What caught my eye this week.
Has winter dragged on for you too, or is it just me? I asked ChatGPT if the weather has been unusually cold and it waffled on for a bit with some anecdotes and then said I should check with the BBC.
Which seemed pretty unhelpful, but then I thought it’s also scarily similar to what you’d actually hear if you asked your nearest mate.
Anyway it has been especially chilly for the past few days. January saw the UK’s coldest night since 2015. Meanwhile on renewable energy investor forums I see debates about whether the slowdown in the North Atlantic conveyor has caused the wind to not blow as much as was forecasted. Which could explain why I’ve worn gloves every day since November.
But I also know I’m prone to Seasonally Affected Depression.
Every January I think I’ve dodged it and then it kicks in – well, about now – and I find myself reading articles about emigrating to Australia.
And yet crazed with cold fever I also ran these numbers on living on a canal boat. A definite case of jumping out of the refrigerator and into the icebox.
Chill brains
A big problem with emotions is how they skew judgement.
For instance I just saw this story about the Met police objecting to a new jazz club in Covent Garden on the grounds that drunk patrons might get mugged on the way home. It seemed ridiculous and I despaired at what London has become since I first arrived in the early-1990s.
But actually…safer is one thing it has become. So am I properly weighting that as I read the story against what mostly appears to me to be the enfeebling of London’s citizens and its nightlife?
Politics is where this emotional distortion effect looms largest.
Perhaps you’ve read in my previous Weekend Reading links how someone’s perceptions instantly reverse in the US depending on whether their favoured candidate is in the White House? So far-reaching is Trump’s chaos theory politics that I don’t doubt it’s affecting me too.
Then again there’s enough to be dispirited about closer to home.
Not least that despite demonstrably hobbling the UK economy – to the tune of £1,750 per person, annually – with his economically insensible Brexit, Nigel Farage is back and doling out his sounds-about-right slop to the same credulous faction who fell for it last time.
We’re told his resurgent Reform party could even dethrone the Conservatives.
Who knows? Though nobody could do a better job of unseating the Tory party than the Tory party managed over the past decade.
The Reform party this week said it would tax renewable energy, reflecting the party leadership’s long history of climate denial. Soon British policy could be driven by the motiviations of an angry middle-aged man in a near-empty pub on a Wednesday afternoon shouting at the television in the corner.
Elsewhere The Atlantic is reflecting on how Covid deniers won – politically, not scientifically – and Politico listed the 37 ways the supposedly disavowed ‘Project 2025’ has already shown up in Trump’s executive orders.
It’s depressing.
Cold comfort
But maybe you’re depressed about me bringing politics to your otherwise favourite financial resource?
Well I have some sympathy, believe it or not.
Over the past six months I’ve grown increasingly irritated at how one of my favourite small-cap share pundits has spent years bemoaning British doomsters as unpatriotic while he dismisses the idea that Brexit had any impact on the UK economy – even as he repeatedly sees an economic recovery around the corner and then is mystified when we instead limp along in semi-stagflation.
Stick to shares, I mutter – obviously in large part because I disagree with him.
Perhaps as you did with me above.
Naturally I think I’m even-handed. For example I flagged up the failings I saw in Rachel Reeves’ budget.
But then I would think that, wouldn’t I?
We all believe we’re above-average drivers.
The big political currents underway seem too important to avoid any mention of on my own website, even if only from a narrow financial perspective – which I do mostly try to stick to. It’s a highfalutin thing to say, but it almost feels irresponsible to look the other way when I have a platform.
Yet I really can see the sense in Jaren Dillan’s perspective at We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards, when he argues it’s okay to ignore politics:
Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?
Let’s say you choose the former. Good luck? Maybe get back to me in four years with a list of what you actually accomplished.
Yes, I am suggesting that we are all impotent. Yes, I am suggesting that one person can’t make a difference. Yes, I am just that cynical.
But deep down—do you disagree with me? Do you think that your rage-posting on social media is going to make a difference? Not only will it not make a difference, it is counterproductive, because, chances are, you’re turning people off in the process.
I know he’s probably right. Who has changed their mind about Brexit, despite its non-existent achievements? The polls have mostly turned against it only because so many of its supporters have died.
Oh well, at least my portfolio is up nicely so far in 2025.
And we’re inching towards spring…surely?
Have a great weekend!
p.s. Moguls: I didn’t get a chance to send out the Monevator merchandise email this week – so don’t worry, you haven’t missed out on the fashion event of the century. The next two to three days for sure!
From Monevator
Investing in infrastructure – Monevator [Members]
Lab-grown diamonds – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Should you invest in buy-to-let through a limited company? – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view click through to read the article. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing to sites you visit a lot.
UK economy saw 0.1% growth in final months of 2024 – Yahoo Finance
Why 1.5m Britons are still hunting for a job – Guardian
Annuity sales jump 24% to a ten-year high – ABI
Nationwide claims big cash ISA deposits are funding a lot of mortgages – Guardian
Government must stop ‘ridiculous’ proliferation of millions of small pension pots – IFS
First-time buyer market rebounds with 19% more purchases… – IFA Mag
…but beware: just seven weeks until stamp duty increases – This Is Money
Thames Water launches appeal to raise bills even higher – Guardian
Non-dom tax raid forces Castle-owning fintech founder out of UK – CityAM
Local government pension schemes headed for embarrassment of riches [Search result, nerdy] – FT
2025E Capex / 2025E Net Income
What will be the return on the Magnificent Seven’s A.I. spending? – Verdad
Products and services
How Vanguard plans to play disruptor again – FT
Barclays and Santander cut mortgages rates below 4%… – What Mortgage
…but Barclays has also cuts its easy-access savings rate to just 1.26% – T.I.M.
You can get up to £3,000 cashback when you transfer your pension to Interactive Investor. Terms and fees apply. – Interactive Investor
Goldman Sachs targets leading role in active ETFs in Europe – FT
Will you miss out on the full state pension? – Be Clever With Your Cash
…some people are struggling to find out – This Is Money
Get up to £4,000 when you transfer your ISA to InvestEngine our link. (Minimum deposit of £100, other T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine
What does ‘making tax digital’ actually mean? – Which
Vintage experts on 21 ways to buy secondhand treasures – Guardian
Does living in a hard water area make energy bills more expensive? – This Is Money
Homes for sale with links to TV and film, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
OBR gloom spells trouble ahead for Rachel Reeves – The Spectator
Feeling guilty about an inheritance – Kindness FP
“My 1.3% mortgage rate is soaring to 4.5%” – Telegraph via Yahoo Finance
The misery value of money – A Teachable Moment
Baby Maeve and the Ovarian Lottery – Best Interest
The five types of wealth [Podcast] – Plain English
More evidence index fund flows are boosting large cap share prices… – K.O.I.
Think you’re too smart to be caught by scammers? [Search result] – FT
The perils of line-item thinking – Behavioural Investment
Why speculators are still running wild when money is no longer free – FT
Never apply for a job online again – Hot Takes
$1 million is still a lot of money… – Of Dollars and Data
…but who wants to look like a million dollars these days? – Guardian
Alternative assets mini-special
Financial firms are still pushing to turn alternative assets into ‘liquid alts’ – I.I.
Did real assets hedge the Covid-era inflation spike? – CFA Institute
US endowments join crypto rush by building Bitcoin portfolios [Search result] – FT
Naughty corner: Active antics
Broken markets? – The Brooklyn Investor
OnlyFan’s sticky business model – SatPost
An interview with Fundsmith founder Terry Smith [Podcast] – R.W.H. via Apple
Commoditisation in the active management industry – BakStack
Primary sources – Rational Walk
The house of cards built by startups and VCs – Crunchbase
Kindle book bargains
Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb – £0.99 on Kindle
The Price of Time by Edward Chancellor – £0.99 on Kindle
Edible Economics by Ha-Joon Chang – £0.99 on Kindle
Taxtopia by The Rebel Accountant – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
World’s sea-ice falls to record low – BBC
Long-term investors split with asset managers over climate risk – FT
It’s hard to cut out single-use plastic for even one month – Guardian
London’s new super sewer is now fully connected – BBC
Robot overlord roundup
Three observations – Sam Altman
Ex-Google boss fears for AI ‘Bin Laden scenario’ – BBC
The embarrassing failure of the Paris AI summit – Transformer
Two AIs discuss AI in an AI podcast – Not Your Advisor [and how to fool them]
At work, a quiet AI revolution is underway… [Search result] – FT
…but not at one law firm, which now restricts AI use – BBC
Trade wars mini-special
Trump VAT threat raises fears of hit to UK – BBC
Deglobalisation: diversification rather than decoupling – Klement on Investing
When are tariffs good? – Noahpinion
Mario Draghi: Europe has successfully put tariffs on itself [Search result] – FT
Off our beat
100 years of London skyscrapers – Londonist
How to achieve immortality – The Honest Broker
Why Gen Z will never leave home – Maclean’s [h/t Abnormal Returns]
LinkedIn is a weird, workaholic wasteland – Sherwood
Is romance in movies dying? The stats are in… – Stephen Follows
…and they’re also in on whether people hate Coldplay – Stat Significant
How to write a good sex scene – Lit Hub
And finally…
“As soon as something stops being fun, I think it’s time to move on. Life is too short to be unhappy. Waking up stressed and miserable is not a good way to live.”
