I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
What rubbish. If our own income wasn't being taken from us to prop up the selfish generation, we wouldn't need an inheritance when we are already old ourselves to get an inheritance.
I would rather work for a living and keep my own income than rely upon my parents dying and getting an inheritance, what about you?
What rubbish. Workers earning under £35k have even got an NI cut.
While pay rises in the City of London are far in excess of what increase the average boomer dependent on the state pension is getting!
I am also a Tory and support inherited wealth, not a libertarian liberal like you
Technically not true - anyone earning below £35k got a NI cut from April through to July 1st.
(Payroll that week is going to be mare for payroll providers).
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Oh dear, oh dear. More sweeping statements and more selective polling, and this time without any spurious citations.
70% of voters over 65 with a degree voted Remain in 2016. 67% of 18 to 34s with just GCSEs voted Leave in 2016.
Age may be the key determinant of voting intention now and whether you vote Tory or Labour but education level not age was the key determinant of the Brexit vote
See also France where the EU hostile Le Pen and her party did better with under 35s than pensioners in the French elections this year
That is a pretty horrific set of statistics if true. What you're saying is that it was just the thickos that gave us Brexit? It wasn't even dementia related.
AND they also gave us the Johnson government. What kind of people are they?
People not bright enough to see through the obvious lies and flaws of Bozo the clown..
RPi up to 11.7% from 11.1% and the RMT asking for 7% and rejecting 3% somehow makes them Marxists.
BigG and Co are protected though
The new offer is 4% this morning, but if the triple lock is reintroduced next year it will be equivalent of £960 on the pension of just £9,600 increasing their income to 10,560 pa and you want to demonise them
Yes, many pensioners have saved into private pensions and the assets in their homes are a cushion in future care and nursing fees which otherwise would fall on the exchequer or provides for their children and grandchildren
Private (and occupational) pensions?
Boomers have already emptied the pot, so those that follow do so on vastly inferior terms.
In my case it was my company pension and I remained in serps which was a very sensible decision
IMO income tax rates should be higher for people over a certain age, say 65.
0/22.5/42.5/47.5 instead of 0/20/40/45. What is your view on that?
At the moment you have 0/33/43/48 for most workers (Not even getting onto te monstrosity that is employer NI...). For younger uni grads (Who can't really avoid going because of competitive advantage reasons within their cohort) it is 0/33/42/51/57 & then weirdly 48 if you earn enough...
It's absurdly high taxation, and it's a disgrace.
We tax people heavily in this country and then piss it mightily up the wall.
This can be seen in action right down to parish council level - and don't get me started on that. Inefficiency and vanity projects.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
I don't think all voters over 47 voted for Brexit?
The majority of all age groups over 47 did vote Leave in 2016
But you said that all voters aged over 47 voted for Brexit. That is a lie.
I voted remain but support brexit following the vote, but also would support re-joining the single market with FOM
Bit of a mix to be honest, but I do not support re-joining and expect this is probably where the majority view is at present
The story is complex. Lots of people voted Leave reluctantly because they wanted a reformed EU. Lots of people voted Remain reluctantly because they wanted a reformed EU. The majority choice wasn't on the table.
A simple derogation from some aspects of FoM would have been enough, but the rigid fundamentalists on both sides prevailed.
This gave parliament (not government - parliament is sovereign) a unique task and opportunity to be wise, creative, unified and bold. The obvious answer - 'Norway for Now' would have hit a populist reaction, and therefore required a united front. Parliament failed either to do this, or to do better than this.
Brexit voters (I am one) take responsibility for doing so. But not for either the intransigence of the EU or the self interested failures of parliament.
A like is not sufficient for this. A superb post summarising hundreds of posts from me alone over the last 6 years.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
What rubbish. If our own income wasn't being taken from us to prop up the selfish generation, we wouldn't need an inheritance when we are already old ourselves to get an inheritance.
I would rather work for a living and keep my own income than rely upon my parents dying and getting an inheritance, what about you?
HYUFD's statement (and he can back it up with whatever spurious evidence takes his fancy) is an absolute crock anyway.
Unless lifetime gifts have been given over time, care home costs run inheritance values down in next to no time.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Oh dear, oh dear. More sweeping statements and more selective polling, and this time without any spurious citations.
70% of voters over 65 with a degree voted Remain in 2016. 67% of 18 to 34s with just GCSEs voted Leave in 2016.
Age may be the key determinant of voting intention now and whether you vote Tory or Labour but education level not age was the key determinant of the Brexit vote
See also France where the EU hostile Le Pen and her party did better with under 35s than pensioners in the French elections this year
That is a pretty horrific set of statistics if true. What you're saying is that it was just the thickos that gave us Brexit? It wasn't even dementia related.
AND they also gave us the Johnson government. What kind of people are they?
It was the less educated who gave us Brexit but it was the retired who voted Conservative in 2019. While most over 55s with a degree voted Remain in 2016, 49% of over 55s with a degree voted Conservative in 2019.
While most 18 to 34s with only GCSEs or less voted Leave in 2016, 51% of 18 to 34s with no qualifications voted for Corbyn Labour in 2019
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
I don't think all voters over 47 voted for Brexit?
The majority of all age groups over 47 did vote Leave in 2016
But you said that all voters aged over 47 voted for Brexit. That is a lie.
I voted remain but support brexit following the vote, but also would support re-joining the single market with FOM
Bit of a mix to be honest, but I do not support re-joining and expect this is probably where the majority view is at present
The story is complex. Lots of people voted Leave reluctantly because they wanted a reformed EU. Lots of people voted Remain reluctantly because they wanted a reformed EU. The majority choice wasn't on the table.
A simple derogation from some aspects of FoM would have been enough, but the rigid fundamentalists on both sides prevailed.
This gave parliament (not government - parliament is sovereign) a unique task and opportunity to be wise, creative, unified and bold. The obvious answer - 'Norway for Now' would have hit a populist reaction, and therefore required a united front. Parliament failed either to do this, or to do better than this.
Brexit voters (I am one) take responsibility for doing so. But not for either the intransigence of the EU or the self interested failures of parliament.
To which needs to be added a religious belief in FOM by some - compromise on this was impossible.
Connected to this was the rise of pay-plus-benefits jobs (where you need benefits to survive, despite being employed) and the religious level refusal to countenance any kind of contributory basis for benefits.
"In their lawsuits, they alleged 10,315 dead people [voted]," Mr Raffensperger said, but a thorough review found a total of only four.
You'd be looking for zero, wouldn't you, but I guess there's always a tiny bit of it going on?
Certainly the dead shouldn't vote. I'm clear on that.
Necrophobic bigotry.
On a similar point, if in the UK a postal vote is cast, then the person dies before polling day, is the vote removed from the count? They obviously know by the barcodes etc how that person voted.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
What rubbish. If our own income wasn't being taken from us to prop up the selfish generation, we wouldn't need an inheritance when we are already old ourselves to get an inheritance.
I would rather work for a living and keep my own income than rely upon my parents dying and getting an inheritance, what about you?
HYUFD's statement (and he can back it up with whatever spurious evidence takes his fancy) is an absolute crock anyway.
Unless lifetime gifts have been given over time, care home costs run inheritance values down in next to no time.
I wish I lived in HYUFD's alternative reality.
As I already said 3/4 of over 65s will never need social care or will die before they do
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
Crikey. That's almost as expensive per gram as printer ink!
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Inflation rose to 3.4% at the end of 2017 because of the GBP devaluation that followed the Brexit vote, which drove up inflation for food and other imported goods. The introduction of new costs and trade restrictions under our new post Brexit trade regime has further pushed up core goods inflation to levels well above those on the Continent (7.2% in the UK versus 4.2% in the Euro Area). And the government wants workers to just suck this up while their pensioner client voters get protected? No fucking way.
EU inflation is now just 0.9% less than the UK average. It is the Russia and Ukraine war and failure to expand energy supplies to meet demand post lockdown with the focus on net zero that has had the biggest impact on UK inflation not Brexit
I really wouldn't be envious of EU economic performance.
Our employment market is red hot and we are first in Europe for new tech/digital start-ups, first or second for FDI (depending on the measure) and our services industry is extremely strong.
The challenges we have here are the usual ones of aging demographics and left behind areas.
A few days ago I commented that the problem with the strike was that it didn't have a clearly articulated purpose.
Well, the Mick Lynch media blitz has fixed that... And more. The big shift in support has come from a lot of people recognizing the argument and saying "hey, that applies to me too."
Raab was on TV this morning with the line "We can't let the unions win"
Inches away from "We can't let the workers win"...
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Yep it's a disgrace and I am a beneficiary but don't agree with it.
And the pensioners were overwhelmingly Brexiteers so if there was any justice they'd have their pensions wrenched from them
We are always told this. Has anyone any data about the way the various age groups voted 40 years ago, in the original EEC referendum? I just wonder whether, or why, my age group changed their view! I know I didn't!
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
I don't think all voters over 47 voted for Brexit?
