Mum of 6 - Partner in Country House hotel but very much behind the scenes
UK
Joined June 2009
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Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Very few of the hospitality "representatives" actually represent the views of most hospitality businesses. Sacha included. Most hospitality business owners hate this government more than the last government.
The problem is the gov. won't let anybody who represent this position anywhere near them so the representatives suck up to the gov.
I think they should do the opposite and refuse to meet with them until we get some solid commitments. MPs love the photo op of being in a pub but don't want to back us.
The public don't care about the truth, for example, they will think the £18k Business Rates scheme will help pubs, when in reality it will be a tiny amount of pubs helped. And when things get tough the gov. will claim that the choice of offering people £100 to help with energy bills was a bigger priority than helping hospitality. This is obviously a false choice, the gov. is spending more than revenue anyway and a VAT cut for hospitality would probably increase revenue over 3-5 years.
The whole situation is a mess, unfortunately it seems the Labour government don't have the people capable of thinking about the big picture.
Spending the day prepping my speech for tomorrows largest conference for future Hospitality Leaders delivered by The Institute of Hospitality @IoH_Online in London.
Yes, its been a disappointing week for Hospitality, but I strongly believe we are the best sector to help get young people into work.
When my sons old enough, I'll be encouraging him to get a part time job to help him through college, as it's the best way to learn life skills, that can't be taught sat behind a desk.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Absolutely disgusting thing to say.
Next time I pull an 80hr week I’ll keep myself warm at night knowing that I’m not really a ‘working person’.
'I don't think employers are working people.'
@CamillaTominey grills Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Emma Reynolds MP, over whether Labour has breached its manifesto pledge in the Budget.
📺 Freeview 236, Sky 512, Virgin 604
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Update:
In the 27 months since Labour came to power, we've seen;
• Employer National Insurance increased from 13.8% to 15%.
• The employer NI threshold cut from £9,100 to £5,000.
• The freeze on Income Tax and National Insurance thresholds extended to 2031.
• Capital Gains Tax increased from 10% and 20% to 18% and 24%.
• Business Asset Disposal Relief increased from 10% to 14%, then 18% – and now its lifetime limit halved to £500,000.
• Investors’ Relief raised to 18% and its lifetime limit cut from £10 million to £1 million.
• CGT relief on sales to Employee Ownership Trusts halved.
• Carried interest taxation increased and moved into the Income Tax regime.
• Dividend tax rates increased by two percentage points.
• Savings-income tax rates increased by four percentage points.
• Property-income tax rates increased by four percentage points.
• VCT income tax relief cut from 30% to 20%.
• Most unused pension funds brought into the Inheritance Tax net.
• Agricultural and Business Property Relief capped.
• Inheritance Tax thresholds frozen until 2031.
• The non-dom regime replaced with a tougher residence-based system.
• VAT imposed on private school fees.
• Business-rates relief removed from private schools.
• The Stamp Duty surcharge on second homes and buy-to-let raised from 3% to 5%.
• The Furnished Holiday Lettings regime abolished.
• A new annual surcharge on homes worth £2 million or more.
• Pension salary-sacrifice NI relief capped at £2,000 a year.
• The bank surcharge doubled.
• Capital allowances for plant and machinery cut twice.
• Online gaming duty almost doubled.
• The Energy Profits Levy increased and extended, and its investment allowance scrapped.
• Vaping Products Duty brought in and tobacco duties increased above inflation.
• Vehicle Excise Duty increased for many new cars, with electric vehicles brought in.
• A pay-per-mile tax on electric and plug-in hybrid cars legislated for 2028.
• Air Passenger Duty increased.
• Making Tax Digital extended to more landlords and self-employed people.
Together they represent one of the biggest transfers of wealth from households and businesses to the Treasury in decades – with little to show for it in public services.
Whether you're a business owner employing staff, a parent paying school fees, a farmer planning succession, an entrepreneur building wealth or simply someone trying to save for your family’s future...
- You keep less of what you earn.
- You keep less of what you invest.
- You leave less for your family.
Death by a thousand cuts.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Labour's Budgets have added an estimated £99,178 a year (£1,907 a week) to the cost of running The Milehouse in Newcastle-under-Lyme since 2024. What's your local paying? #HospitalityBan @HospitalityBan @AJogee @UKLabour hospitalityban.co.uk/s/o8HCe…
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
@andyburnham and @JohnHealey_MP , today’s Budget may have offered some breathing space for businesses. But how much breathing space is there for a pub or restaurant that’s already struggling to breathe?
I ask you both to think about the thousands of people behind Britain’s independent pubs, restaurants and hotels.
People who have invested their life savings, missed precious family occasions and worked themselves to exhaustion trying to keep their businesses alive.
Since 2021, the minimum wage has risen by 48%. The employer’s National Insurance bill for one full-time minimum wage employee has risen by 162%, from around £1,300 to £3,400 a year.