– Richard Branson, Screw It, Let’s Do It
Like these links? Subscribe to get them every Friday. Note this article includes affiliate links, such as from Amazon and Interactive Investor.
Sorry I know this is a bit off topic but as we’re talking about the decline of the state. Has anyone been following the SEND children and councils having statutory duty to ferry them to school. Apparently 9800 is the average taxi cost per child. Meanwhile these send badges seem to be being given out like confetti due to all the financial incentives. Not sure whether it’s SAD like yourself but I just think this country is finished now. Far too many takers and not enough people happy to contribute.
Also just seen the Terry Smith link I’m halfway thru the podcast he seems a cool guy.
@TI
I found the FT’s How Vanguard plans to play disruptor again link paywalled. I also tried searching in Google in a private window and clicking the subsequent link method but to no avail. I guessed it worked at the time but they’ve switched off public access since?
Yes .. mad politics that seems bad long term yet the value of my SIPP keeps rising. It can’t last.
Jim, we have an EHCP for my son and that took over 2 years to get – this was 2015-2018 so pre Covid, since when things have spiked.
If you think getting an EHCP is easy then you haven’t gone through the system to get your child an EHCP.
> Seasonally Affected Depression
Surely you’re well off enough to bunk off to somewhere a bit warmer for a couple of months? I considered Madeira for that sort of thing, but in general, go south young man 😉
Blighty hasn’t really got the range of latitudes that the US has to do snowbirding but London has three airports at last count. The FI usually are flexible on timing. You’ve obviously got to watch out for your 90 days out of 180 EU visa rule if you have plans later on. Appreciated S.A.D. is about light levels rather than the correlated temperature drop, but you get more light further south too.
Yeah, I’m with you TI. Not enough sunshine and too much Trump. I should follow Ermine’s advice and establish a regular winter getaway. I’m already avoiding the news even more than normal.
Spoonbill I was referring to SEND not EHCP. I’d guess obtaining a send badge for a kid wouldn’t be too hard nowadays. How else do we explain the massive rises? I’m sure there is lots of genuine need out there but where do we draw the line. Parents in this article can’t take their kid to school because of work. So either stump up the taxi fare with the wages from work, or change to part time and take your kid to school seems pretty simple to me. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68665303
@Jim #1
I like to think I’m a pretty positive person, but I agree – it feels like the UK is done for. I can barely read the paper anymore – it’s just annoying, and the politicians seem to make everything worse.
Talent will move increasingly to the states and we’ll slide downhill a little quicker.
I’ve been talking of retiring abroad for too many years and missed the NHR in Portugal, but Cyprus and Greece look very generous. No tax on dividends and 5% on Pensions for 17 years….
Maybe things will look better in the spring, on the plus side the UK is a tax haven for pensioners (TY 24/25 anyway).
@TI Not sure this is the right forum for ill-informed comments about children with special needs and the stresses and strains on their parents. Facile suggestions about complex topics are not welcome.
Jim,
Nobody gets a LA funded taxi because they have been obtained a “SEND badge” – whatever that is meant to be. A school might place a child on their SEND register as they can see the child has significant learning difficulties of some type, that really just means they are on the radar for the school’s SENCo and they then do their best to put in something to help them out. Usually this is very little as state schools are extremely stretched, and it’s not a legal obligation for them if no EHCP is in place.
You have to fight for years with a system designed to be as unhelpful as possible to get an EHCP, which is a legal document setting out the child’s needs and how they should be met. Then you have to find a school which agrees it can meet need. Each part of the process takes months at best, but usually years. It’s painfully slow.
A taxi might be necessary where local authorities have no suitable provision within their boundary, as the law states that for placements out of catchment, transport should be provided.
Some LAs have started to ask families to work out their own arrangements as they are nearly bust, which is not legal but it takes a long time to appeal/go to tribunal over such things.
None of this situation is the fault of the families struggling with a system that is hopelessly under resourced. Children don’t like taking taxis out of their own area to a school miles away, it lengthens their school day and they often end up stuffed in with several other children with their own struggles.
What would improve the situation massively is if all local authorities had enough capacity to give places to children with EHCPs within their boundary, avoiding the need for funded transport.
That would be expensive. So Labour are making noises that they are going to all but stop issuing EHCPs and increase training for mainstream school staff so SEN children are placed there. This might work for some, but it will fail quite a lot of families.
In Wales, there is no system to get an EHCP. So many families end up leaving the education system and do their own thing, sometimes with a home ed community.
Anyway, just wanted to put you straight about taxis. Any family with that arrangement will have been through hell before they have reached the stage you’re looking at, it’s a harrowing process that you would not wish on anyone.
Yes it’s been a bit of a slog of a winter by the time we hit this stage of the year. Warmer temperatures and the clock change seem long overdue.
I’m a fairly positive chap but the world has never felt more dangerous to me. I’ve no idea the direction the US will ultimately end up taking but I wonder when we need to start worrying about the 60%+ weighting in our index funds.
On emigrating, these southern European countries are economic basket cases too though right? Granted the weather’s nicer, but I did read some studies a while back saying weather was poorly correlated with mental health, other factors weighed more heavily. That said, I think a month or so out of the UK winter can be a spirit lifter, especially as that way you get to experience a significant delta in temp as opposed to upping sticks permanently. I think canaries can be good for this if done right, lots of sports people do winter training blocks over there.
The wages in the states are crazy, but it’s a funny old place. Not for everyone. When I go over there I can’t square away how they get the basics so badly wrong yet still lead the world. For example, you can’t pay for a meal or fuel in a sane way, walking seems to be an extreme sport and the food is worse than awful. It puzzles me. Scandinavian countries seem to be most sensible, but the weather is even worse! You can’t really win?
@Rob is quite right @Jim, EHCP is super hard. And also if you your child is Autistic getting diagnosed which is also required for EHCP also takes years, and it’s really a pandemic as children on ASD are rising exponentially and there is no explanation and as usual “science” rejects a lot and there is no good support for it as nothing proven scientifically.
Mainstream schools are not prepared to deal with such children and Special schools have huge waitlists as mainstream rejects a lot of kids. It’s really bad, not only in the UK actually but everywhere in the world.
@Rhino – I dunno about southern European countries being economic basket cases, Spain seems to be putting out some decent economic data recently… although granted for the previous 15 years it wasn’t so good, but any visit during that time it always seemed rather pleasant to me. The impact of climate change might be a threat to the longevity of it as a pleasant destination however
@flotron – yes I did see a few articles suggesting Spain was on the up. I was just talking big handfuls over past few decades say, Spain has had historically poor unemployment figures. I dare say a visit to parts of the UK could seem quite pleasant over the summer?
Good to have some additional information around comment #1. I’ve seen substantial efforts at our local comp to increase SEN provision as a governor there. This is helping to alleviate some of the pressure on the local specialist schools. The ‘taxis like confetti’ doesn’t chime with my experience either. LA funding is very tight.
@never give up – “I wonder when we need to start worrying about the 60%+ weighting in our index funds”
Well with Trump, Starmer & Rayner clusterfuck here and mad dictators around the world – I’d say start now but probably a bit late already to do that much about it. Plus if you have quite a bit in GIA accounts, as I do, you can’t easily just switch out funds without a large CGT bill waiting for you these days. With miniscule CGT allowance you can’t even bed & isa each year without it resulting in CGT bill for doing so – never mind about living from it.