The majority of all age groups over 47 did vote Leave in 2016
But you said that all voters aged over 47 voted for Brexit. That is a lie.
I voted remain but support brexit following the vote, but also would support re-joining the single market with FOM
Bit of a mix to be honest, but I do not support re-joining and expect this is probably where the majority view is at present
The story is complex. Lots of people voted Leave reluctantly because they wanted a reformed EU. Lots of people voted Remain reluctantly because they wanted a reformed EU. The majority choice wasn't on the table.
A simple derogation from some aspects of FoM would have been enough, but the rigid fundamentalists on both sides prevailed.
This gave parliament (not government - parliament is sovereign) a unique task and opportunity to be wise, creative, unified and bold. The obvious answer - 'Norway for Now' would have hit a populist reaction, and therefore required a united front. Parliament failed either to do this, or to do better than this.
Brexit voters (I am one) take responsibility for doing so. But not for either the intransigence of the EU or the self interested failures of parliament.
Obviously you feel that the EU should take responsibility for their intransigence and parliamentarians for their self interested failure, but I’m unclear for what you’re taking responsibility. Is it just the bare act of voting for Brexit?
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
What rubbish. If our own income wasn't being taken from us to prop up the selfish generation, we wouldn't need an inheritance when we are already old ourselves to get an inheritance.
I would rather work for a living and keep my own income than rely upon my parents dying and getting an inheritance, what about you?
HYUFD's statement (and he can back it up with whatever spurious evidence takes his fancy) is an absolute crock anyway.
Unless lifetime gifts have been given over time, care home costs run inheritance values down in next to no time.
I wish I lived in HYUFD's alternative reality.
As I already said 3/4 of over 65s will never need social care or will die before they do
Just wondering what the difference is between those who will never need social care, and those who will die before they do.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
On ticket offices, the one at my local station (a city) always has queues (as do the machines). The ticket office queues consist largely of three groups: tourists; the elderly; and people who have realised that you can sometimes get a cheaper ticket by talking to someone than is apparent from the options on the ticket machine. So ticket offices shouldn't be closed down (at busier stations), but staffing could be reduced if we had (as I recall the government promised) a simplified fare structure where it was an absolute doddle to get the cheapest available fare from the machines.
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Wow, the things you learn on PB. Fascinating.
The W54 (aka the Davy Crockett warhead) was the result of the miniaturisation of atom bombs to use as primaries in H-bombs. They used the same tech to build a really small atom bomb, on it's own....
A few days ago I commented that the problem with the strike was that it didn't have a clearly articulated purpose.
Well, the Mick Lynch media blitz has fixed that... And more. The big shift in support has come from a lot of people recognizing the argument and saying "hey, that applies to me too."
Raab was on TV this morning with the line "We can't let the unions win"
Inches away from "We can't let the workers win"...
Government: we want a high wage economy! Workers: great, can we at least have only a 5% cut in our real wages? Government: No, Trotskyite Scum!
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
What rubbish. If our own income wasn't being taken from us to prop up the selfish generation, we wouldn't need an inheritance when we are already old ourselves to get an inheritance.
I would rather work for a living and keep my own income than rely upon my parents dying and getting an inheritance, what about you?
HYUFD's statement (and he can back it up with whatever spurious evidence takes his fancy) is an absolute crock anyway.
Unless lifetime gifts have been given over time, care home costs run inheritance values down in next to no time.
I wish I lived in HYUFD's alternative reality.
As I already said 3/4 of over 65s will never need social care or will die before they do
Just wondering what the difference is between those who will never need social care, and those who will die before they do.
Some people will die before their 80s, some will live to their 90s or even centenary and be lucky enough to avoid dementia
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Yep it's a disgrace and I am a beneficiary but don't agree with it.
And the pensioners were overwhelmingly Brexiteers so if there was any justice they'd have their pensions wrenched from them
We are always told this. Has anyone any data about the way the various age groups voted 40 years ago, in the original EEC referendum? I just wonder whether, or why, my age group changed their view! I know I didn't!
If you have a degree you probably didn't, as I already pointed out most over 55s with a degree voted Remain in 2016
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
I tend to think of something transformed in a positive light; perhaps mutated?
On ticket offices, the one at my local station (a city) always has queues (as do the machines). The ticket office queues consist largely of three groups: tourists; the elderly; and people who have realised that you can sometimes get a cheaper ticket by talking to someone than is apparent from the options on the ticket machine. So ticket offices shouldn't be closed down (at busier stations), but staffing could be reduced if we had (as I recall the government promised) a simplified fare structure where it was an absolute doddle to get the cheapest available fare from the machines.
I once, at a small Essex station, queued behind someone who wanted to know the cheapest fare to get to the nearest station to a port for the Outer Hebrides!
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Whilst losing FoM and all the benefits involved for the younger and older who took advantage of it?...not even mentioning the massive issues employers have with trading?...
I'm hoping the market has overshot on oil and we're due a correction.
There’s rumours of Air Force One heading to Riyadh in the next few days, in an attempt to increase Saudi supply - which they say is currently constrained by export facilities and ships.
or (what I suspect is the reality) the fact their are pumping out everything they can as the fields drain out..
And paying golfers hundreds of millions of pounds to join the LIV tour
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Oh dear, oh dear. More sweeping statements and more selective polling, and this time without any spurious citations.
70% of voters over 65 with a degree voted Remain in 2016. 67% of 18 to 34s with just GCSEs voted Leave in 2016.
Age may be the key determinant of voting intention now and whether you vote Tory or Labour but education level not age was the key determinant of the Brexit vote
See also France where the EU hostile Le Pen and her party did better with under 35s than pensioners in the French elections this year
That is a pretty horrific set of statistics if true. What you're saying is that it was just the thickos that gave us Brexit? It wasn't even dementia related.
AND they also gave us the Johnson government. What kind of people are they?
I would have thought you have enough on your plate with France's political horror show which may actually be far worse than anything brexit has to offer which can be assuaged with sensible compromises
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
Ok so we have chopped out 25% from the list who will benefit, although for all I know you have just made up that figure or got it from some disreputable internet source or (most likely) have misunderstood something you have read. Now lets deal with the 75% left:
a) What percentage will inherit nothing or an amount that is meaningless in terms of long term existence. So all those whose parents are renting, have a significant mortgage, have to live off of their accumulated wealth, have multiple children (or any combination of that list). That is the parents have little to give.
b) What percentage are going to inherit at a time in life where it is pointless.
c) What percentage simply don't need to inherit.
Now just to show how common those are my circumstances fit into all 3 as well as @Big_G_NorthWales case. My father has little to give me. I don't need it anyway as I am considerably richer than him. I am 67 and I have never inherited anything (most people won't until their 60s). Unlike him (who lives off of a civil service pension) I don't have any pension (other than the state) so will be living off my wealth, so I (or more importantly my children) have no idea if they will inherit from me. I also have no idea if my father at 96 will need care to be paid for (it seems likely and it is amazing that so far he has needed none).
Can I suggest you live in a fantasy world where the children inherit the family home or business or farm at 40 and everything carries on to the 1950's middle/upper class sunset.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Well that is the problem of the Tories losing a lot of their old Remain vote and acquiring new voters who favour porkbarrelling and economic protectionism. It is a fundamental clash with the old pro-business free trade Tories.
They sold out business and financial rigour for a mess of pooterish populism. British Peronism in effect.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Ha ha, thanks. Well if I can return the favour, I would say we have completely transformed our relationship with the EU in a way that I would have thought should make you happy. I wouldn't characterise the government's economic policy as left wing, but simply confused (perhaps to you that is the same thing!). The spending around Covid was probably unavoidable and was temporary. The other spending increases mostly reflect population ageing, not helped by the fact that the Tories are now an overwhelmingly elderly supported party and they have to look after their people. Everything else is mostly getting starved of money. On the cultural stuff the government is doing its best but is swimming against a more liberal tide which it doesn't have too much power to resist. For a Conservative/conservative I would have thought that the absence of ideas or solutions would be a concern, but then I could say the same for my side, who aren't much better.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Oh dear, oh dear. More sweeping statements and more selective polling, and this time without any spurious citations.
70% of voters over 65 with a degree voted Remain in 2016. 67% of 18 to 34s with just GCSEs voted Leave in 2016.
Age may be the key determinant of voting intention now and whether you vote Tory or Labour but education level not age was the key determinant of the Brexit vote
See also France where the EU hostile Le Pen and her party did better with under 35s than pensioners in the French elections this year
That is a pretty horrific set of statistics if true. What you're saying is that it was just the thickos that gave us Brexit? It wasn't even dementia related.
AND they also gave us the Johnson government. What kind of people are they?
I would have thought you have enough on your plate with France's political horror show which may actually be far worse than anything brexit has to offer which can be assuaged with sensible compromises
Indeed and in France it was under 35s who voted most strongly for Melenchon and Le Pen and cost Macron his majority.
It was over 55s who voted most strongly for Macron, without pensioners Macron and his party would not even have come first.
