Lukin

@bphillipsonMP x.com/mjdaly57/statu…

Mortified to see these comments, some made by people standing to represent my area in Sunderland. A vote for any party other than Labour risks letting these people into power – racist, misogynistic and downright dangerous.

@bphillipsonMP x.com/hoodedclaw1974…

@wesstreeting How’s your good friend and mentor Mandelson doing? Shared any texts lately? Guess you won’t be pushing for the leadership anytime soon because of this. Every cloud, eh?…..

I’ve never been so shocked and disgusted by a Labour Party election broadcast. No wonder it has been censored. It’s because we didn’t use our own words - just those of Reform UK politicians. It needs to be watched and shared so that people know who and what they’re voting for.

@UKLabour Traitors to your own nation. Your party is doomed.

Happy St George's Day from all of us at the Labour Party.

@James5555883379 Those engineers and doctors are easily riled up.

Sunderland.. Local residents have reported a disturbing video showing a scrap on Borough Rd featuring knives and machetes. Sad to say I don’t recognise my city anymore. I guess I’m not the only one 😔 USUAL SUSPECTS..

@Keir_Starmer Traitor. Resign.

St George’s flag stands for unity over hatred and decency over division. Those are the values I will always fight for. Some try to hijack our flag to spread hate, I reject their plastic patriotism. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…

@campbellclaret @jk_rowling @RestIsPolitics @SarahEMcBride Can’t decide if this is Parody or Satire? The one thing I am sure about….It ain’t reality!! 🤦🏼‍♂️😂

For those in the middle of the @jk_rowling conversation I strongly recommend you listen to @RestIsPolitics LEADING interview with @SarahEMcBride - you could not wish to hear a more compelling, passionate and measured advocate of trans rights and human rights. m.youtube.com/watch?v=UvxQze…

@m00nton @ripx4nutmeg No

@Meatymitt @ripx4nutmeg Quick question, can mammals lay eggs

Monty Don meets two women working as gardeners at Hyde Park in the latest episode of Gardeners' World. As it's a BBC programme, one of the two women has a penis

@Keir_Starmer Resign. Traitor.

I know parents are worried about social media and its impact on their children’s safety. They rightly expect fast action. Today, I’m calling on senior leaders from X, Meta, Snap, YouTube and TikTok to step up. I will do whatever it takes to keep children safe online.

@iAmJoshHunt My wife manages a local PFI medical centre. Needed six shelves fixing to a wall in a store room. Probably 2-3hrs work. Price charged from approved contractor: £900. Oh, and they already had the shelves. Price was just for “labour” 🤦🏼‍♂️