I don’t know just about Farage bashing – it’s the damned lot of them! The political class are not worth anything IMO. They are all self serving and as corrupt as each other – whether in US, here, anywhere pretty much. Whoever we vote in nothing changes – it’s just a similar debacle with whoever – the Tory dropouts, the Labour ongoing crapfest (couldn’t run the proverbial p*ss up in the brewery – that’s if there’s any left due to number pubs they’re putting out of business) or Farage’s lies to grab power, won’t even mention divvy Davey. They are all liars and as corrupt as each other – the expenses scandal was just one example of that – they were all in it together then. Agree with others – this country’s done for.
Agree it does seem a great idea to get out of this hell hole of a country and somewhere warmer with much better resorts – not dilapidated/run into the ground and nowt spent on em for decades but when you actually do and negotiate all the bother of getting to airports (minimum couple hrs each way for me), getting any decent & inexpensive parking for car and then shitshow of being managed through security like cattle waiting in line at the slaughterhouse for their fate, often delays due to our weather or this, that or the other (could be likely an ant crossing the runway and so environmentalists protesting!) Then you get to the other end and transfers aren’t there. The food can be hit and miss and the tea is often like dishwater. Oh and don’t forget all the calamity/stress beforehand to arrange this stressbuster of a jaunt – hopefully while not getting scammed online in the process, having to fit in around any work/other commitments, worry of house when away and if local scum in area will be trashing the gaff before you get back – as well as stress when you get back catching up with everything. Feel you need another couple of holidays just to cope with it all – makes you wonder why the hell bother? Think I’ll just stay in not so great Britain and watch the rain on the windows.
Argh @AS, I was waiting for the but, the glimmer of hope, the positive ending, the correcting course of action and it never came!
@TI: emigrate Auz/weather blues. We all make our own weather & take it with us:
https://youtu.be/b99vu9bH2Zc?
🙂
“despair at what London has become”: yeah. Check out the silent hole where there used to be a music scene. When Fabric shut the party was truly over. Truth be told though, this backward looking, uptight and reactionary country has had a downer on fun since long before s.63(1) CJPO 1994 and the absurd and over the top backlash against the Castlemorton Common rave on the May 1992 bank holiday weekend.
Re SAD, do some reading about Vitamin D levels and consider adding a strong supplement to your daily diet.
Thanks for the links – will read while topping up my winter sun this half term!
I’ve mixed feelings about the pessimism on UK. Yes, the country feels worse than it did in the 90s/00s. But I think a lot of it is morale rather than fundamentals. Some of which, at risk of sounding like a rabid Reformista, is in my view down to a lack of social cohesion, which can in turn partly be laid at the door of immigration policy. I say this not because I think immigration is the dominant issue (I get more exercised about potholes and crap trains in general) but simply because I think it’s probably not a common opinion in these parts.
In any case, I can’t see myself leaving the UK unless it gets a lot worse. Having myself lived abroad in a few places, and with family living in a few more, I know that all countries have their problems and I’ve yet to see one whose problems I prefer to deal with vs those of the UK.
I love this website and these link roundups and I want to sign up as a member as a thank you for all the free stuff but every week there’s a Daily Mail Reform Russian bot ghoul who posts something that doesn’t get deleted and diverts the chat into sub-Facebook group nonsense. Today it’s Jim and his reactionary overreaction to some guff he read. Last time I was here it was two ‘different’ commenters denying climate change with the exact same terminology. 75% of articles have the first comment from that **** who still believes in Brexit (from his apartment in Moscow). DELETE!!! Delete and I will literally give you money. Please let me give you money.
Great links (just gotten through).
Verdad – it’s dispersion time. The ROI more likely to be great (like the investment into the Federal Highways System in the fifties) or terrible (like the UK 1840s railway boom) than in-between. If AGI emerges and fulfils its full potential commercially and/or economically then the build out costs will look like chump change. If it doesn’t, then it will go down as a disaster. This is big stakes either way.
FT’s speculators’ piece – the ‘Greenspan Put’ is alive and kicking.
The Brooklyn Investor – valuation is hard.
Thanks for the links, TI.
I am an above average driver. I also have an above average number of legs, as most people do.
Hi, could you please upload the link to where it says London is safer? I think I read something similar before recently, but it definitely doesn’t feel safer to me.
“But actually…safer is one thing it has become”
I’ve enjoyed coming to this site, and I’m very grateful to you guys for the information / education I’ve received from you over the years that I would never have got elsewhere. I always recommend this site to people starting out in their financial planning, as a British based moneymustache equivalent, but in many ways superior.
Regarding the recent addition of political commentary, exposure of your leanings/bias, I’ll be honest that it is off-putting to me. Whenever you introduce political stance, you’re essentially turning off half your audience. I know it’s hard to avoid politics when you’re passionately concerned about what’s going on in the world, and I’m guilty of many an outburst in the comments section of social media, but all I do is frustrate myself without adding anything of use to anyone. But this is your site obviously, and I’m not a Mogul, so if your market like the political stuff, maybe it’s in your interest and theirs to add more of it. Just offering my opinion since you brought it up.
Andrew, if you want to support monevator that’s great. Do it. Stop using people with different opinions to you, like myself, as an excuse not to. I don’t understand why it would be a ‘Russian bot’ who brings up the concern about local authorities having these massive unfunded statutory financial obligations which is going to send them all to the wall. Surely it’s good to raise awareness of the issues rather than put our heads in the sand. You might not agree but it’s healthy to debate these things. Unfortunately I was at the top of the comment list this week so my slightly off topic post might be more prominent than usual. Anyway this is the last comment I’ll make this week so as not to put off even more potential subscribers 🙂 Anyone who wants to keep their head in the sand and pretend this country is on a sustainable path then feel free! Enjoy rest of weekend.
Tend to agree things seem pretty crxppy right now. However, they might just get worse. So, strap yourselves in, and cheer up a bit. This malaise, etc could go on for some time yet – and I strongly suspect that we could all be in far worse situations than we probably currently are.
@Jim Despite being corrected by a number of users that have experience of the system directly, and have explained how difficult it is to get this support, you are maintaining that these “massive obligations” that you’ve “heard about” are going to send them to the wall. I’m not sure focusing cost savings on areas supporting kids with additional needs is really what we should be aiming for as a country. The whole “not enough makers, too many takers” discussion seems to be being driven by media and wealthy individuals no doubt protecting their own interests. I’m reminded of the Rupert Murdoch cartoon where he is telling a builder the immigrant wants to steal his cookie while Murdoch is sat behind a pile of cookies. I believe tax rates on wealthy individuals were much higher in the past, and personally think they should be again. I’d rather squeeze a millionaire for a few percent, than deprive an additional needs child the ability to get to school.
Well it’s a beautiful morning in Cambridgeshire, the sun is shining and the birds know spring is on the way.
I love the UK even the weather. I do get a bit melancholic mid winter but that makes me even skippier when spring comes.
I also think it’s an easy place to make a living with good freedoms. Politics wise yes there’s always something to grumble about but thats universal and i think it’s always been that way. If there is a worry for me it’s the huge increase in negative sentiment beamed into our eyeballs. I mostly turn it off and go for a walk.
Thanks for the comments everyone, and for the pretty constructive vibe even when there’s been some big or off-topic disagreements. Not easy when the subject of my post — and a couple of the comments — are in the mix I know.
I’m more in a reading and reflecting mode this weekend, so for now I’ll leave it there but I do appreciate too the pep talks about the weather and winter. And yes I should go abroad for a bit in the winter. There are reasons why it’s a bit more complicated for me (nothing sinister!) but two weeks in January is doable and should be done! 🙂 By the time April/May comes and friends are inviting me abroad I’m loving the UK weather again — and as always I’m trying not to fly *too* much for carbon reasons, so that’s extra excuse.
I agree the UK winter (and seasons generally) has its charms. I don’t hate the winter or anything like that… it just sort of comes over me.
Anyway friends over today for a big roast and I’m late starting my prep so…
Seeing a comment from an “Andrew” made me wonder about the – High earning, recent, London home buying Andrew. And how things worked out for him.