Same as here without pensioners Corbyn would now be PM and as I already pointed out under 35s with GCSEs or less voted Leave while pensioners with degrees voted Remain
On ticket offices, the one at my local station (a city) always has queues (as do the machines). The ticket office queues consist largely of three groups: tourists; the elderly; and people who have realised that you can sometimes get a cheaper ticket by talking to someone than is apparent from the options on the ticket machine. So ticket offices shouldn't be closed down (at busier stations), but staffing could be reduced if we had (as I recall the government promised) a simplified fare structure where it was an absolute doddle to get the cheapest available fare from the machines.
I once, at a small Essex station, queued behind someone who wanted to know the cheapest fare to get to the nearest station to a port for the Outer Hebrides!
Was it HYUFD wanting to connect to the Inverness ferry for the Outers?
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Wow, the things you learn on PB. Fascinating.
The W54 (aka the Davy Crockett warhead) was the result of the miniaturisation of atom bombs to use as primaries in H-bombs. They used the same tech to build a really small atom bomb, on it's own....
That's what you'll get from an H-bomb with no tritium.
But if tritium has a half-life of about 12 years, surely they must be regularly replaced anyway? Also the idea that security around Russian nukes is so bad that people are regularly stealing bits of them is not that comforting.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Inflation rose to 3.4% at the end of 2017 because of the GBP devaluation that followed the Brexit vote, which drove up inflation for food and other imported goods. The introduction of new costs and trade restrictions under our new post Brexit trade regime has further pushed up core goods inflation to levels well above those on the Continent (7.2% in the UK versus 4.2% in the Euro Area). And the government wants workers to just suck this up while their pensioner client voters get protected? No fucking way.
EU inflation is now just 0.9% less than the UK average. It is the Russia and Ukraine war and failure to expand energy supplies to meet demand post lockdown with the focus on net zero that has had the biggest impact on UK inflation not Brexit
I really wouldn't be envious of EU economic performance.
Our employment market is red hot and we are first in Europe for new tech/digital start-ups, first or second for FDI (depending on the measure) and our services industry is extremely strong.
The challenges we have here are the usual ones of aging demographics and left behind areas.
If you think things are functioning well in the UK you really should go out more. You can't get a doctor's aopointment.... you wait up to 13 hours for A&E ....you can't get a policeman for love nor money. The hospitality industry has all but collapsed .....You have waits of three or four hours at airports-if your plane takes off at all-the trains aren't running. The traffic jams are appalling....
What is this "Red Hot employment" market doing? It seems the only person who hasn't noticed apart from you works in Dubai!
(Sandpit. Why don't you come back to this Nirvana?)
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
All estates over £1 million are still liable for inheritance tax even now and you still have to pay for social care out of your estate, just the costs are correctly capped now.
I am a Tory, inherited wealth has always been one of the key cornerstones of Toryism.
What really annoyed me about the closures is the short-sightedness of British Rail in selling off the land for redevelopment and to shed their legal liability for it, thus making future reopenings of many routes nigh impossible, in stark contrast to the policy in other countries, like France or Spain.
Heads should roll for that.
But the Conservativews of the time demanded that such useless land be disposed of, state monolith, guided busways were so much superior, and all that. (Partly because some of them had shares in motorway and car industry companies.)
There have also been a lot of disposals in recent years AIUI.
Not disagreeing though with the basic premise.
Hmmm. There are cases both sides. Assets remaining under railway control get left to rot, and not used.
Near me there is a decent quite flat segregated cycle path linking an area of 100k people 6 miles to within half a mile of the local main line to London station. For the last half mile there is a track by the railway, owned by Railtrack (or whoever), which would be a perfect route alongside the railway.
But RT have been sitting on it for decades and not completed the route. The diversion is hilly and quite dangerous - so people don't cycle to the railway station, and go in their cars.
Times move on, and needs change. Even a country such as France - nearly 4 times times as big as the UK - only has double our current mileage of railway track. I'm not convinced it should all have been left alone.
Consider the Bath-Bristol cycle route over a former railway which now has several million trips per year, and that is a cycle path that does not even reach Dutch minimum standards - iirc it is only 3m wide tarmacadam.
On the Cambridge - Huntingdon - St Ives busway, I don't have an intimate knowledge but I note it carried 4 million people last year, which must make the local tiny country roads a lot safer. Suspect it was also a hell of a lot cheaper than rebuilding the railway, at an all in cost of £180m even after all the problems.
A few days ago I commented that the problem with the strike was that it didn't have a clearly articulated purpose.
Well, the Mick Lynch media blitz has fixed that... And more. The big shift in support has come from a lot of people recognizing the argument and saying "hey, that applies to me too."
Yes, Lynch is really earning his salary - I can't remember a union leader who puts the case as clearly, calmly and with a dash of dry wit. (I don't care what he thinks about the Labour Party, Ukraine, or anything else.)
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
I don't take quite such comfort.
While it's conceivable that a significant, even large percentage of Russian warheads are defective, they have a very large number (even allowing for the usual exaggeration of actual usable numbers). What is more, because of their relatively crude fabrication, they don't last anywhere near as long as US warheads, and are therefore much more regularly re-manufactured. Although, as with stockpile numbers, Russian manufacturing capacity will have declined over the last decade or so, that might mean a thousand or so warheads being remanufactured annually. SO there's a whole process going on there, which as much as it might allow the theft of nuclear materials, also gives the capacity to keep active checks on them.
I'm sure you're right that some tritium goes astray in the system. But I'm pretty sure quite a lot doesn't. And as you say, if you're checking, any fakes replacing the real stuff are 'obvious'.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Inflation rose to 3.4% at the end of 2017 because of the GBP devaluation that followed the Brexit vote, which drove up inflation for food and other imported goods. The introduction of new costs and trade restrictions under our new post Brexit trade regime has further pushed up core goods inflation to levels well above those on the Continent (7.2% in the UK versus 4.2% in the Euro Area). And the government wants workers to just suck this up while their pensioner client voters get protected? No fucking way.
EU inflation is now just 0.9% less than the UK average. It is the Russia and Ukraine war and failure to expand energy supplies to meet demand post lockdown with the focus on net zero that has had the biggest impact on UK inflation not Brexit
I really wouldn't be envious of EU economic performance.
Our employment market is red hot and we are first in Europe for new tech/digital start-ups, first or second for FDI (depending on the measure) and our services industry is extremely strong.
The challenges we have here are the usual ones of aging demographics and left behind areas.
If you think things are functioning well in the UK you really should go out more. You cant get a doctor's aopointment.... you wait up to 13 hours for A&E ....you can't get a policeman for love nor money. The hospitality industry has all but collapsed .....You have waits of three or four hours at airports-if your plane takes off at all-the trains aren't running. The traffic jams are appalling....
What is this "Red Hot employment" market doing? It seems the only person who hasn't noticed apart from you works in Dubai!
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
Crikey. That's almost as expensive per gram as printer ink!
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
Turning your point round, if someone has £200k plus then why shouldn't they pay for their own care needs rather than taxpayers generally? This is why social care is a knotty problem. I see both sides.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
To be fair, Mr G neither you nor I. or our wives, appear to need social care at the moment although I regret to say I am beginning to make demands on social services. And we all, I think, have passed four score years!
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Well that is the problem of the Tories losing a lot of their old Remain vote and acquiring new voters who favour porkbarrelling and economic protectionism. It is a fundamental clash with the old pro-business free trade Tories.
They sold out business and financial rigour for a mess of pooterish populism. British Peronism in effect.
In the 19th century and early 20th century the Tories were often protectionist, it was the Whigs and Liberals who were most pro free trade.
It was just keeping Labour out after universal suffrage that in the 20th century shifted many pro free trade middle class Liberal businessmen to become Tories.
Remember too it was the Liberals who introduced the workhouse, many old school Tories opposed it
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
Ok so we have chopped out 25% from the list who will benefit, although for all I know you have just made up that figure or got it from some disreputable internet source or (most likely) have misunderstood something you have read. Now lets deal with the 75% left:
a) What percentage will inherit nothing or an amount that is meaningless in terms of long term existence. So all those whose parents are renting, have a significant mortgage, have to live off of their accumulated wealth, have multiple children (or any combination of that list). That is the parents have little to give.
b) What percentage are going to inherit at a time in life where it is pointless.
c) What percentage simply don't need to inherit.
Now just to show how common those are my circumstances fit into all 3 as well as @Big_G_NorthWales case. My father has little to give me. I don't need it anyway as I am considerably richer than him. I am 67 and I have never inherited anything (most people won't until their 60s). Unlike him (who lives off of a civil service pension) I don't have any pension (other than the state) so will be living off my wealth, so I (or more importantly my children) have no idea if they will inherit from me. I also have no idea if my father at 96 will need care to be paid for (it seems likely and it is amazing that so far he has needed none).
Can I suggest you live in a fantasy world where the children inherit the family home or business or farm at 40 and everything carries on to the 1950's middle/upper class sunset.
I have just hit 40 and sadly already know some of my contemporary who have lost either 1 or both parents well before they reached 80, let alone 90 or 100
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Technically speaking, I thought tritium is hydrogen isn't it?