This one will require a stiff drink. In the early 1990s, the government came up with a clever idea. Instead of borrowing money cheaply to build hospitals, schools, and roads, it would get the private sector to build them and then pay the private sector back over 25 to 30 years. The Private Finance Initiative. PFI. The attraction was obvious. You got a shiny new hospital today. The bill didn't show up on the government's books. The cost was deferred into the future. Politicians got ribbon-cutting ceremonies without the awkward conversation about borrowing. It was, in effect, the nation's credit card. Buy now, pay later. Except the interest rate was extraordinary. The total capital value of everything built under PFI was around £50 billion. As of March 2024, there were 665 PFI contracts still running across the UK, with roughly £136 billion in remaining payments stretching out to the early 2050s. These are payments public bodies are contractually locked into. Hospitals, schools, councils, government departments. Paying for buildings that in many cases were constructed twenty or thirty years ago. And the terms are extraordinary. PFI contracts were structured so the private sector would not just build the facility but manage its services. Cleaning. Maintenance. Catering. Portering. These services are bundled into long-term contracts with built-in inflation increases that the public sector cannot renegotiate, cannot exit without paying massive penalties, and often cannot even fully scrutinise because of commercial confidentiality clauses. In one case raised in Parliament, a hospital was charged £333 to change a lightbulb. That isn't an urban myth. It was cited in Hansard. The NHS has been hit hardest. According to parliamentary analysis, the capital cost of NHS PFI projects was around £13 billion. The total repayments are estimated at around £80 billion. And the peak of NHS PFI annual repayments isn't even here yet. It arrives in 2029. The bills are still going up. In 2020-21, NHS trusts paid £457 million purely in interest charges on PFI contracts. Not services. Not maintenance. Interest. In the last five years, NHS trusts have handed over more than £1.8 billion in PFI interest alone. We Own It calculates that money would have covered the starting salaries of over 50,000 new doctors. One NHS trust, Essex Partnership, has reportedly paid back 27 times what was originally borrowed. Some hospitals are spending more on PFI repayments than on medicines for patients. And remember, these repayments come out of the same NHS budget that's supposed to fund patient care, staff, and equipment. Scotland got it just as badly. Audit Scotland reported that Scottish taxpayers will pay a cumulative £40 billion for PFI assets worth just £9 billion. North Ayrshire Council will have paid £440 million by 2038 for four schools that cost £83 million to build. Now here's what makes this worse. Many of these contracts are starting to expire. The buildings are being handed back to the public sector. And the NAO has warned of significant risks around the handback process, including cases where public bodies were dissatisfied with the condition of assets being returned to them. Decades of payments. And some of these buildings may come back needing significant further investment. So what actually happened? The government could have borrowed money at significantly lower rates to build these hospitals and schools itself. Sovereign borrowing has always been cheaper than private finance. Instead, it paid the private sector to borrow at a premium and passed the inflated cost on to the taxpayer. The private sector took the profit. The taxpayer took the risk. The buildings are now ageing. The debts are still being paid. And the services that were supposed to benefit are being squeezed partly because so much of their budget is locked into contractual obligations they cannot escape. PFI wasn't investment. It was an accounting trick. A way for governments to build things without the borrowing showing up in the national debt figures. It made politicians look fiscally responsible while loading future generations with obligations they had no say in and no ability to renegotiate. Both parties did this. The Conservatives created PFI in 1992. Labour massively expanded it after 1997. More than 700 projects were signed. The coalition eventually wound it down. The current government scrapped the latest version. But the contracts remain. The payments continue. And the damage is already done. This is what it looks like when a country chooses to buy its infrastructure on hire purchase instead of investing properly. You lock in above-market rates for decades. You lose control of the assets. You tie the hands of future governments. And when the bill keeps coming due, you're told there's no money for doctors, teachers, or social care. There was always money. It just went somewhere else.

@Capt_Fishpaste Didn’t think he’d cut it in the Prem. Happy to be entirely wrong. Legend.

A footballer proven at Premier League level. Somehow. 😂 #SAFC

@dpaudits x.com/daveatherton/s…

So we managed to get inside to rape alarm illegal migrant hotel in Dumfries, and it is luxury and a half

@BattleByrd This is my pornography. Absolute filth 🫡

"Yeah I'd like to book a tee time for tomorrow at 8:30." Groundskeeper as soon as you get off the phone...

@AllisonPearson x.com/daveatherton/s…

People have no idea how broken Britain is. If an asylum claim is refused officials send a letter saying “You should now leave the UK.” That’s it. No follow up. No deportation. How many asylum seekers leave do you think?

@RealDonKeith x.com/daveatherton/s…

🚨An Irish senator just admitted her own national flag terrifies her. She called it a “disgrace” to see the Irish tricolour at protests, claiming it scares her. Get these woke people out of government.

@Femi_sorry Thank you for displaying the dictionary definition of “suicidal empathy”

Southport Inquiry: The immigration status of the parents of Axel Rudakubana had NOTHING to do with their culpability. Robert Jenrick: Deport them! Reform UK is weaponising the murder of three small girls, for their own racist agenda. youtu.be/XebEjfKAQS8?si…

@RealDonKeith Traitor.

🚨Kevin Maguire had a full meltdown on air, raging that deporting the parents of Southport killer Axel Rudakubana would be “odious, vile & racist” because they are black and brown. Too bad. Deport them all.

@RedTory2016 “The best interests of myself”. Sums him up perfectly 👌🏻

Good. Now fuck off and don’t come back. Women with endometriosis don’t need your wank cosplay

@DrEliDavid 🎯

“If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.” —Jordan Peterson