Ent

The Telegraph’s BBC hypocrisy A paper that knows a thing or two about editorial f*ck-ups...

It takes an obscene amount of hubris to lecture the BBC when you have The Telegraph’s record on truth-telling.

Some of the paper’s errors this year are so bad they’re almost laughable 👇🏻

Is he saluting or slapping himself in the face

The sixth generation ago is 64 individual people, out of 126 total ancestors (parents through to great-great-great-great grandparents). 7th gen adds 128, 8th adds 256 and so on (ignoring inevitable overlap at some point).

That was bond issue specifically for massive, immediate tax cuts with no OBR forecasts to set out even the anticipated impact

Indeed. What also continues to puzzle me is why we are so worked up over a forecast gap of 1-2% of Government spending. Big scary number I guess.

But the examples he cited also involve failures from Sheffield Wednesday FC, the FA, several architects, construction firms, fire safety consultants, fire cladding manufacturers and installers....

A little bit fine but not too much 😁

Bond issue is not printing money. Argentina and Zimbabwe have currencies pegged to the dollar/gold. Sterling is fiat. They are not the same.

We regularly create new sterling through bank loans, but no-one (thankfully) is suggesting we all stop getting mortgages or business loans.

It was (well most of it) 0% via Bank of England. It's frittering away through inflation. Bond yields are also private sector income!

We aren't capped on bond issue but we can certainly have too high a level.

£20Bn is a drop in the ocean though compared to e.g. £300Bn during covid

The coverage is a joke, because it's 1-2% of gov spending. Over many years, with so many variables..... it's meaningless.

Thank god we can rely on the Times to keep its finger on the pulse

We have 5k Immigration Enforcement staff who do about 10k of enforced returns/yr.

So we need to recruit about 1.6m enforcement officers.

We could employ the unemployed, but I think we'd be deporting a lot of them, so would probably need an overseas recruitment campaign to get the staff 🤪

Is there some sort of national competition to be as stupid as possible

Absolute bollocks

And pre Brexit CS levels were relatively low following 6 years of reckless austerity that definitely didn't destroy any public services or cripple the return to trend growth no sir

25% cuts. So some examples. It would mean firing:

15k from HMRC - goodbye tax take
6k from Border Force - open season for small boats
19k Prison Officers - tough on crime?
22k from DWP - good luck getting your pension

And drumroll - some 15-20k CS from our national security apparatus

Morons

Love the bit about the £29m in a trust not being for her and her kids, as it's for her kids and some others. I'm pretty sure if my kids had £29m in a trust I'd be feeling pretty good about slackening off saving for them.

2/3 of Civil Service in just 5 depts; MoJ, DWP, HMRC, MOD, Home Office. That covers tens of thousands of prison officers and border staff. 60k in HMRC collecting taxes from 36m employees and 5.5m businesses. MOD CS deployed all over the country and world. Civil Service does not = Whitehall or admin

Next up from the Times is a story about HS2 with a picture of the England Women's Rugby team 🙄

Zuckolding

We've always controlled our borders, and we do not have uncontrolled immigration. This is absurd and journalists must call it out

Shot, chaser

Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

Hopefully we can go back to appointing civil servants - specifically professional diplomats - to the role.

They aren't more popular though. That's just rubbish. And pushing crap like that on social media only makes it more likely to come true. Why are UK media so obsessed with Farage?

Hunt didn't avoid tax on that purchase though - it was completely in line with rules on stamp duty and cannot be pinned on only one party either. However, it is mad that someone can buy 7 properties and not owe stamp duty, while people buying one or two do.

Errrrr

Quite something for Jenrick to respond to a completely accurate summary of his xenophobia with an attempted bait and switch that is still xenophobic

Peter the article does not quote Rayner as saying 'officials' i.e. civil servants because I'm sure Rayner knows full well it's Special Advisers doing the negative briefing. This subtle shifting of blame from political appointees to civil servants needs to stop.

Wildlife is not unremarkable Lewis. Perhaps swap that point out for the role journalists have played in widespread economic incompetence and pushing the (wrong) idea that HS2 is pointless.