On taxes and spending we all have our own views on who should pay more (or less). I think it’s fair to say v the last few decades :
– more tax comes from High earners (top 5 or 10%)
– less tax comes from the middle (earning percentiles 40-60%)
– due to higher tax free allowances and lower tax rates v 80s 90s
– non-workers of working age people do better
– possibly as pip/DLA proportions grow and we diagnose (or label) people
more frequently
– pensioners do better v age earnings
We aren’t a rich enough country to continue in this direction.
The local election is soon and I’ve have many leaflets through the door but only one knock on the door – Reform, and interesting he was under 25 with a moustache attempting to look a little older. People have different views and it shows in elections – different views and opinions are allowed, it used to be called diversity
It’s so sad isn’t it, rather than declaring ‘I don’t have to explain climate change’, whining about leaving the dynamic economic superpower that is the EU (will Germany make it 3 years in a row of no growth ?) and being general remoan boars, the ‘grown ups’ want a third runway at Heathrow and will be ripping up planning laws to promote growth over the environment in the Spring
Question isn’t so much who’ll vote for Reform – but which party will be the natural home for whiny remoan net zeroers ?
Looks like City living is doing your nut in 😉 I have heard my first blackbird of the year (in Tesco’s car park) and the robins are giving it some, owls are hooting. Britain does have miserable weather at this time of year but much natural beauty and it’s still worth going to look at.
I’m with Elton #29 – sure there’s always something to moan about but I think a large part of the problem is summed up
> it’s the huge increase in negative sentiment beamed into our eyeballs. I mostly turn it off and go for a walk.
Put your phone in a different room and take a walk round a park, at least. London is graced with a hell of a lot of green spaces, use ’em!
@Bblimp — I’ll say this for you, you’ve lived up to your caricature.
Imagine if your divisive, economy-harming, ironically immigration-boosting, Truss and Johnson-enabling act of national self-harm had delivered concrete anything at all!
You’d be insufferable! Whereas as things are your chiming in when I mention Brexit is more like a memento mori.
I’m sure every reader of this blog is raising their crown mark-stamped pint glass to you and toasting the £1,750 it’s costing every UK citizen a year — or likely several times that for the average Monevator subscriber.
Cheers indeed.
@BBlimp #32: why do you guys always focus on the worst points which you could make in support of your case and not instead the best ones? 🙁
We’re on path for a global average of around 3 degrees centigrade over the pre-industrial temperature level by 2100 (on current mitigating measures and trajectories) but, more significantly, peaking at least 5 degrees over the pre-industrial baseline, with that peak level reach at some point between 2300 and 2500 and then staying close to or at those levels for thousands of years thereafter. It is neither persuasive nor reasonable to argue otherwise.
What is more reasonable and persuasive to point out is a). what difference does it make what the UK does and b). if it’s minimal then why should we attempt the energy transition on a truncated timescale compared to the period over which commercial factors would ultimately likely lead (in any event) to the mass adoption of solar PV and solar thermal, BEVs and nuclear (especially fast breeder and small modular reactors)?
This is a good, fair minded and pragmatic point that you could make. As Perplexity AI summarises it:
“China’s carbon dioxide emissions vastly exceed those of the UK. Between 2013 and 2020, China emitted 80 billion tonnes of CO2, surpassing the UK’s cumulative emissions of 78 billion tonnes since the Industrial Revolution began in 1750. In 2023, China accounted for over 31% of global CO2 emissions, emitting 11.9 billion metric tons, while the UK contributed less than 1%.”
@TI like Ermine says, get yourself out and into the daylight. Visit one of the great London viewing platforms like the top of Greenwich Park, Ally Pally etc. Or dust off the road bike and knock out half a dozen laps of Richmond Park. Failing that head across to the Porchester Spa for a Turkish bath, a couple of hours over 30’c with a book of sudoku puzzles will drive some of the chill damp out of you!
@ermine — but how much of China’s emissions were due to consumer demand from the UK and the rest of the West? Am I right in thinking that the carbon cost of manufacturing consumer goods is not accounted for in these figures?
@Jim, “Far too many takers and not enough people happy to contribute.”
Is that new? The game is a balance between what workers pay in and what the govt pays out. That multi-trillion govt debt did not start yesterday.
The govt now spends over £1.3 trillion/annum. Yes, a few hundred million, perhaps even a few billion, might be due to benefit cheats, illegal economic migrants faking asylum status and even those exploiting the SEND system to get a free taxi. But that doesn’t explain the other £1.29 trillion?
The problem is the fundamental issue that all developed countries are struggling with: demographics. Like an iceberg, you can only see the small piece on the surface, but underneath there is a massive block of ice about to sink you.
The error was made many decades ago and it was never politically feasible to correct it. There was a mismatch between what people were willing to pay in tax and what they expected in retirement: in terms of pensions, medication/treatments and social care. The system assumed a small number of old and infirm. Instead, we now have a large (and rapidly ballooning) number. The system assumed productivity gains that would generate growth to pay for the ballooning liability. Instead, productivity fell just as we needed it most. We made incorrect assumptions from the moment we set up the welfare system. You pay a price for getting it wrong.
We compound this error, however, by asking the current generation to pay for the errors of previous generations. With 1 in 4 retirees now millionaires, we get angry because a young family, with SEND children, both of whom work full time, get a free taxi to a school that is far too far away. We don’t get angry when the 80-year old millionaire is on their fourth NHS hip/knee/heart operation with a total cost running into six figures.
If anyone should be angry it should be the SEND children. Their parents and grandparents totally f**ked it up. They should apologize.
@Curlew Try this: https://archive.ph/0FeP8
@TI, @DH
But serious question – if you want Britain to be in serial decline because it’s paying more than rest of world for energy, and sit around crying about leaving the EU – who are you going to vote for ? The ‘grown ups’ you were waiting for has gotten common sense ! (On Net Zero at least)
Off topic commentary devalues Monevator. Time to introduce a yellow card/red card system perhaps.
Re: SAD. I wish you well. My orange branded budget return flight to Morocco booked a month in advance was £45 for a trip early Feb. 5 nights @ 4* hotel is still cheap. 25C everyday and I was very happy every day. Airlines branded in different colours also offer great value.
Re: Taxes/Who pays/Getting Poorer etc. – See any “hollowed out middle class” conversations since about 1980’s. The answer is in there.
Re: World Gone Mad sentiments/60+% US allocations etc – I have just majorly overhauled my ISA/SIPPS for some diversified flight to safety but then again Goldman still seems to back US exceptionalism. At least in public.
https://privatewealth.goldmansachs.com/outlook/2025-isg-outlook.pdf
@TI: surely you could get to the south of France (using Eurostar) for a while for some extra anti-SAD daylight and warmth? For example today Nice is 9 degrees warmer than London and has 30 more minutes of daylight. My SAD tends to occur in November so that’s when I try to leave these shores in search of extra daylight for 3 weeks or so. When still working I couldn’t go away for weeks at that time of year, but found that starting daily use of an SAD lamp in mid-September helped once the dreaded November arrived.
@CF – mmm. Seductive isn’t it. We just need to ask those with the broadest shoulders (have you heard that one before?) to bear a little more. Those who earn more should pay more. Except:
https://ifs.org.uk/publications/governments-record-tax-2010-24
“In fact, remarkably, despite the overall tax burden reaching historical highs, income tax and employee NICs now take a smaller fraction of the earnings of a single full-time median earner with no children than at any time for almost 50 years” source IFS (link above).
I am not really suggesting we raise taxation on the masses. Why? – Because they are taxed indirectly much higher than before through very high accommodation prices.
Just read the executive summary – my view is that we are reaching the outer limits (not the xfiles 🙂 ) on what we can sustainable tax people. It is possible we can raise tax on wealth (we should obviously raise inheritance tax for example) but there will clearly be some negative fall out that may limit what can be raised.
And it won’t solve the problem – it’s too big. Only economic growth can. Which is a bit of a problem when the latest economic figures show the economy actually shrunk again once the effects of migration were taken into account. GDP per capita fell by 0.1%. Individually we are getting poorer year on year.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/gdpfirstquarterlyestimateuk/octobertodecember2024
If people are feeling a bit nervous well…..this week in European history has the potential to be amongst the most important since the end of the second world.
Ultimately, I’m just a keyboard warrior, albeit one whose reasonably well read and my opinion is the UK is more vulnerable now than at any time since the Napoleonic wars (1940 might say hold my beer).