The basic cost of employing that person has increased by 55%.
Food prices have risen by around 40%. Commercial electricity by around 65%.
And our customers, struggling with their own household bills, simply cannot keep paying more.
You can be busy, loved by your customers and doing everything right, and still lose money.
That’s the heartbreaking reality of hospitality today.
I recognise that today’s Budget included some help with business rates. But it did not deliver the reduction in hospitality VAT that so many of us have been desperately asking for.
And the fundamental problem remains.
Behind every business facing closure is someone lying awake at three in the morning, wondering how they’ll pay their staff, their suppliers and the next electricity bill.
Someone who will still get up the following morning and greet their customers with a smile.
Andy and John, I genuinely believe you understand the importance of our pubs and the communities they serve.
But understanding their importance and giving them a realistic chance of survival are two very different things.
When these businesses close, we lose jobs, livelihoods and places where generations have celebrated, laughed, cried and made memories.
We lose a little of the heart of our communities.
We aren’t asking for special treatment. We’re asking for a fair chance to survive, with meaningful action on hospitality VAT and employment costs.
Please don’t mistake our determination to keep going for evidence that we’re managing.
Because the saddest thing about all this is that people aren’t giving up because they’ve stopped loving what they do.
They’re giving up because, however hard they work and however much they care, they simply cannot afford to carry on.
And once those doors close for the last time, no future Budget can bring back everything those businesses meant to the people who loved them. 💔
@UKHospKate @BBCRadioWales @WalesPolitics @andyjlennox @Porkyaskew @NailcoteHall @Sacha_Lord @lordwaynebas @Sassan_sir @BBCWalesNews @switherdenMP
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
I’m wondering where the cavalry for hospitality is @andyburnham ?
Don’t talk about business rates. Removing business rates for those rates under 18k is a JOKE when our rates were changed from 18.5 to 73.5k less than a year ago!!
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
What people don't realise (and presumably @andyburnham @JohnHealey_MP), is that if the minimum wage does rise to £13.20 - that actually costs the employer somewhere between £16.90–£17 per hour. That's just not possible right now. Hospitality will be destroyed.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Britain:
A few weeks of sunshine: ☀️
hosepipe bans.
A few days of rain: ☔️
flooding.
If the local and national governments + water companies invested in reservoirs, water pipe maintenance, road drain cleaning, and flood protection of fields, we wouldn’t go through this endless cycle of weather chaos.
A competent government would ensure the building of new reservoirs, fix the Victorian pipes that leak half our water into the ground, unblock the road drains, and stop treating flood defences like an afterthought.
Until the government does this, we will keep lurching from one weather crisis to the next. Do the bloody basics.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
This month the Energy Secretary approved his third large solar farm in a fortnight, one of them on prime farmland across Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire that his own inspectors told him to refuse. They walked the site. They said no. He signed it anyway.
So here's the grand plan. Take some of the best food-growing soil in England, ground that has fed people for a thousand years, and bury it under glass panels shipped in from China to catch the famous Lincolnshire sunshine. In a country where the sun knocks off mid-afternoon for half the winter and turns up for roughly eleven per cent of the year, we are concreting over arable land to harvest photons that mostly aren't there.
A British solar field spends most of its life doing an impression of a very expensive greenhouse with the plants missing. The panels tilt hopefully at a grey sky. The soil beneath them, some of the finest in the country, sits in the dark for forty years quietly learning to be a car park.
And it doesn't come back. Not in your lifetime. They are making a permanent decision about a temporary energy fashion, on ground you cannot un-glass, against the written advice of the men they pay to give it, in the same fortnight the same government swears food security keeps it awake at night.
Sunniest idea they've had all year.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Customer: "Oat milk, please. Trying to lower my footprint."
Barista: "Course. Happy with the rapeseed oil in it?"
Customer: "Rapeseed oil? In milk?"
Barista: "It's not milk. It's oats, water, and a good glug of seed oil for the creaminess."
Customer: "I avoid seed oils."
Barista: "You're about to wear a moustache of one."
Customer: "...Almond, then?"
Barista: "Lovely. How do you feel about draining California?"
Customer: "The soy?"
Barista: "Comes with a complimentary top-up of oestrogen. On the house."
Customer: "...Coconut?"
Barista: "Flown across an ocean, and more saturated fat than lard."
Customer: "What's the little carton at the back?"
Barista: "That one's just milk. Cow, field, grass, done. No factory, no solvent, no asterisk."
Customer: "And the footprint on that?"
Barista: "She made it out of rain. Yours is the taxi you took here to ask."
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Look at them all, grinning as they parachute in a bloke who has tried and failed to be Labour leader twice, who won a manufactured by-election and will now become PM unopposed so he can avoid all scrutiny of what he actually stands for. Risible.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Wow. So the cow in @JeremyClarkson Farm never had TB in the post mortem…. They killed a cow pregnant with 2 cows for an inconclusive test.. This happened to Geronimo the alpaca and my friends show cow… TB testing in the UK is a fucking joke!
