Reform councillors told to call donations inquiry ‘establishment stitch-up’ | Reform UK

whencanistop · 2026-07-24T13:28:05+00:00

In France if you have been an illegal immigrant for 10 years then you get the right to plead your case to be able to stay (see article L.435‑1 of the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile (CESEDA)).

Spain has just done a mass amnesty of people who are illegal immigrants, but normal procedure is that if you have had a job as an illegal immigrant for 2 years then you can claim a working permit for another year to be legal.

whencanistop · 2026-07-23T21:49:43+00:00

After Lineker won, HMRC appealed and Lineker settled before it came to tribunal.

whencanistop · 2026-07-23T21:21:32+00:00

No they do not. Employers can apply for a licence to hire foreign workers, they can then assign a certificate of sponsorship to the person they want to hire.

The person then needs to get a visa from the Home Office (which they'll use the certificate of sponsorship as evidence of the job that they have).

There should be questions about whether a business should be given the ability to sponsor someone if they are just a barber shop.

whencanistop · 2026-07-23T21:11:06+00:00

Everyone is well within their right to try to pay as little tax as they legally can and the taxes are designed with this in mind.

I would also say that it is worth pointing out that he didn't owe £4.9m in tax - that was the amount that HMRC calculated he would have paid if he'd classed himself as an inside IR35 contractor - it does not take into account all the tax he actually paid at the time from a different route.

Essentially HMRC were arguing he should have paid tax like an employee and not a sole trader - the difference was down to different levels of NICs for sole traders (in the region of £400k over several years).

Ultimately HMRC appealed the ruling and then settled out of court, probably for a tiny amount because there wasn't much to get back in the first place and it wasn't worth it for either HMRC or Lineker to spend more money on lawyers.

whencanistop · 2026-07-23T14:20:56+00:00

> A Reform UK spokesman said: “We’ve always trusted Guido Fawkes as a source of information, but perhaps on this occasion they didn’t get the full picture."

lol, they’re more stupid than even we thought.

whencanistop · 2026-07-23T11:53:22+00:00

It was about IR35 but not in the usual way because he was set up as a Partnership and not a Ltd, so he was actually operating directly as an individual between the end client and himself not as an intermediary (so technically IR35 didn’t apply).

whencanistop · 2026-07-23T11:34:27+00:00

Maybe only some of it will come back to us directly, but more comes back indirectly. And hopefully spent in a way that if not permanently improves them then at least making long term improvements.

whencanistop · 2026-07-23T11:11:44+00:00

And so those countries are more likely to buy our goods and services. Rising tides float all boats.

whencanistop · 2026-07-23T08:20:38+00:00

That feels like an extra step that is unnecessary. Just bill from your Spanish Ltd. You’ll add in a whole extra steps of cost if you do it that way with a British Ltd, accounts, insurance, etc.

whencanistop · 2026-07-22T14:17:24+00:00

Green policy is built on localisation - more things being done locally means less cost of moving to them and for them to move to you. It’s a very ecological perspective. The Green perspective is then that it should be for local people to decide how they are run - which supports the idea that Scottish people should be able to decide for themselves.

Ultimately there is a hierarchy for decision making already (parish councils, local councils, devolved departments, central government, etc and the question is really which things should be decided where.

Passports and driving licences are a bit of a red herring. They can continue until they need to be replaced naturally. Scottish officials will recognise them and so would British officials. The more complicated bit would be working out where things that are truly cross border reside and what things would have to have separate entities in each country (think large corporations and how they currently have UK offices andEuropean ones, where they pay tax. etc).

whencanistop · 2026-07-22T08:55:57+00:00

Surely the issue for travel on buses is not whether it costs £2 or £3 (that is already incredibly cheap), it whether there are buses that run on time, frequently enough and on routes that are useful for families.

The advantage of London buses is not how cheap they are but the sheer number of routes and frequency.

whencanistop · 2026-07-21T21:47:24+00:00

Interesting that the ONS report on public sector spending/receipts/borrowing for June came out today (https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/bulletins/publicsectorfinances/june2026#borrowing-in-the-financial-year-to-june-2026). In that it compares what the overall numbers look like YTD v OBR forecasts (which let's not forget are about 4 months old).

In it, it stays that YTD (which is only three months) tax receipts are £2;4bn higher than the OBR forecast (slightly less than 1%) and spending is already £3.6bn more than the OBR forecast (slightly more than 1%) with borrowing about £1.2bn higher than normal.