I have absolutely no idea how easy it is to fake the difference between protium, deuterium and tritium though. It would be highly amusing if Russian nukes contain nothing other than generic protium hydrogen.
What really annoyed me about the closures is the short-sightedness of British Rail in selling off the land for redevelopment and to shed their legal liability for it, thus making future reopenings of many routes nigh impossible, in stark contrast to the policy in other countries, like France or Spain.
Heads should roll for that.
But the Conservativews of the time demanded that such useless land be disposed of, state monolith, guided busways were so much superior, and all that. (Partly because some of them had shares in motorway and car industry companies.)
There have also been a lot of disposals in recent years AIUI.
Not disagreeing though with the basic premise.
I'm not so partisan as I'm unable to criticise the behaviour of Conservative governments over the past 60-70 years, where justified.
In fact, it's essential: bad policy is bad policy.
Like most things this is neither a good or bad thing. Large ex marshalling yards sterilised a lot of potentially useful land in cities and releasing it allowed city centres to grow dynamically, in the same way as decontaminating and releasing Canary Warf did for our Financial district. The bigger problem was giving up the strips of land which allowed the lines to be reinstated if required. The cost/reward ratio there was dramatically different and not a good thing.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Well that is the problem of the Tories losing a lot of their old Remain vote and acquiring new voters who favour porkbarrelling and economic protectionism. It is a fundamental clash with the old pro-business free trade Tories.
They sold out business and financial rigour for a mess of pooterish populism. British Peronism in effect.
Remember too it was the Liberals who introduced the workhouse, many old school Tories opposed it
That kicks blaming the last government into the park....
On ticket offices, the one at my local station (a city) always has queues (as do the machines). The ticket office queues consist largely of three groups: tourists; the elderly; and people who have realised that you can sometimes get a cheaper ticket by talking to someone than is apparent from the options on the ticket machine. So ticket offices shouldn't be closed down (at busier stations), but staffing could be reduced if we had (as I recall the government promised) a simplified fare structure where it was an absolute doddle to get the cheapest available fare from the machines.
I once, at a small Essex station, queued behind someone who wanted to know the cheapest fare to get to the nearest station to a port for the Outer Hebrides!
Was it HYUFD wanting to connect to the Inverness ferry for the Outers?
No; a female person. Apparently, from the clothing!
Poor HYUFD will never be allowed to forget that exchange will he! Any more than he'll be allowed to forget confessing to voting PC!
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Wow, the things you learn on PB. Fascinating.
The W54 (aka the Davy Crockett warhead) was the result of the miniaturisation of atom bombs to use as primaries in H-bombs. They used the same tech to build a really small atom bomb, on it's own....
That's what you'll get from an H-bomb with no tritium.
But if tritium has a half-life of about 12 years, surely they must be regularly replaced anyway? Also the idea that security around Russian nukes is so bad that people are regularly stealing bits of them is not that comforting.
Yup - which is why the Tritium is in separate, removable canisters. It has to be removed much more frequently, since the decay product is He3. Which is a reaction poison and will stop the bomb working.
If it is being stolen, it is probably at the re-processing laboratories.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
All estates over £1 million are still liable for inheritance tax even now and you still have to pay for social care out of your estate, just the costs are correctly capped now.
I am a Tory, inherited wealth has always been one of the key cornerstones of Toryism.
Shouldn't that read .."I am a Tory, greed and cronyism have always been the key cornerstones of Toryism."..?
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
Wasn't he saying what will happen, not what he wants to happen?
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
I don't think all voters over 47 voted for Brexit?
The majority of all age groups over 47 did vote Leave in 2016
But you said that all voters aged over 47 voted for Brexit. That is a lie.
I voted remain but support brexit following the vote, but also would support re-joining the single market with FOM
Bit of a mix to be honest, but I do not support re-joining and expect this is probably where the majority view is at present
The story is complex. Lots of people voted Leave reluctantly because they wanted a reformed EU. Lots of people voted Remain reluctantly because they wanted a reformed EU. The majority choice wasn't on the table.
A simple derogation from some aspects of FoM would have been enough, but the rigid fundamentalists on both sides prevailed.
This gave parliament (not government - parliament is sovereign) a unique task and opportunity to be wise, creative, unified and bold. The obvious answer - 'Norway for Now' would have hit a populist reaction, and therefore required a united front. Parliament failed either to do this, or to do better than this.
Brexit voters (I am one) take responsibility for doing so. But not for either the intransigence of the EU or the self interested failures of parliament.
To which needs to be added a religious belief in FOM by some - compromise on this was impossible.
Connected to this was the rise of pay-plus-benefits jobs (where you need benefits to survive, despite being employed) and the religious level refusal to countenance any kind of contributory basis for benefits.
The absolutism on FOM was mainly the other way as regards the political imperatives post the Referendum. "Norway for now" might well be viewed in hindsight as the clear and obvious best pragmatic way forward but the hard politics of the situation made it impossible. Why? Because any Tory PM proposing it would have been turfed out by the party.
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Technically speaking, I thought tritium is hydrogen isn't it?
I have absolutely no idea how easy it is to fake the difference between protium, deuterium and tritium though. It would be highly amusing if Russian nukes contain nothing other than generic protium hydrogen.
Tritium is hydrogen, in the same way diamond is carbon.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Yep it's a disgrace and I am a beneficiary but don't agree with it.
And the pensioners were overwhelmingly Brexiteers so if there was any justice they'd have their pensions wrenched from them
We are always told this. Has anyone any data about the way the various age groups voted 40 years ago, in the original EEC referendum? I just wonder whether, or why, my age group changed their view! I know I didn't!
If you have a degree you probably didn't, as I already pointed out most over 55s with a degree voted Remain in 2016
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Inflation rose to 3.4% at the end of 2017 because of the GBP devaluation that followed the Brexit vote, which drove up inflation for food and other imported goods. The introduction of new costs and trade restrictions under our new post Brexit trade regime has further pushed up core goods inflation to levels well above those on the Continent (7.2% in the UK versus 4.2% in the Euro Area). And the government wants workers to just suck this up while their pensioner client voters get protected? No fucking way.
EU inflation is now just 0.9% less than the UK average. It is the Russia and Ukraine war and failure to expand energy supplies to meet demand post lockdown with the focus on net zero that has had the biggest impact on UK inflation not Brexit
I really wouldn't be envious of EU economic performance.
Our employment market is red hot and we are first in Europe for new tech/digital start-ups, first or second for FDI (depending on the measure) and our services industry is extremely strong.
The challenges we have here are the usual ones of aging demographics and left behind areas.
If you think things are functioning well in the UK you really should go out more. You can't get a doctor's aopointment.... you wait up to 13 hours for A&E ....you can't get a policeman for love nor money. The hospitality industry has all but collapsed .....You have waits of three or four hours at airports-if your plane takes off at all-the trains aren't running. The traffic jams are appalling....
What is this "Red Hot employment" market doing? It seems the only person who hasn't noticed apart from you works in Dubai!
(Sandpit. Why don't you come back to this Nirvana?)
As I've reported previously - you can get a GP appointment. Six weeks ago I filled in an e-consult, was called later that day and had an appointment in person that evening.
You are doing the classic thing of seeing headline news and thinking it is the experience of everybody. It isn't. Chaos at airports - well yes, but it was strongly correlated with half term, and I think that extra demand often causes problems. Traffic jams - anything in particular? I've not seen anything out of the normal. We currently have rail strikes. Other countries have strikes at times too. France seems particularly prone.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Well that is the problem of the Tories losing a lot of their old Remain vote and acquiring new voters who favour porkbarrelling and economic protectionism. It is a fundamental clash with the old pro-business free trade Tories.
They sold out business and financial rigour for a mess of pooterish populism. British Peronism in effect.
In the 19th century and early 20th century the Tories were often protectionist, it was the Whigs and Liberals who were most pro free trade.
It was just keeping Labour out after universal suffrage that in the 20th century shifted many pro free trade middle class Liberal businessmen to become Tories.
Remember too it was the Liberals who introduced the workhouse, many old school Tories opposed it
I don't think you're right there.
I don't think there was a Liberal party when the workhouse was introduced or indeed a Tory one!
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
To be fair, Mr G neither you nor I. or our wives, appear to need social care at the moment although I regret to say I am beginning to make demands on social services. And we all, I think, have passed four score years!
Indeed and we are fortunate but in my son in laws parents case they were both 84 when they suddenly needed care and to date have paid over £200,000, though with his mothers death this is now about £55,000 pa for as long as his father survives
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 36m Part of Keir Starmer's problem is that expectations within Labour have changed. When he was first elected people thought Boris was unbeatable, and he had to be Labour's Kinnock. Many MP's now think Boris is there for the taking with the right leader. (Correctly).
I wonder what would count as a less-than-impressive result for Starmer in Wakefield — winning by less than 3,000 votes maybe. There could be a lot of sniping from the left if that happens, despite winning the seat.
