Limitations should be no barrier, may not be able to do it their way but do it your way. https://teapawt.org/t.co/lbSWiGS0an for WomensAid
Montgomeryshire Mid Wales
Joined September 2011
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Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
Tim this is the Welsh Sec of State reading his cabinet notes in Downing Street yesterday, to me it reads defence cut by 1%
🔥SECONDS OUT, ROUND 3 OF THE DEFENCE SPENDING ROW 🔥
Tory counter spin incoming:
A Tory Source said: 'The DIP settlement was TDEL. The amount of TDEL in the budget is £1bn less per year. To describe a billion pounds as a "technical adjustment" when the MOD is cutting training this year to save cash, is for the birds. Labour have been caught out - talking up defence spending in the speech then cutting it in the footnotes.'
Glad that's cleared everything up!
Or not.
Fight!
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
The chancellor’s plan to copy PFI to pay for defence spending “off the books” is an attempt to cheat the fiscal rules independent.co.uk/voices/hea…
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
We need to spend more on defence, but using creative accounting to keep that investment off the national debt is entirely the wrong approach.
John Healey should know better. He was Financial Secretary to the Treasury under Gordon Brown - the Chancellor who deliberately expanded PFI to hide Government borrowing and take it off the balance sheet.
In plain English, that trick saw the taxpayer pay over £5.50 for every £1 of actual infrastructure built.
Labour are about to repeat that wheeze to deceive the public and saddle future generations with the bill.
Our Armed Forces need real investment, not Treasury smoke and mirrors.
thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
Tucked away on page 118 of the Budget document the Treasury announced a lowering of salary requirements to make it easier for businesses to hire immigrants rather than recruiting and training Brits.
This is totally wrong-headed. Alan Milburn’s interim report into Neets explicitly warns that too many employers have become accustomed to looking overseas for workers.
And Labour’s own immigration white paper, published last year, promised to RAISE salary requirements and ensure that recruiting from abroad never becomes a cheap alternative to paying people properly. In the paper’s foreword, Starmer wrote: ‘We will wean our national economy off its reliance on cheap labour from overseas…That is what our economy needs. It is what people want.’
Clearly Burnham/Healey don’t agree. And apparently the government’s solution to having a million young people doing nothing is to find somebody else to do the jobs.
I go into all the detail in my latest: spectator.com/article/the-bu…
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
If wind and solar are cheaper, then how come we're paying ~£12bn/yr in renewables subsidies? And even more in backup, grid balancing and expansion costs.
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
The Chancellor's approach to beer is remarkably similar to his approach to the economy. Sink it in record time.
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
"It is, by my understanding, the biggest tax rise ever in British history. And the politicians love it because they don't think we notice it." Andrew Neil explains how freezing income tax thresholds creates a hidden revenue grab that drags millions into higher tax brackets.
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
'The biggest tax rise in British history'... that you might not know abo... youtu.be/t6UXit_lgI8?is=-0BV… via @YouTube
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
A morning in Westminster - gossip is that backbenchers are quite unhappy with the Budget. Complaints that "Andy's been captured by the machine". Cross-party people who had his ear on social justice issues before he became PM now say they can't get near him. Dissent brewing.
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
NEW: John Healey has rejected Andy Burnham’s position on the UK rejoining the EU
Burnham has said he’d like to rejoin in his lifetime
Healey tells @krishgm: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don't expect to see that”
He seems to be opposing rejoining in the foreseeable future
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
6am: Healey tells BBC he will bring down benefits bill before election
8:20: Treasury dispute the story
1pm: No10 disown it saying they have never set a target
2pm: PM says cuts as soon as possible
4pm: Healey says Labour won't bring bill down this Parliament
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
The Defence Secretary, who has never served, says he doesn’t care what the Defence Select Committee thinks about defence spending. Its members have at least 42 years’ Armed Forces service between them.
Dismissing that experience is not strength. It is a failure of leadership.
