Rupert Lowe MP This is important. I have been contacted by a shocking number of small businesses whose business rates bill is set to soar. And I mean soar. It is a destructive, outdated, unfair tax regime, and it’s getting A LOT worse. These revaluations are just brutal. Most politicians don’t understand business rates, and even fewer care to. They talk about ‘growth’ while presiding over a tax system that punishes the very people who keep our economy alive. Scrap the current system. I’d abolish business rates entirely. It’s economically illiterate in today’s age. Replace it with something tethered to reality, turnover. Much smaller levels, but targeted - make it fair with the online giants. It is ridiculously complicated, and small businesses are now figuring out just how much more they’re paying. VAST hikes. 300% rises. Often more. Tens of thousands of pounds to find. This is a nuclear winter for these firms. All on top of the NI changes and the new workers' ‘rights’ bill. Headwinds everywhere… Small firms cannot absorb another shock when the next revaluation hits. I’ve been contacted by firms outlining some of these hikes. I mean it’s just unmanageable. They will go bust. It’s that simple. Those who limp on will have to cut investment, fire staff and increase prices. That drives inflation, and so the doom loop continues. Brilliant. Great work everyone. If the government is serious about growth, it should start by letting small firms keep their own money to invest and hire. A physical shop pays a fortune in rates while an online corporate pays next to nothing. This is economic self-harm. It is destroying our towns... And we’re surprised that so many of our high streets are turning into desolate shitholes? When the cost of doing business on said high street is so astronomical? Is anyone surprised? I’m not. Stop pushing SMEs into insolvency with bureaucratic fantasy-valuations from civil servants who have never even run a paper round. Business rates need a radical overhaul, urgently. I am raising this in Parliament.

Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧🎗 @JChimirie66677 Something shifted today. The Budget row stopped being a story about dishonesty and became something darker: a government moving to remove the one man who could expose it. Rachel Reeves hasn't simply misrepresented the public finances. She hasn't simply engineered a false fiscal crisis. She is now clinging to office because the one man who could contradict her – the chairman of the OBR – has been shoved aside hours before he was due to give evidence. That is not politics. That is the state reaching for the dimmer switch to keep the truth out of sight. Richard Hughes's resignation was dressed up as noble self-sacrifice, but the timing gives the game away. He falls on the morning Reeves faces her fiercest scrutiny. He disappears from the witness table where he was meant to confirm, under oath and in public, that the Chancellor had the upgraded forecasts before she warned the country of a black hole that did not exist. And he falls after days of pressure from ministers who suddenly lost their patience with the one body they had spent months claiming proved their credibility. A watchdog that tells the truth is useful to them. A watchdog that contradicts the script is disposable. This is the true scandal. Not the lie, but the purge. A government that cooks its own numbers is untrustworthy. A government that removes the referee to protect a minister is dangerous. Reeves has not merely broken faith with the public – she has broken the independence of Britain's fiscal institutions. The OBR was created to keep politicians honest. Today it has been reminded, in brutal terms, that honesty carries a price. Starmer cannot wash his hands of this. His fingerprints are all over the weapon. He attacked the OBR for its timing. His ministers briefed against Hughes. His MPs questioned his position. Reeves withdrew her confidence just as the narrative turned against her. And then, as the walls closed in, the man at the centre of the row quietly exited the stage. Starmer held a press conference insisting there was "no misleading," a line delivered with the weary certainty of a man who hopes repetition can replace truth. It cannot. The public is not blind. They can see the choreography. A Prime Minister who stays silent while his Chancellor misleads the country is weak. A Prime Minister who allows the watchdog to be trampled to spare his Chancellor is complicit. This government now faces a crisis of legitimacy of its own making. It asked the country to trust it. Then it undermined the very institution designed to earn that trust. This is not the behaviour of grown-ups. It is the behaviour of a government that fears scrutiny because it knows scrutiny will expose the lie. We should be clear about what happened today. The head of the OBR resigned in the middle of the biggest fiscal scandal in years. He resigned on the eve of giving testimony that could have ended Reeves's career. And he resigned under a cloud of ministerial pressure, pointed criticism, and barely disguised frustration from Number 10. This government has not only misled the public – it has interfered with the mechanisms designed to correct that misconduct. A country can survive a dishonest Budget. It cannot survive a government that silences the people who catch it. And that is where Britain now stands. If the ethics system fails to act, if Parliament shrugs, if the OBR is cowed into submission, then the lie becomes law and the truth becomes optional. Reeves may cling on. Starmer may brazen it out. But a government that protects itself by toppling the watchdog is not a government with a future. It is a government already rotting from the inside. "Richard Hughes's resignation was dressed up as noble self-sacrifice, but the timing gives the game away. He falls on the morning Reeves faces her fiercest scrutiny."

BlueSky Sees Surge in New Users and Child Sexual Abuse Material Swelling numbers for the decentralized social platform BlueSky have brought a wave of harmful content

Decrypt

BlueSky Sees Surge in New Users and Child Sexual Abuse Material - Decrypt

Swelling numbers for the decentralized social platform BlueSky have brought a wave of harmful content, leading to attempts to moderate it.

BlueSky Sees Surge in New Users and Child Sexual Abuse Material Swelling numbers for the decentralized social platform BlueSky have brought a wave of harmful content https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

The EU eSafety director has allowed BlueSky exemption status from Digital ID laws. I wonder why a platform full of the far left, deviants and paedophiles gets an exemption? Says everything you need to know really ...

India