[Crabcakes]

Farage is quite the economic wizard, blank cheques for steel plants in North Lincs industrial towns and tax cuts for Tory voters in rural south Lincs . All paid for by stopping benefits to illegal immigrants and ending woke wind farm subsidies.

Farage knows exactly how he’d pay for it. After stopping benefits, he’d pick a new target. And so on and so on, until the only people left not targeted are straight, white men.

Sound familiar?

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't usually link to Richard Murphy, but this is useful in the context of Fargle.

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/202 ... ween-them/

It is staggering how little people know about the UK economy. I noticed this chart is part of the thread on Twitter yesterday: <chart>


The research appears to be entirely genuine. What is staggering is the scale of ignorance that it reveals. People are quite simply clueless as to what the government spends its money on.

Amongst the extraordinary perceptions of the public belief that 8% of government spending is on MPs salaries, when it is actually 0.01% and that just 11% is spent on pensions,

Plenty to tap into there for somebody who wants to pull funding out of their arse. This would get exposed hopefully in a General Election campaign, but I reckon Andrea Jenkyns could win Lincolnshire with "cut MPs expenses to fund tax cuts".

[Killer Whale]

If you asked a randomer off of that Facebook how much 'we' spend on illegal immigrants, they will pull out a figure that sounds big but not too big. It doesn't matter that it's not based on anything but the correspondent's perception of what is and isn't a big number, what they're really trying to tell you is how important they think the issue is.

[Watchman]

[but I reckon Andrea Jenkyns could win Lincolnshire with "cut MPs expenses to fund tax cuts"./quote]

Nargle and crew say….” hang on a minute”

[Youngian]

I don't usually link to Richard Murphy, but this is useful in the context of Fargle.

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/202 ... ween-them/

Public estimates of immigrant numbers also have no relation to reality. Sadly unsurprised by that or that people can't cope with scary big numbers but the stuff like the preposterous MP salary estimates are weird.

[Abernathy]

Good article here on the dangers of Farage/Reform.

https://uglypolitix.substack.com/p/the ... -289233168

[Tubby Isaacs]

He’s moved on to accusing China of state sabotage of steel, I see. The logic of spunking a load of money on loss making industries in Britain escapes me.

“They’re renationalising! We didn’t think of that!” Mr Wu The Inscrutable added.

[Bones McCoy]

Good article here on the dangers of Farage/Reform.

https://uglypolitix.substack.com/p/the ... -289233168

I really liked this excerpt:

Whenever we hear a bold promise, we should stop and ask ourselves three questions:
- How would this actually work in practice?
- Who benefits most if we do this - and who pays the price?
- Why is this promise being made now, and who’s pushing it?

It reminded me of Tony Benn's five questions for those in power.
In this case, three questions for radical oppositions.

[Watchman]

My fantasy election result is that somehow Frogface gets into government, and he’s made Home Secretary, he would piss and shit himself at the same time