[Crabcakes]

And, of course, stuff like this:



But that’s the cost of being Labour in office - your vastly outnumbered friendly press will be as critical as your hostile press because the left are self critical to a fault, and your hostile press will be hostile whatever you do because you don’t work in their interests.

[Yug]

The fact there’s little reaction of course could say another thing - that people who have seen the numbers realise there are very few ways out of the financial black hole the Tories left behind that don’t involve unpopular choices.

Plus there’s always the fact that these cuts aren’t very obviously funding tax breaks for the wealthy.

Plus, of course, no actual concrete statements have been made yet. All this pearl-clutching is based on little more than media speculation, much of which is bad-faith shit-stirring by the usual suspects in the hostile right-wing press.

I'm waiting for the Spring Review before I start chucking my toys out of the pram.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is the Spring Statement. The Spending Review was supposed to be in Spring before it seems to have slipped to Summer. I assume a load more Trump-inspired bad news will feed into that, for which Rachel Reeves will get blamed in the traditional "Gordon Brown crashed the world economy" way.

[Yug]

Statement, review, whatever it's called. I'm still going to wait for the official announcement, instead of getting my knickers in a twist over media shit-stirring and fear-mongering.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's Clive Lewis again. This time with a meme, where the figures are even worse than the spelling. The tax gap figure (which by the way isn't just "avoidance") is the Richard Murphy estimate that nobody takes seriously. The tax gap per HMRC is about £36bn. Still a lot of money, but does he think we don't try to collect it? The Government is getting banks to report interest earned to HMRC quickly so that it's fed into tax returns and therefore much harder to evade. What has "outsourcing" got to do with tax? Doubtless some of it is poor value, but we'd have to pay for the services to be done anyway. That figure for privatized dividends looks a bit dubious. Is that per year? Last figure for train companies was £165m in total. If that's not per year, why is it on here? And having money in a tax haven isn't illegal. It's illegal to bring it onshore and not pay tax on it. Is that really happening to £10bn a year?

You can think, as the original author linked to here argues well and I agree, that the new benefit powers are disproportionate. But don't do the "there's all this easy money out there they don't try to collect" bollocks. And at least get the fraud figures right. Estimate for benefit fraud is £7.4bn, not £1.2bn. Presumably Clive would have no problem with Liz Kendall's draconian stuff if it got the rate down to what he thought it was, right?

[The Weeping Angel]

It's Clive Lewis again. This time with a meme, where the figures are even worse than the spelling. The tax gap figure (which by the way isn't just "avoidance") is the Richard Murphy estimate that nobody takes seriously. The tax gap per HMRC is about £36bn. Still a lot of money, but does he think we don't try to collect it? The Government is getting banks to report interest earned to HMRC quickly so that it's fed into tax returns and therefore much harder to evade. What has "outsourcing" got to do with tax? Doubtless some of it is poor value, but we'd have to pay for the services to be done anyway. That figure for privatized dividends looks a bit dubious. Is that per year? Last figure for train companies was £165m in total. If that's not per year, why is it on here? And having money in a tax haven isn't illegal. It's illegal to bring it onshore and not pay tax on it. Is that really happening to £10bn a year?

You can think, as the original author linked to here argues well and I agree, that the new benefit powers are disproportionate. But don't do the "there's all this easy money out there they don't try to collect" bollocks. And at least get the fraud figures right. Estimate for benefit fraud is £7.4bn, not £1.2bn. Presumably Clive would have no problem with Liz Kendall's draconian stuff if it got the rate down to what he thought it was, right?

He got called out for that, albeit for the spelling and the fact he used AI ( If you really want to get Bluesky mad, use AI). Of course, I don't like what is being proposed either but Clive who should know better seems ignorant of the fact that the govt announced measures to clamp down on tax avoidance.

[Tubby Isaacs]

UK not bothering with Corporate Fraud, latest. (Credit where it's due here to the Sunak Government).

The fraud landscape in the UK is changing, and it will become much easier to prosecute organisations for fraudulent offences.
In September 2025, the UK’s new corporate “failure to prevent fraud” offence introduced under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (Act), will come into force. This marks a key step in the UK government’s intention to bring about a corporate-culture shift around fraud prevention, encouraging organisations to take proactive measures to prevent fraud.

[Youngian]

Does AI open up possibilities to trawl the global banking network to catch up with tax evaders? Maybe but plasterers working for cash will still be safe.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Lots of tax figures here, from a tax barrister. Is it possible for a (reasonably high profile) Labour MP to look stuff up rather than forward very obviously shit memes?

https://www.patrickcannon.net/insights/ ... istics-uk/