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Technically speaking, I thought tritium is hydrogen isn't it?
I have absolutely no idea how easy it is to fake the difference between protium, deuterium and tritium though. It would be highly amusing if Russian nukes contain nothing other than generic protium hydrogen.
Tritium is hydrogen, in the same way diamond is carbon.
Well, yes, it is.
Like for many things, there's a Big Bang quote for that.
Sheldon at the jewellery store: Diamonds. Crystalized carbon. Every day, people go to the grocery store and come home with sacks full of carbon, in the form of charcoal brickets, which they toss in their barbecues and set on fire. But just because you have some carbon with the atoms stacked neatly, you expect me to plunk down thousands of dollars.
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Technically speaking, I thought tritium is hydrogen isn't it?
I have absolutely no idea how easy it is to fake the difference between protium, deuterium and tritium though. It would be highly amusing if Russian nukes contain nothing other than generic protium hydrogen.
Yes - some used to call Tritium ultra-heavy hydrogen. As opposed to heavy hydrogen (deuterium).
Since it is so valuable, and well contained, testing it once it is in the capsule would probably not be possible. IIRC the American capsules are completely sealed, with a puncture point built in, rather than having a valve. There probably wouldn't be any radioactivity to detect on the outside....
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
All estates over £1 million are still liable for inheritance tax even now and you still have to pay for social care out of your estate, just the costs are correctly capped now.
I am a Tory, inherited wealth has always been one of the key cornerstones of Toryism.
Shouldn't that read .."I am a Tory, greed and cronyism have always been the key cornerstones of Toryism."..?
Not always, see Wilberforce, Disraeli, Macmillan etc.
In some respects apart from Brexit Johnson is more a Disraeli or Macmillan old style Tory than a Thatcherite Gladstone Liberal.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
To be fair, Mr G neither you nor I. or our wives, appear to need social care at the moment although I regret to say I am beginning to make demands on social services. And we all, I think, have passed four score years!
Indeed and we are fortunate but in my son in laws parents case they were both 84 when they suddenly needed care and to date have paid over £200,000, though with his mothers death this is now about £55,000 pa for as long as his father survives
Has the care cap come in yet ? (Yes I know it's not a cap)
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Technically speaking, I thought tritium is hydrogen isn't it?
I have absolutely no idea how easy it is to fake the difference between protium, deuterium and tritium though. It would be highly amusing if Russian nukes contain nothing other than generic protium hydrogen.
Tritium is hydrogen, in the same way diamond is carbon.
Nerd alert!!!
Tritium is an isotope of Hydrogen, diamond is an allotrope of carbon.
TSSA General Secretary @Manuel_TSSA has welcomed news that members across @merseyrail have voted to accept a 7.1 per cent pay deal describing it as “a sensible outcome to a reasonable offer”. Full story 👇
A few days ago I commented that the problem with the strike was that it didn't have a clearly articulated purpose.
Well, the Mick Lynch media blitz has fixed that... And more. The big shift in support has come from a lot of people recognizing the argument and saying "hey, that applies to me too."
Yes, Lynch is really earning his salary - I can't remember a union leader who puts the case as clearly, calmly and with a dash of dry wit. (I don't care what he thinks about the Labour Party, Ukraine, or anything else.)
In fairness he's sitting there with 7 or 8 hearts in his hand and the government has just declared them trumps, having completely misread the situation.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
Ok so we have chopped out 25% from the list who will benefit, although for all I know you have just made up that figure or got it from some disreputable internet source or (most likely) have misunderstood something you have read. Now lets deal with the 75% left:
a) What percentage will inherit nothing or an amount that is meaningless in terms of long term existence. So all those whose parents are renting, have a significant mortgage, have to live off of their accumulated wealth, have multiple children (or any combination of that list). That is the parents have little to give.
b) What percentage are going to inherit at a time in life where it is pointless.
c) What percentage simply don't need to inherit.
Now just to show how common those are my circumstances fit into all 3 as well as @Big_G_NorthWales case. My father has little to give me. I don't need it anyway as I am considerably richer than him. I am 67 and I have never inherited anything (most people won't until their 60s). Unlike him (who lives off of a civil service pension) I don't have any pension (other than the state) so will be living off my wealth, so I (or more importantly my children) have no idea if they will inherit from me. I also have no idea if my father at 96 will need care to be paid for (it seems likely and it is amazing that so far he has needed none).
Can I suggest you live in a fantasy world where the children inherit the family home or business or farm at 40 and everything carries on to the 1950's middle/upper class sunset.
I have just hit 40 and sadly already know some of my contemporary who have lost either 1 or both parents well before they reached 80, let alone 90 or 100
You keep referring to Stats, although I know you really don't understand the maths of them, but we have been here before but in response to that it is now anecdotes. To leave money to your children clearly they must have been born and you needed to be alive to produce them. The average person has children around the age of 30ish so if you now do a life expectancy for a 30 something you can progress with the calculation. Now you have to adjust that life expectancy to be not for one person, but for both dying because you don't inherit until both parents die. That increases the age again.
Sometime ago I did that calc using ONS data and a bit of maths and it comes out at an average of about 63 - 65. When I posted that others confirmed the ball park with info they looked up.
If you are going to keep quoting stats at us then don't go back to anecdotes which are meaningless. We all sadly know people who have sadly died in there 40s, 50s, 60s and well as children and teens. It does stop the maths that tell you the average age of inheritance is in your 60s.
I have to say I think in hindsight Labour have got the best position on this, for what they actually want to achieve. Polling seems to reflect that.
I think that not interrupting an enemy making a mistake is a good tactic, and allowing those like Rayner to speak out shows reasonable tolerance.
If the government thinks that 2% payrises for the public sector are sustainable with inflation forecast at 11% and pensioners getting 10%, they are in for a rude awakening, particularly at a time of full employment and unfilled vacancies.
A 2% rise with 11% inflation is a real terms paycut of 9%, equivalent to not being paid for one month in the year. Anyone would ballot for strike at that offer.
A sustainable and non inflationary offer would be CPI minus 1-2%. People would accept that, and fiscal drag would mean that Sunak would quietly get a decent share of it.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Leaving the EU is far more than a moderate change, Casino.
Right now the change between what we do and what they do may only be minimal, and the disruption is greatest now and past few years. But the benefits versus costs from Brexit were always going to be hockey-stick shaped.
The cost, the disruption, is up-front as it is for almost all major changes. But the benefits are transformational for decades, potentially even centuries, to come.
Over time the EU is evolving into a kind of United States of Europe and that ratchet effect is only going one way. The existence of the Euro is only going to reinforce that continuing to happen. The UK being outside of that should not be underestimated, we will evolve over time in a very different way to how Europe does.
Its like contrasting the difference between Canada and America. We are Europe's version of Canada. Over time the effects of us not being in that political union are going to evolve more and more until eventually the very notion we might have ever been involved will be quite alien.
I recommend the whole thing - and note that, for all its faults, we are very lucky to have the Biden administration in charge at this point, as they are probably uniquely well prepared to respond rationally.
I take comfort in the fact that tritium is $30,000 a gram. Each US nuclear weapon has 3 - 5 grams in it. So, $90,000 to $150,000 in small gas cartridges (probably the size of those laughing gas capsules you see littering the streets).
In Russia, they will all have been stolen by now. Without them, every Russian nuclear weapon will have a yield of a Davy Crockett.
Better yet, if the tritium has been replaced with either of the obvious fakes - hydrogen or helium - they will act as a neutron absorbing reaction poison. And probably prevent any yield at all.....
Wow, the things you learn on PB. Fascinating.
The W54 (aka the Davy Crockett warhead) was the result of the miniaturisation of atom bombs to use as primaries in H-bombs. They used the same tech to build a really small atom bomb, on it's own....
That's what you'll get from an H-bomb with no tritium.
But if tritium has a half-life of about 12 years, surely they must be regularly replaced anyway? Also the idea that security around Russian nukes is so bad that people are regularly stealing bits of them is not that comforting.
Yes, it's a regular cycle. The US stopped production for a while after the Cold War, but restarted as stocks began to run down.
It's made in a rather messy process: https://www.gao.gov/assets/a311096.html ...To produce tritium, stainless steel rods containing lithium aluminate and zirconium-—called tritium- producing burnable absorber rods (TPBAR)-—are irradiated in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Watts Bar 1 commercial nuclear power reactor. Despite redesigns of several components within the TPBARS, tritium is still leaking-—or “permeating”-—out of the TPBARs into the reactor’s coolant water at higher-than-expected rates. ..
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Well that is the problem of the Tories losing a lot of their old Remain vote and acquiring new voters who favour porkbarrelling and economic protectionism. It is a fundamental clash with the old pro-business free trade Tories.
They sold out business and financial rigour for a mess of pooterish populism. British Peronism in effect.
In the 19th century and early 20th century the Tories were often protectionist, it was the Whigs and Liberals who were most pro free trade.
It was just keeping Labour out after universal suffrage that in the 20th century shifted many pro free trade middle class Liberal businessmen to become Tories.
