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‘Ignoring My Question!’ Victoria Derbyshire Calls Out Minister For Not Saying If Taxes Will Go Up

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The BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire called out a minister this morning for refusing to say if the overall tax burden will go up under Labour.

The tax burden is already high by historical standards, after several hikes from the Conservatives – but the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) predicted it would increase by even more under this government.

The economists forecast that the party would take the tax burden to its highest level of record, reaching 37.4% by 2028/29.

So, while hosting Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Derbyshire pressed environment secretary Steve Reed over his government’s plans for taxes.

She began: “Just to be clear with our audience, because you said you want to be honest in government – the overall tax burden is going to go up to its highest ever under this Labour government, isn’t it?”

Reed said his government’s “intention” is to reduce taxation over the course of this parliament, but Derbyshire cut in: “That wasn’t my question.”

The minister began: ’We’re all going through a spending review process –”

Derbyshire cut in: “Again, you’re ignoring my question Mr Reed. I thought you were going to be a different kind of government?”

When Reed said they did not have all the information yet, Derbyshire replied: “It’s already out there! The IFS have got the graphs!”

Reed said each government department was looking for efficient ways to save money, adding: “It is very important that we’re open and transparent about that.”

“But not open and transparent about the overall tax burden?” Derbyshire said.

Reed deflected, and said the chancellor Rachel Reeves would be unveiling Labour’s plans in the budget at the end of the spending review period.

He added that the government will not be raising income tax, VAT and National Insurance on working people.

The minister said: “We have to break out of the doom loop that has led us to this situation – because the Conservative government couldn’t grow the economy, taxation is high.

“We intend to grow the economy through things like building 1.5m new homes.”

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Cabinet Minister Accuses Rishi Sunak Of ‘Deliberately Covering Up’ Problems Within Government

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A cabinet minister has accused former PM Rishi Sunak of “deliberately covering up” the country’s crises when he was in government.

Speaking on Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said the Tories had left the country in a much worse state than previously expected – and that Labour were only just discovering how bad it is.

Reed claimed the Conservatives left a “catastrophic” inheritance behind – although Phillips replied: “Is there an element of, let’s call it ‘Kabuki theatre’ here?”

He pointed out that chancellor Rachel Reeves herself said in June that, “we’ve got the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] now, we know things are in a pretty bad state, you don’t win at the election to find that out.’”

Reeves is expected to say the Tories left a £20bn black hole in a speech to parliament on Monday.

Phillips continued: “Yet now, you’re suddenly going, ‘oh my god, there’s all these things we didn’t know.’

“Was she wrong then or is she just doing theatre now?”

“Well there are things outside of what the OBR are covering,” Reed said, pointing to the overcrowding in prisons which he claimed the Tories had not been upfront about.

But Phillips recalled a previous Labour press release about the overcrowding, suggesting the party knew about the crisis ahead of the getting into government.

“There isn’t anything new that you could not have known,” the Sky News host said.

Reed hit back: “We know now the prime minister received a letter from civil servants a week before he called the election warning him about this critical failure point, and that judges would no longer be able to send convicted criminals to prison if they deserve custodial sentence.”

Phillips said: “My point is, you and your colleagues would come in here, week after week after week, saying, ‘we don’t believe them, it’s worse than they’re saying.’

“And now suddenly you’re discovering that it’s worse than they were saying!”

“It’s not only that we didn’t know – the prime minister deliberately covered it up! They covered it up!” Reed said.

He then pointed to the real cost of the Rwanda scheme.

He said the Tories said they had spent £400m to send four volunteers to Rwanda, but Labour say they have just found out they actually spent £700m.

The cabinet minister added: “We want to get away from the politics of denial and cover-up.”

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JD Vance Says He Was Being ‘Sarcastic’ About Childless Cat Ladies, Has ‘Nothing Against Cats’

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JD Vance isn’t backing down from his past criticism of prominent elected Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”

In an interview on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show, Kelly talked to Vance in depth about scornful comments he made in 2021 about people who choose not to procreate. At one point, she asked him to respond to the outrage over his use of the term “cat ladies.”

“Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats. I’ve got nothing against dogs, and I’ve got one dog at home, and I love him,” Vance said.

“People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I said, and the substance of what I said, Megyn, I’m sorry, it’s true,” Vance said.

In his interview with Kelly on Friday, Vance acknowledged that Vice President Kamala Harris has stepchildren and that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has adopted children. He had named them both as childless cat ladies in 2021.

“I wish her stepchildren, and Kamala Harris, and her whole family, the very best,” Vance said. “The point is not that she’s lesser. The point is that her a party has pursued of set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”

But Vance did not take back his 2021 statements that people without children “don’t have a direct stake” in the country’s future. He didn’t recant his claim that people who’ve chosen not to have children are “miserable.”

