iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Where I fully agree: land value tax. Replacing council tax, business rates and stamp duty with an LVT would be fairer and pro-growth. The Greens have campaigned for exactly this for as long as I can remember. Maybe we haven't run out of road – we've dodged the best tax on wealth there is.

The biggest gap in the piece is about income flows, but what drives public anger is the stock of accumulated wealth and soaring asset prices. He brackets it out as "inequality, not revenue" – but for many of us that's the whole point. Taxing wealth isn't only about the revenue.

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His claim that a wealth tax "wouldn't work" is presented as settled, but it's a live dispute and he's firmly on one side. And the sums he calls illusory aren't trivial: the popular taxes he dismisses could raise ~£40bn – more than the defence rise he cites in the same piece.

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The core move is "almost no country funds a big state this way, so it can't be done". That shows difficulty, not impossibility – it's about the power of mobile capital, not a law of physics. And Switzerland, Norway and Spain run recurring wealth taxes today.

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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Interesting piece from @danneidle.bsky.social on whether Britain has "run out of other people to tax". Much is right: the UK taxes ordinary and low-paid workers lightly by global standards, and you can't fund a big state from the very wealthy alone. But it overclaims where it matters.

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Reposted by Jack Lenox

BREAKING: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage bought a £1.4 million property in cash shortly after receiving a £5m personal gift from billionaire donor Christopher Harborne, according to property records seen by Sky News.

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Jack Lenox @jacklenox.com · 09/05/2026

Just another day being treated like absolute shit for having the temerity to get around the UK by bike I suppose.

Jack Lenox @jacklenox.com · 09/05/2026

But also the station and train staff always assume you don't have a bike reservation. And they seem so disappointed to learn you've actually bothered/managed to jump through all the hoops to get one.

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Jack Lenox @jacklenox.com · 09/05/2026

My favourite thing about travelling with a bike on Avanti West Coast is not only do they make it as difficult as possible beforehand (needs to be booked way in advance because hardly any spaces, paper tickets only etc.)

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

A please @labouruk.bsky.social, stop saying that it's up to us to stop Reform. YOU could stop a Reform government in 2029, by introducing the proportional representation so many in the country have been clamouring for. The only way Farage can win is through our crazy first-past-the-post system.

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Jack Lenox @jacklenox.com · 08/05/2026

It's nauseating to watch the positive spin and soft balls Kuenssberg keeps tossing to Reform on the BBC's local election coverage. While seemingly only capable of asking the same negative questions of the Greens that have been addressed dozens of times already.

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Pip @pipmadeley.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

If you're thinking of staying up all night to watch Kuenssberg and Mason frothing over the local election results, just ring the Samaritans instead, there are people who can help you.

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 07/05/2026

I joined NY’s Cutest on the Bergen Bike Bus that they ride to school every Wednesday, rain or shine. We’re adding bike boulevards and more pedestrian space on Bergen and Dean Street, from Court Street to East New York Ave. It was a wonderful kind of day.

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David Osland @davidosland.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove admitted taking cocaine and a Tory MP in the last parliament had to go to rehab to treat his addiction. But no rightwing commentators mention this when discussing the Greens' drug policy.

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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Many Jewish people don't want non Jewish people telling us what to believe & say. For the Prime Minister to criticise the single Jewish party leader on Antisemitism demonstrates the lack of credibility and seriousness of Labour on the issue. www.thenational.scot/news/2604932...

thenational.scot

Zack Polanski slams 'disgusting' Keir Starmer over antisemitism remarks

Zack Polanski has slammed the Prime Minister over claims Keir Starmer is conflating "criticism of the Israeli Governments genocide [with]…

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Jack Lenox @jacklenox.com · 15/04/2026

Blessed are the warmongers…

Ben Goldacre @bengoldacre.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Reposted by Jack Lenox

In the news today, a cyclist on the pavement who killed a man is charged with manslaughter. By contrast, here's a van driver who killed a little girl. He was driving on the pavement: common, and illegal. Killed her. Only charged with dangerous driving. Fully let off. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl...

bbc.co.uk

Cheshire van driver cleared of dangerous driving after four-year-old's death

Four-year-old Esmé Rose Weir was run over as she rode her scooter along the pavement to pre-school.

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Oil prices wouldn't be all over the news today if more of our economy was powered by local, secure renewable energy. This isn't an "energy crisis". It's a fossil fuel crisis. 44% of UK electricity came from renewables in 2025. More of that plus an electrified economy => no more oil shocks.

Crude oil prices, showing a very sharp increase in the last day, from around 65 to 101 dollars per barrel..

