Tulip_mania

A Teacher earns £41333 (after 6 years, not promoted or with any extra responsibility) and an electrician likely on at least the same, suggestions I see are employee around £40-50k, self employed can be more depending how much work they do. So a household income of £80-100k, not massive, but certainly outside London well above average.

The thing is, most Millennials who have inherited so far, have inherited money from their WW2 vet era grandparents, either directly by their will or indirectly by Boomer parents passing on money. Older boomers are around 75, younger ones 60 so most of them are still with us. The point the article accurately makes is that it's a whole lot easier to save moving costs and legal fees by skimping on avocado toast, if you have £100k deposit from your family. Frankly, it's the only explanation for the London/South East property market, it's just recycling money from Granny. But creates a closed loop for those whose granny didn't leave significant amounts of money.

Most of the 'cash only' Barbers are reasonably busy in my experience, I'm suspect there is some tax dodging going on, but it's believable the staff/rent are being paid from the money paid by customers, and at my local one the guys don't turn up in Range Rovers. Any business which is empty the majority of the time, but with multiple staff standing chatting and driving expensive cars, unless the business is selling very high margin products, raises questions.

There are some where I rarely see any customers, but the 'staff' seem to come and go in white Range Rovers, there's certainly potential for some money laundering going on. Not sure what the tax evasion would be, any more than takeaways/barber shops which only accept cash payments.

One of the things in 1997 was tactical voting, if Lab/Lib voters decide they want to give the tories a kicking more than vote specifically for their preferred party it could lower the labour vote, but have no impact or possibly increase lab/lib seats. I agree I'm suspicious about how many people will eventually vote reform, though they largely represent people who are unhappy with conservative and/or labour having possibly voted for both of them previously and are now just unhappy so not voting a higher chance. The real core Reform vote is in that section of East England from the Thames to Humber, but excluding a few towns like Cambridge, that's dead cert tory so they will get in anyway with a reduced majority. Unless Farage stands in Clacton, I don't really see Reform getting a seat.

This, even at the cheapest ticket it's like 20 seats, they can do a couple of London-Manchester (or equivalents in one shift), the £600 is for a full shift, so likely £60-100/hour depending on the length of shift. The real test is for Avanti to use this opportunity to recruit more drivers, then once there are enough they don't need overtime, update the contracts to make the shift rota over 7 days rather than Sunday being overtime.

The whole campaign made itself look ridiculous from the outset with their "Back to 60" line. The increase from 60-65 was announced and legislated in the 90s so women had at least 15 years notice (and for the first people it was only a few months change) up to 20 years+ notice for those who would have been retiring at 65. Also, the women affected were aged 15-25 when the equal pay act came into force so all or the vast majority of their working life was covered. If they had just focused on the accelerated increase from 65-66 which applied to men and women they might have had better grounds for complaint. Why the government didn't just delay that slightly and do it in 2020-2022 after the equalisation of men and women I never really understood. They won't get anything and the only people doing well out of this are lawyers.

Part of me wants them to go subscription, the people who would pay would want e.g. Radio 3, 4 & 6, Natural History, University Challenge, Newsnight as it used to be and higher end drama. They could stop spaffing money on Mrs. Brown's Boys and interminable quiz and game shows. It's just incredibly difficult to be all things to all (wo)men these days, and in trying to please all they end up pleasing none. If they were subscription, they could focus on those who paid.

Fairly simple solution to that is to increase the state pension slightly to offset the additional tax for lower earning pensioners. Average pensioner income of £349/week is about £18k, so £10/week, £520/year extra on the pension means anyone on that amount or below is up even after paying the extra 10% NI, bit of a hit on better off pensioners. But need to merge Income Tax, NI, Dividend and Cap Gains (reintroduce indexing to encourage long term investment) at the same rates and thresholds. No reason earnings from Capital should be Taxed any differently from Labour. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2021-to-2022/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2021-to-2022

