A theory I’d love someone clever to look into.

I suspect median wages, in real terms, broadly track mortgage interest rates, which we know broadly follow BoE rates.

This would need to be so for home ownership to be possible, which broadly it has been for recent decades. In historic terms BoE & mortgage rates have been exceptionally low over the past decade+, falling gradually over the past couple of decades. Just a year or so back a typical two year fixed rate was 1.2%!!

Today it’s 4-5 times that figure.

It took 15 years for typical

There must be some correlation between mortgage repayments & typical earnings.

Get your calculator out… Average wage ~£32k, £2k pcm take home

Typical monthly mortgage repayments currently ~£600 per £100k borrowed.

Presuming no more than 1/3 of income to be spent on housing, that means around £110k mortgage per borrower.

Nurses will each decide for themselves what is the least they can afford for them to stay in their job.

If they conclude they can’t afford to continue making a loss, one of two things will happen.

Either they will quit nursing for better paid employment (of which there’s Plenty).

Or they’ll quit & return to exactly the same role as an agency nurse, costing the govt who say they can’t afford nurses twice as much (if not more) than if they’d simply engaged with nurses demands in the first place.

So we’ve left the world’s 2nd largest economy in order to strike free trade deals with global economies that will ultimately leave us in a much better position. Except the USA, the world’s largest economy, has made it very clear they’re not interested. Even if they were, they’re so much larger than our economy, the negotiations would consist of little more than them faxing T’s & C’s with a note saying “sign this”.

Tories saying they’re going to replace GDPR?

Firstly, they can’t, it’s not their’s to replace.

Secondly, any entity wishing to do business with any EU entity must abide by/comply with GDPR. That’s just the law, like it or not. Introducing BDPP, Tory version of GDPR, merely means any EU entity wishing to do business with UK will now have to comply with two sets of legislation. By definition, this isn’t removing red tape, it’s introducing it. The very fact it will have to run concurrently with EU

The best way to convince Labour of the benefits of #PR is to deliver it at the next GE.

Remember, your vote has no bearing on the national outcome, it only affects your constituency, so voting other than tactically to unseat Tory candidates is a fool’s ideology. Don’t believe me? Look at how many votes greens get & how many seats they have. Voting green, in a constituency where clearly they haven’t a snowball’s chance of winning is a wasted vote (sorry greens).

I urge all those who want, more than anything else, to GTTO, study your

I remain convinced we’re in for an early election, regardless of polls.

Only the most swivel eyed believe we will see substantial growth before the end of this term. Therefore, the Tories best position may be one of economic ambiguity, something the OBR may be about to deliver? I know many people are jumping up & down about polls & huge Labour leads. Take them with a generous pinch of salt & never underestimate Tories.

Labour’s economic credentials certainly aren’t sold to the public, or to business, yet. A December election Luke be called on the back

Just like Columbo, or Sherlock, I have figured it out.

The clues were all there, one just needed to join the dots.

The moment of devilish inspiration began at Her Majesty’s funeral, our protagonist giggling to himself as the conspiracy fermented in his twisted mind. Over the coming days plans were put into place, outcomes conspired with well heeled co-conspirators, yet hidden from almost everyone else.

A few days after the initial idea took hold, the first action was put into play. Everything a nation thought it knew was as expected, but

I criticised Labour when they were becoming a cult of one man, I’m sure as hell going to criticise the Tories now they’re doing the same. If they’re all going to claim that, as a party, they’re useless & can do nothing without the leadership of one, demonstrably flawed man, then that needs to be put on their campaign leaflets!!

That said, I think for every day Johnson stays in office now, that’s another few dozen constituency votes lost. I’ve believed for a while his seat is vulnerable. Furthermore, I believe if Tories were to lose their PM, likely

Looking for insight & opinion on an incident I was party to a couple of days ago that has left me troubled.

I was travelling on a single carriageway A road, 60mph. Ahead I witnessed a young man (early 20’s?) essentially playing chicken with the traffic, walking in & out of the live traffic with no regard to his, or anyone else’s safety. In between, he was observed to be holding his head in his hands & appeared to be in some distress.

I had a passenger with me that, in my opinion, made it unsafe for me to stop (not sure what I could do anyway, not

The law says it’s illegal to reveal someone’s tax status.

Why then is my tax status (PAYE) revealed to my employer’s finance department?

