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
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.
Whig retweeted
A wee stat ahead of Wednesday's budget, on a policy that almost certainly won't change:
In 2021, roughly 1 in 10 full-time nurses paid 40% income tax. In 2026, it's closer to 1 in 3.
That's the power of the "fiscal drag" tax. The term "high earner" has been quietly redefined.
Whig retweeted
Astounding Sunday Times investigation reveals new scandal in SNP’s Socialist Scotland:
800 NHS, central government, council and quango workers whose jobs no longer exist but remain on the public payroll because of the SNP’s ‘no public-sector redundancy’ policy.
Estimated cost of paying people to do nothing: £27m a year.
One NHS Highland worker has been receiving a full salary and benefits for 17 years despite not having a specific job.
The health board refused to say what the worker had been doing for almost two decades and how much they had been paid.
Likely cost to the taxpayer is expected to be far higher with several public bodies refusing to disclose salaries for hundreds of the workers awaiting redeployment.
Interesting that the Economist and the FT seem to be moving increasingly towards more sensible fiscal positions.
Signs of a shift in the centre?
Britain needs ‘chainsaw economics’ ft.trib.al/fRuz3RS
Whig retweeted
We can laugh at all the chips 'n' gravy I-love-Oasis-me professional northerner stuff, and the Gogglebox pandering, but there is obviously a constituency for it. Caring about relatively abstract stuff like the national debt & gilts & mortgage rates is unusual.