Remember too it was the Liberals who introduced the workhouse, many old school Tories opposed it
I don't think you're right there.
I don't think there was a Liberal party when the workhouse was introduced or indeed a Tory one!
It was Earl Grey's Whig government which introduced the workhouse and the Whigs of course became the Liberals
A few days ago I commented that the problem with the strike was that it didn't have a clearly articulated purpose.
Well, the Mick Lynch media blitz has fixed that... And more. The big shift in support has come from a lot of people recognizing the argument and saying "hey, that applies to me too."
Yes, Lynch is really earning his salary - I can't remember a union leader who puts the case as clearly, calmly and with a dash of dry wit. (I don't care what he thinks about the Labour Party, Ukraine, or anything else.)
I really look forward to his appearances - when he comes on I either stop what I'm doing or freeze the telly until I can focus on it.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
Ok so we have chopped out 25% from the list who will benefit, although for all I know you have just made up that figure or got it from some disreputable internet source or (most likely) have misunderstood something you have read. Now lets deal with the 75% left:
a) What percentage will inherit nothing or an amount that is meaningless in terms of long term existence. So all those whose parents are renting, have a significant mortgage, have to live off of their accumulated wealth, have multiple children (or any combination of that list). That is the parents have little to give.
b) What percentage are going to inherit at a time in life where it is pointless.
c) What percentage simply don't need to inherit.
Now just to show how common those are my circumstances fit into all 3 as well as @Big_G_NorthWales case. My father has little to give me. I don't need it anyway as I am considerably richer than him. I am 67 and I have never inherited anything (most people won't until their 60s). Unlike him (who lives off of a civil service pension) I don't have any pension (other than the state) so will be living off my wealth, so I (or more importantly my children) have no idea if they will inherit from me. I also have no idea if my father at 96 will need care to be paid for (it seems likely and it is amazing that so far he has needed none).
Can I suggest you live in a fantasy world where the children inherit the family home or business or farm at 40 and everything carries on to the 1950's middle/upper class sunset.
I have just hit 40 and sadly already know some of my contemporary who have lost either 1 or both parents well before they reached 80, let alone 90 or 100
You keep referring to Stats, although I know you really don't understand the maths of them, but we have been here before but in response to that it is now anecdotes. To leave money to your children clearly they must have been born and you needed to be alive to produce them. The average person has children around the age of 30ish so if you now do a life expectancy for a 30 something you can progress with the calculation. Now you have to adjust that life expectancy to be not for one person, but for both dying because you don't inherit until both parents die. That increases the age again.
Sometime ago I did that calc using ONS data and a bit of maths and it comes out at an average of about 63 - 65. When I posted that others confirmed the ball park with info they looked up.
If you are going to keep quoting stats at us then don't go back to anecdotes which are meaningless. We all sadly know people who have sadly died in there 40s, 50s, 60s and well as children and teens. It does stop the maths that tell you the average age of inheritance is in your 60s.
Well if we are talking averages most people will still be alive in their 60s when they get that big inheritance with about 20 years of life left too
A few days ago I commented that the problem with the strike was that it didn't have a clearly articulated purpose.
Well, the Mick Lynch media blitz has fixed that... And more. The big shift in support has come from a lot of people recognizing the argument and saying "hey, that applies to me too."
Yes, Lynch is really earning his salary - I can't remember a union leader who puts the case as clearly, calmly and with a dash of dry wit. (I don't care what he thinks about the Labour Party, Ukraine, or anything else.)
In fairness he's sitting there with 7 or 8 hearts in his hand and the government has just declared them trumps, having completely misread the situation.
In what regard? I get that people might be thinking "yeah, they deserve a higher pay rise, and so do I", but there was a notable lack of "chaos" yesterday. The government can afford to sit back and let them go on strike again and again and again.
Offtopic, but thanks to whoever it was who posted the “Bored Ape Nazi Club” video on here the other day.
Very enlightening, and what was from the evidence quite clearly an epic troll on a bunch of gullible rich people, who now “own” something totally worthless! (Not that most of us thought them to be worth anything in the first place).
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Inflation rose to 3.4% at the end of 2017 because of the GBP devaluation that followed the Brexit vote, which drove up inflation for food and other imported goods. The introduction of new costs and trade restrictions under our new post Brexit trade regime has further pushed up core goods inflation to levels well above those on the Continent (7.2% in the UK versus 4.2% in the Euro Area). And the government wants workers to just suck this up while their pensioner client voters get protected? No fucking way.
EU inflation is now just 0.9% less than the UK average. It is the Russia and Ukraine war and failure to expand energy supplies to meet demand post lockdown with the focus on net zero that has had the biggest impact on UK inflation not Brexit
I really wouldn't be envious of EU economic performance.
Our employment market is red hot and we are first in Europe for new tech/digital start-ups, first or second for FDI (depending on the measure) and our services industry is extremely strong.
The challenges we have here are the usual ones of aging demographics and left behind areas.
If you think things are functioning well in the UK you really should go out more. You can't get a doctor's aopointment.... you wait up to 13 hours for A&E ....you can't get a policeman for love nor money. The hospitality industry has all but collapsed .....You have waits of three or four hours at airports-if your plane takes off at all-the trains aren't running. The traffic jams are appalling....
What is this "Red Hot employment" market doing? It seems the only person who hasn't noticed apart from you works in Dubai!
(Sandpit. Why don't you come back to this Nirvana?)
As I've reported previously - you can get a GP appointment. Six weeks ago I filled in an e-consult, was called later that day and had an appointment in person that evening.
You are doing the classic thing of seeing headline news and thinking it is the experience of everybody. It isn't. Chaos at airports - well yes, but it was strongly correlated with half term, and I think that extra demand often causes problems. Traffic jams - anything in particular? I've not seen anything out of the normal. We currently have rail strikes. Other countries have strikes at times too. France seems particularly prone.
I am not 'doing the classic thing of looking at headlines'. All those things I have mentioned I have encountered myself in the last several months. I specifically didn't mention things like the costs of living because it hasn't yet affected me. You obviopusly haven't been anywhere or tried to use any services yourself or you'd know these things.
.........Or perhaps you live in Dubai with their access to rose tinted TV sets? I spend time in France and if you think it's as bad there then you should take a trip and you'll be in for a pleasant surprise.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
To be fair, Mr G neither you nor I. or our wives, appear to need social care at the moment although I regret to say I am beginning to make demands on social services. And we all, I think, have passed four score years!
Indeed and we are fortunate but in my son in laws parents case they were both 84 when they suddenly needed care and to date have paid over £200,000, though with his mothers death this is now about £55,000 pa for as long as his father survives
Can indeed come on suddenly. My own fall a few weeks ago seems to have accelerated a whole lot of deterioration, and consequently need for assistance.
I can't even type easily now; have to use the dictation facility; which isn't very satisfactory, although I'm beginning to get better at it.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
All estates over £1 million are still liable for inheritance tax even now and you still have to pay for social care out of your estate, just the costs are correctly capped now.
I am a Tory, inherited wealth has always been one of the key cornerstones of Toryism.
Shouldn't that read .."I am a Tory, greed and cronyism have always been the key cornerstones of Toryism."..?
Not always, see Wilberforce, Disraeli, Macmillan etc.
In some respects apart from Brexit Johnson is more a Disraeli or Macmillan old style Tory than a Thatcherite Gladstone Liberal.
In beliefs perhaps (although I suspect they may be elastic) but in behaviour? A pound shop Lloyd George combined with Walpole from the Whig/Liberal side?
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
They also voted for Brexit. And yet ... "The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016." Of course, stuff the workers - the pensioners are OK.
Yet inflation was low after Brexit, it is only the war in Ukraine and the limited energy supplies and excess demand post Covid that have really seen inflation rise.
It was of course not just pensioners who voted for Brexit either, all voters over 47 did therefore including many still of working age. Plus pensioners who were graduates voted Remain while working under 35 non graduates voted Leave
Inflation rose to 3.4% at the end of 2017 because of the GBP devaluation that followed the Brexit vote, which drove up inflation for food and other imported goods. The introduction of new costs and trade restrictions under our new post Brexit trade regime has further pushed up core goods inflation to levels well above those on the Continent (7.2% in the UK versus 4.2% in the Euro Area). And the government wants workers to just suck this up while their pensioner client voters get protected? No fucking way.
EU inflation is now just 0.9% less than the UK average. It is the Russia and Ukraine war and failure to expand energy supplies to meet demand post lockdown with the focus on net zero that has had the biggest impact on UK inflation not Brexit
I really wouldn't be envious of EU economic performance.
Our employment market is red hot and we are first in Europe for new tech/digital start-ups, first or second for FDI (depending on the measure) and our services industry is extremely strong.
The challenges we have here are the usual ones of aging demographics and left behind areas.
If you think things are functioning well in the UK you really should go out more. You can't get a doctor's aopointment.... you wait up to 13 hours for A&E ....you can't get a policeman for love nor money. The hospitality industry has all but collapsed .....You have waits of three or four hours at airports-if your plane takes off at all-the trains aren't running. The traffic jams are appalling....
