Scottish Tory living in London. Medical Entrepreneur. Angel Investor. Jewish. Libertarian.
London
Joined November 2010
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Robert MacKay retweeted
Thank God he didn’t apply a Snapchat bugs bunny filter to make fun of a politician
Robert MacKay retweeted
Whether you are happy or not that the Prime Minister is opening up the Brexit debate again, there are two things we know for certain.
1. He lied about not opening up the Brexit debate again.
2. He wouldn't be the PM right now, if he hadn't lied about it.
Robert MacKay retweeted
Five more everyday fixes for you, Andy:
1. Red ends on Sellotape so we can find them.
2. Biscuits that survive being dunked.
3. Fitted sheets with THIS WAY UP printed on them.
4. Bins that put themselves out.
5. A smoke alarm that recognises toast.
Britain rebuilt. You’re welcome.
Robert MacKay retweeted
Thatcher was extraordinary in this interview (for the 1987 General Election). You watch it and by the end of it sit in astonishment and disappointment that Britain hasn’t found this quality of leader in the period since.
Thatcherism stands for sound finance; it stands for honest money, not inflation; it stands for living within your means; it stands for incentives, because we know full well that the economic strength of a nation comes from the efforts of its people, and its people need incentives to work as hard as they possibly can. All of that has produced economic growth.
It stands for something else: It stands for the wider spread of ownership of property, of houses, of shares, of savings; it stands for being strong in defence, a reliable ally and a trusted friend.
People have called those 'Thatcherism'. They are, in fact, fundamental commonsense, and having faith in the enterprise and abilities of the people.
It was my task to try to release those. They were always there. They have always been there in the British people but they couldn't flourish under socialism.
Robert MacKay retweeted
Good spot by Martina... 👇
In short, Andy Burnham's attempt to blame Brexit for the small boats crisis contradicts what his own Home Secretary has said 🤔
Interesting difference between the PM and his Home Secretary over Brexit and small boats.
Andy Burnham today blamed the crisis on Britain losing its EU returns agreement after Brexit but Shabana Mahmood has previously rejected that argument.
She told the Home Affairs Committee in February: "I am sure there are lots of other debates to be had about the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but is Brexit responsible for the boats? I do not think that is true...
“The idea that this has happened because we have lost the access to Dublin and the returns agreement with the EU - I think that is too much of a stretch.”
In September, she went further, arguing that under Britain's one-in, one-out deal with France “more returns have happened than ever was the case under the Dublin arrangements, when we were still members of the EU".
She also warned that it was “a mistake to see the EU’s new pact as some sort of new silver bullet” that would eliminate Britain's migration problems.
Robert MacKay retweeted
FYI, talking about Brexit yesterday, Angela Rayner claimed that...
“The evidence is really clear in terms of 20% down in exports to the EU, 16,000 businesses no longer exporting to the EU, it has been the red tape on the EU deal we got, has been damaging to the economy”.
But if this is indeed the evidence, it really is not clear!
Let's unpick it... 🧵
Number 10 clearly considers the PM to be a bit of a loose canon…. telegraph.co.uk/politics/202…
Robert MacKay retweeted
We did know it. We knew, at the time, we were living in an extraordinary decade. We had the luxury of the 60s, 70s, and 80s to inspire us to create it.
We thought each decade would get together better. We were full of hope.
What we never realised is that 26 years later, we would be living in the dystopian nightmare of all the films we had been watching.
Robert MacKay retweeted
They just can't be this bad. They just can't.
1. The highest price they can command is determined by competition. If you increase taxes on everyone then all prices rise.
2. Taxing O&G so highly deters investment. This reduces supply. Reduced supply increases price.
Nope, that’s not how taxes and price works. The price is determined by demand and supply.
Companies charge the highest price they can given demand. A tax levied on *profits* does not affect a company’s cost ie supply.
Taxes on *windfall* profits (like oil and gas) are the most efficient kind of tax there is.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Corporate profit taxes do not directly shift marginal costs but empirical studies show partial pass-through into higher consumer prices. Windfall taxes on oil and gas have deterred investment and production in practice despite theoretical efficiency on rents.
dadun.unav.edu/server/api/cor…
ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps…
taxfoundation.org/blog/big-oil-p…
scottishfinancialreview.com/2025/09/03/win…
Robert MacKay retweeted
They need to reset the system and print loads of £ to trigger aggressive inflation.
Why?