One’s tax status is only revealed when one wants to hide how little tax one pays, relative to the PAYE most of us pay. If I tell you my
income (variable but around £50k), you can quickly calculate my tax liability almost to the penny. I’m not embarrassed either by the tax I pay, or the level of my earnings.

1st world trucker problem. Let me rant about yesterday’s shift to give you a glimpse into a typical day driver’s experience.

Unusually for many operations I actually know 12 hours ahead of time what run I’m on, consequently I know roughly how long I’ll be out for. I knew yesterday would be a 15hr day, so that means 3 meals on the road (I just can’t get up early enough for breakfast before I leave). Breakfast/lunch isn’t a problem, I actually have a kind of brunch, yoghurts, fruit, breakfast biscuits. Simples. For dinner I want a hot meal,

We know it takes about 6 months to go from carnlicenct to earning as an LGV driver, now add in the speed at which DVLA can process tests & the pass rate. Overall we can expect around 800 new drivers per week to join then industry, 6 months after they decide to pursue a new career

Timeline to qualify as an LGV driver:

• Send off for you provisional, this can take 2-3 weeks currently, it used to be quicker.

• Apply for your theory test date, until you have the provisional entitlement on you licence the system won’t let you do this, so it must be done in order. Theory test centres are busy currently so this could take a further 3-4 weeks.

• Sit your theory test & pass first time (well done 😉).

• Book your practical training course same day, maybe another 6 week wait as your training will coincide with your practical

Let’s deal with this stupidity that says because we have more unemployed than vacancies in logistics all the unemployed can fill the vacancies we have. As with any job, you need candidates living in the area of the vacancies. You then need them available for the hours required if the job. For haulage that is 24/7 with shifts up to 15hrs, possibly with unplanned nights out, weekend working & unsociable start/finish times.

Pre-pandemic there were almost 1 million workers on zero hours contracts. In the current climate that figure is likely to be higher. On average they work ~2/3 the hours their fixed hours colleagues. According to the ONS when they assessed this around 1 in 6 of these workers Reported that the previous week they received no work at all. Almost a third of those on zero hours report they want more hours. The average worker on zero hours doesn’t pay income tax & around 50% won’t meet the automatic enrolment figure for a pension. Because their hours

Brexit’s ability to potentially improve the daily lives of people in this country boiled down to them being able to agree an exceptional trade deal with both China & USA. Setting aside the fact that both these nations are economic superpowers & consequently any deal would massively favour them, not us, there’s zero prospect of a deal with China. There’s almost zero prospect of any deal with USA, particularly while these two heads of government remain. In the mean time all the negative consequences of Brexit continue & there’s only so much of

A chancellor whose wife owes the exchequer hundreds of thousands in back taxes. Who is about to scrap a manifesto pledge to pensioners & increase taxes on workers while protecting the rich. A transport Secretary whose incompetence has lead to national food shortages and delays in life saving vaccines. A former health Secretary responsible for possibly the largest waste of money in govt

I have always been firmly against the idea of detaining people without conviction, or indefinitely short of the truly most heinous crimes, however I’m beginning to……Extremist on New Zealand terror watchlist shot dead after supermarket knife rampage - LBC apple.news/Ad4OqnYDITYWDV… change my mind. This individual was known to police & assessed as dangerous. It took just 60seconds for him to be shot dead by police tailing him. In that time he stabbed 6 people. Even if they survive they’ll be traumatised for life, as will many around them, witnesses/family.

When Johnson unveils his solution to social care(?) with its corresponding increase in taxes I hope media ask to see then original plan that didn’t involve a tax rise in direct contradiction to the Tory manifesto. Alternatively Johnson must admit that when he said he had an oven ready plan, it was no such thing because he had no idea how to fund it. There are only three options here, 1. he had no idea how to find it, 2. he always intended to break the pledge about tax rises, or 3. he had an alternative funding method that he has dropped in favour of

Whenever I see a report like this I know somewhere there’s a brexiteer arguing about whether the figures are accurate & that actually the damage isn’t so bad, or that we’ve now recovered. What they seem to conveniently omit from their arguments is that ALL these reports say that

https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1433335989330644993

businesses have been significantly negatively affected. There isn’t a 52:48 split on whether Brexit has been good for British businesses. When, on the rare occasion a news report emerges saying how wonderful Brexit has been for an individual business, you scratch beneath the