What is this "Red Hot employment" market doing? It seems the only person who hasn't noticed apart from you works in Dubai!
(Sandpit. Why don't you come back to this Nirvana?)
As I've reported previously - you can get a GP appointment. Six weeks ago I filled in an e-consult, was called later that day and had an appointment in person that evening.
You are doing the classic thing of seeing headline news and thinking it is the experience of everybody. It isn't. Chaos at airports - well yes, but it was strongly correlated with half term, and I think that extra demand often causes problems. Traffic jams - anything in particular? I've not seen anything out of the normal. We currently have rail strikes. Other countries have strikes at times too. France seems particularly prone.
I am not 'doing the classic thing of looking at headlines'. All those things I have mentioned I have encountered myself in the last several months. I specifically didn't mention things like the costs of living because it hasn't yet affected me. You obviopusly haven't been anywhere or tried to use any services yourself or you'd know these things.
.........Or perhaps you live in Dubai with their access to rose tinted TV sets? I spend time in France and if you think it's as bad there then you should take a trip and you'll be in for a pleasant surprise.
So is it CPI that is 9.1%? And that excludes housing cost inflation?
Christ.
It is going higher still so a lot of pain ahead
Pain felt by younger working people and not the asset classes or the retired.
Many pensioners receive the state pension of just £9,600 pa and are really hurting
True, but the state pensioners now are the ones who voted for Thatcher from '79 onwards. The current stingy state pension follows on from policies of her governments.
I have some sympathy, but fairly limited amounts.
Blair/Labour were in office for 13 years from 1997-2010
This period of Conservative government will comfortably exceed that but it doesn't feel it, still less the Thatcher-Major period of 18 years.
At no time has it felt secure and transformatory.
It has certainly been the latter, and not in a good way.
I'm not so sure it has. Blair and Thatcher both permanently shifted the dial.
It's not clear this one has.
Nothing is permanent in a democracy. But leaving the EU will be harder to reverse than anything Thatcher or Blair did. These Tory years have been completely transformatory, they will long be remembered.
As far as I can tell the Tory government has achieved a moderate change in our political relationship and trading arrangements with our near neighbour (at great political cost) whilst seeing its economic policy shift notably to the Left and the ongoing triumph of the Left in social and cultural matters over the last 12 years.
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
Well that is the problem of the Tories losing a lot of their old Remain vote and acquiring new voters who favour porkbarrelling and economic protectionism. It is a fundamental clash with the old pro-business free trade Tories.
They sold out business and financial rigour for a mess of pooterish populism. British Peronism in effect.
In the 19th century and early 20th century the Tories were often protectionist, it was the Whigs and Liberals who were most pro free trade.
It was just keeping Labour out after universal suffrage that in the 20th century shifted many pro free trade middle class Liberal businessmen to become Tories.
Remember too it was the Liberals who introduced the workhouse, many old school Tories opposed it
I don't think you're right there.
I don't think there was a Liberal party when the workhouse was introduced or indeed a Tory one!
It was Earl Grey's Whig government which introduced the workhouse and the Whigs of course became the Liberals
It may have been the Liberals who introduced the workhouse, but it will be the Tories who bring it back.
Offtopic, but thanks to whoever it was who posted the “Bored Ape Nazi Club” video on here the other day.
Very enlightening, and what was from the evidence quite clearly an epic troll on a bunch of gullible rich people, who now “own” something totally worthless! (Not that most of us thought them to be worth anything in the first place).
NFT value is seemingly almost entirely dependent on the seller. If Joe Public buys a monkey NFT they become worthless instantly - but celebs can sell them for a fair chunk of cash. That's quite unlike a house, a Rubens or heck even a bitcoin.
A few days ago I commented that the problem with the strike was that it didn't have a clearly articulated purpose.
Well, the Mick Lynch media blitz has fixed that... And more. The big shift in support has come from a lot of people recognizing the argument and saying "hey, that applies to me too."
Yes, Lynch is really earning his salary - I can't remember a union leader who puts the case as clearly, calmly and with a dash of dry wit. (I don't care what he thinks about the Labour Party, Ukraine, or anything else.)
In fairness he's sitting there with 7 or 8 hearts in his hand and the government has just declared them trumps, having completely misread the situation.
In what regard? I get that people might be thinking "yeah, they deserve a higher pay rise, and so do I", but there was a notable lack of "chaos" yesterday. The government can afford to sit back and let them go on strike again and again and again.
In regard to public opinion. The majority are not annoyed at the inconvenience and support the strikes. That is not what the government wanted. The government has come across as completely unreasonable by not allowing the management to make an offer until the day after the first strike. Claims that the Union were not negotiating have been effectively demolished by Lynch whose blunt style is well suited to such disingenuousness.
The number annoyed may increase as the number of strike days increase but other unions settling for circa 7% in the same industry show where this needs to go.
A few days ago I commented that the problem with the strike was that it didn't have a clearly articulated purpose.
Well, the Mick Lynch media blitz has fixed that... And more. The big shift in support has come from a lot of people recognizing the argument and saying "hey, that applies to me too."
Yes, Lynch is really earning his salary - I can't remember a union leader who puts the case as clearly, calmly and with a dash of dry wit. (I don't care what he thinks about the Labour Party, Ukraine, or anything else.)
In fairness he's sitting there with 7 or 8 hearts in his hand and the government has just declared them trumps, having completely misread the situation.
History suggests that holding all the cards isn’t the be all and end all if you’re Gove, Davis, Rees-Mogg, Frost, etcetera, etcetera.
I found this table on state pension rises. If you look at it, the state pension has cumulatively risen by around 45% over 11 years. Whereas, as I understand it, public sector pay rises have been frozen at 0.5 - 1% for the whole time. What is explosive is the prospective April 2023 rise to the state pension, if it is CPI, it could be 10%.
The government make things worse by just going on about how people must 'take the pain' etc. They have just themselves to blame. There was bound to be a eventual reckoning for such a divisive and unfair policy.
State pension triple lock: rises since 2011 Financial year State pension rise Based on 2011/12 4.6% RPI 2012/13 5.2% CPI 2013/14 2.5% 2.5% 2014/15 2.7% CPI 2015/16 2.5% 2.5% 2016/17 2.9% Earnings 2017/18 2.5% 2.5% 2018/19 3% CPI 2019/20 2.6% Earnings 2020/21 3.9% Earnings 2021/22 2.5% 2.5% 2022/23 3.1% CPI
It would be interesting to see the FT chart updated with the latest figures.
Of course today's pensioners were working in Thatcher's day, not pensioners. So if it was good enough for their parents to have the link broken, and not saved for, then why isn't it good enough for them?
Boomers eh? They screwed over their parents. Then they screwed over their kids. The most selfish generation.
What rubbish, thanks to boomers their children and grandchildren will inherit more than any generation before them.
You are assuming they do not need care and nursing over several years
My son in law's parents have already burned through £200,000+ in nursing care costs though his mother has recently died
3/4 of over 65s will not need social care or will die beforehand
So your want us to die rather than have to have social care paid out of your inheritance
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
To be fair, Mr G neither you nor I. or our wives, appear to need social care at the moment although I regret to say I am beginning to make demands on social services. And we all, I think, have passed four score years!
Indeed and we are fortunate but in my son in laws parents case they were both 84 when they suddenly needed care and to date have paid over £200,000, though with his mothers death this is now about £55,000 pa for as long as his father survives
Can indeed come on suddenly. My own fall a few weeks ago seems to have accelerated a whole lot of deterioration, and consequently need for assistance.
I can't even type easily now; have to use the dictation facility; which isn't very satisfactory, although I'm beginning to get better at it.
Comments
Unless lifetime gifts have been given over time, care home costs run inheritance values down in next to no time.
I wish I lived in HYUFD's alternative reality.
It's not clear this one has.
While most 18 to 34s with only GCSEs or less voted Leave in 2016, 51% of 18 to 34s with no qualifications voted for Corbyn Labour in 2019
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election.
So what you could really say was the young with little education voted for Brexit and then also voted for Corbyn
Connected to this was the rise of pay-plus-benefits jobs (where you need benefits to survive, despite being employed) and the religious level refusal to countenance any kind of contributory basis for benefits.
Our employment market is red hot and we are first in Europe for new tech/digital start-ups, first or second for FDI (depending on the measure) and our services industry is extremely strong.
The challenges we have here are the usual ones of aging demographics and left behind areas.
Inches away from "We can't let the workers win"...
I know I didn't!
So ticket offices shouldn't be closed down (at busier stations), but staffing could be reduced if we had (as I recall the government promised) a simplified fare structure where it was an absolute doddle to get the cheapest available fare from the machines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiM-RzPHyGs&t=215s
That's what you'll get from an H-bomb with no tritium.
Workers: great, can we at least have only a 5% cut in our real wages?
Government: No, Trotskyite Scum!
If I were you I wouldn't be too downhearted.