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
This is astounding. The government's own figures show working-age welfare will go up by £60 BILLION by 2030, yet the Treasury has to rush out and correct the Chancellor to say there is no timetable for cutting the benefits bill. Looks like foot in mouth syndrome is spreading.
John Healey couldn't even find £10 billion to get defence spending to 3% of GDP - the thing he quit over.
Don't let anyone tell you this was a 'do no harm budget'. In doing so little, Labour have harmed our economic security and they've harmed our national security.
Business owner couldn't spell it out clearer !!
‘John Healey, if you’re listening, where’s my breathing space?’
Business owner Paul Bowen has criticised the Chancellor’s promise to give ‘breathing space’ through measures in his Budget.
#budget #businesses #costofliving
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
This video is just devastating for Labour.
It couldn't be worse for Andy Burnham, than a northern piemaker destroying their budget - straight down the camera lens, clearly and passionately.
Support British businesses, and get some pies from this fella - bowenpies.co.uk/
WATCH: Owner of Piemaking Business Explains How Healey's Budget Does Nothing for Him order-order.com/2026/10/29/w…
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
The Young Entrepreneurs Allowance announced in budget. It already exists. You can get full universal credit in first year of starting business. Pointless feel good announcements are irritating.
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
Business groups are sharply criticising John Healey’s budget
“This budget lacks the bold moves that would have made it easier for firms to invest, hire and grow,” CBI boss Rain Newton-Smith says
“There is nothing concrete to provide breathing space for the vast majority of businesses who are already dealing with energy bills a third higher than their European counterparts.”
The budget had “nothing to ease sky-high energy bills and nothing to make hiring someone more affordable,” the Federation of Small Businesses says.
The British Chambers of Commerce says Healey’s package lacks “the big calls that would really shift the economic dial” and that “many firms will have been hoping for a greater impact.”
Make UK says the budget “failed to address any of the fundamental costs holding back investment and growth in manufacturing.”
Via @Joe_Mayes @JacobReid02 @sabahmeddings: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Andrew Paddison - Team Paddison retweeted
In a few days MPs will vote on the Budget. So many people have made every effort to ensure they are all appraised on the situation the UK is facing.
Our Defence Chiefs have said we have a few years to rearm. That means plugging key capability gaps, building scale, mass and resilience, reforming how we design, procure and manufacture to keep pace with the changing nature of warfare and technology. It means meeting our NATO obligations.
The public get this. As an island nation our energy, data and trade security is vulnerable. Government is telling them to prepare for aggression designed to impact our way of life. We are told to store beans and bottled water.
In today’s Budget the government needed to advance our readiness and resilience, and show how we will deliver for NATO.
The Chancellor resigned when Defence Secretary to highlight the gulf between the government’s duty and its actions. So, what has changed since?
There have been cuts to immediate defence budgets, next year there will be less money for activity, wages, kit, equipment and training.
There has been no plan unveiled for us to reach 3.5% GDP by 2035, or 3% by 2030. Forecasts predict we will flatline at 2.7% until the end of the decade.
Other departments have been asked to fund the shortfall in the DIP. On the upside, by and large departments did deliver on savings the last time this was asked of them. And there was a nod to some defence reform today. But two problems remain: the imbalance of funding with capital rising but RDEL being cut, and the £11 billion shortfall between the DIP framework and our NATO commitment.
The Treasury has also taken back some funds from the MOD, freed up from lower pension costs.
After today we are 14th in NATO for GDP % spend, and 31st for rearmament speed (second to last).
It is never too late to do the right thing, but it now may be too late to be ready.
Every MP must understand the reality the UK now faces. In a short while we may suffer the consequences of inaction against agreed commitments. If the predicted conflict is at the scale most Europeans now believe is likely, fighting that war could cost us half our GDP, or 5x the entire welfare budget.
Parliament must see the sense in spending a tenth of that to prevent such an event.
We will soon know.
