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You’ve never had it so good – politicalbetting.com
You’ve never had it so good – politicalbetting.com
While official figures show average wages are outpacing inflation, 78% of Britons feel that prices are rising faster than their incomePrices are rising faster than my income: 78%My income is keeping pace with prices: 13%My income is rising faster than prices: 1%yougov.co.uk/topics/polit…
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Costs are up dramatically over that period.
This place probably has more of the 1% than most anywhere outside a Davos gathering...
Over the last 3 years the Cost of living has probably exceeded income for many of us. Not just inflation, but also the rise in mortgage interest rates.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/19/jair-bolsonaro-charged-alleged-brazil-coup?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Office for National Statistics (ONS)
@ONS
Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 3.0% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 2.5% in December 2024.
Sky were saying it was going to be 2.8% (and, even suggested it might be lower and things were looking good). It's something that really annoys me. Don't speculate on figures that will be announced in less than hour.
1) the big price rises that have changed spending patterns are now baked in. That these higher prices are not rising with *average* wages is nice. But won’t make people feel better off.
2) *average* wages is a story in itself. What is the actual breakdown? Is it segmented?
(Bad news for Labour = ONS back to gold standard
Chinese warships in waters 150 nautical miles east of Sydney
‘Unprecedented’ manoeuvre comes as Beijing projects power further in Pacific
https://www.ft.com/content/fda734fc-6023-4ad9-b3ae-33234ee40505
Yet another impact of a truly catastrophic budget where costs were dumped on employers to hide the tax increase. The result is that they are having to increase prices. Who could possibly have foreseen such a consequence?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/cj92l2lw274o
November 24 2022
The phone rings at 2.45am from a 2019’er, clearly pissed but just about coherent: “Hi, chief. Hope I haven’t woken you.” (It’s 2.45am, FFS.)
Me: “What’s up?”
Him: “I’m stuck in a brothel in Bayswater and I’ve run out of money.”
Me: “Go on…”
Him: “I met a woman as I left the Carlton Club who offered me a drink, but I now think she is a KGB agent. She wants £500 and has left me in a room with 12 naked women and a CCTV.”
Me: “Give me a few moments and I will call you back.”
Bloody hell, this is a mess. I ring Spad [special adviser] Emma. She offers to leave her house and go personally to Bayswater on an extraction mission.
I suggest not (she sounded rather disappointed).
Instead, we devise a plan to send a taxi, extract our man, return him to the safety of his own hotel. I go back to sleep.
4.10am. Phone rings again.
Me: “Are you back safely?”
Him: “Yes, but you will never guess what happened next.” (The truest thing he said all evening.)
Me: “Go on…”
Him: “Well, I slipped out of the room and saw the taxi Emma ordered across the road, so I legged it over and jumped in. However, it turned out it was a different taxi being driven by an Afghan agent called Ahmed.”
Me: “So…”
Him: “Well, he demanded £3,000 for a blow job.”
Me: “And?”
Him: “I legged it back to the hotel and locked the door.”
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/egos-fights-sex-scandals-confessions-chief-whip-0xjwb6kgt
That was the case after the pandemic, but I don’t think it’s the case now?
But yes, when official figures show average wages rising faster than inflation, they probably don't mean median take home pay compared with CPIH
ANZUS does have some very vague mutual security commitments but we can all estimate the current worth of that agreement.
In true PB tradition this isn’t technically correct. A trainee solicitor can legitimately call themselves a “trainee solicitor”. I don’t know what this chap referred to himself as but “an articled clerk” hasn’t been a thing in England and Wales for over 30 years.
Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974 states:
“Any unqualified person who wilfully pretends to be, or takes or uses any name, title, addition or description implying that he is, qualified or recognised by law as qualified to act as a solicitor shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding the fourth level on the standard scale.”
Humans tend to be pretty bad at identifying the "end of the beginning" in a turning point (and this might not even be that). Maybe we're right to be suspicious of it.
I think that graph explains a lot of the discontent around the country over the last years.
It seems to me that the Poles are the ones out in front on this. A massive re-armament, in depth. Further, basing this on weapons that don’t come with strings in their usage.
Trump boosters have had to overlook his actions in January 2021. If they can excuse that, they can excuse anything.
People ARE stupid
He told the Commons that he worked as a solicitor in Manchester before changing career.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-jonathan-reynolds-cv-business-secretary-b1211954.html
Apparently there are also misleading linked in snaps on Guido but I haven’t checked that website.
It would be interesting to get a representative sample of CVs from a range of senior people and see how many have been embellished in some way, I would suspect all of them.