We no longer have any empire to rely on, the coffers are empty, we have sold a large number of our most productive assets to overseas operators and the population is aging rapidly. The portion of the workforce over 50 by 2030 will be >47%. Just think about what that means for growth to sustain ourselves.
We are suddenly faced with a need to increase defence spending to potentially 5% of GDP. That would be an annual increase of 76 billion pounds based on 2024. It’s not achievable unless we slash welfare spending.
So the reason you may feel uncomfortable is for the next few decades we are not going to have much influence on world events. We are going to be price takers not setters. That’s broadly been the case since Suez but the last few weeks had exposed the lie of the special relationship. There is no special relationship. America doesn’t have friends, it has interests (not my words but Henry Kissinger’s).
It is nuts that the UK is considering any peace keeping force in Ukraine. We cannot provide the necessary protections our soldiers would deserve. We should be far more ruthless in our decision making, use any increased spending on tech, the Airforce and the Navy and ensure this Island and our trade routes are sufficiently protected.
We need to be far more mercantile. How about saying to the EU – we’ll contribute some of our increased defence spending to a pan-european force – in return we want single market access.
Some relevance here to FIRE. Things have the potentially to get quite nasty over the next few decades. The UK looks friendless today. Don’t rely on the state to bail you out – it’s not going to happen. I’m not talking about a bug out plan – I’m talking about increasing your independence where you can. Financial independence plays a major part. US equities are a key hedge here – if they are going stamp all over everyone over the next decade I’d rather own their capital and potentially benefit from their behaviour than not.
@BBlimp #38: energy is the biggy. We should have done a France and gone all in on nuclear in the 1970s. Three Mile Island (no one died), Chernobyl (several dozen of cleanup volunteers who went into the actual reactor hall died, contrary to the extravagant predictions at the time and since), Fukushima (no deaths from radiation, many attributable to panicked and unnecessary evacuation) has led to a paranoia about radiation from nuclear power. To provide a decent amount of reliable electricity (US levels) to all humans on a fully decarbonised planet we will need something like 10,000 to 25,000 large nuclear plants (3-4 GW each) in the not too distant future, depending upon the future energy mix (for a 100 TW total globally, versus about 18 TW of total energy production from all sources now). Based on the past performance, a Three Mile Island or larger release once every four thousand reactor-years, if nuclear power is truly successful, we could then expect roughly 3 to 6 sizable releases every year. The good news is that our oxygen based metabolism damages our DNA at more than 25,000 times the rate of average background radiation and we cope just fine. The Linear No Threshold model of radiation damage is demonstrably wrong. As sunlight is free and going to waste if we don’t tap it (likewise for wind, tidal, geothermal, and hydroelectric) we might as well use all those to the max too. Unlike for fossil fuels, they’re not a scarce and increasingly hard and expensive to extract (and polluting) resource. I’m a Remainer for sure, but no NIMBY as you perhaps imagine. With a few potentially calamitous no way back from disaster possibilities around synthetic biology aside, I’m pretty much a card carrying effective techno accelerationist.
Wow. The comments this weekend… This is definitely not my echo chamber!
Elton #29 and Ermine #33, thanks for the shining lights in the darkness.
@TI, thanks for the links, as ever. I hope you have a folder of grateful Monevator readers comments to help you through times like this.
Chin up and put your best foot forward.
@159F I enjoyed Goldman’s report. It sez (p76ff)
The market’s spirited climb has carried valuations into thinner air. About 60% of last year’s price return came from P/E expansion rather than from earnings growth.
Hmm, where have we seen this movie before? Runup to y2k?
History also reminds us that what constitutes an unsustainably high level of valuations is a moving target. Over the last few decades, valuations have
shifted structurally higher
Yup. This time it’s different/it’s all different now One of the reasons it’s all different is
Additionally, investors have developed greater faith in policymakers’ ability to manage shocks and sustain growth, reinforced by the effectiveness of automatic stabilizers, direct fiscal transfers and unconventional monetary policy during the global financial crisis of 2008 and the pandemic in 2020.
Wow. I dunno what they’re drinking at GS but I’m sure it ain’t legal. And have you seen the current policymaker, Mr Goldman Sachs?
It would be so much easier to save themselves 106 pages and just open with
Chase momentum. It works. Until it doesn’t every once in a blue moon, and then you’re stuffed, but then we’ll short y’all.
SAD – I second the option of lamps. Well, I personally don’t because I am a creature of the night, but Mrs Ermine does, even if it does seem she is looking into the light of a thousand suns. Unlike in chickens it seems there are non-visual light receptors in human eyes
@ermine #43: “we’ll short y’all”: Never short a bull market. Ever. Even if it’s a bubble. Especially if it’s a bubble.
@MM (#39)
Thanks but that didn’t work either. Guess it must be a new incompatibility with Linux and its browsers.
UGH, here in Canada the SAD is real! I start taking Vit D in November and won’t stop until April. Nature has dumped (blessed us with?) 40cm of snow on Thursday and today we are getting another 30cm. My kid’s ski teaching job was cancelled today, so you know the snow is bad when Canadians forgo fresh powder due to the driving conditions…
We usually head south in winter for a week or two but since our teens are in the most important high school years we’ve decided to hang back until the youngest is out of HS. On the one hand: yay for saving money! On the other hand: ugh, winter is such a slog. I would be able to manage a lot better if the state of the world hadn’t gone topsy-turvy in the past month-ish. It’s just compounded the misery, if I am honest.
I am obsessed with canal boats! I have been watching Kris Atomic’s channel on YT and I used to follow an instagram account (I deleted IG) that posted historical narrowboat pictures. I definitely could not live on one but it doesn’t keep me from dreaming about them! Here, it’s impossible to live on a boat due to the ice (although, some people on the west coast live on houseboats with propellers that move the water around the boat so it doesn’t freeze). Canal boat vlogs are a delight to watch and it keeps me from doomscrolling the horrors so win/win there.
@ZX #38: but what’s the solution right now?
Apply to become the 51st US state?
Form CANZUK, with Ottawa, Canberra and Auckland sharing sovereignty with Westminster?
It’s not so crazy as a way out. In June 1940 we offered De Gaulle a Franco-British Union state with a British King and PM but with a French President.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1940-10-16/debates/df2035a9-d123-4a5d-8f63-e27920ab4771/FrenchRepublic(ProposedUnionWithGreatBritain)
Maybe the time has come to face the fact that the game is up and we’re just not economically viable on our own. The UK ex London now ranks below every single US state including even Mississippi.
We’re a third rate power. Let’s throw our lot in with someone else be it the EU, the US, the former Dominions or even the Belt and Road initiative. Someone, anyone frankly, who can provide for us.
@49 – if only we could become a US state I’d personally be delighted. If Greenland doesn’t fancy it, I do. Not that I imagine much of the UK population would vote for it.
Jim #1 – what an incredibly ignorant and stupid comment about SEND.
There are a few people on here I would mute in a heartbeat if it were possible
All very depressing, but looking on the bright side and to plagiarise Mel Brooks it’s :-
Springtime for U.S. and Donald T
Winter for woke-land and France…….
…..Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Reform party.
@snowcat, #52
I was curious as to where the figure comes from, but I found it here https://www.countycouncilsnetwork.org.uk/councils-call-for-reform-of-send-school-transport-services-as-costs-double-for-local-authorities-in-county-areas-over-the-last-five-years .
Are you saying that site is inaccurate? Costs are reported as having doubled between 2019 and 2024, which is far above the rate of inflation or increase in public sector resource in general, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable as we are in a time of straightened finances to at least wonder what has changed so rapidly.
@ZX:
Re: “With 1 in 4 retirees now millionaires, …”
Looks a bit DT to me. According to the Office for National Statistics, 27% of over 65s in Great Britain live in a household that has a total wealth of £1 million or more, but that doesn’t, of course, mean 27% of individual pensioners are personally worth this amount. And IIRC most of it is in the form of house prices and pension funds.
Having said that, agree that [eventually] we will all “pay a price for getting it wrong”.
