council estate socialist; proud Brummie!! views utterly & totally own. RT=not endorsements ever. blog: https://xitter.cf/t.co/IFGi0rWQQj
London UK
Joined April 2009
- Tweets24.4K
- Following1.9K
- Followers1.5K
- Likes105K
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
Want to cut the welfare bill? Pay wages people can actually live on so working people don’t need benefits to survive.
End the great rent rip-off. Build council homes instead of pouring taxpayers’ money into private landlords’ pockets.
Tackle poverty, not the poor.
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
Wealth taxes, public ownership and social care for all!
What do Jeremy Corbyn, Sir Ed Davey, Robert Jenrick, John McDonnell and Alicia Kearns want to see in the budget?
@AliFortescue speaks to MPs from across the Commons about their hopes for the Chancellor's speech.
Watch the full pre-budget show at the link in the comments.
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
If you're a chief executive on a telephone number salary, at least have the grace not to complain about the taxes that fund the benefits your workers have to claim because you refuse to pay them enough to live on
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
The media are cheerleading more drilling in the North Sea. The BBC's Business Reporter, Simon Jack said Jackdaw would create "dozens of jobs". The Labour minister herself had confirmed 27 new jobs! You won't get the facts from them so I've gone through the biggest myths in this blog post: devutopia.substack.com/p/myt…
#BrokenMedia
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
£2bn a year. Is that all Labour are willing to take from the banks?
- No windfall tax on the £200bn profits the big four have made in five years.
- No tiered reserves to cut the £22bn a year the Treasury pays the banks in interest on their QE money at the Bank of England.
£2bn from the banks. Watch how tightly they hold back the spending our public services need.
EXCL: John Healey poised to tax Britain’s banks in his 28 October budget to help offset the damage inflicted on the public finances by war in the Middle East, the Guardian understands.
The chancellor is in Bangkok, where the IMF has praised the UK’s progress towards balancing the books, urging him to “stay the course”.
To keep the Treasury’s deficit reduction plans on track in the face of rising government borrowing costs, Healey is understood to have decided to tap the financial sector for additional revenue.
One option understood to be under discussion – reversing cuts to the bank surcharge made by Jeremy Hunt – would raise upwards of £2bn a year.
Lenders have logged strong earnings on back of rising interest rates, with UK’s four largest lenders – HSBC, NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group – alone having generated £200bn in pre-tax profits over past five years.
More from economics editor Heather Stewart, @jessicaelgot & Kayleena Markoff 👇
theguardian.com/uk-news/2026…
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
Looks like selling Royal Mail to a Czech billionaire worked out every bit as well as selling our water system to an Australian investment bank and our steel industry to an Indian multinational
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
The Pope received Archbishop Broglio of the Military Archdiocese this morning; he just released the following statement “…do we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries? The crime committed by Nidal Malik Hasan was heinous, but does exposing the public to his execution serve any purpose? Has the potential moral injury, which the members of the firing squad might experience, been considered? Will the exposure of a live-stream to the young and impressionable during the 250th anniversary year of our independence be able to be repaired? The US military generally enjoys a good reputation in the world. Is there really a value to throwing them in the same boat with terrorists by broadcasting the image of the execution of a man in a wheel chair to the whole world?”
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
In the run up to the Budget on 28 October the media will tell you which cuts “must” be made. Here’s the list they won’t read out. Corporate welfare.
- The banks have already pocketed £6bn from the Tory surcharge cut. Labour still hasn’t reversed it.
- The Treasury also pays the banks interest on their QE reserves at the Bank of England. IPPR puts that at £22bn a year.
- Oil and gas firms get back tax they’ve already paid when they decommission rigs. HMRC’s own estimate: £24bn.
That bank reserves payment alone is more than the entire police budget for England and Wales (£21bn), and over 80% of what councils in England spend on adult social care (£26.7bn).
There’s always money. Now ask yourself why these numbers never make the media’s list of “tough choices”.
🙏🙏🙏🙏
Dear friends, during some recent medical examinations, the doctors found a small, localized nodule in my lung. It was detected at a very early stage and is well-localized. The doctors believe that it is best to intervene, so, following their advice, I have decided to undergo surgery to remove it. The operation is already scheduled to take place in the coming days. I thank you for your spiritual closeness and entrust myself to your prayers.
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
Exactly this. The media ask why anyone would back the Greens when Burnham is calling for some of the same things. They're missing the difference.
The Greens are an opposition party with a handful of MPs. Burnham is PM, with the whole state behind him and a massive Commons majority.
He shouldn't be calling for things. He should be doing them. Instead, anything major is parked until after the next election.
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
I'm 64. I'm (obviously) not retired yet.
When I was at school, I was told I would be able to retire at 60. Then there was a court case that said that women and men should not be discriminated against, and should have the same retirement age.
The French (bless them) decided to bring the men's retirement age down to 60, in line with women's. In the UK they decided to put the women's retirement age up.
The reason we had an earlier retirement age was because it was recognised that women carry/carried the burden of homemaking and child-rearing on top of working. But hey ho. That is that.
I am what I recently discovered is called "Generation Jones" - a year or two short of Gen X, but definitely not "Boomer" either. I started work in 1979. In the 70s and 80s my basic income tax rate started at 33%, then went down to 30%, and by the time I moved to France in 87, was 27%. The 20% rate didn't come in til 2010.
All of you saying the Triple Lock should be smashed fail to take into account that we paid higher rates of income tax for many years. The majority of us most probably started working younger than the majority start now - far fewer of us went to Uni and worked from 16 or 18 (in my case, 17) "Gap year" was something out of Brideshead Revisited.
The UK has one of the lowests rate of state pension in the OECD countries. And you want to lower it even further by playing one generation off against another, while you STILL have endless money for bombs and wars in far off lands?
Get to fuck.
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
Universalism means people aren't humiliated through means testing, its more convenient & cheaper to administer, it fosters the idea we all have a stake in society & the cost can be clawed back from the rich through progressive taxation. Its a principle that should be defended.
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
As I said, abolishing the Triple Lock was the ‘foot in the door’ - which is why it was so important to fight to keep it.
The Anti-state pension lobby won’t rest until there is no state pension at all.
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
Final salary pensions are closing. What's replacing them won't fund a retirement.
Last year over a million pension pots were accessed for the first time. Six in ten were worth under £30k. The median was about £20k.
Turned into an annuity, a guaranteed income for life, £20k buys about £1,600 a year. That figure is fixed and never rises with inflation.
So most people don't buy one. 46% of pots were cashed out in full, and only 1 in 10 became a guaranteed income.
A "moderate" retirement, by the PLSA's standard for a single person outside London, costs £32,700 a year. Even with the full State Pension, reaching it takes a pot of about £310k. Only 8.6% of pots accessed last year were over £250k.
The full State Pension plus the median pot comes to about £13,850 a year after tax. That's roughly the PLSA minimum of £13,900, and less than half what "moderate" needs.
For most people, private pensions aren't a pension. The State Pension is.
🤖 Made with AI
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
Margaret Thatcher broke the link between the state pension and earnings in 1980, the value of the pension falling and pensioner poverty soaring as a result.
I thought Andy Burnham was rolling back Thatcherism.
Theresa Byrne #CeasefireNow! 😢👏✊ retweeted
This is a huge milestone, laying bare what survivors and the bereaved have been saying for 9 years: Grenfell was no tragedy, it was corporate manslaughter.
It should never have taken so long to get to this point — but we will never, ever give up in our fight for justice.
BREAKING: Prosecutors asked to consider manslaughter charges against firms and people over Grenfell fire news.sky.com/story/cps-asked…