Debase £10-£15 trillion in debt across this land.
Burst or debase?
They’ll debase it.
Just like 2020:
Event (Pandemic)
Consent (Printing)
Solution (Inflation)
Blame someone else (Russia)
Robert MacKay retweeted
If there is one thing I wish people understood more it's that all Government borrowing makes you poorer.
Every pound from the magic money tree makes every pound you have worth a little less.
Robert MacKay retweeted
📣 Every now and then, someone comes along whose expertise, character and outlook uniquely fit them for a role and they secure it.
🙏🏻I’m thankful @griffitha is Shadow Chancellor and I hope one day he is the real thing, because he will be the real thing indeed.
💡One to follow.
Not properly recognising liabilities is one of the two pathologies of every financial scandal. (The other is recognising revenue which never turns into cash flow).
When Rachel Reeves changed the headline debt target in October 2024, she did more than tweak an accounting rule.
By switching from measuring public sector net debt (PSND ex BoE) to public sector net financial liabilities (PSNFL), ministers created a channel to spend the same taxpayer money through Public Financial Institutions, or “PuFins”.
Debt is still debt but under Labour’s fiddled measure, spending via a PuFin barely registers against the fiscal rules.
As this excellent report from the Centre for Policy Studies shows, had the old target been kept, the October 2024 Budget would have broken the debt rule by £6 billion. Under the new one, it passed with £16 billion to spare.
Expect next week’s budget to include more examples of this dodge.
cps.org.uk/research/pufins-t…
Robert MacKay retweeted
Norway’s equivalent NHS has mandatory charges for GP appointments, consultations and tests.
If any political party here advocated something similar, journalists like Faisal would hysterically report it as fascism.
If we did have a sovereign wealth fund, the BBC would be busily pumping out stories about how it invests in data centres while people are dying on waiting lists now look at this struggling food bank.
Political journalists need to stop advocating policies modelled on foreign fiscal prudence - as their screeching and hyperbole would make them impossible to apply here.
Our political journalists and their awful takes are one of the reasons the county’s in such a mess.
NEW
Britain’s missing sovereign wealth fund… Treasury officials have modelled that had the UK done what Norway did with North Sea revenues, there would be a £1 trillion fund…
As Chancellor sets up Energy Wealth Fund, a look at the long historical argument about where the oil windfall went, including from interviews with those who have run Norways $2.4 trillion fund, now the biggest in the world, filled from the proceeds of the same North Sea.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm4g…
Robert MacKay retweeted
This man is unfit to be chancellor.
We don't have a sovereign wealth fund because we spent the money on the NHS, education, lower taxes etc.
Norway had one because it produced similar fossil fuel exports but are 10x smaller. So they had quite a lot spare.
‘We'd have a British sovereign wealth fund now that will be worth probably a trillion pounds’
Chancellor @JohnHealey_MP suggests what Britain could have gained if it had set up an energy wealth fund like Norway’s back in the 1980s
#Peston
Robert MacKay retweeted
Black woman works hard, contributes, employs people, and then has to argue with white guilty people to say that the looters are wrong.
White guilt is destroying the West.
We need to wake up and realise this.
Robert MacKay retweeted
Exactly this... 👇
Put another way, the clickbait about a '£1 trillion UK wealth fund' requires you to believe that, rather than ramp up NHS spending between 1997 and 2010, a Labour government would have said 'lets buy some US Treasury bonds and Asian equities' instead... 🤔
Anyone drawing parallels with Norway off the back of this story should do so fully aware of the investment mandate of Norges (below).
If UK wants to start now then it shouldn’t be buying green energy assets (which is this new fund’s mandate) but, probably, a global equity ETF, a global bond fund, and buyback some of that gold sold 25y ago….
Robert MacKay retweeted
What a British Sovereign Wealth fund would look like in reality
xitter.cf/RicHolden/status/21133…
This is clearly insane.
A charity set up to maintain London’s bridges is sitting on £1.5 BILLION, funding political campaigns and giving £1.1m to a group with links to a charity now under investigation over alleged Hamas connections.
Meanwhile, Hammersmith Bridge is still closed and other Thames crossings are crumbling.
What on earth are @cityoflondon doing?
Via @Fhamiltontimes in @TheTimes
thetimes.com/article/1932707…
Robert MacKay retweeted
This has gone viral in France.
The wonderful black woman is a credit to France.
The smug, haute-bourgeois blonde an embarrassment.
