The cost of living – politicalbetting.com
The cost of living – politicalbetting.com
BREAKING: Bank of England cuts interest rates for fifth time in a year – now down to 4%.? Our polling shows the public sees interest rates as the second most influential key economic indicator – while MPs rank them fourth.Full findings ? bit.ly/4opj8XJ
1
Comments
So far I've spent about £3000 on repainting the bedroom, hall, kitchen, including quite expensive paint. Also about £2k on furniture upgrades, new curtains, new appliances, new ART PHOTOS etc. Still got the living room and bathroom to go, maybe another £4k including new furniture, bespoke blinds, cushions, etc
So that's £9k for a total revamp of my small but desirable flat, turning it into a kind of weird personal shrine?
I don't believe that is insane for a complete transformation, especially as it is will be THE TEMPLE OF LEON by the end
Do you honestly think I'm being ripped off? Under £10k to entirely transform a flat? Including much furniture and bespoke blinds, curtains, etc?
I don't believe it is. But if it is I am intrigued how the rest of you habitate. Do you simply slap more daub on the wattle?
(Interesting mirror to the focus on crime by the right in the UK. DC's crime rate has fallen significantly since the 90s, just as it has here. It's a pretty blatant attempt to justify unrest and/or authoritarianism)
Distract from Epstein
Dry run for cancelling elections
Meanwhile his brains are leaking out of his ears...
Trump: "It's embarrassing for me to be up here. I'm gonna see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday."
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lw52ij5f3u2w
For me that would be eye wateringly OTT but I'm church mouse poor.
If you can afford it and you like the result then it's your money
On Jan 6th 2021, that day of infamy, Trump was saying only Pelosi could invoke the National Guard in DC.
I think we know what’s coming on Jan 6th 2029.
The man, 52, was reported to police after staff at the Co-op store in Fore Street, Torpoint, Cornwall, were attacked at 4.45pm on Wednesday Aug 6.
He was restrained by a male customer but became unresponsive a short while later.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/11/torpoint-coop-man-dies-after-restrained-customer/
With the stock market, there's a consensus that up is good. House prices are more complicated. I think most respondents in the graphic are unhappy about house prices being too high, not too low. Those with houses think house prices should be higher; those without, the reverse.
Under 10k for a whole flat (albeit not new kitchen or bathroom) feels perfectly reasonable to me
My big expense was the guy who painted the bedroom. But I specifically asked a pro interior decorator pal for an expert painter, who would choose the best colours (within my parameters) and get it all done REALLY well. He cost £2000 to do the bedroom, inc paint
But he did a magnificent job. Flawless, and he chose glorious colours (actually altering my specifications, but making it better)
So it was pricey. But the bedroom now ROCKS the CORACLE of SATAN
Individuals care about things that impact them: interest rates, house prices, inflation. National unemployment is a little bit of an outlier but I suspect that people who are unemployed/know someone unemployed care a lot about it while there are a large group of people who have never been in that position (in my career I’ve fortunately only had one 3 month period where I was in an “at risk” process without a job to go to & it was pretty unnerving). The strength of sterling is heavily reported and an “easy” yardstick for individuals to grasp “sterling is strong = we are doing well”. Of course it’s more complicated than that but that’s how normal people hear it.
MPs are more focused on things at a macro level - like national GDP, etc which just don’t translate to the individual level in a meaningful way.
Let me begin with an example. A year after Abraham Lincoln's mother died (from milk sickness), his father went back to Kentucky and proposed to a widow, with children of her own. She accepted and moved with with him and her children to Illinois. Blending these two families together made both of them better off, financially. (And since she and Abe's father were good-hearted, as well as competent, happier, too.)
If young people in the UK, like young people here in the US, are less and less likely to get married, they will pay more, and have less. So inflation will hit them harder.
I rather enjoy some DIY tasks. It's not sex or heroin or hiking the Solovetskys, but there is a pleasure in it. Using your hands, an honest day's toil, and so forth
The trouble is
1. I get bored very easily. I can do it for an hour or two, after that tedium kicks in, then actual invade-Poland-now anger, I believe this is why Hitler started World War 2, he was sanding and respraying an old card-table and it just dragged
2. And that's when I start hurrying up and making expensive mistakes so
3. If a job is big I hire a pro
So it's just over a grand a year to live in a flat I find much more pleasing. Or I do it cheaply and get depressed at the paint scheme
Also, the IKEA really HAD to go
Their biggest challenge is that Trump and Newson keep changing the detailed rules that they are supposed to follow in contradictory ways.
Message I took from that is that the police really don’t want to take sides. They are trying to follow the rules and not get involved in politics.
Whether the US has quite got there yet I will leave up to you.
T'was on the Monday morning, the gas man came to call,
The gas tap wouldn't turn, I wasn't getting gas at all;
He tore out all the skirting boards to try and find the main,
And I had to call a carpenter to put them back again!
