(1257) Afternoon all. (1325)
17. Reform … disgruntled ex-Tories vs disgruntled ordinary Brits
16. IYE in comments
Re Farage/Reform – “Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me!” Folks need to remember that when they’re giving them second (third, fourth…) chances.
Unrelated:
Title speaks for itself.
https://miriaf.co.uk/the-government-is-trying-to-kill-you-is-no-longer-a-conspiracy-theory/
15. The ravaging of Canada by Castro and fellow traitors
14. Articles of faith in the church of Reform
13. The Frankish sacking of Constantinople in 1204
It started with exploring this, from the Merovingians to the Carolingians to the Lombards to Venice … to how each had become nominally Christian but were still actually pagan, esp. Venice and its witches, to the promises of plunder, to the Welfs, to the Great Schism and its ridiculous basis, to the very nature of how the creed changed from the Roman rite to Nicea 325 to the Apostles’ Creed, to the references to the three components of the Triune God in scripture (KJV) to the very real displacement within the physical Church from the Spirit’s role “indwelling” in the human believer to being mainly concerned with visible Church structure, buildings, organisation, eventually “conquering”, to the protests against all the abuses, centred around “filthy lucre” … and so on.
Therefore, it was perfectly easy for the Frankish to slaughter, rape and pillage those supposedly of the same faith, as it was not based on shared indwelling but on territory and wealth, on the settling of old scores between nobles.
12. TPA
Perhaps you’ll have seen this coming, perhaps you won’t, but what our findings laid bare was that nearly half of all councils increased their reserves while putting up council tax. 47.2 per cent (150 out of 318) of councils which published accounts for 2023-24 saw an increase in their usable reserves during the period, while 59 councils saw increases in both 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Epping Forest topped the chart for the biggest increase of usable reserves seeing their balance tick up by a hearty £86 million in 2023-24. Hot on their heels were Milton Keynes adding £78.8 million or 29 per cent. In that same period council tax rose by 4.99 per cent. Elsewhere, three councils had usable reserves per resident in excess of £10,000. These were the City of London (£31,414), Shetland Islands (£17,548) and Orkney Islands (£11,512). A further four councils had between £2,000 and £4,000 in usable reserves per resident: Westminster (£3,248), Isles of Scilly (£2,928), Wandsworth (£2,354) and Tower Hamlets (£2,005).
With our findings gaining national attention, lead researcher on the project and TPA policy analyst, Shimeon Lee, was spot on when he told journalists: “Local taxpayers will rightly be concerned that some councils are filling their coffers at the expense of residents. For many years, town halls have consistently increased council tax and justified the rises with claims of financial hardship. These figures reveal that a significant number of local authorities are hoarding cash while local people struggle to make ends meet.” Shimeon followed up with a blog highlighting the ten key takeaways from the research which you can read here.