Lot of pessimism here -can’t say I feel it but everything is personal of course
Reality was always going to come down the line at some point
A country that prioritises aims that seem to be unrealistic,too difficult,unaffordable etc will hit the buffers hard at some point
At the same time the barbarians are always at the gate waiting for our signs of weakness ie Putin etc
Perhaps and only perhaps the Americans have woken up to this scenario and the Europeans are now scrambling to keep up
The good times of apparently unlimited government spending are ending but this is not a new situation
I am sure we will all find away through-as we have done before-many times
Living interesting times
xxd09
I lived in Antarctica for two years continuously at our furthest southern base. You don’t see the Sun for about three months of the year. It’s even more at the South Pole. There are thousands of people further north right now not seeing the Sun for months. There are hundreds of people on submarines right now on multi-month shifts. Get a grip.
It never ceases to amaze me that otherwise very intelligent people (especially city-dwellers) appear to overlook at least two glaringly obvious things when it comes to mental health. 1) Because there is so much competing media today compared to the past, there is only one way to compete for attention to get your money or time. I’ll give you a clue. It is not by posting feel-good articles; you know, like the one that always used to pop up at the end of the BBC 6 o’clock news. And, ironically named, the positive feedback effects of such negativity are significant. No matter how clever you think you are, negativity around you will bring down all but the most hardened sociopath/narcassist. We are, mostly, social creatures.
2) Look at the comments above from those with positive outlooks. Notice anything in common? I’ll give you another hint: “nature”. And yet how much time and money have you invested in such conservation efforts to ensure local species diversity? Back to where I was once lucky enough to live in Antarctica, you would be unlikely to be using your second hand to count the number of species of life you would see in a whole year. Most people are clueless about the important things in their environment. Take a look around you. A really good look.
@DH. Let’s not be too gloomy. We are not a third rate power. We have fallen behind our many of our peers in the last couple of decades. Go back to before 2008, however, and the UK’s position would have looked very different.
We’re vulnerable because the UK is all about trade/services flow and the velocity of money. We’re procyclically aligned with globalization but deglobalization has been happening since 2012/13. We compounded that error with Brexit. Trying to become Global Britain just as everyone else starts moving toward regional has to be one of the most poorly timed trades ever.
Nonetheless, in most ways, we are in exactly the same place as every other developed country with a similar set of problems. It’s not as though the US, Canada, Australia and Europe don’t have the same issues. Some are better off. Some are not.
We’ve identified the basic solution: growth. We know how to do that. Infrastructure, investment, training, automation, identify competitive advantages. We just don’t have the pain threshold to implement what’s needed and it’s a trade that will take decades to play out.
Unfortunately, the populations’ expectations are totally misaligned with reality and, so politically nobody wants to take the stop-loss. Labour is paying the public sector more with no productivity targets? Even Blair didn’t do that. The right blames the ‘Other’. It’s benefit cheats, migrants, SEND children, whatever. All rounding errors but it’s plays well to a population that is addicted to simple ‘common sense’ solutions to very complex problems and refuses to look in the mirror and see the big problem.
@Alcam. Fair point. It’s households not individuals. Though it doesn’t matter whether it’s property or pensions or cash. All assets. My point is we’re still fiddling while Rome burns. It’s just so easy to blame our position on someone else, even though the actual costs are negligible while missing the massive bloody elephants in the room. I really wonder sometimes if people get that a billion just isn’t that much anymore. Perhaps we should start expressing govt spending in terms of £/headcount. Or how many lattes/year!
@Northern Lad
“Not that I imagine much of the UK population would vote for it.”
You have it exactly spot on. Most of us sane can’t stand the tacky theme park/burger joint/cheap naff diner sort of place.
Full of nutters, self interested loud mouth narcissists, gun toting serial killers, red necks and worse or as they would term them “total jerks.” Believe me there is no “special relationship” whether from their side or ours. Would rather live in Putin’s Russia than that “God forsaken sh*thole.”
@ZX:
Re: “My point is we’re still fiddling while Rome burns.”
I recall reading about the demographics issue as far back as the late 80’s/early 90’s. For a variety of reasons, I had more time (and possibly more curiosity then) and devoured textbooks, every Economist, etc from cover to cover. That we have somehow effectively ignored the issue for getting on for forty years is frankly astonishing – but, it does beg the Q when will the “penny” drop (pun intended)?
@SF (#43):
Re “… this week in European history has the potential to be amongst the most important since the end of the second world.”
You could be correct however, I hope you are wrong!
@BBlimp — I don’t believe Britain is in serial decline because it’s paying more for energy than the rest of the world, so I reject your premise.
The net zero stuff is just an opportunistic pivot you guys have made after the abject failure/damage of Brexit, and the reshaping of the European energy stack after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Energy is extremely important. But we have the outline of the tools we need: renewable, nuclear, gas for the transition, better energy efficiency etc.
Western knowledge economies have been becoming ever less dependent on energy per unit of GDP for many decades. Even with the greater importance of data centres of late, I think that continues to hold, at least absent AGI (in which case all bets are off and I assure you it’s not the typical Reform voter who will inherit the world).
For a mature developed economy like the UK to grow, we need steady accumulation of marginal gains… a better-trained workforce, investments in infrastructure, (at the least) high-skilled immigration, really good trade networks, stable politics and macroeconomics.
All boring stuff that doesn’t get anyone outraged reading the Daily Mail.
Oh and should-be-obviously, given the low quantum of developed world growth, we should not take 0.25-0.5% off the likely 1.5% to 2% a year GDP growth for a couple of decades just to satisfy the Little Britain fantasies of a faction of day dreamers, nationalists, and worse, as we did since 2016.
(Incidentally, do you ever pause for a moment and wonder why the stuff the likes of Reform are into is all basically rabble-rousing whistle blowing, rather than unpopular or difficult block-and-tackle bureaucratic grunt work? Does that not seem strange to you? Could you perhaps be…the baddies?)
Net Zero wouldn’t be so bad if all countries were moving towards it together (e.g. via a global carbon tax or even just global binding national targets).
Aggregate it’d set everyone’s growth back by a few years, but it wouldn’t be a competitive devaluation versus the environment.
Let’s be clear, the motivations for net zero haven’t gone away. (Not least because the motivations are not ‘create a communist utopia’ as per Reform’s wet dreams).
Climate heating continues. Weather events continue to become more extreme. I detail these every week in the links.
There’s been no incredible scientific breakthrough from Trump supporters or Richard Tice working in his garage at the weekend. The scientific consensus is still overwhelmingly (like to the tune of very near-100%) that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet.
And very few climate scientists think this will end well for human beings.
Reform/Leave types act like those of us who are concerned about this can’t use a calculator.
That we can’t see that burning a cheaper fossil fuel delivers more energy per £ compared to a longer-term investment in renewables, nuclear, or insulation.
Newsflash, the smart people are over on this side of the room!
Climate scientists modelling chaotic weather systems over multi-decade horizons undergoing the fastest heating event in the history of the earth are quite capable of reading their Ovo energy bills.
On the other hand, people who thought that Brexit would somehow be economically advantageous for the UK economy should show a little more humility about basic maths let alone climate science. Or at least when the results come in and five years after Brexit we’re all £1,750 a year poorer and endlessly debating how to further slice up the dwindling cake, maybe look up the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Let me tell you what is going on, in case one day you have some kind of epiphany and wonder why you didn’t realise it sooner.
There’s no amazing scientific recalibration going on. There is no hoax.
Populists have just pushed at a door and found — for a variety of reasons, some very understandable and some lamentable — that the door has some give in it and they can get back into the room with their anti-expert rhetoric / rubbish.
And it’s the misfortune of the rest of us to be living through such an age, and for those that come after us to have to suffer the consequences.
@Al Cam,
Very interesting comment re “27% of pensioner households are millionaires” which demonstrates the need to scrutinise the data behind eye-catching headlines. From https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/articles/estimatingdefinedbenefitpensionwealthingreatbritain/december2024:-
“Applying the updated model to published data for total private pension wealth in Great Britain financial year ending (FYE) 2018 to 2020 (Round 7) reduces our estimate of median total pension wealth by 16% from £57,000 to £48,000, and mean total pension wealth by 34% from £185,000 to £123,100.”
A few observations about the financing the cost of the welfare state follow.
The cost of the State Pension in 2023/2024 was expected to be over £125 billion (Statista). The cost of disability benefits in 2023 was around £43 billion.
I’m a higher-rate pensioner tax payer living in Scotland so the measures which I favour would adversely affect me.
a) Combine income tax and NI which would, as well as raising revenue, would start to address inter-generational unfairness. There would need to be some adjustment to tax thresholds and income tax bands – 28% is far too high a level for the basic rate.
