Andrew Neil on #bbcqt: "The big problem we face is 6.7 million adults of working age who aren't working and are living on out-of-work benefits. 6.7 million. No country can prosper with that number of people able to work who are not working." The first half is broadly right. DWP figures show 6.7 million people in Great Britain claimed some combination of out-of-work benefits in March 2026. However, the second half is misinformation because it misdescribes that statistic. DWP's out-of-work benefits category deliberately includes people the state has assessed as unable to work, or does not currently expect to work. DWP's own breakdown shows that 4.6 million of the 6.7 million, around 68%, have no work requirements at all. DWP explains that this is generally because they are too sick to work or are the main carer for a very young child. That group includes 2.8 million Universal Credit claimants on the health route and 390,000 on Employment and Support Allowance and older incapacity benefits. Only 2.2 million, about a third, are expected to take any steps towards work, and 590,000 of those are themselves on the health route. Treating the whole 6.7 million as available labour turns a count of claimants into a count of idle workers, which the data simply does not support. The official labour market figures tell a very different story. The ONS puts unemployment, meaning people actively looking for and available for work, at 1.78 million for May to July 2026. The Learning and Work Institute estimates that 3.9 million people are out of work but say they want a job, and that there are 5.5 of them for every vacancy. There is a serious debate to be had about rising sickness claims and appropriate support. It is not helped by presenting people the state itself has judged unable to work, or not required to, as if they were simply choosing not to. Nobody challenged Neil. Nobody corrected the misinformation. Neil got a round of applause. Someone could have told Fiona Bruce the facts in less than a minute. This is just one example which helps explain why many people understandably treat @bbcquestiontime as a joke. Sources: DWP Benefit Combinations, March 2026; ONS/House of Commons Library, September 2026; Learning and Work Institute, September 2026.

Billionaire-supported Reform UK and Restore Britain use 'sovereign' as a euphemism for 'illiberal authoritarian'. The British people don't want to join fucking Belarus and Russia.

A message for the right from the left. 😂😅🤣😆 This entire three minutes is like a therapy session. I highly recommend watching. It’s also frickin’ hilarious.💥

Modi, Orban, Erdogan, Trump, Farage. They all learn from each other on how to deal with journalists, and how create their own propaganda channels. independent.co.uk/voices/don…

Un homme, mort, gisant dans l’eau après avoir tenté de traverser la Manche pour trouver refuge au Royaume-Uni. Cette image a été prise par le photojournaliste Sameer Al-Doumi sur la plage d’Hardelot, en France, il y a deux jours. Dans l’indifférence. instagram.com/p/DdqjKYZDVHh/…

Please read very important and is yet another area where the state broadcaster is failing to do its job. In truth for various reasons (see below) the figure @afneil should have quoted was 1.7 million. There is also a shortage of jobs. @docrussjackson

Trump in 2015: I would not be throwing Xi Jinping a dinner. I would get him a McDonald's hamburger and say 'we have to get down to work.' We're giving him a state dinner and what he has done is sucked all of our jobs.

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”

Seems nice - and not at all a lost broken incel failure who hides behind anonymity and insults women like a pathetic little coward.

🔴 NEW Rupert Murdoch Flew Kemi Badenoch and Her Deputy to Mediterranean for Summer Trips Worth £12,000 By @josiahmortimer The Conservative leader and Alex Burghart MP held "off-site meetings" with the billionaire media mogul in August Subscribe to support fearless independent journalism. bylinetimes.com/2026/09/25/r…

Certainly a contender, along with: Tokyo, May 2019 (Trump). North Korean state media had called Biden a fool of "low IQ". Trump tweeted from Japan that he "smiled" when Kim did so. At a press conference beside Prime Minister Abe, he said he agreed with Kim's assessment. This is arguably the closest match to the Xi episode: siding with a hostile authoritarian regime's insult of a domestic political rival, while on foreign soil. It is also by the same president. Helsinki, July 2018 (Trump again). Standing next to Putin, Trump was asked about Russian interference in the 2016 election. He said Putin had been "extremely strong and powerful in his denial" and declined to back his own intelligence agencies' finding. He walked the remarks back the following day. Many Republicans at the time, including John McCain, condemned it in the strongest terms. McCain called it "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory." Hanoi, February 2019 (yep, it's Trump). Trump said he would take Kim Jong Un "at his word" that he didn't know about Otto Warmbier's treatment. Warmbier was the American student who died after detention in North Korea. Oval Office, May 2017 (fucking Trump again). Trump once again. This time he shared highly classified intelligence, reportedly supplied by Israel, with Russia's foreign minister and ambassador. The Washington Post reported it, and the administration did not dispute that the information was shared. Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798 (John Adams). These criminalised "false, scandalous and malicious" writing against the government and were used to jail newspaper editors and a sitting congressman, Matthew Lyon. Indian Removal Act, 1830 (Jackson), and the Trail of Tears that followed. Jackson's famous line "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it", about defying the Supreme Court, is probably apocryphal. Executive Order 9066, 1942 (FDR). This led to the internment of around 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them US citizens. The US government formally apologised in 1988. Wilson, 1913 onwards. His administration resegregated the federal civil service. The Sedition Act of 1918 was used to imprison critics of the war, including Eugene Debs. Watergate (Nixon) and Iran-Contra (Reagan's administration). Iran-Contra involved secret arms sales to Iran with proceeds diverted to the Contras, in breach of the Boland Amendment. January 6, 2021 (Trump. Again). For many historians this is the leading modern contender, since it involved the peaceful transfer of power. Trump was impeached for "incitement of insurrection" but acquitted by the Senate.