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
According to this Labour Government 16 and 17 year olds are mature enough to vote, but not to serve on a jury. That is an "adult duty" apparently.
They are old enough to vote, but are now subject to a government-mandated social media curfew at 8.30pm.
The only consistent thing about Labour's votes at 16 policy is the blatant party political self interest.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Barnaby Philip John Webber
11/01/2004-13/06/2023 💔
If you can, share these images of the beautiful soul stolen from us by the worst of humanity.
Let his face today burn bright.
Barney, I promise you there will be accountability 💛💚
For You. For Grace. For Ian.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
This year the Home Office moved to stop expert sheep shearers from Australia and New Zealand coming to shear British sheep.
The people who keep the animals comfortable were declared surplus to requirements.
For over a decade, around 75 of the best shearers on earth have flown in each spring on a simple visa concession. In a few brutal weeks they take the wool off up to two million sheep.
A top shearer clears a ewe in two or three minutes. Hundreds a day. Calm hands, no panic in the animal. It is a global trade and a young body's game, and Britain has never grown enough of its own.
The official line? Fourteen years to train Britons, so the door is closing.
Here is what that tidy sentence ignores. A sheep must be shorn every year or she overheats, cannot move properly, and gets eaten alive by flies and maggots. Shearing on time is welfare, plain and simple, written into law and into the animal's own skin.
So a government that lectures farmers without pause about welfare has quietly made the most basic welfare task harder to carry out. After the outcry they allowed one "final" year. Then the experts are gone for good.
A sector already losing money on every fleece, already burning wool it cannot sell, now told it cannot even get the people in to take the wool off.
You could be forgiven for thinking somebody wants the British sheep gone.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
June in Britain. Remember this next time the Sun comes out against and we are all told we must pay more taxes to the God of Man Made Global Warming...
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
>be Britain
>experts decide the cattle and sheep must go
>think of the methane, save the planet by lunch
>cull the lot, pop the champagne
>then notice the 65% of your land that grows only grass
>thin soil, vertical hills, rain like a power shower
>try wheat on a Welsh fell to replace the sheep
>it stands there, reads the room, dies
>fine, "let nature heal"
>nature sends bracken, rush and six-foot gorse
>the Lake District turns to impassable scrub
>which then catches fire every August, lovely
>the curlews needed the grazing, so they clear off
>hill farms shut, villages empty, 800 years of know-how gone in ten
>still hungry, so you import the beef
>now it's Brazilian, off torched rainforest, shipped round the planet you were saving
>your emissions end up higher than when you started
>shelves thin out, prices double
>the experts pop up on telly to call it a triumph
>and gently suggest the real problem was the chickens all along
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
Blame the energy price rises on sunshine, moonlight, good times and the boogie. But never blame it on yourself.
Kara Kynaston-Evans retweeted
A pasture in the Lincolnshire Wolds has carried cattle for a thousand years.
It's worked by the Crawford family. Has been since the reign of George IV. Two hundred years of calving in the small hours, of bringing the herd in before storms, of two hundred years of knowing that the Lincoln Reds prefer the south-facing slopes in spring and the sheltered hollow when the wind comes off the North Sea in October.
In 2025, a solar developer offered them £1,250 an acre per year, index-linked, on a forty-year lease. The suckler herd was running at a loss before subsidy. With subsidy, the margin was thin enough that one bad winter or one TB reactor wiped it out.
The family is thinking about it.
You can't blame them. The maths is not subtle. The maths is a father and a son walking the herd at first light, neither of them speaking, both of them knowing that the figure on the developer's letter is more than the farm has cleared in a decade.
If they sign, the panels go up in 2027.
The herd will be dispersed at Louth, which is now the last remaining livestock market in Lincolnshire. Two hundred head of one of the oldest beef breeds in Britain, descended from cattle the Norse settlers brought across the North Sea, finished on grass without a grain of cereal, broken up and sold to whoever turns up with a trailer. Fewer than five hundred original-population Lincoln Reds remain in the world. The Crawford herd was one of the larger ones.
The barn becomes a substation. The cattle grid gets lifted. The hedge the great-grandfather planted in 1958 gets pulled out to widen the access track for the construction lorries.
The Crawfords did not choose this. The economics were engineered, in Westminster, over fifteen years, to make this the only sensible option.
The panels are not the villain. The panels are the symptom.
The villain is a country that decided British beef mattered less than electricity it could have generated from the roof of the Amazon warehouse outside Grantham. The shelf in the supermarket where the Lincoln Red used to sit will be filled, quietly, by Irish beef, then Australian, then Brazilian, and nobody will tell the shopper why the country stopped feeding itself.
The roof of the warehouse is still empty.
The herd is gone.
