0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
Two full days left after today at £149.
Bitfest tickets rise to £199 on 1 November.
Four days of Bitcoin IRL, workshops, art, music, builders and community. Freedom Fest included.
Book before the price changes: bitfest.uk/
#LateBird
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
Update:
In the 27 months since Labour came to power, we've seen;
• Employer National Insurance increased from 13.8% to 15%.
• The employer NI threshold cut from £9,100 to £5,000.
• The freeze on Income Tax and National Insurance thresholds extended to 2031.
• Capital Gains Tax increased from 10% and 20% to 18% and 24%.
• Business Asset Disposal Relief increased from 10% to 14%, then 18% – and now its lifetime limit halved to £500,000.
• Investors’ Relief raised to 18% and its lifetime limit cut from £10 million to £1 million.
• CGT relief on sales to Employee Ownership Trusts halved.
• Carried interest taxation increased and moved into the Income Tax regime.
• Dividend tax rates increased by two percentage points.
• Savings-income tax rates increased by four percentage points.
• Property-income tax rates increased by four percentage points.
• VCT income tax relief cut from 30% to 20%.
• Most unused pension funds brought into the Inheritance Tax net.
• Agricultural and Business Property Relief capped.
• Inheritance Tax thresholds frozen until 2031.
• The non-dom regime replaced with a tougher residence-based system.
• VAT imposed on private school fees.
• Business-rates relief removed from private schools.
• The Stamp Duty surcharge on second homes and buy-to-let raised from 3% to 5%.
• The Furnished Holiday Lettings regime abolished.
• A new annual surcharge on homes worth £2 million or more.
• Pension salary-sacrifice NI relief capped at £2,000 a year.
• The bank surcharge doubled.
• Capital allowances for plant and machinery cut twice.
• Online gaming duty almost doubled.
• The Energy Profits Levy increased and extended, and its investment allowance scrapped.
• Vaping Products Duty brought in and tobacco duties increased above inflation.
• Vehicle Excise Duty increased for many new cars, with electric vehicles brought in.
• A pay-per-mile tax on electric and plug-in hybrid cars legislated for 2028.
• Air Passenger Duty increased.
• Making Tax Digital extended to more landlords and self-employed people.
Together they represent one of the biggest transfers of wealth from households and businesses to the Treasury in decades – with little to show for it in public services.
Whether you're a business owner employing staff, a parent paying school fees, a farmer planning succession, an entrepreneur building wealth or simply someone trying to save for your family’s future...
- You keep less of what you earn.
- You keep less of what you invest.
- You leave less for your family.
Death by a thousand cuts.
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
Maybe its just me, but running a small business has never - certainly not in my lifetime - been as difficult as it is right now and I'm struggling to find reasons to carry it on.
Its certainly not for the work life balance, or for the money. Its not for an easy life, or to relieve avoid stress.
So what is it for? To keep other people employed? To keep paying ever more tax?
Its been 25 years, and I think I'm done.
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
Time to post my biannual “how artificially compressed are British wages”.
Rising minimum wage and a 50k+ p/a tax bracket that runs to 40% of earnings, and hasn’t adjusted for inflation. This form of artificial wage compression has turned everyone in Britain into low productivity tax cattle - you have zero incentive to become anything other here.
This is also a form of ambition and productivity compression.
Source, ONS, Fig 5: ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabo…
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
The real cost to business is £16.95 when you include NI, statutory holiday pay and minimum employer pension contributions.
This is unfathomably stupid.
There are many viable businesses that are unviable because of this. My first job was £2.30 an hour and there were no employment rights, minimum wage or holiday pay. The job was a privilege and created the right incentives to work hard.
Economics is about what works, not what sounds good. The incentives here are flipped and a job is now being treated like an entitlement.
So let's talk about the two big consequences for businesses already operating at the margin:
1. Wage compression - less jobs for younger people as it is less risky to employ older, more mature people for base wage roles.
2. Businesses that are currently viable or on the margin, will become unviable.
We are ruled my morons.