My friend who works with the top of MI5, MI6, and police counter terror etc, WhatsApped me yesterday to say that the police are absolutely hacked off by being forced to micromanage free speech at either end of the spectrum. They really don't want to do it. "Gets in the way of proper police work". But they are given no choice by a government, which is apparently in total panic about the potential recurrence of the Southport Riots, and obsessed with preventing anything that looks like them
That's his take, FWIW
(In terms of public realm, it implies 2 cycles since 2010, to pick a not-at-all random date.)
(I’m currently at 9 years interior and it’s getting a bit shabby).
It took several minutes to return fairly easy travel info. Claude returned the same info immediately.
Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
Eg yesterday I was riffing with the new model about my gay new flat and we moved on to Oscar Wilde. And I made a joke about “somdomite”. The old GPT4o would have instantly got the reference (to the famous misspelling in the letter that accused and doomed Wilde) and indeed would have run with the joke and turned it into a mad riff with typos
GPT5? Simply didn’t get it. Didn’t understand it. It didn’t even understand it after I dropped lots of heavy clues
I had to patiently explain this piece of literary history like I was talking to a 9 year old. And even then - like a 9 year old - GPT5 seemed a bit gormless. Like it hadn’t really grasped the concept
wtf have they done with it? Rumours fly that they are fast running out of money - OpenAI are being crushed by the might of Google and musk and meta who can afford to lose tens of billions on all this. OpenAI cannot do that
So they have pretended to make an “upgrade” which is actually a downgrade, and all they are doing is throttling back on the intelligence they offer so as to save cash, and they are blaming any problems and complaints on “privacy” and “sycophancy” as issues
It feels like a massive error, at the very least
@KevinASchofield
Trump gets the venue for his talks with Putin wrong for a second time in the same press conference.
"We're going to Russia - it's going to be a good deal."
It's in Alaska.
https://x.com/KevinASchofield/status/1954934566503805230
Now I could probably have saved a £2,000 on a cheaper poorer quality kitchen but labour isn't cheap and the kitchen wasn't that expensive.
The boiler was £3750 and that was the cheapest quote by £1500...
Only “problem” - they’ve made me two sets of beautiful velvet curtains not one. I’ve got a free set of curtains. Worth hundreds. What do I do with it? Keep it spare?
Maybe keep it spare for when one gets dry cleaned
I promise to return to non decor related discussions before the end of the summer
Then you remember they opened between 1985-91 and its coming up to 40 years of the initial work so no wonder major renovations are required.
Worth adding it's clear that a lot of Albert Dock leases have expired because i'm sure there were more restaurants now then there was last time I was there (10 months ago from memory).
Or so the family legend has it.
And it puts my sub £10k in london in perspective
You can't sell them because they won't fit anywhere else.
When I sold a flat some time ago I'd had some lovely silk blinds made for the windows which cost a fortune and when it came to selling the flat I offered to sell the blinds for £100. They offered £50 and I was so outraged I refused and the blinds spent the following 10 years in the attic of my new place before I finally threw them away. Lovely, they were and it's a tragedy.
So bin them now and save the palaver.
Oooooh
I just can’t chuck em, psychologically
I shall keep a set spare for emergencies and cleaning or maybe just rolling around in naked
I couldn’t find anywhere to “show them” so they have become the world’s most extravagant drawer liners in an old Italian chest
And during my renovations I found a massive bag of raw frankincense tears that I bought in a village in Oman direct from the Empty Quarter
So I have put some raw frankincense (enlivened by drops of eucalyptus oil) in small cast iron Japanese pots and put a pot in each now-silk-lined drawer. So when I open the drawer I get this intense aroma and it’s like opening the drawer of a quietly but massively gay cardinal in Rome who likes Yemeni boys and is weirdly obsessed with cheaper Chinese AirPods
Does your block of flats or terraces have a notice board? Or a newsagent's window? Or Facebook group?
If it's a converted terraced house or block there may be dozens the same within a few metres.
Or you could make your shagpit bed into a 4 poster. Or have a curtained off alcove.
Irrespective of any gerrymandering.
I think it's possible they could be stolen outright.
Not even the most red of states would have all state election officials willing to falsify an election either
"...I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelenskyy was saying I have to get constitutional approval. He has approval to go to war and kill everybody but he needs approval to do a land swap because there will be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia.
I get along with Zelenskyy but, you know, I disagree with what he has done. Very, very severely disagree. This is a war that shouldn’t have happened."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/aug/11/donald-trump-washington-crime-homelessness-redistricting-tariffs-us-politics-news-live-updates
Does Trump even care about midterms anyway? He didn't in 2018, unless he or a member of his family is on the ballot I don't think he is really that bothered. Hence why he roused his supporters in 2020 in DC but not 2018.
If a whole load of GOP Representatives and Senators lose their seats next year I doubt Trump will care, he will blame them for being insufficiently MAGA. Remember the GOP was always just a vehicle for Trump for his presidential ambitions, he was a registered Democrat until 2009 although he had backed Reagan in the 1980s but not massively so