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migration.greenparty.org.uk

P.s. I didn't realise when writing this thread, but our conscientious migration policy group actually have their own dedicated website where all our migration policy is publicly available: migration.greenparty.org.uk

Home - Green Party Asylum and Migration Policy Working Group

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You can read our actual manifesto – the policies we're proposing for this parliament – on our website. And if you want to read the Policies for a Sustainable Society and judge for yourself? Join the party. It costs as little as £1 a month. We'll show you everything. join.greenparty.org.uk

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That was in one of the most deprived constituencies in England, where 45% of children live below the breadline. Not a wealthy liberal enclave. A community that has been failed by decades of two-party politics. They heard the attacks. They read the policy. They voted Green.

One more thing. Every party and every right-wing outlet weaponised this policy in Gorton and Denton. The Mail, GB News, Reform, Labour – they all attacked it. Hannah Spencer won with 40.7% of the vote. A majority of 4,402. The Greens' first ever by-election victory.

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So when Reform calls our policy "reckless and dangerous" and Labour calls it "financially reckless" – compared to what? Twenty years of limbo? A deportation agency that kills people? Compassion is the practical choice. Cruelty is the reckless one.

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Reform wants an ICE-style deportation agency modelled on the American system. Since September, ICE agents have shot 14 people and killed two US citizens. 24 further deaths in custody. Children as young as five taken into ICE custody. That's what they call "taking back control."

Now let's look at what the critics are actually proposing. Labour wants asylum seekers to wait TWENTY YEARS before they can apply to settle permanently. Twenty years in which you can never fully plan your life, never feel secure, never truly belong.

A compassionate system isn't a naive one. Our policy includes exclusions – applications can be rejected on grounds of serious crime or threats to national security. But migration is a human reality, not a criminal offence. That shouldn't be controversial.

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…press wants to engage with: Restrictive immigration systems don't prevent migration. They make it more dangerous, more permanent, and less manageable. When you can't leave and return legally, you don't leave. The current system creates the problems it claims to solve.

For people already here without documentation – often the most vulnerable in our society – it means support to regularise their status. To come INTO the system. To pay taxes, access services, and stop living in fear. Our policy recognises these people exist. Here's the deeper point nobody in the…

After five years of living, working, and contributing here, you can apply for settled status. Your children born in the UK are British citizens. Once citizenship is granted, it can't be stripped away. A country where people put down roots, not live in permanent precarity.

It means removing income requirements that currently let wealthy migrants in while shutting out people with just as much to offer. And replacing language requirements with free language classes – investing in integration rather than using it as a gatekeeping tool.

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It means students with a genuine offer from a recognised institution get a visa to study – and three years afterwards to find work, so we're not training people and then forcing them to leave. Workers with a confirmed job get a visa to work. Simple as that.

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So what does a humane system look like in practice? It means anyone arriving gets a three-month visitor visa — time to find their feet, time to apply for the right visa if they want to stay. Visa fees charged at cost, not inflated to create a profit-making barrier.

The full sentence: "The Green Party wants to see a world without borders, until this happens the Green Party will implement a fair and humane system of managed immigration where people can move if they wish to do so." We're proud of that aspiration. And we're honest about the pathway to get there.

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So what does the policy actually say? Let's go through it. The opening line is: "The Green Party wants to see a world without borders." This is where every hostile journalist stops reading. But the sentence doesn't stop there.

Our manifestos – the policies we actually propose for each parliament (up to five years) – are derived from this document. They are not the same thing. The Mail knows this. A party spokesperson told them so. They ran the story anyway, days before the Gorton and Denton by-election. Funny, that.

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The Green Party is the only UK party with a long-term vision for the world we want to see, written and updated by our membership – our Policies for a Sustainable Society. No other party publishes anything like it. Either because they don't have aspirations or because they hide them.

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Calling a member-approved conference motion an "internal document" is designed to make you think we're hiding something. We're not. We're the most transparent party in British politics. That's exactly what the Mail finds so threatening.

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First, the "internal documents" claim. Our migration policy was voted on by members at conference in spring 2023. It was on our website for years. It moved behind a members-only login because journalists kept misrepresenting it as our manifesto. It isn't. It never was.

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Jack Lenox @jacklenox.com · 01/03/2026

The Daily Mail has said it obtained "internal documents" revealing the Green Party's migration policy. As a long-term Green Party activist, I'm very familiar with the actual policy. And what the Mail describes and what the document says are two very different things. A thread 🧵

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Perhaps I'm missing something, but you're responding to a post in which I've said, "Portugal decriminalised drugs", and then proceeded to state a percentage of people who are still prosecuted for drug offences… 🤷🏻‍♂️

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Jack Lenox @jacklenox.com · 01/03/2026

Absolutely! Feel free to reproduce, tweak etc as you see fit! 🙏🏻