Anyone with an iq under 115 is not exactly bright
So yeah the majority of humans are fucking idiots. Hence the failure of democracy
McConnell, still Kentucky’s senior senator, has been showing curious signs of rebellion—voting against the confirmation of Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and providing the only Republican vote against Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as director of national intelligence. (Another no vote, on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be secretary of health and human services, may be yet to come.) But above the talk of a liberated McConnell in his YOLO phase hangs a bitter irony: For a few weeks in January and February 2021, McConnell held a unique power to stop Trump, once and for all.
That was the brief time when McConnell seriously considered voting to convict Trump on an impeachment charge relating to his role in the January 6 insurrection. Had he done so, and had he used his peerless vote-whipping prowess to scrounge up the nine additional Republicans necessary to convict the then disgraced ex-president, Trump could have been constitutionally barred from ever again holding “any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.” His vengeful quest to return to power could have died in its infancy.
In my view he’s broken the law (strict liability) and the punishment should be a conditional discharge.
Weirdly, companies in such an economy tend to be much slower to reduce prices when costs are expected to fall.
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.0% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 2.5% in the 12 months to December 2024.
On a monthly basis, CPI fell by 0.1% in January 2025, compared with a 0.6% fall in January 2024.
The largest upward contribution to the monthly change in both CPIH and CPI annual rates came from transport, and food and non-alcoholic beverages; the largest downward contribution to both came from housing and household
Lollies £1.70 to £2.25
Bacon £1.65 to £2
Rice pudding 25p to 29p
None of these were on offer a fortnight ago so just price hikes
I assume you mean mean average compared to median average.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Also, droning on about IQ all the time makes a person look, um, stupid. see also: D. Trump
3% my arse.
A country where government spending is 44% of the economy clearly doesn't have rampant capitalism or anything like it.
Rampant oligopoly, rampant welfareism and rampant stagnation more like it.
Can anyone explain in simple terms why it's worth it?
As far as I understand we will end up paying exactly the same amount of tax when it is brought back as we would if it was in UK.
Am I missing something?
The first thing that Russia does when invading a neighbour is to set up gender-neutral toilets.
Their troops also check on everyone's preferred pronouns before raping them.
Why can't they be funded out of fines?
For a similar example getting pension tax relief at 40% but being a basic rate taxpayer when you take the pension.
"...implying that he is qualified or recognised by law as qualified to act as a solicitor " ?
In this case, where he was a trainee, perhaps not ?
Bloody autocorrect
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/coAnaLQtNh0
I’m quite fond of you, you weird old nerd. I admire - as I’ve said - the way you seek to defend people being bullied on here
Thanks
And income inequality has been steadily rising for a while.
I noticed because it's still 4 for £1 at Onestop and they are not renowned for bargain prices.
880 billion dollars of cuts to Medicaid and 230 billion dollars of cuts to food stamps .
So that they can keep the tax cuts which overwhelmingly help the highest earners . But the price of eggs ……
This is likely to lead to a government shutdown unless enough GOP balk at those proposals. The Dems busy trying to stop these cuts but will likely get little thanks from those who voted for Trump and really deserve to be fxcked.
We live in strange times, malc.
To paraphrase: at least he's our lying fcukwit.
@adambienkov.bsky.social
Here's the executive order just signed by Trump.
One of the defining features of fascism is that the discretionary power of the leader always prevails over the rule of law.
https://bsky.app/profile/adambienkov.bsky.social/post/3lijbctlpos2q
https://x.com/davidgauke/status/1891977091517706557?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Almost as good
https://x.com/andyelvers/status/1891977933050331439?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/18/ukraine-and-europe-made-to-sit-outside-as-us-and-russia-sharpen-their-carving-knives
Anyone detect an ironic echo of the Plum-pudding in Danger ?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plumb-pudding_in_danger#/media/File:Caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg
And we should not let people think Trump is a-okay just because he is not a fascist.
Trump may turn into a fascist; but it is also possible that he turns into something that is not fascist, but just as bad. A new category, all to himself and his acolytes. If so, that needs calling out just as much as if he was a fascist.
Of course no "expert" would want to be caught thinking for himself like this. It would be more than his job was worth. He'd be dissing the state and the "professionals". That's a no-no. He'd be rocking the boat, sawing through the branch he was sitting on, and doubtless other clichés could also be reached for.
The RI index would be attacked by "experts", and the response from the truth side would be "Those bumsniffer experts would say exactly what they're saying, wouldn't they? We're not going to get sucked in and play their bullshit game with them."
But no. There's no opposition. The masses watch politicians play the same old game with each other. As in other types of advertising, methods used for decades usually work well. There are simple rules for influencing behaviour. Nobody on the screen says in proper language what everyone in the working class knows: the retail price index is cock.
Highly analogous points could be made regarding health, education, etc.