Pensioners make far greater use of the NHS than those in employment and don’t have to bear costs such as commuting and formal clothes.
b) All currently untaxed benefits should be increased but made taxable; it’s absurd to be paying disability benefits to millionaires. This and the above change would also make work more attractive for people who are currently economically inactive.
c) According to HMRC the tax gap (difference between tax collected and what theoretically should have been collected) in 2022/23 was £39.8 billion. This includes avoidance (£1.8 billion), evasion (£5.5 billion), the hidden economy and tax write-offs after insolvency. I do not understand why HMRC does not increase the effort to reduce the tax gap on a year on year basis until diminishing returns kick in.
d) Remove the 2.5% element of the triple lock. I’m unable to find how the ‘increase in earnings ‘ element is calculated. I see some references to ‘total earnings growth’ which, if correct, would be skewed by the greater percentage earnings increase of high earners. A better metric would be median earnings.
End of rant.
@all — RE: the diversity of views, whether I should be deleting more posters etc, obviously I get the frustration.
I get even more emails from silent readers wondering why I don’t moderate away the views of people such as @BBlimp.
Especially as so far he is batting 1/100 on getting anything right in his eight years of posting here. (He did predict immigration wouldn’t fall. But I guess he didn’t share this with his fellow Leave supporters ahead of the Referendum…)
Well the answer is that I do delete the odd comment, but usually only if they are overtly racist, sexist, attacking another poster, generally illiterate or obviously provocative for the sake of it.
Don’t get me wrong, if the balance of comments started to tilt towards ‘that’ faction I’d delete it all rather than enable them to have another platform to spout their nonsense.
But my feeling is that whenever we have these political free-for-alls (which certainly comprise less than 10% of Weekend Reading threads) they are serving a useful function of showing (a) what that ‘other side’ is thinking and (b) refuting it (admittedly about as challenging as beating a one-legged man in an arse-kicking competition).
I’m ever mindful of the shock of the Brexit Referendum result in 2016, and hence whilst I find their commentary mostly as fact-free and tedious as most of the rest of you, I do hope it serves as some kind of inoculation, if only just for me.
For context I deleted two comments this week. Both were just antagonistic semi-literate rubbish attacking the ‘woke brigade’ and restating that Brexit won, in case any of us had somehow forgotten that unfortunate fact. They brought nothing to the table.
The ‘SEND’ stuff prompted earlier in the thread I knew nothing about, and I can see it may have upset some readers, particularly if they know of kids in such a situation.
But as best I can tell it was posted in good faith, and personally I’ve found the various readers who took the time (thanks) to set the record straight have helped bring me up-to-speed, so I can’t say I regret not deleting it.
Again if I thought this stuff comprised a majority of comments, I would moderate more heavily. But (thanks to you all who do comment with sensible stuff) it really doesn’t.
It just stands out among the sea of articulate evidence-rich commentary, and hence is more jarring for it, I feel.
Cheers!
I for one enjoy the mixed set of comments. Refreshing from the “echo chamber” content one usually reads in a comment section.
Not sure I have anything to constructively offer on the seasonal depression and negative news content then to reiterate that fresh air, countryside, and perhaps turning off the smart phones would help (maybe).
An obvious but sometimes neglected point the “No to Net Zero” brigade avoid: even if anthropogenic global warming were not real (it is) or not serious (it is) then unless we move from fossil fuels we will run out. It is definitionally a finite resource. Even if we frack, shale oil, tar sands and hit up every inaccessible deposit the amount of hydrocarbons economically viable to extract in terms of energy used to energy gained will not last humanity more than at the very most a few hundred to a few thousand years at current rates of use (depending on the resource in question, and how exploitable likely future discoveries of oil/coal/gas are). If we want a resource that will last millions of years we need fast breeder fission with both thorium and uranium, fusion and solar (wind etc also helps on the margins). At the moment, relying on fossil fuels is like driving a car fast down the motorway on the emergency red part of the fuel gauge with no petrol stations ahead. It takes 200 million years for forests to turn into coal and millions for new natural gas and oil deposits to form. We can’t wait till new reserves are produced. Ergo whatever you think about climate change we need to switch to effectively limitless solar and nuclear resources sooner rather than later.
@SJ — Thanks for the nice words about the site, and I note your comments about the political stuff, which are very reasonable.
There’s lots of data about violent crime having reduced, both in London and the UK — and yes, few people feel it that way:
https://theconversation.com/most-crime-has-fallen-by-90-in-30-years-so-why-does-the-public-think-its-increased-228797
Googling around will provide London stuff. Note that lots of reporting and recording is actually *up* over this period (especially from women and minorities).
Don’t know how old you are, but if I’m paying attention on a Saturday night in London, it’s massively safer. You essentially just don’t see lairy gangs of lads barging into others and starting stuff etc, unless you go looking for it, now. This was routine in mainstream pubs/clubs in the 1990s (even if those places had offsetting other benefits).
Some of this perception may also be that I’ve left the demographic for youthful male posturing violence. I’m essentially invisible to most of them now, I suppose! 😉
But anyway, the statistics tell the story too.
Where I do personally feel less safe is the ‘lone wandering druggie/psycho’ factor. It feels like this is a bigger risk, perhaps because the streets are so much quieter than in those days, but probably it’s no more risky than it was and I/we just have a greater awareness of it now due to the media/Internet.
p.s. Thanks all for the further thoughts on SAD. I do agree also about nature, and it’s invariably restorative.
Just hard in this country/in London to regular get out in it!
I think I could take the inclement interminable grey skies and drizzle better if I lived by the sea in the South-West, say, and did daily coastal walks by the sea. But it’s hard to get excited about traveling out of town for an hour just to stand in muddy grey fields surrounded by dead-looking trees for four months of every year.
(Again, I do appreciate the beauty of a woods without its leaves! 🙂 It just gets a bit much…)
@GOP (#63):
FYI:
The average earnings figure uses the measure for the whole economy, seasonally adjusted, taken from May to July, and compared with the same three months a year earlier.
It is the figure for total pay (which includes bonuses) and waits for the revised estimate which is published a month after the provisional figure.
That final figure is officially the statistic KAC3 for May to July (revised). It is also published mid-October.
@GOP (#63):
This may also be of some interest: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/totalwealthingreatbritain/april2020tomarch2022 which was published just over three weeks ago.
@TI – I note you didn’t answer the question – now the ‘grown ups’ have abandoned the green crap, who do whiny remoaner net zero types (remaining monevator readers after you drove 52pc of your audience away) vote for ?
I can only assume you are getting the dawning realisation that people just aren’t interested in this nonsense anymore and you’re left with fringe parties to vote for.
My predictions aren’t wrong – they just haven’t occurred yet. You’re in a bbc/ guardian/ the rest is politics echo chamber so you can’t see anything about the world around you – put it this way, before the US election you thought Harris would win because the lovey grown up Rory Stewart was giving you his analysis and he’s the right sort of chap. A remainer. A net zeroer. A ‘grown up’. Trump increased his vote in every county in America !
My point is – all the reforms taking place there will come here, and shouting/ screaming about climate change denial or ‘no debate’ isn’t going to stop it.
I’m young enough I can wait for us to have another 1979 moment.
For Bblimp, I guess…
45 years ago, as a software engineer, I did a contract in Dublin. First time I’d worked abroad. On weekends, I’d drive off and explore the countryside. One day, deep in the interior, I came across a huge machine, something like a combine harvester, in what looked like a vast ploughed field. Transpired it was a machine owned by Bord na Mona, the national energy company of Ireland, and it was, basically, strip mining peat. I’d only ever come across peat in Scotland, in a scenario of crofters, or villagers.., digging a few slabs, and drying them out for home use. They’d smell lovely. I’d never imagined that peat was mined on an industrial scale. It somehow seemed wrong to me. I returned to my car, a huge American Plymouth, and drive off. Yes, a slight lack of self-awareness there.
Three or four years later, working in S E Asia, some colleagues and I went rafting down a jungle river. Half a dozen JCB inner tubes, secured by frameworks of cane, to make a couple of rafts. . Several miles of rapids, then as the river widened out, it slowed down. As we drifted along, we entered an area that had recently been logged. Smoke and silence, all jungle life gone, dead or fled.