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
An increase to £13.20p/h equates to a minimum wage of £27,456, based on a 40 hour week.
Once you factor in employers NI and basic pension contributions, the MINIMUM cost to hire a 21 year old for a company would be £31,461.
This is before you factor in any overarching business costs like office space, laptops, phone, software, training, support staff, vehicles etc.
This is going to be devastating to SME's who cant put together a simple 12 month budget without the goalposts being moved & their margins squeezed.
It'll also be catastrophic to youngsters opportunities because businesses will simply not be able to afford to hire them.
What's also incredible is that anything above £50,270 is seen as 'high earnings' in the UK and is taxed at 40%!
We are governed by financially and economically illiterate morons.
This will not end well.
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
HMRC writing off £13bn in unpaid business taxes due to businesses going into liquidation. Unpaid council tax bills a £7.4 billion. Stamp duty down £500m due to higher rates. North Sea windfall taxes achieving only 25% of forecast. The Laffer curve is everywhere. The country is on its knees.
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
This is your children's debt and therefore their future.
If you continue to consent to this, you are consenting to a shit future for them and thus you are a fucking coward.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance revealed this week that public sector debt has breached £3 trillion.
But that is only part of the story.
What the Government is not acknowledging is the vast mountain of additional liabilities it has accumulated, obligations that will ultimately have to be paid.
The real national debt is far worse, standing at £11.7 trillion.
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
$MORE – A GENERATION-BY-GENERATION LOOK AT INVESTING
Day 3: Generation X (Born 1965–1980, aged 46–61)
Over the past two days I've looked at Generation Z and Millennials, exploring their financial challenges, investing habits and why $MORE might appeal to them.
Today it's Generation X.
Many people in this generation have spent decades working, raising families, paying mortgages and hopefully building some financial security along the way.
But I think Generation X faces a particular challenge when it comes to retirement, and it's something that doesn't always get enough attention.
Generation X has, in many ways, fallen between two very different pension eras.
Many Baby Boomers benefited from generous final-salary pension schemes, where retirement income was largely determined by salary and years of service.
But during Generation X's working lives, many private-sector employers began closing these schemes to new employees, moving towards pensions where the individual carries much more of the investment risk.
And here's something worth remembering.
Automatic enrolment into workplace pensions didn't even begin in the UK until October 2012, with the rollout taking until 2018.
By then, many Generation X workers were already in their thirties, forties or even early fifties.
That means some missed years, potentially decades, of the automatic pension contributions that younger generations now benefit from.
Of course, many Gen X workers did have good workplace pensions, but others were left having to make their own retirement arrangements much later in their careers.
I think this is an important distinction.
For a generation now approaching retirement, there isn't necessarily another 30 or 40 years available to make up for lost pension contributions.
And that's why I think investments capable of generating income deserve serious consideration.
Which brings me to $MORE.
For anyone unfamiliar with it, $MORE is a perpetual preferred equity issued by The Smarter Web Company.
It currently carries a variable annual dividend rate of 12%, calculated against a £100 reference amount per share, with dividends scheduled weekly.
It's the possibility of reinvesting those weekly dividends that I find particularly interesting.
Rather than spending the income, you use it to purchase additional shares. Those shares potentially generate further dividends, which can themselves be reinvested.
Over time, this creates the potential for compounding.
Let's consider two very different situations.
SCENARIO 1 – INVESTING £100 A WEEK INTO A STOCKS & SHARES ISA
Imagine you're 45 or 50 years old and decide to start putting £100 a week into $MORE through your Stocks & Shares ISA.
That's £5,200 a year, well within the current £20,000 annual ISA allowance.
You reinvest every dividend and continue contributing £100 each week.
Assuming the dividend remains at 12%, the shares can always be purchased at £100 and the dividends are reinvested weekly, here's what the mathematics suggests.