The Ohio Republican senator and vice presidential candidate went on to explain that Democrats are “anti-family” because, in part, of liberal commentary about the downsides of having children. (Some young people say, for instance, that they don’t have want to have children because of climate change.)

Vance also pointed, repeatedly, to two anti-family policy positions that he claimed Democrats have taken: “Why are they wanting to mask toddlers years into the pandemic? Why are they saying that we should get rid of the child tax credit, which lowers taxes for working families with children?”

The child tax credit reduces household tax bills by as much as $2,000 (£1,555) per child, a policy with bipartisan support; Democrats temporarily expanded the credit to as much as $3,600 (£2,800) per child in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan. They wanted to make the expansion permanent but failed to do so in large part because of unanimous opposition from Republicans, including Vance.

Vance also falsely claimed to Kelly Democrats actually don’t support the CTC, as it’s known. An ABC News story published Friday drew attention to a comment Vance once made arguing parents should pay lower taxes than non-parents. In that story, a spokesman for Vance pointed out that the CTC already does give parents a lower tax rate, which he acknowledged Democrats do support.

As for the idea of a childhood mask mandate, Vance seemed to be referring to past Democratic support for masking in places like schools and daycares.

The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, highlighted Vance’s interview with Kelly on Friday, and in an email about his support for an abortion ban, called him a “creep” and “weird.”

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Here’s How People Are Reacting To The Wild Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony

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The Paris Olympics opening ceremony had it all, and people are… processing.

The ceremony, billed as one of the most ambitious ever, featured a parade of boats along the Seine, with a series of fun and quirky shows along the banks as well as some prerecorded segments. It replaced the typical format of a parade of nations inside a stadium.

Athletes, some wearing ponchos over their uniforms, kept their spirits high despite rainy weather, waving from their boats.

Lady Gaga stunned with a very va-va-voom rendition of Zizi Jeanmaire’s Mon Truc En Plumes on a set of stairs by the river, surrounded by enormous plumes of pink feathers.

In another segment, headless women dressed in red — representing the ill-fated queen of France, Marie Antoinette — appeared in the windows of a grand building amid bursts of fire and an energetic performance by heavy metal band Gojira. This was followed by opera music.

Elsewhere, dancers in pink, including a woman dressed as a croissant, partied in the streets.

There was also a catwalk showcasing out-there French designs, and at one point, a semi-naked blue man — French singer Philippe Katerine — sang as he lay on a plate of fruit and flowers on the runway. Also, Minions. And in one prerecorded bit, apparently the beginning of a ménage à trois?

Throughout the show, viewers were shown clips of a hooded figure carrying the Olympic torch, leaping and bounding across Parisian rooftops, in a nod to The Phantom of the Opera.

Towards the end of the night, a silver rider bearing the Olympic flag on a mechanical horse appeared to gallop down the Seine, eventually delivering the flag to be hoisted at Place du Trocadero.

As the Olympic torch approached its final destination, the Eiffel tower beamed out a dazzling light show. After the cauldron was lit, Celine Dion brought the night to a magnificent end with an electrifying comeback performance perched on the Eiffel Tower.

As the ceremony played out, some viewers were delighted by the French-ness of it all. Others took issue with the boat parade format. Some simply had no idea what was happening.

“WHAT IS GOING ON,” one user wrote, sharing a clip of the Marie Antoinette moment.

“A beheaded Marie Antoinette is one of the wildest and craziest things ever at the Olympics,” said another.

“Impressed that the French planned their Olympic ceremony and decided ‘and then we’re gonna show off one of our main cultural exports, the ménage a trois!’ and then they did,” another commenter posted.

See some of the other reactions below.

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if you’re not watching the olympic opening ceremony the main torchbearer is a masked vigilante wearing keens and les miserables-style revolutionary rags who entered on a boat to the phantom of the opera theme and is now doing parkour around paris to techno. extremely french

— molly taft (@mollytaft) July 26, 2024

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if you’re not watching the olympic opening ceremony the main torchbearer is a masked vigilante wearing keens and les miserables-style revolutionary rags who entered on a boat to the phantom of the opera theme and is now doing parkour around paris to techno. extremely french

— molly taft (@mollytaft) July 26, 2024

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“Then Marie Antoinette’s head will segue us into a sequence celebrating the ménage a trois…”

— Matt Bevan (@MatthewBevan) July 27, 2024

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“Then Marie Antoinette’s head will segue us into a sequence celebrating the ménage a trois…”

— Matt Bevan (@MatthewBevan) July 27, 2024