Whig; limited government; freedom of exchange, expression; personal liberty. Apologist for wheat. Pronouns: ‘Your Eminence’
South East, England
Joined September 2020
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Here’s a vision of the world under your rule, drawn from your posts: limited government, personal liberty, free exchange, simplified taxes, social-insurance healthcare instead of a command-and-control NHS, pro-housing development over NIMBYism, defence of private enterprise
🤖 Made with AI
Public sector trade unions are absolutely disgraceful. They should be banned
Civil servants’ absurd demands show how far trade unions have fallen telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/w…
Whig retweeted
Let me remove my economist hat for a second and make a comment which, speaking as an ordinary citizen in a personal capacity, might capture a lot of the frustration the British public has with this generation of policymakers.
How can it be that a new government with a £1.3 TRILLION budget (40% of GDP) sees ‘doing no harm’ as a good outcome for its first Budget when people are being told to stockpile three days’ worth of water and food in case of an emergency?
£1.3 TRILLION to spend this year, likely rising to north of £1.5 TRILLION by 2030, and the government argues it does not have the resources to take the necessary bold measures on energy security, defence and AI.
None of this is even remotely serious.
#Budget #Budget2026
@JohnHealey_MP @RobertJenrick @afneil @KemiBadenoch
Eye-catching policy tweaks will make headlines, but financial markets are likely to look through the noise and focus on three issues at today’s Budget:
1. Borrowing costs: UK benchmark interest rates are too high, crowding out private economic activity, and are caused by years of inflationary fiscal and regulatory policies. A good Budget would be one that allows markets to reduce the “moron premium” priced into UK debt.
2. Inflation impulses: The government’s planned deficit reduction should be disinflationary over the medium term. But any near-term giveaways to ease cost-of-living pressures that are not offset within this fiscal year would add to short-term inflation pressures, keeping benchmark rates elevated and heaping pressure on the Bank of England to tighten.
3. Issuance: Headroom above £15bn should draw a decent market reaction, and £20bn better still. But how much debt is issued around the rules matters more. “Your First Home” equity loans buy a financial asset, but require debt issuance to fund them in the first instance. Will Healey use this trick to finance other initiatives too? If gilt markets see heavy issuance on the horizon, even a positive surprise on the headroom number could see yields rise.
#healey #Budget #Budget2026
Whig retweeted
Here's the real story of this Budget, the can being kicked down the road. This Labour government is apparently planning spending cuts on most areas of public service spending of 2.6% per year between 2028-29 and 2031-32.
Pull the other one. It's got bells on.
Whig retweeted
OBR Says Employment Rights Act Will Hurt Economy for the First Time order-order.com/2026/10/28/o…
Whig retweeted
Mindblowing chart from OBR. In 2029 real household disposable income per person expected to be just 1% higher than in 2019. What an unbelievably awful decade. It used to grow by 2%+ every year, not 1% in 10 years.
The Picky Bits budget? The same but a much more annoying term
Winner so far, hat tip to @MJBurrows - the Tapas Budget, lots of fussy little measures that add up to nothing very satisfying
Whig retweeted
Earning 1.8x the national minimum wage now makes you a higher-rate tax payer. 🤯
In 1990, 1.7 million British people paid the 40% rate of income tax.
By 2027, almost 9 million are projected to pay higher or additional rates.
From roughly 1 in 15 income taxpayers to more than 1 in 5.
On Budget Day, it’s worth remembering that higher-rate tax has become an increasingly ordinary tax on aspiration.
Britain needs lower taxes & less government in our lives.
Whig retweeted
Putting an end to this would be the easiest win in politics. No more tax rises. Deficit down. GDP up. Popular with the public.
But they can’t do it because of their lunatic, benefits-obsessed backbenchers.
Who elected Martin Lewis and made him Chancellor?
CONFIRMED. Gas Standing Charges to be scrapped. I've just come out of a meeting with the Chancellor. The gas standing charge will be scrapped in 2027 (my guess, either for 1 Oct price cap or the 1 Jan 28 price cap). Having campaigned against the moral hazard of standing charges for years, I'm pleased.
It's currently £108 a year. That cost will be shifted onto unit rates. We don't know how much yet, but I suspect just under 1p per kwH.
The Chancellor also said he will be talking to Ofgem about how they get rid of the charge on electricity as well, but that is 'trickier' apparently and will take longer.
This is primarily about the price cap standing charges. There will still be an open market, so other firms can offer other forms of prices with or without the standing charge. My suspicion is that once it goes on the price cap, it will tend to be reduced on other tariffs as well.
