Exclusive: Britain’s welfare bill is set to continue to rise even after Andy Burnham’s reforms next year. *Burnham is planning a new welfare bill to cut benefits early next year - probably at the start of a new parliamentary session in April *Around the same time, ministers will announce the Milburn reforms to encourage young people back to work and improvements to disability benefits *The fiscal scorecard for these changes will not be published until the Spending Review later in the year *Under current plans, the upfront cost of Milburn reforms will outweigh any benefit savings for at least two financial years *This means the overall welfare budget will not see any savings until 2030 at the earliest *This timeline pushes back any savings (and reallocation of money eg for defence) until well after the next election Story: telegraph.co.uk/politics/202…

This utterly despicable 🤡 deliberately DELETED every single WhatsApp message other than this one. 👇Frankly, she is the lowest of the low!

🌍 European countries that added the most migrants (2000–2024) 1. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: +7.1M 2. 🇪🇸 Spain: +6.8M 3. 🇩🇪 Germany: +6.4M 4. 🇹🇷 Türkiye: +5.8M 5. 🇮🇹 Italy: +4.4M 6. 🇫🇷 France: +3.0M 7. 🇦🇹 Austria: +1.4M 8. 🇳🇱 Netherlands: +1.4M 9. 🇨🇭 Switzerland: +1.3M 10. 🇧🇪 Belgium: +1.3M 11. 🇸🇪 Sweden: +1.3M 12. 🇵🇱 Poland: +917K 13. 🇮🇪 Ireland: +840K 14. 🇳🇴 Norway: +720K 15. 🇷🇴 Romania: +521K 16. 🇵🇹 Portugal: +476K 17. 🇩🇰 Denmark: +475K 18. 🇭🇺 Hungary: +393K 19. 🇨🇿 Czechia: +386K 20. 🇫🇮 Finland: +378K Europe's migrant population grew by 40.8 million between 2000 and 2024, up 67%. The UK, Spain and Germany together account for almost half of that increase. Source: UN DESA

If I had a mortgage, and this switch was an option, I'd absolutely bite your hand off to convert my debt to S£ while retaining my (private sector) wages in £GB. Within about a week I'd halve (or better) my debt to income ratio. Sure, the value of the property would have plummeted, most likely, but I'd have no plans to sell. If this were really the way we'd chosen to go, I might even feel incentivised to take out a mortgage on my currently paid off property in advance, hold that in £GB short term bonds, then take the option to switch to £S mortgage in Indy day and watch that debt plummet against the £GB cash I'm holding. The arbitrage opportunity here would be legendary. So much so, in fact, that it actively incentivises the market to crash the value of £S to realise that arb. As someone who voted Yes in 2014, and leans that way still, but also someone who has worked in financial services (currently a bank) my whole life, this proposal is academic fantasy that would most likely be so negative for a £S and the Scottish electorate in general it's an active argument against independence for a socially minded indy voter like myself. This is "an answer" to this long-standing question. It needs a much, much better answer IMO.