AFTER 5 YEARS
Total invested: £26,000
Potential portfolio value: £35,571
Potential weekly dividend: £82
AFTER 10 YEARS
Total invested: £52,000
Potential portfolio value: £100,340
Potential weekly dividend: £232
AFTER 15 YEARS
Total invested: £78,000
Potential portfolio value: £218,275
Potential weekly dividend: £504
AFTER 20 YEARS
Total invested: £104,000
Potential portfolio value: £433,019
Potential weekly dividend: £999
Think about that final example.
Someone investing £100 a week over 20 years would have contributed £104,000 of their own money.
Under these assumptions, reinvested dividends could have helped build a portfolio worth approximately £433,000, potentially generating almost £1,000 every week if they stopped reinvesting.
And because the investment would be held within a qualifying Stocks & Shares ISA, that dividend income could be withdrawn free of UK income tax under current rules.
For somebody approaching retirement, that's a potentially substantial additional income stream.
But let's consider another situation that I suspect many people in Generation X will recognise.
SCENARIO 2 – WHAT IF YOU INHERITED £100,000 TODAY?
Perhaps you've inherited money from a parent or relative.
You've received £100,000 and don't immediately need it for living expenses.
What if you invested that money into $MORE and reinvested every dividend until retirement?
Using exactly the same assumptions as before, here's how the figures develop.
AFTER 5 YEARS
Original investment: £100,000
Potential portfolio value: £182,086
Potential weekly dividend: £420
AFTER 10 YEARS
Original investment: £100,000
Potential portfolio value: £331,553
Potential weekly dividend: £765
AFTER 15 YEARS
Original investment: £100,000
Potential portfolio value: £603,712
Potential weekly dividend: £1,393
AFTER 20 YEARS
Original investment: £100,000
Potential portfolio value: £1,099,274
Potential weekly dividend: £2,537
That final number is particularly striking.
In this hypothetical scenario, £100,000 invested today could become approximately £1.1 million over 20 years.
And if the 12% dividend rate were still being paid at retirement, that portfolio could potentially generate over £131,900 a year in dividends, before any applicable taxes.
It's important to understand that these are mathematical projections, not expected or guaranteed returns.
They assume two decades of uninterrupted dividends at 12%, a constant £100 share price, immediate reinvestment, no fees and no losses. All of those assumptions could prove unrealistic.
There's also an important ISA distinction.
You couldn't simply put the entire £100,000 inheritance into your own ISA in one tax year. The current annual allowance is £20,000, so you would need to move money into an ISA over multiple tax years, subject to future allowances.
Investing the full £100,000 immediately outside an ISA could result in dividend taxes that materially reduce the figures above.
Nevertheless, I think both examples demonstrate why dividend reinvestment deserves attention.
And there's another important factor for Generation X: inflation.
People approaching retirement need to think about what their money will actually buy in 10 or 20 years.
Simply maintaining the same amount of money isn't necessarily enough if everyday living costs continue rising.
An income-producing investment that allows dividends to be reinvested could potentially help build a larger portfolio before retirement.
Of course, $MORE isn't inflation-linked, and a 12% dividend today doesn't guarantee the same rate in the future.
What about the risks?
$MORE is an equity investment, not a bank deposit.
The dividend rate is variable, payments can be suspended, the share price can decline and the company has redemption rights. Its Bitcoin treasury strategy also introduces financial risks. Concentrating a substantial amount of retirement savings in one issuer would increase those risks considerably.
The weekly dividend entitlement is based on the £100 reference amount per share, not necessarily the price paid in the market.
But I believe $MORE gives investors something genuinely interesting to research: a preferred equity designed around regular cash distributions, with the potential to reinvest those distributions while building towards retirement.
And that brings me back to Generation X.
Some people will be able to invest £100 a week. Others might receive an inheritance, sell a property or release capital from a business.
The amounts and circumstances will be different, but the question is similar.
How could the money available today be put to work to create an income later in life?
For those who understand the structure and accept the risks, I think $MORE deserves consideration in that conversation.
Particularly for a generation where many didn't benefit from decades of automatic pension saving or the final-salary retirement arrangements enjoyed by some of their predecessors.
