We are paying through the nose to keep the lights on, and we're still in autumn.

Wow Georgina from London doesn’t hold back on Ash’s show, and my god I don’t think she could have said that ANY better. People have had ENOUGH!! She has just said EXACTLY what we are all thinking. 👏👏👍🇬🇧

Multiple life long Manchester United fans have had their season tickets cancelled today due to the system deeming their activity as 'touting' - despite going to every single game last season these fans haven't been given a say and will no longer be welcome at Old Trafford. Horrible stuff to see from the club...

Murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their home town is what’s making people angry, not “social media”!

Hey @Ed_Miliband , you are a complete and utter moron. WARM BEER ?…

What a shocking game

Quick age test… Who remembers this classic?

🚨Laila Cunningham says the Government has a "real issue" with Elon Musk's X because they "can't control the narrative". JHB: "I would appreciate it if they take the same urgency and speed to dealing with grooming gangs as they do to AI images." @JuliaHB1

BRILLIANT EXPLAINER; THE DEATH OF THE BRITISH PUB 🍺 Ever wonder why your local is struggling? For every £6 pint you buy, the landlord is left with a pathetic 13p. The government snaffles £2.44 in tax, VAT, and "climate levies." They’re taxing our heritage to death to fund net-zero nonsense and open-border fantasies. While the London Government sip their fancy wines at home, the Great British pub is being bled dry by the Treasury. Support your local, or lose it forever.

As announced we protest against this dysfunctional co-ownership before Fulham. But you have got to watch this! 😂 Full press statement tomorrow. The 1958🇾🇪

Business rates. The British people, and its MPs, do not understand the coming apocalypse. And it is going to be an apocalypse. I talk to pub owners, cafe owners, all types of small business owners. They are terrified and nobody is listening. Real people. Family businesses. The sort of places that keep towns and villages alive. They are running out of road, and the business rates change will be the end of the road for many. They’ve absorbed blow after blow over the last few decades and kept going anyway. But this will be the end for many. A sad, bitter end. Rising rents. Rising supplier costs. Rising insurance. Endless compliance. Paperwork that grows every year but adds absolutely zero value. They dealt with all the lockdown bullshit. Forced closures. Confusing rules. Constant U-turns. Damaging loans. ‘Following’ the science, remember? Many got no proper support due to the structure of their businesses. They battled on. People remortgaged homes, drained savings, worked unpaid - just to keep the doors intact so they could reopen when finally allowed. When restrictions were lifted, it wasn’t normal. Customers poorer, costs stayed high, footfall patchy. Then the energy costs blowing up after the Ukraine war. Still bleeding the business dry. And now, on top of all of that, they’re staring down a business rates revaluation that could be the final straw. Not because their business is suddenly thriving or profits are surging, but because a formula has made some impossibly complicated recalculations. For hospitality, there is no escape. A pub can’t go remote. A cafe can’t move to a warehouse. They have to be there. In the town, paying extortionate business rates. This, of course, is all after higher operating costs from the first Reeves budget. NI changes were punishing for these businesses. Absolutely punishing. We inflict such brutal costs on high street businesses, then we’re confused when so many of our town centres are becoming desolate shitholes? Not that difficult to figure out, is it? And now this. The rates increase. For small pubs, it’s adding tens of thousands of pounds to the bill every year. THEY WILL GO BUST. There is no way to pay it and stay viable. It’s impossible. I’d like to see Reeves try. Then she’d really start crying. I am doing what I can in Westminster. Questions asked, motion tabled - with just three MPs supporting so far. James McMurdock, Gavin Williamson and Peter Bedford. I am going to lobby for more support, and hopefully we can get Government to listen. We’ve seen with the farming tax changes can be made if enough noise is made, but sadly I’m just not seeing anywhere near that same level of anger. And we need anger for them to notice. This could be the end of the British pub. That is not an exaggeration, and it’s not just pubs - it’s entire industries. So get angry. Ask your MP to sign the motion. I am doing what I can in Westminster. It HAS to change.

This is 2025 - there should be a way for English football fans to watch whichever prem game they want at 15.00 on a Saturday. When I was a chairman in the league, the blackout perhaps served a purpose. Now? No. Outdated and in today's digital age, it really doesn't work - I think we all know why that is... Fans all over the world can watch whatever game they like, but English fans are stuck with these ludicrous rules. Makes no sense and it's patronising. Let's ditch the 3pm blackout and give fans the choice.

No. What you are doing is paying Norway £40 BILLION a year for oil and gas. Oil and gas which Norway drills in the North Sea. Next to the UK’s oil fields we can’t use because of insane net zero. No wonder Norwegian PM is smiling.

🚨🚨🎙️| Roy Keane: "Every time I watch Manchester United, they disappoint me."