...moderate change?....
a) What percentage will inherit nothing or an amount that is meaningless in terms of long term existence. So all those whose parents are renting, have a significant mortgage, have to live off of their accumulated wealth, have multiple children (or any combination of that list). That is the parents have little to give.
b) What percentage are going to inherit at a time in life where it is pointless.
c) What percentage simply don't need to inherit.
Now just to show how common those are my circumstances fit into all 3 as well as @Big_G_NorthWales case. My father has little to give me. I don't need it anyway as I am considerably richer than him. I am 67 and I have never inherited anything (most people won't until their 60s). Unlike him (who lives off of a civil service pension) I don't have any pension (other than the state) so will be living off my wealth, so I (or more importantly my children) have no idea if they will inherit from me. I also have no idea if my father at 96 will need care to be paid for (it seems likely and it is amazing that so far he has needed none).
Can I suggest you live in a fantasy world where the children inherit the family home or business or farm at 40 and everything carries on to the 1950's middle/upper class sunset.
They sold out business and financial rigour for a mess of pooterish populism. British Peronism in effect.
You really are unpleasant and hopefully a labour government may relieve you of some of your entitlements
For a Conservative/conservative I would have thought that the absence of ideas or solutions would be a concern, but then I could say the same for my side, who aren't much better.
It was over 55s who voted most strongly for Macron, without pensioners Macron and his party would not even have come first.
Same as here without pensioners Corbyn would now be PM and as I already pointed out under 35s with GCSEs or less voted Leave while pensioners with degrees voted Remain
Also the idea that security around Russian nukes is so bad that people are regularly stealing bits of them is not that comforting.
What is this "Red Hot employment" market doing? It seems the only person who hasn't noticed apart from you works in Dubai!
(Sandpit. Why don't you come back to this Nirvana?)
I am a Tory, inherited wealth has always been one of the key cornerstones of Toryism.
Near me there is a decent quite flat segregated cycle path linking an area of 100k people 6 miles to within half a mile of the local main line to London station. For the last half mile there is a track by the railway, owned by Railtrack (or whoever), which would be a perfect route alongside the railway.
But RT have been sitting on it for decades and not completed the route. The diversion is hilly and quite dangerous - so people don't cycle to the railway station, and go in their cars.
Times move on, and needs change. Even a country such as France - nearly 4 times times as big as the UK - only has double our current mileage of railway track. I'm not convinced it should all have been left alone.
Consider the Bath-Bristol cycle route over a former railway which now has several million trips per year, and that is a cycle path that does not even reach Dutch minimum standards - iirc it is only 3m wide tarmacadam.
On the Cambridge - Huntingdon - St Ives busway, I don't have an intimate knowledge but I note it carried 4 million people last year, which must make the local tiny country roads a lot safer. Suspect it was also a hell of a lot cheaper than rebuilding the railway, at an all in cost of £180m even after all the problems.
While it's conceivable that a significant, even large percentage of Russian warheads are defective, they have a very large number (even allowing for the usual exaggeration of actual usable numbers).
What is more, because of their relatively crude fabrication, they don't last anywhere near as long as US warheads, and are therefore much more regularly re-manufactured. Although, as with stockpile numbers, Russian manufacturing capacity will have declined over the last decade or so, that might mean a thousand or so warheads being remanufactured annually.
SO there's a whole process going on there, which as much as it might allow the theft of nuclear materials, also gives the capacity to keep active checks on them.
I'm sure you're right that some tritium goes astray in the system. But I'm pretty sure quite a lot doesn't. And as you say, if you're checking, any fakes replacing the real stuff are 'obvious'.
It was just keeping Labour out after universal suffrage that in the 20th century shifted many pro free trade middle class Liberal businessmen to become Tories.
Remember too it was the Liberals who introduced the workhouse, many old school Tories opposed it
Which people am I supposed to hate? I get so confused, back to the Daily Mail for some assistance
I have absolutely no idea how easy it is to fake the difference between protium, deuterium and tritium though. It would be highly amusing if Russian nukes contain nothing other than generic protium hydrogen.
Poor HYUFD will never be allowed to forget that exchange will he! Any more than he'll be allowed to forget confessing to voting PC!
If it is being stolen, it is probably at the re-processing laboratories.
You are doing the classic thing of seeing headline news and thinking it is the experience of everybody. It isn't.
Chaos at airports - well yes, but it was strongly correlated with half term, and I think that extra demand often causes problems. Traffic jams - anything in particular? I've not seen anything out of the normal.
We currently have rail strikes. Other countries have strikes at times too. France seems particularly prone.
I don't think there was a Liberal party when the workhouse was introduced or indeed a Tory one!
Like for many things, there's a Big Bang quote for that.
Sheldon at the jewellery store: Diamonds. Crystalized carbon. Every day, people go to the grocery store and come home with sacks full of carbon, in the form of charcoal brickets, which they toss in their barbecues and set on fire. But just because you have some carbon with the atoms stacked neatly, you expect me to plunk down thousands of dollars.
Since it is so valuable, and well contained, testing it once it is in the capsule would probably not be possible. IIRC the American capsules are completely sealed, with a puncture point built in, rather than having a valve. There probably wouldn't be any radioactivity to detect on the outside....
In some respects apart from Brexit Johnson is more a Disraeli or Macmillan old style Tory than a Thatcherite Gladstone Liberal.
Tritium is an isotope of Hydrogen, diamond is an allotrope of carbon.
allotropes are bonding differences
isotopes are nuclear differences
The wife of one of Vladimir Putin's former ministers has given a five-figure sum to the Conservatives at a fundraising dinner.
Lubov Chernukhin, 49, successfully bid £30,000 for a wine-tasting tour that was offered as an auction prize at the event on Monday evening.
The cash takes Mrs Chernukhin's donations to the Tories to £2.1million – making her the biggest female political donor in British history. This includes £879,000 during Boris Johnson's leadership.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10939973/Russian-gives-30-000-Tories-wine-tasting-tour-fundraising-dinner.html
https://www.tssa.org.uk/news-and-events/tssa-news/tssa-accepts-7-1-per-cent-pay-deal-at-merseyrail
Sometime ago I did that calc using ONS data and a bit of maths and it comes out at an average of about 63 - 65. When I posted that others confirmed the ball park with info they looked up.
If you are going to keep quoting stats at us then don't go back to anecdotes which are meaningless. We all sadly know people who have sadly died in there 40s, 50s, 60s and well as children and teens. It does stop the maths that tell you the average age of inheritance is in your 60s.
If the government thinks that 2% payrises for the public sector are sustainable with inflation forecast at 11% and pensioners getting 10%, they are in for a rude awakening, particularly at a time of full employment and unfilled vacancies.
A 2% rise with 11% inflation is a real terms paycut of 9%, equivalent to not being paid for one month in the year. Anyone would ballot for strike at that offer.
A sustainable and non inflationary offer would be CPI minus 1-2%. People would accept that, and fiscal drag would mean that Sunak would quietly get a decent share of it.
Right now the change between what we do and what they do may only be minimal, and the disruption is greatest now and past few years. But the benefits versus costs from Brexit were always going to be hockey-stick shaped.
The cost, the disruption, is up-front as it is for almost all major changes. But the benefits are transformational for decades, potentially even centuries, to come.
Over time the EU is evolving into a kind of United States of Europe and that ratchet effect is only going one way. The existence of the Euro is only going to reinforce that continuing to happen. The UK being outside of that should not be underestimated, we will evolve over time in a very different way to how Europe does.
Its like contrasting the difference between Canada and America. We are Europe's version of Canada. Over time the effects of us not being in that political union are going to evolve more and more until eventually the very notion we might have ever been involved will be quite alien.
Russian tritium is produced here, I believe ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak
Similarly, the US has a single facility extracting it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site
It's made in a rather messy process:
https://www.gao.gov/assets/a311096.html
...To produce tritium, stainless steel rods containing lithium aluminate and zirconium-—called tritium- producing burnable absorber rods (TPBAR)-—are irradiated in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Watts Bar 1 commercial nuclear power reactor. Despite redesigns of several components within the TPBARS, tritium is still leaking-—or “permeating”-—out of the TPBARs into the reactor’s coolant water at higher-than-expected rates. ..
Very enlightening, and what was from the evidence quite clearly an epic troll on a bunch of gullible rich people, who now “own” something totally worthless! (Not that most of us thought them to be worth anything in the first place).
.........Or perhaps you live in Dubai with their access to rose tinted TV sets? I spend time in France and if you think it's as bad there then you should take a trip and you'll be in for a pleasant surprise.
I can't even type easily now; have to use the dictation facility; which isn't very satisfactory, although I'm beginning to get better at it.
RMT accused of calling strike to defend host of outdated practices"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/06/21/archaic-rail-rules-mean-takes-nine-workers-change-plug-socket/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rationality-What-Seems-Scarce-Matters/dp/0241380278/
That's quite unlike a house, a Rubens or heck even a bitcoin.
The number annoyed may increase as the number of strike days increase but other unions settling for circa 7% in the same industry show where this needs to go.