Because reaching retirement with investments capable of generating regular income could provide something particularly valuable.
More financial freedom and more choice over how you spend your time.
Tomorrow: Baby Boomers.
For many, retirement has already arrived, so I'll be looking at $MORE from a different perspective: generating weekly income from capital already accumulated, without needing to wait another 10 or 20 years.
$MORE $SWC #GenerationX #Investing #ISA #Dividends #Retirement
$MORE – A GENERATION-BY-GENERATION LOOK AT INVESTING
Day 2: Generation Y – Millennials (Born 1981–1996, aged 30–45)
Yesterday I looked at Generation Z and how time can be their biggest advantage when investing.
Today I'm looking at Millennials, and I actually think this is one of the most interesting generations when considering an investment such as $MORE.
Why? Because Millennials are at a stage of life where their financial priorities are changing.
Many are now established in their careers, earning more than they did in their twenties, but they're also dealing with mortgages, childcare, rising household expenses and the growing realisation that retirement might not be as financially comfortable as they once imagined.
They're earning money, but a surprising amount of it is already spoken for.
And I think this is where investing for income starts becoming particularly interesting.
Research from interactive investor's 2026 Great British Retirement Survey found that Millennials have a typical pension pot of approximately £25,000, despite expecting to retire with around £450,000.
That's quite a gap to bridge, even allowing for another 20 or 30 years of working.
What's interesting is that Millennials are already investing outside their pensions. The same research suggests they're investing around £400 a month on average outside pension arrangements.
So the appetite to invest is clearly there.
But I wonder how many have seriously considered building an additional source of income rather than focusing entirely on capital appreciation?
This is why I believe $MORE deserves their attention.
$MORE is a perpetual preferred equity issued by The Smarter Web Company, currently carrying a 12% annual dividend rate, calculated against a £100 reference amount per share, with dividends scheduled weekly.
It's a different proposition from buying ordinary shares in the hope that the price appreciates.
With $MORE, the primary attraction is the potential income.
Let's look at the numbers.
At the current dividend rate:
100 shares = £1,200 annually.
250 shares = £3,000 annually.
500 shares = £6,000 annually.
That's approximately £23, £58 and £115 a week respectively, before tax.
These figures assume the current dividend rate continues and the shares are held for a full year. The actual investment cost depends on the market price, and the dividend rate can change.
Now imagine being 35 or 40 years old and beginning to build an investment portfolio that generates an additional income stream.
You don't necessarily need that income today.
Perhaps you reinvest it, buying additional shares and potentially increasing the dividends received in the future.
Perhaps you use part of it to help with household expenses while reinvesting the remainder.
Or perhaps you simply want to build investments that could eventually supplement your earnings and give you greater financial flexibility.
For Millennials, I think flexibility is enormously valuable.
There's another reason I believe income-producing investments deserve consideration: inflation.
Millennials have experienced some significant financial shocks during their adult lives, including the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic and the subsequent surge in inflation and interest rates.
They understand what happens when household expenditure increases faster than wages.
An additional investment income stream could help offset some of those rising costs, although $MORE isn't inflation-linked and its dividend isn't guaranteed to maintain purchasing power.
I also think there's an interesting psychological difference between owning an investment purely for price appreciation and owning one that aims to distribute income regularly.
With a growth share, you might spend years waiting for the market to recognise its value.
With an income-focused preferred share, you're investing primarily for distributions rather than relying entirely on a higher future selling price.
That doesn't make it risk-free. $MORE is an equity investment, not a savings account. Dividends can be suspended, its rate can change, its market value can fall, and The Smarter Web Company's Bitcoin treasury strategy introduces additional risks. The preferred shares do, however, rank ahead of ordinary shareholders and carry cumulative dividend rights.
What excites me about $MORE is the opportunity to make the money you've already earned start working for you, potentially generating income every single week, and then having the choice of spending that income or reinvesting it to build something substantially bigger over the years ahead.