The article is based on a slightly odd bit of Maths though. It would seem the government funds loans by issuing long term bonds, seems reasonable enough, in 2023 these were expensive UK Gilt 10 year bond is currently 3.8%. The students will accrue interest at between RPI and RPI+3%, which over the next 15 years is expected to average below this. So for student loans paid out in 2023 this may be the case. However, all student bonds issued in the last 15 years are likely to have been borrowed at lower rates, and those loans are currently accruing interest at 7.6%, though this will have been lower in previous years. So overall, it's unlikely the whole student loan book issued since 2012 has a lower cost of borrowing than the interest rate charged, older loans tracked BOE base so were very cheap 2008-2022. However, the issue remains with loans which are written off without being repaid, as of 2023 the repayment window was extended to 40 years and threshold reduced to £25000, which should result in more being repaid. But a £50k loan, with say average 5% interest, is adding £2500/year, repayments are 9% over £25k, so anyone earning under £50k, isn't repaying capital, you would need to average ~£64k over 40 years to actually repay the loan. If at 3% interest the break even is £40k, and average needed for repayment over 40 years ~£54k.

How much more expensive is it to send a tanker via the Cape of Good Hope than Via Suez? For oil/LNG it is 6091miles from Doha to Milford haven via Suez which at 12kts is 21days, via Cape Town is 10824 and 37 days. For containers it is 8219 from Singapore to Felixtowe (all China etc stuff will pass Singapore so best reference) at 15kts, that is 23 days, Cape Town is 11686 and 32 days. It's a bigger hit for the oil from the middle east than the containers from China, but there will be a £500k charge for a large vessel to transit Suez, so issue may be time more than money. I also read this morning that the USA is now our biggest source of LNG ahead of Australia then Qatar, which combined with domestic production and pipeline imports from Norway may restrict the effect on pricing.

On raw numbers I do get a 0.058% fall which would round to -0.1%, just. But it seems to be an ongoing story of nominal flat-lining, lower volumes and real terms falls. With wages having gone up a chunk and 85% mortgages back to 4.6% it's probably within the stress tests. What I am looking at now is are car dealerships struggling to sell cars, their supply chains are sorting themselves out, so are people paying the mortgage, but passing on the new family SUV?

So they're not paying for it from a £50k salary, he's presumably a head of department or similar on that salary, gets a staff discount (places I'm aware of is usually 2 kids free for staff) and basically the grandparents are paying what's left to cover. If you want to pay, that is your choice, but there are orchestras in state schools, there is no reason their hobby should be subsidised any more than a kid who wants to ride a mountain bike. You are welcome to pay including VAT.

Private school fees start at about £15k/year, so if you are an average full time worker on £38k, you take home about 29k/year. maybe there are people whose living costs mean you can get by on £14k for rent, bills, food etc. but I've not met them, and if there are their kids would get mercilessly bullied in a private school for wearing Primark clothing so they'd be better off in Bash Street Comp. But basically that argument is a load of bull. People who are spending £15k (so £18k with VAT) on schools are on £100k plus household incomes, they might have to skip the skiing holiday or wait before replacing their car, but it's not a mainstream concern. 7%, it's up there with the 4% complaining about inheritance tax, it's the kind of tax you want to be in a position to pay.

This already happens, particularly in Scotland where there are no grammar schools and few academy type schools where you can game the system to get into without living nearby. 7% of the population go to private school, so any change is likely to be relatively small, and a chunk of that 7% probably live in an area with 'good' schools anyway. Not sure the changes will make that much difference, most parents will find the cash (probably from the grandparents) and keep their kids in the private school. We variously have selection by House price (comprehensive), Fees (private), Tutoring (grammar), Willingness to sit in a church you don't believe in every Sunday* for 5 years (faith schools) and Pushy parents (the myriad academies etc). This will continue to be the case. *I know some people actually do believe in, but segregating government service provision by religion is just weird, meanwhile many ministers know the section of their congregation with under 5s mostly just believe in the attached school.