BUSINESS RATES SCANDAL Rachel Reeves, Budget speech: “the lowest rates since 1991, paid for through higher rates on…..warehouses used by online giants” So here’s the truth behind Labour’s “fairness”: 📦 Online giants → Ave 16% rise 🍺 Your local pub → Ave 66% rise Small businesses hammered. Big business off the hook. @Conservatives would completely scrap business rates for 250,000 shops, pubs, hotels and restaurants. Paid for by cutting welfare spending and cost of doing govt.

Can we talk about RR standing up yesterday claiming lowest business rates since 2012 and then publicans are checking rateable values to see increases of nearly 300% from 2026 in some cases? @allen_m_simpson @UKHospKate @AltonSteven @MerlinFDC4 @dustonlandlady #TaxedOut

Thanks to @thetimes for highlighting the true cost of a pint - the main beneficiary is Govt with £2 in a £5 pint being paid in tax to fund vital public services. But with just 2p left over, the pub landlord is literally #TaxedOut

Kier you gotta stop talking like we are thick. Cutting red tape…..you have done the exact opposite and every small business owner in Britain knows this. We got more rules, more costs, more hassle on the very people who graft and keep this country afloat. The new day one rights and dismissal laws mean that every little shop or builder need a lawyer just to hire or let someone go. You whacked up wages but never gave a cut in business rates. There been no NI relief and no VAT help, basicallly just shoving the bills on the people who create the jobs. You froze the VAT threshold so more firms get dragged into the tax net…… basically a stealth grab on the self-employed. You promised to fix planning and rates and you haven’t shifted a thing. And don’t even get me started on the inheritance tax on farmers… These are people that are putting food on our tables. The very people battling against losing all the food coming from over seas an abroad. Our high streets are dieing and you need to be looking into giving more relief on business rates… I could go on all day. And yes I know you didn’t start in great position but a lot more can be done than just listening to your analysists who have never actually run a business. Please don’t act like ya doing us all a favour when shops are closing, cafes are folding and family firms are dying at an alarming rate. Small business are the back bone of Britain. The butcher, the builder, the café, the market stall. They are the real people, who have got no safety net. You should be helping them breathe, not strangling them. You don’t “invest in the future” by bleeding out the people who build it. Bosh❤️

I sit in Parliament listening to these ministers, and it’s all just so depressing - the vast majority of them have never run a business, and it SHOWS. You would not believe how bad it is. They think ‘work’ means turning up to an office between 9 and 5, answering a few emails, and going home at the end of the day. Nice lunch break, few coffees away from the desk, probably a smoking break or several. It doesn’t - not for the millions of men and women who actually create the wealth that funds the state. Running a small business isn’t a job. It’s a way of life. It is life. It’s 24/7/365. It’s relentless. You are the accountant, HR department, compliance officer, cleaner, marketer, and customer service team - all in one. There’s no sick pay, no safety net, and no taxpayer-funded pension waiting for you. Holiday? Good luck. If you do manage to get away, it’s checking the phone all day, every day. Wife/husband obviously getting pissed off. We’ve all been there... It’s all on you. Every invoice chased, every tax deadline met, every bit of red tape navigated is on you. And if you make one mistake, one error, one small slip-up, the state comes after you - in a relentlessly efficient manner that is never afforded to us when we ask questions of it. Most MPs have no idea what that feels like. They just don’t. We’re going to see more of this in the budget I’m sure. More hurt. More pain. More tax. They don’t get it. They don’t understand that when a small business owner gets hit with another tax, it’s not absorbed by a ‘budget’ - it’s taken straight out of their family’s pocket. There is no ‘deficit’ in the business world - that’s called going bust. And they certainly don’t understand what real risk looks like. Politicians can vote through a policy on Monday and forget it by Tuesday - a small business owner lives with the consequences of that policy for years, decades. The MP monthly salary is safe. It always has been. In the public sector before, and in the public sector after - if not that, some charity/NGO funded entirely by the public sector. GET A REAL JOB. If MPs actually spent a week running a small firm - paying suppliers, tackling VAT, navigating health and safety law, sorting out HR issues, chasing clients for payment, trying to expand while staying compliant with everything from GDPR to local planning regulations - they’d legislate very differently. I can promise you that. They’d realise that most of Britain’s problems could be solved by the state doing less, not more. Cutting tax. Simplifying regulation. Slashing back the HRification of the country. Trusting people who actually produce things to get on with it. Instead, we have a political class that talks endlessly about ‘growth’ while brutally punishing the only people capable of delivering it - especially going after the family businesses/farms, which is a particularly spiteful policy decision. Small business owners are people who work harder than almost anyone in Parliament could imagine - and who are treated worse for it. Britain’s small businesses don’t succeed because of politicians, they survive in spite of them.