I think Millennials are reaching the age where building wealth becomes just as much about generating income as accumulating assets.
And with another 20 to 30 years potentially ahead before retirement, the ability to reinvest that income could be particularly valuable.
That's why I believe $MORE could appeal to this generation.
Not because they're looking to get rich overnight, but because many are now thinking seriously about making the money they've already earned work harder for them.
Tomorrow: Generation X.
A generation approaching retirement, where protecting wealth, generating income and reducing dependence on employment become increasingly important.
$MORE $SWC #Millennials #Investing #Dividends
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
The McRib is back on 10/27. BTC historically goes up >2x after the McRib returns. Don't fade the McRib.
Not financial advice.
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
BREAKING NEWS
Prime Minister Andy Burnham announces national car park loyalty scheme.
His statement- "I know many motorists are finding it financially difficult to run their vehicles at the moment. I'm a motorist too, so I get it. I will not accept there is nothing I can do to offer help to those who need it.
So from 1st January 2027 I will be introducing a car park loyalty scheme. It's free to join and will immediately provide motorists with the opportunity to save money when parking their cars.
By simply registering online with your name, your home address, your phone number, your email address, the vehicle registration number, the VIN number, the vehicle make and model, your driving licence number, a copy of your insurance policy and details of your entire family and anyone else you may know, (including the names of your pets - but excluding goldfish), you will be able to get a free parking session for every 40 paid tickets you download to the website.
This will save the average household £3.78 per year and is another example of @UKLabour being on your side when times get tough.
I am determined to make life easier for you. You can register for this initiative on absolutelyshitideasfromburnh…
I'm here to help.
Your friend, Andy".
0rangecoins🔶 retweeted
Dear @southport_fc,
I was a little disappointed to see the "mutual termination" of Mark Duffy because his political opinions were discovered on Facebook.
A man has now lost his livelihood.
I have not seen Mark's posts, I don't need to. But the ones referenced in the Southport news mention him calling Keir Starmer vile and sharing a post from "Far-right" Advance. I mean he is right about Keir Starmer, hence why football fans were been singing he is a wanker all summer, and calling Advance far-right is babyish at best. Though it appears that these days if you believe in Conservatism and Freedom you are now far-right. Laughable really.
Perhaps you could clarify something. Is holding conservative views now incompatible with managing your football club? Or is it simply a question of which political opinions are considered acceptable?
Conservatism is a perfectly legitimate political position in a democratic country. People are entitled to disagree with it, of course. That's the point of democracy.
Football was built by working-class communities. These are people who have watched their towns decimated, their opportunities disappear and their living standards sacrificed for an ever expanding state.
They are entitled to be angry. They are entitled to question their government. And, believe it or not, they are entitled to hold political opinions that might offend the sneering middle-class.
I appreciate that defending someone's right to express an unpopular opinion can be uncomfortable. It requires a backbone, particularly when people are demanding consequences.
But that is precisely when the principle matters.
Free speech is not a commitment to protecting opinions we agree with. Anyone can do that. It is a commitment to tolerating opinions we dislike, even those we find offensive.
Of course, it is your business, you are a private organisation and can do as you want. But I am sure there are fans of your team who would share Mark's beliefs. Personally, I struggle to understand why political disagreement should become a question of someone's livelihood.
We live in a country where people can defend almost any progressive opinion, however controversial, and expect these opinions to be treated as a legitimate contribution to public debate. Yet express the wrong conservative opinion and suddenly your employment becomes a matter of public interest.
Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I thought football was one of the few remaining places where people from different backgrounds and political persuasions could come together, call the PM a wanker then have a pint.
Or do you propose sanctions for anyone now calling Andy Burnham a wanker (he is by the way), or supporting right-wing parties?
Our country was built on the shoulders of giants and will be destroyed sliding down the backbones of cowards.
Club Statement:
Southport Football Club can confirm that Mark Duffy has left his position as First Team Manager following the mutual termination of his contract.
The club would like to thank Mark for his efforts and wish him all the best for the future.
#ONEPORT