As for those on fixes: if you get a fix now, the rate of your fix is fixed, so this should not affect it. You will pay what you pay and if it has standing charges they will continue (some asking if they should delay fixing because of this, no if a fix is right for you and will save you money, don't let this change that - this is about the structure of bills, as opposed to the actual costs on bills).
About 60% of people will pay less due to this, 40% more. My guesstimate is the dividing line will be somewhere around 12,500 kilowatt hours of gas (can't know until there is actual pricing). According to a study by Nesta, this switch would leave the majority of people in all income groups under £100,000 better off.
Of course, when this does come in, if we're still in the nightmare that we are right now, there will need to be support put in for vulnerable higher users, who will have to pay more. Though hopefully by then the mid-east will have calmed and energy prices lower.
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That's all long term. The biggest issue in energy right now is that we're expecting a 27% rise in the price cap in January. I asked the Chancellor whether he will be intervening on that. He told me I'd have to wait for the budget, but reading between the lines, yes, there will be an announcement today.
Whether it's an increase in the Warm Home Discount, or whether it's council tax banned, or whether it's done via a payout for people in say council tax bands A-D as a proxy for household income as Rishi Sunak did who knows.
Whig retweeted
This is bonkers. The gas grid costs an amount to upkeep approximately proportional to the size of each person’s hookup, the most logical way to pay for which is through some sort of charge reflecting that.
The price system is collapsing around our ears!
CONFIRMED. Gas Standing Charges to be scrapped. I've just come out of a meeting with the Chancellor. The gas standing charge will be scrapped in 2027 (my guess, either for 1 Oct price cap or the 1 Jan 28 price cap). Having campaigned against the moral hazard of standing charges for years, I'm pleased.
It's currently £108 a year. That cost will be shifted onto unit rates. We don't know how much yet, but I suspect just under 1p per kwH.
The Chancellor also said he will be talking to Ofgem about how they get rid of the charge on electricity as well, but that is 'trickier' apparently and will take longer.
This is primarily about the price cap standing charges. There will still be an open market, so other firms can offer other forms of prices with or without the standing charge. My suspicion is that once it goes on the price cap, it will tend to be reduced on other tariffs as well.
As for those on fixes: if you get a fix now, the rate of your fix is fixed, so this should not affect it. You will pay what you pay and if it has standing charges they will continue (some asking if they should delay fixing because of this, no if a fix is right for you and will save you money, don't let this change that - this is about the structure of bills, as opposed to the actual costs on bills).
About 60% of people will pay less due to this, 40% more. My guesstimate is the dividing line will be somewhere around 12,500 kilowatt hours of gas (can't know until there is actual pricing). According to a study by Nesta, this switch would leave the majority of people in all income groups under £100,000 better off.
Of course, when this does come in, if we're still in the nightmare that we are right now, there will need to be support put in for vulnerable higher users, who will have to pay more. Though hopefully by then the mid-east will have calmed and energy prices lower.
---------------
That's all long term. The biggest issue in energy right now is that we're expecting a 27% rise in the price cap in January. I asked the Chancellor whether he will be intervening on that. He told me I'd have to wait for the budget, but reading between the lines, yes, there will be an announcement today.
Whether it's an increase in the Warm Home Discount, or whether it's council tax banned, or whether it's done via a payout for people in say council tax bands A-D as a proxy for household income as Rishi Sunak did who knows.
Whig retweeted
This picture should be shared far & wide to explain wage compression
You have people with years experience earning a tiny amount more than minimum wage
It’ll push decline further as people will continue not to care about the country
There is no reward for improving ones self
Whig retweeted
Min wage will probably accelerate the decline of every region outside London
Can an SME in Newcastle drop £36k to hire a 21 year old?
Isn’t this the opposite of Andy’s plan for devo maxx?
Whig retweeted
So gas bill standing charges going. Medium and larger homeowners will pay far more under this policy. Far, far more.
This is fun. So much to cut!
I wanted to visualise Britain's state spending ahead of the Budget, so I've vibe coded an app which presents it as a disk drive.
Take a look at the tradeoffs and see if you can make the budget fit:
britains-disk.pages.dev
Whig retweeted
An increase to £13.20p/h equates to a minimum wage of £27,456, based on a 40 hour week.
Once you factor in employers NI and basic pension contributions, the MINIMUM cost to hire a 21 year old for a company would be £31,461.
This is before you factor in any overarching business costs like office space, laptops, phone, software, training, support staff, vehicles etc.
This is going to be devastating to SME's who cant put together a simple 12 month budget without the goalposts being moved & their margins squeezed.
It'll also be catastrophic to youngsters opportunities because businesses will simply not be able to afford to hire them.
What's also incredible is that anything above £50,270 is seen as 'high earnings' in the UK and is taxed at 40%!
We are governed by financially and economically illiterate morons.
This will not end well.