I said 'only' to emphasise the difference between the claim (6.7 million) and reality (2.2 million). The 2.2m is the number of working-age people in Great Britain on out-of-work benefits who have some work-related requirements (they are expected to take steps towards work). It is a subset of the broader 6.7 million on out-of-work benefits. The rest have no work requirements, mainly because they have been assessed as too sick to work or are the main carer of a very young child. Under Thatcher, the closest figure was the claimant count: people claiming unemployment-related benefits (Unemployment Benefit plus means-tested Supplementary Benefit/Income Support paid because of unemployment). These claimants were required to be available for work, and from 1986 the Restart programme added stronger “actively seeking work” checks. In 1986s, the claimant-count figures (ONS, not seasonally adjusted annual averages) reached 3.29 million - far higher than today’s 2.2 million. Two large groups that did not have work requirements then, and should not be added to the comparison, were: Invalidity Benefit (the main long-term sickness benefit): rose from about 610,000 in 1979 to 1.21 million in 1990. Lone parents on Supplementary Benefit/Income Support: rose from about 306,000 in 1979 to 793,000 in 1990. The working-age population was also smaller then (around 36 million in the early 1980s versus over 42 million now), so the mid-1980s claimant-count rate was substantially higher than the current 2.2 million figure as a share of the working-age population. Direct like-for-like “benefit combinations with work requirements” statistics of the modern DWP type do not exist for the 1980s, because the conditionality regime and the way benefits were recorded were different. The claimant count remains the standard official series used for this comparison. I left school at 16, worked all the way through the Thatcher years, have never been on benefits, and recently retired having paid taxes and NI throughout. Miserable bastards like you don't appreciate facts or context that challenge your worldview, but that's a you thing.

RT @SymsFifi: If a child is shouting “let them drown” down a megaphone, Social Services need to be brought in.

#GMB (finally) get to ask Zia Yusuf about his racist tweet. As Ranvir Singh points out, Yusuf chooses to deflect rather than answering the question.

I'm not. Neither is Tommy Robinson.

Multiple means 2. The Navy already ran the Channel in 2022 (Op Isotrope). It ended in 2023. Pushbacks were trialled and dropped as unsafe and unlawful. You can't return "every illegal" to France without France agreeing. And 2026 crossings are down 42% on last year. No, it won't.

Check out the trailer for my new film, "Musk." It's about a "free-speech absolutist" who has threatened a lawsuit to try to stop the film from being seen.

Andrew Neil on #bbcqt: "The big problem we face is 6.7 million adults of working age who aren't working and are living on out-of-work benefits. 6.7 million. No country can prosper with that number of people able to work who are not working." The first half is broadly right. DWP figures show 6.7 million people in Great Britain claimed some combination of out-of-work benefits in March 2026. However, the second half is misinformation because it misdescribes that statistic. DWP's out-of-work benefits category deliberately includes people the state has assessed as unable to work, or does not currently expect to work. DWP's own breakdown shows that 4.6 million of the 6.7 million, around 68%, have no work requirements at all. DWP explains that this is generally because they are too sick to work or are the main carer for a very young child. That group includes 2.8 million Universal Credit claimants on the health route and 390,000 on Employment and Support Allowance and older incapacity benefits. Only 2.2 million, about a third, are expected to take any steps towards work, and 590,000 of those are themselves on the health route. Treating the whole 6.7 million as available labour turns a count of claimants into a count of idle workers, which the data simply does not support. The official labour market figures tell a very different story. The ONS puts unemployment, meaning people actively looking for and available for work, at 1.78 million for May to July 2026. The Learning and Work Institute estimates that 3.9 million people are out of work but say they want a job, and that there are 5.5 of them for every vacancy. There is a serious debate to be had about rising sickness claims and appropriate support. It is not helped by presenting people the state itself has judged unable to work, or not required to, as if they were simply choosing not to. Nobody challenged Neil. Nobody corrected the misinformation. Neil got a round of applause. Someone could have told Fiona Bruce the facts in less than a minute. This is just one example which helps explain why many people understandably treat @bbcquestiontime as a joke. Sources: DWP Benefit Combinations, March 2026; ONS/House of Commons Library, September 2026; Learning and Work Institute, September 2026.