For someone who worked in computer systems, I’m not great at data analysis. I usually have to experience something directly to have an opinion on a subject.The two events above were my trigger, years later, to start realizing that what I did in my daily life does make a difference to the planet I live on. So, in the context of now, I almost exclusively invest, month by month, in index tracker funds, of the ESG/SRI/Sustainable variety. As for the tech bros, Trump ”… drill bay drill..”…, I’ve gradually eased my way out of the fund scenarios where tech bro stocks represent upwards of 9% + as the top holdings. I’ve moved into ESG/SRI/Sustainable global trackers where no one stock occupies more than about 6% of the fund.
Must say, though, I feel quite cheered to note the slide in sales of Tesla cars, a result perhaps, of the Musk effect, competition, and a realization by buyers that they prefer something that doesn’t look like Mr Blobby, and doesn’t feel like they’re driving an Ipad. In the space of 2 weeks recently, on 2 separate occasions, I passed a Tesla on a breakdown truck. When was the last time you saw a Toyota or Honda at the side of the road, with the bonnet up ?
@TI. I live in the countryside and when I go into a city it is immediately clear how pasty faced the locals are. Combination of indoor habitat and air pollution. Take a vitamin d supplement every day !
I reckon you can tell a lot about a country just by looking at the quantity of litter. The UK is dreadful for this.
@ TI 68 > Just hard in this country/in London to regular get out in it!
Nah, gerraway London Greenground map
They even seem to allow birds into the city, though the call of the last cockney sparrer rang out decades ago and you don’t get the starling flocks over Charing Cross that you used to.
JFDI 😉
@Delta Hedge #50
I lived and worked in Auckland for a while back in the day, and it isn’t the seat of government in New Zealand. For the record, that distinction belongs to Wellington.
In the context of this weekend’s “state of the nation” discussion in many of the posts above, I went to NZ to evaluate whether or not to emigrate there and I couldn’t wait to get back to the UK. I have no wish to be unkind but I think of it as Dull Zealand.
I have looked at Oz in the same vein and with the same outcome, for me Oikstralia holds no charm.
Haha 🙂 Oops. Yeah. Must say never heard Wellington come up in any news ever, although Canberra in Oz and the Hague in the Netherlands don’t exactly sport stellar profiles either.
Take it then that the Aussies and the Kiwis wouldn’t be up for a union with Canada and the old mother country of Blighty??
Stronger together and all that.
“the slide in sales of Tesla cars”
Yup: first one virtue-signals by buying an EV; then one virtue-signals by replacing one’s Muskmobile. How conspicuously virtuous are the Virtuous.
@dearieme #77
Is one virtue signalling if buying/not buying based on ethical concerns? IDGAF what others think of what I buy, but I will buy products that are better for the environment where I can, and I won’t buy products where the owner supports fascism.
@Seeking Fire #43: “peace keeping force in Ukraine”: there is of course the moral case to consider here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/peace-or-partition
Do we really want to be party to, or acquiescent in, another Munich 1938?
@DH more than happy to acquiesce in another Munich. Having fought in a war for this country based on a pack of lies I ain’t too keen on sending a load of lads off to patrol in some warzone.
The cost effective alternative to either going along with a dirty deal between the Trump regime and the Russian aggressor (made behind the victim Ukraine’s back) or to hiking defense spending to what would be now unaffordable levels is for European NATO members to instead maintain the current levels of their domestic defence spending but to continue their support for Ukraine by slightly less than doubling the aid which they provide in order to make up for the missing American contribution. Trump, Russia and the Saudis can then sign anything which they want to regarding a so called peace or ceasefire deal, but Ukraine will fight on regardless and in doing so continue to humiliate Putin, cripple the Russian war machine, and do us all a favour in the process. There’s no way in any event that we can find an extra £76 bn p.a. for general defence spending.
@The Investor
Thanks for the link. I think my issue is that I never paid attention to the news in the past and now that I do, I see all the bad stuff and it affects my perception in the streets.
I had a similar situation in Bali in 2017. The volcano was expected to erupt. Even when the ground shook every other day, I wasn’t concerned and barely even thought of it. Then I started checking the news and got myself in a right paranoid panic. I checked for updates almost every hour. Ultimately, I was gone by the time it went, but even taking off in the plane, I was worried it would go off. The ash isn’t friendly to aircraft engines…
Anyway, I’ve signed up to Ground News (no affiliation) so I can get a more balanced view of things and would do well to consume less political commentary on Youtube and X.
Regardless of political leanings, I think the vast majority of us want a safe, fair, functioning place to live, with preferably 7%+ average return on our investments. Fingers crossed we get it / don’t lose it.
@BBlimp – Obviously I would have preferred Harris to win, but I didn’t think she *would*. You’ve made that up.
Happy to concede I’d hoped the American people wouldn’t vote for a convicted criminal who instigated a massed insurrection into one of their most sacred buildings, but we’re all having to recalibrate on the ‘cognitive dissonance’ (to put it kindly) of the populists, both in the US and closer to home.
On that note, all parties are dialling back net zero pledges because a sizeable chunk of the voter-ship has proven repeatedly that it doesn’t care about (a) facts (b) outcomes.
It’s hard to run a democracy given this kind of voter insensibility, but it’s the best system we have.
Hence parties are having to recalibrate to try to peel off sufficient reasonable voters from the Reform/Maga blocks to try to keep the grown-ups, as you rightly call them, in charge.
Regarding the next election, I will do what I always do, which is assess all the parties and what they are offering, and ideally pick my favourite but most likely pick the least worst.
This is normal in a democracy. It is only with messages posted on the side of a bus that you get everything you wanted.
Re: forecasts post the Referendum, I predicted *many* years of political tumult, economic stagnation, disillusioned voters, lower immigration, and a weakening of the European defence pact if not eventually, outright war in Europe (highlighting the post-WW2 consensus and the Russian threat, for which I was ridiculed by Leave voters).
Leave voters, including in some cases yourself, predicted economic prosperity, superior and more accountable politics following the ‘settlement’ of the European issue, and a collapse of the EU as other countries followed the shining British example and exited, but of course no greater security threat.
In the years followed we had political tumult, voter disillusionment, economic stagnation, war on the fringes of Europe, EU solidarity re: that war, and zero countries following Britain’s lead — oh but greater immigration, which is darkly ironic.
So I got one thing wrong (immigration) and everything else broadly in-line, whereas you got one thing right (immigration), by accident (you predicted Singapore-on-Thames).
Other readers can assess this record as they see fit.
But I’d suggest you get a new hobby before you do any more harm to yourself and our wallets. If not worse.
@SJ — You’re welcome and that’s an interesting anecdote re: the volcano in Bali 🙂 I believe this is the psychological bias that economists call the ‘availability heuristic’ at work.
@ermine — Thanks for that green map! I know a fair few of them but it’s great to see it all laid out like that.
@Others — Cheers for all the more useful/thoughtful comments, whether about politics or the weather. Unfortunately I’ve spent too much time talking to the wrong person, as so often when we go down this road, but I much more appreciate all the intelligent and sensible things shared on this thread. Cheers! 🙂
@BBlimp (#71)
Leaving aside the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and the effects will intensify with time, energy security is also important. Had schemes for additional insulation (UK housing stock is particularly bad in this respect) and sources of renewables (which have levelised costs per MWh similar to or less than conventional sources of power generation) been installed 10 years ago, the price shock following from Putin’s war would have been much less significant. One reason for installing renewables or reducing energy demand now is that as global installation ramps up at some stage there will be a shortage (and prices will go up). It is almost certain that simultaneously fossil fuels will go up in price too (perhaps time for a long-term investment in commodities!).
@SJ #82
I normally limit my news intake to the broadly based BBC TV Text service, which is admirably succinct and factual and usually completely up to date, plus the regular news bulletins on Classic FM.
I prefer BBC FOUR for the text service because there are ordinarily no minor on-screen programme distractions before 7pm.
Wherever possible, I eschew other people’s opinions.
Re BBlimp: The only way I think Brexit and Trump 2.0 makes sense rationally is if the aim is chaos and uncertainty in order to try to force the hand of monetary policy, get lower rates and an injection of liquidity into markets – all to try and cause asset prices to rise steeply (as after 2009 and 2020), whilst at the same time weakening the real economy in order to put pressure on employment and wages (reducing the inflation risk to capital, especially from wage inflation). That’s probably a tad too Machiavellian for the real world.