Gas + Electric are down (seems flat v govt payment last year, but for ONS price is down) Petrol/Diesel is down Food seems pretty flat in last 6 months. Anything related to car maintenance, purchase, or home improvements is up a lot. Mortgage is flat (fixed for a few years yet) I think the numbers announced seem resonable, though note CPIH is higher as OOH costs increasing as people remortgage, the problem is that none of us is probably a statistical average, so we all have different experiences.

This is pretty pathetic, lets charge people like my parents, pensioners on a relatively low income who are careful to make sure they can pay their bills, £16 to cover those who can't be bothered to pay. Either reduce company profits for poor management of accounts, or chase those who haven't paid.

It's largely regression to the mean, used car prices soared when you couldn't buy a new one due to manufacturing delays post covid. That has largely sorted itself out now, so you can choose between new and used, albeit finance costs have increased so the same 'sticker' price costs more. The other interesting aspect which will play out for the next few years is the 4 year PCP echo, i.e. the reduced number of people coming to the end of PCP deals taken out from 2020-early 2023 as there simply weren't cars to buy, presumably there are a mix of people who kept their previous car so are driving round in an older car or looking for new now availability is better, and possibly a number who reduced the number of cars in their household due to WFH etc. But there will be peaks and troughs in demand until thing rebalance I expect. I'm still not paying £34k for an electric Corsa though.

The British Steel Industry has been a basket case for as long as I can remember, we can import new iron if we need them to produce higher grades where scrap isn't useful, though I'm not sure this problem is as significant as made out. We import the iron ore for the blast furnaces anyway so it's not that the UK is wholly self sufficient. If these electric arc furnaces can run efficiently, and perhaps schedule production to align with windy periods so cheap green energy, they could be a significant improvement in actually increasing the amount of steel the UK produces at commercially viable costs.

I think you're missing the point currently Wind is generating ~5GW of electricity in the UK, it can peak over 15GW, the cost to produce those 2 amounts is basically the same, wind is largely a capital cost. However, to cover the variability you need 10GW of gas or other flexible capacity, so once you include the cost of building and fuelling when necessary a Gas power station the costs are higher than the wind auction. Wind power runs at about 1/3 of installed capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingdom, Nuclear runs at about 2/3 of installed capacity and the downtime is much more predictable, you can schedule maintenance in the summer when demand is lower. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c9a5d37ed915d07b20fa2ba/Nuclear_electricity_in_the_UK.pdf

Depends if you count the cost of backup generation for when it's not windy.

Electric arc steelmaking needs less manpower than a Blast Furnace and a Basic Oxygen Furnace. The proposed Electric Arc Furnaces are intended to operate in a one stage process using scrap steel as feedstock. It will likely mean that the plants can produce the same amount of steel with fewer staff. Which is understandably not popular with staff in Wales or Scunthorpe where there aren't that many other jobs that pay well around. There have been proposals for hydrogen fed blast furnaces, but I get the impression that these are experimental/expensive and the industry which has regular crises is moving towards the cheaper and less risky option. Starmer was visiting Wales yesterday and made some interesting comments about making more steel, presumably hoping that if the Electric Arc Furnaces are more competitive with imported steel, we could increase the amount we make, meaning that with more Electric Arc Furnaces employment might not drop as much.

Simplest way is to allow MPs 1 researcher in London, and 2 staff in constituency office, paid at appropriate civil service rates for the jobs they do. The bulk of the 'expenses' are this, so the amount would be reduced pretty drastically. Flat rate salary doesn't really work as MPs in Cornwall/Shetland, inevitably have more reasonable travel costs than those near London, and need either a hotel or flat. If my work expects me to be away overnight, they pay for a hotel, I really don't see why MPs are any different.

With compound inflation actually slightly less than 4 years, but yes, anyone looking for a 4-5 times salary mortgage at current prices is nuts. Will also be a divide between those who are basically being repossessed and need to clear the mortgage and rent/buy somewhere cheaper, who will eventually sell when the bank's patience runs out. And those who can pay the mortgage (even at higher rates) but want a certain amount of equity to buy a more expensive place, may never sell.

IRs don't as I understand it drive benefits and pensions. Pensions are highest of CPI/Wages/2.5 Benefits are just CPI