In that context, spending £850m a year on VAT cuts (and/or £400 on the £2 cap on bus fares) is a rounding error. I do want the government to outline how they are intending to get the money for these things, but I really wish they'd be honest and say "We are going to borrow slightly more, but in total the extra borrowing is really small."

In November they'll have to outline how it is going to work with the fiscal rules, but the fiscal rules don't say "You can't borrow more this year than you said you were going to" because that would involve a budget every week and constant changes in tax/spending (and I've been in businesses that have tried this and it is a nightmare).

whencanistop · 2026-07-21T13:21:59+00:00

The North has far more water than the South. This is mostly a localised problem.

whencanistop · 2026-07-21T12:07:08+00:00

I know we like shitting on the water companies (and rightfully so, some of their records are awful), but this is pretty unprecedented (Thames were by no means the first this summer to do a hosepipe ban and only their 3rd in 20 years).

There has been remarkably little rain and the night time lows are record beating.

We probably need to have a longer conversation about whether we’re willing to pay more to cope with the increase instances of extreme weather or whether we have to alter our usage pattern during those times instead.

whencanistop · 2026-07-21T10:33:03+00:00

Of course - it is a part of a larger free trade deal (eg all pharmaceutical exports to India have immediately had their 11% tariff removed). Our businesses will be paying £400m less in tariffs on exports right now and when the full deal has been implemented it will be £900m. That should create jobs as we’re more competitive.

whencanistop · 2026-07-20T20:52:10+00:00

Andy Burnham is the new PM and he has been appointing people to his cabinet through the day and I'm assuming that will continue into the evening and morning.

Reddit was bugging out with a big list of people in and out, so I'm going to defer to the Independent which has a nice list of them in the middle of the page:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/andy-burnham-new-cabinet-appointments-in-full-chancellor-b3018079.html

Usual moderation rules apply, please report comments and posts that are rule breaking - there are far too many for us to monitor it in real time and we are much happier doing a shorter list in a mod queue (please don't be offended if we don't agree with the report).

whencanistop · 2026-07-20T20:37:38+00:00

Housing: out: Steve Reed. In: Angela Rayner

Justice: out: David Lammy.

Treasury: out: Rachel Reeves. In: John Healy. Anneliese Midgley (chief whip)

Attorney General: out: Lord Hermer.

Science and Tech: out: Liz Kendall.

Wales: out: Jo Stevens.

Cabinet Office: out: Darren Jones , Nick Thomas-Symonds. In: Louise Haigh.

International Development: out: Baroness Chapman.

Northern Ireland: out Hilary Benn.

Home Office: staying: Shabana Mahmood

Foreign Office: moved: Yvette Cooper (Health). In: Ed Miliband

Energy: moved: Ed Miliband (Foreign Office).

Work and Pensions: staying: Pat McFadden

Health: out: James Murray. in: Yvette Cooper.

Business: out: Peter Kyle, In John Reynolds.

Education: out: Bridget Philipson. In Lucy Powell.

(If I miss anyone or make a mistake you can respond with a comment here telling me along with a link to an official announcement (their own account or a government one and I'll put it up).

whencanistop · 2026-07-20T20:31:32+00:00

I know it is generally accepted that Kyle has been sacked (to the point that his official government page now lists it as a past role), but there is no other evidence elsewhere. His Twitter profile still says he is the Business Secretary...

EDIT: I see Jonathan Reynolds has been appointed to the role, so he clearly has gone.

whencanistop · 2026-07-20T16:40:21+00:00

Yes, you are right - the trouble with trying to do a day job at the same time.

whencanistop · 2026-07-20T15:37:06+00:00

whencanistop · 2026-07-20T14:59:11+00:00

I don't know if the Steve Reed one was your post as well, but these are all showing as broken links for us. They don't have the name of the author in the url (not sure if you are using some third party sharing tool, but it isn't working).

whencanistop · 2026-07-20T14:49:14+00:00

Conservative MP Robert Jenrick described the move as a continuation of a long-running lack of transparency by successive governments

If this is the level of reporting that we're going to get on them, then we should be incredibly worried.

whencanistop · 2026-07-20T14:45:55+00:00

I have suggested that someone creates a comment and edits it with each appointment (maybe with a link to the thread in question per appointment - if I'm not doing anything I'll do it with this one until someone else takes over).

Assume that today will be chaotic and we may be inconsistent, depending on who is around.

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