Now retired. Ran my own business and served as a councillor in Wandsworth 2010-26.
SW15, London
Joined April 2010
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Steffi Sutters retweeted
The government’s grandest plane, an A321 jet, took off from Stansted at 6.05 a.m. this morning. Burnham wasn't on it. It flew 34 minutes to Manchester to collect the PM, then set off for the Commonwealth summit in Antigua. Guido estimates the detour cost around £20,000 of taxpayer cash. Avanti not good enough for him?
Flight tracking data shows the jet landed in Manchester at 6.39 a.m. and left again at 8.06 a.m., heading for a refuelling stop in Newfoundland before the Caribbean. The government eventually publishes what every trip on the plane costs. Starmer’s same-day trip to Paris on in April came to £39,756 at roughly £20,000 a leg. Stansted to Manchester is shorter than Paris, but every additional leg brings its own landing and handling fees. About £18,000-20,000’s worth according to Guido’s fag packet maths…
The whole jaunt, there and back, comes to about 21 hours of flying. Based on Starmer’s £121,239 trip to Yerevan in May and Yvette Cooper’s £148,700 trip to Washington in December, long-haul flying on the plane costs between £9,500 and £12,400 an hour. That puts Burnham's full trip at about £250,000.
Burnham took the same government jet from Glasgow to Manchester in July to open No10 North, despite a choice of trains. When Liz Truss used the same plane to fly to Australia, @AngelaRayner called it a “ridiculous waste of half a million pounds on a private jet trip”. Thoughts on this one, Ange?
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds' statement that employers are not 'working people' is contradicted by Labour statements during the 2024 election campaign.
Keir Starmer, Asked if he fell into his own description of “working man”, he said: “Yes, I’m a working person, I come within my own definition of a working person, which is earning my living, paying my taxes and knowing what it means to save money.”
Rachel Reeves stated that "working people are people who get their income from going out to work everyday, and also pensioners that have worked all their lives and are now in retirement, drawing down on their pensions.” (She added that "there are people who do have savings, who have been able to save up and those are working people as well.")
It's clear that employers are included in these definitions. That Burnham's Labour Party has a different anti-employer definition is indeed worrying.
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Labour warns us to 'be ready' for emergency when they are doing nothing for national resilience. It's a disgrace
youtu.be/QjMry1I8Lf0?is=rcEi… via @YouTube
Steffi Sutters retweeted
“We vote for freebies, & gaily assume that the bill will fall on someone else: landlords, banks, energy companies.
“We seem unable to process the concept that all these taxes, in the end, fall on us. Your bank will no more pay the bank levy than your house pays the council tax, your car the excise duty, or your TV the licence fee. You will pay as a depositor or a borrower.
“All taxes fall on human beings.”
dailymail.com/debate/article…
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Wow! There should be no politics, lanyards, badges Or ideologies in school. Leave our kids alone. Teach them don’t politicise them
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Ofgem: Britain Could Fail Legal Gas Security Test This Winter order-order.com/2026/10/22/o…
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Just when there is good news of more tax revenue from allowing the Jackdaw field, the Chancellor announces more spending on renewable power grants to more than offset the extra tax. Start to get borrowing down.
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Energy Grid Wobbles as NESO Triggers Emergency Measures to Import Power from France order-order.com/2026/10/22/e…
Steffi Sutters retweeted
The Foreign Secretary of a country whose public debt has surpassed £3 trillion flew halfway across the globe to lecture the world on the perils of unsustainable debt and climate change.
Irony died twice last week.
My latest @Telegraph column:
telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/ne…
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Thank heaven for small mercies. The UK government has — at last — granted consent for gas to be produced from the Jackdaw gas field. Now, what about Rosebank?
Steffi Sutters retweeted
I asked in the Lords why the government leaves out the costs of extra grid, backup gas power costs, and payments to windfarms not to produce sometimes, when talking about the cost of renewables. No answer.
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Sarah Helm, the wife of Britain's national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, took flak last week after appearing to support Palestine Action, the banned terror group, on Twitter. The police looked, but took no further action.
The Spectator can reveal that there is vastly more material, far more controversial than this, in Helm's tweets.
Helm has defended Hamas, questioned reports of mass rape by the terror group, blamed the 7 October attacks on the creation of Israel in 1948, compared Israel to the Nazis, and appeared to praise Syria's then dictator Bashar al-Assad for remarks in which he had called the Jewish state an 'outlaw colonial entity' populated by 'herds of settlers that are closer to barbarism than to humanity.'
She has also called for western military intervention against Israel and attacked her husband's own government for its 'complicity' and 'appeasement' towards Tel Aviv. Here are some of the highlights.
✍️ Andrew Gilligan
Article | spectator.com/article/reveal… | @mragilligan
nitter.cf/spectator/status/21121…
Sarah Helm, the wife of Britain's national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, took flak last week after appearing to support Palestine Action, the banned terror group, on Twitter. The police looked, but took no further action.
The Spectator can reveal that there is vastly more material, far more controversial than this, in Helm's tweets.
Helm has defended Hamas, questioned reports of mass rape by the terror group, blamed the 7 October attacks on the creation of Israel in 1948, compared Israel to the Nazis, and appeared to praise Syria's then dictator Bashar al-Assad for remarks in which he had called the Jewish state an 'outlaw colonial entity' populated by 'herds of settlers that are closer to barbarism than to humanity.'
She has also called for western military intervention against Israel and attacked her husband's own government for its 'complicity' and 'appeasement' towards Tel Aviv. Here are some of the highlights.
✍️ Andrew Gilligan
Article | spectator.com/article/reveal… | @mragilligan
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Stephen Kinnock’s claim that there were no boat people because we were in the European Union is a straightforward lie. Illegal immigrants flooded in by lorry, train and cars. They disappeared into towns/cities and couldn’t be properly counted. When advances in technology made these methods of transport much harder to use the illegal migrants took to boats, courtesy of the people smugglers. Since the boats are usually interdicted on arrival the counting is easier. Nothing to do with being in or out of the EU.
This is the madness of net zero. £50m to keep the lights on and all the while our bills keep rising …
Yesterday, @neso_energy spent a record *£50m* in grid balancing costs….to keep the lights on.
In one day. A warm, sunny day.
This is unsustainable. What is going on at NESO? Why are their models so wrong?
Steffi Sutters retweeted
There is no way the UK can change the damned climate!
We are less than 1% of emissions.
THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS!
By the way, why do we need to lead, give me one reason why everyday people have to be impoverished, because you have some stupid, expensive, unobtainable, ideological goal ?
Steffi Sutters retweeted
Farms supplying Müller have been secretly filmed horrifically abusing their cows. This petition is calling on the company to cut ties with any farm abusing its animals and, in doing so, send a powerful message to all their suppliers. Sign here: act.38degrees.org.uk/act/end…
