In 1989 Scottish band Del Amitri released “Nothing Ever Happens.” A song about misplaced values in society, & lack of change. It contained the line, “American businessmen snap up Van Goghs for the price of a hospital wing.” An Andy Warhol painting was sold yesterday for $195M.

Good grief. youtu.be/SQobvGO5b6w?is=mlG-…

Why does The Economist hate wealth taxes?

Multi-millionaire Iceland boss wants to axe pension triple lock. Full UK state pension (received by 35% of pensioners) is less than 50% of minimum wage. Millions can't save for private pension 2m pensioners live in poverty. 110000 a year die in poverty. archive.ph/OIdCF

How embarrassing for all those who claimed Hannah Spencer was wearing a £1800 Gucci silk blouse. 🤣🤣🤣

Oh dear there appears to be a project of misinformation emerging around Hannah Spencer. She must be doing something right. x.com/JosephW56436640/status…

Those who celebrate @elonmusk's $1 trillion fortune need to be reminded of a simple and vital truth: That there is a fundamental tension between extreme wealth and the very possibility of democracy.

RT @NeilClark66: Ruth Curtice , Chief Executive of the ‘Resolution Foundation’ , who is calling today for the Triple Lock on the state pen…

“The Triple Lock isn't some gold-plated luxury. It exists because politicians allowed the State Pension to fall behind for decades. Even today, a full State Pension is barely above the poverty line.”

The full UK State Pension is now worth around £12,548 a year. That's less than half the earnings of someone working full-time on the National Minimum Wage, despite many pensioners paying taxes and National Insurance for 40, 50 or even 60 years. Yet every time the Treasury needs money, the same voices appear demanding the Triple Lock be scrapped. Why? State pension spending is forecast at around £154 billion this year, but that supports over 13 million pensioners, many of whom rely on it as their primary income. Meanwhile, billions continue to disappear into failed projects, government waste, bureaucracy, consultants, quangos and policies that deliver little value to ordinary taxpayers. The Triple Lock isn't some gold-plated luxury. It exists because politicians allowed the State Pension to fall behind for decades. Even today, a full State Pension is barely above the poverty line and is nowhere near a typical working wage. If politicians want to save money, start with waste, inefficiency and failed spending programmes. Leave pensioners alone. They worked, they paid in, they built this country and they deserve dignity in retirement, not another raid on their income.

RT @NeilClark66: As I said, the propaganda against the triple lock is unrelenting. It’s just like the build up to the Iraq War.

It's time you dickheads gave up trying to make capitalism work.

The political power comes from being part of the baby boomers?? It doesn’t come from the Super rich whose wealth & income she DOESN’T mention for some reason..? 🤔

1.9 million pensioners living in poverty and 25,000 freezing to death every year not enough for you disgusting people?

This is insanity. The combined wealth of the world's billionaires has tripled over the last 15 years, surging from $4.5 trillion to over $14 trillion. Meanwhile, they've made sure the masses are busy fighting each other to stop us from uniting against their reckless greed.

I'm here to support the people not the billionaires at the World Cup #TaxTheSuperRich #worldcup2026

The State did NOT expand as the likes of @DanielPriestley says. What happened is that State assets were sold off to private investors & are now being rented back, at a much higher cost to the public. @garyseconomics explains. youtu.be/II1GOhoNpms?is=fnX3…

IS ANDY BURNHAM THE ANSWER TO BRITAIN'S MALAISE? Andy Burnham has said he accepts Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules. But he got into a bit of a pickle during an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on the BBC’s Newsnight programme this week, when she asked him to explain what they were. What Andy ought to have said is that he rejects the fiscal rules because they are an absurdity and will make it impossible to deviate from the neoliberal path on which the current government is travelling. For the avoidance of doubt, the fiscal rules stipulate that: • day-to-day government spending must be fully matched by tax revenues, and the government’s current budget must be in surplus within the next three years; • the so-called public sector net financial liabilities (85% of which is the sale of interest-bearing government bonds, also known as gilts) must also be falling as a share of GDP by 2029; • expenditure on certain social security benefits must be capped. None of this makes any economic sense. For a start, since the end of WW2, the government has only recorded a budget surplus eight times, from 1948 to 1951 and from 1998 to 2001. In fact, according to the Office of Budget Responsibility, British governments have run budget deficits for 224 years out of the last 300. Furthermore, capping social security is not only cruel and inhuman, but also economically stupid, because an increase in welfare benefits will be spent in the local economy, thereby driving economic growth. So, by accepting the chancellor’s preposterous fiscal rules, Andy Burnham will be unable to make good on his criticisms of market-led policies. In the same Newsnight interview, he was also at pains to stress that he was not going to ignore the bond market, as if the bond market is some sort of holy grail. He ought to be arguing that the government’s focus should be on identifying and building real resources in the country to make the economy more resilient in the face of global crises. There is an underlying contradiction in Andy’s rhetoric about criticising market solutions on the one hand, and surrendering to the bond market on the other. Not least because the bond market is actually reliant on the government, rather than the other way round. The government must collect taxes to control inflation, and it uses the bond market for the same purpose, because taxation and bond sales remove liquidity from circulation. But neither taxation, nor bond sales are used to pay for government expenditure. Andy says the country has been on the wrong path for 40 years, but he won’t be able to get it back on track if he’s going to tie his hands behind his back. The problems that Britain is facing, like the housing crisis, youth unemployment and our dilapidated infrastructure, won’t be tackled by more tinkering. These challenges require fundamental reform, which means Rachel Reeves’ foolish fiscal rules will have to go. Andy Burnham should be arguing for a huge fiscal stimulus and tax reform to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families. That was the commitment that Labour gave in its 1974 manifesto, which was abandoned after Harold Wilson stepped down as prime minister in 1976. Less than six months later, Denis Healey went cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund on a false premise. It was Healey’s fateful and wholly misguided decision that paved the way for Margaret Thatcher and sent us down the path that Andy Burnham now says he wants to deviate from. Of course, the neoliberal establishment want to maintain the economic status quo which has seen them get filthy rich, while millions of British citizens have been simultaneously plunged into poverty and precarious employment. Fifty years ago, precarious employment hardly existed, and poverty was considerably lower. Back then, around 8 million people worked in manufacturing and the UK was the world’s third biggest economy.

Greece's bankruptcy lives on. In the midst of all the cacophony celebrating our splendid 'recovery', 60% of households cannot make ends meet. The never-ending legacy of the EU's savaging of our people...