In the news

This is a key distinction, rather than pedantry

Long-suffering staffers have had to endure months of vermin-infested kitchen

Quite.

Pedantry would be to point out that the quote begins with "hoist", not "hoisted".

Number 7, is possibly the greatest challenge. Think it will only get worse with technology.

Good charts although #8 is just showing the difference between aggregate and per capita, right? It will be interesting to see how / if any of this reverses as zero interest rates unwind.

Isn't the issue that the money is going to other places such as shareholders rather than wages?

Top 10% wealth is just under 2m of assets

This sounded really high to me, so I looked it up.

Who are these people and how have they got a £1m pension pot but ‘only’ a £500k house and £125k in actual money?

Is it because they’re old? How does it work?

the aviation industry only contributes 2% to global emissions overall

Some airlines claim to be on track to lower their CO2 emissons by 50%. Meaning they could get down to 1% in theory. Interesting.

Because not everyone lives in the south east?

And France are just about to ban domestic flights where a high speed rail connection exists which is a sensible approach

Defined benefit scheme? Requires a massive pension pot.

Civil servants innit.

This should be EU wide policy.

Frequent share buybacks.
Forcing the value of shares to go up, thus increasing the value of executives shares.

The average UK house price is £300k tho, so £500k isn’t top 10%.

It was mainly the £1m that I was struggling with. But it looks like £500 a month invested at 5% gets you there. If you work for 45 years. Forty. Five. Fucking. Years.

So depressing. Not helped by the fact my private pension contains £0.

If you work for 45 years. Forty. Five. Fucking. Years.

That's slightly less than average, isn't it? Leave school at 18 and work until state pension at 67 is 49 years.

Put another way, it's only just over half of expected life expectancy at birth these days.

These reports of "17.5 years to pay back" are a bit silly. How about your home is more comfortable and therefore has to be considered a nicer house?

How much time do people spend worrying about the ROI on decorating, disposable IKEA furniture and fast fashion?

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-11534625/How-takes-17-YEARS-green-home-improvements-pay-themselves.html

It could be but that chart doesn't give you that information. Looking it up, labour's share of national income has recovered to pre-crisis levels over the last few years (figure 4) so I don't see the evidence that corporate profits are taking a bigger share of GDP.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/productivitymeasures/bulletins/labourcostsandlabourincomeuk/2022#labour-share-of-income

Good spot, thanks

Not sure it is silly, we need to insulate the house better with cavity fill.

That's 2K, no problem right? But the wall ties that bind the outer wall to the inner wall are also end of life, so that then needs done. 5K. And the pointing, cha. Another 1K. And coating the walls with Stormdry. 1K. (these are NI prices). Cavity fill really only should be done with all that is already done.

So now it is 9K and it won't save =that= much on heating. Rather stick it in the mortgage.

"How much time do people spend worrying about the ROI on decorating, disposable IKEA furniture and fast fashion?" Yeah we don't buy those things either, but 10K was the smallest bill in the article, that's significant.

And with new windows, one ultra basic kitchen door (5.5K) and rockwool we are at 6K and that's NI prices, I see they cost 12K in some places for just windows and doors! That's a lot of IKEA :)

Shame the trains are overcrowded and dirty on popular routes, not to mention a lot of the high speed trains are actually slow (also bike transport is a shit show). I can drive to Lyon faster than I can get there by train on this side of France. They cancelled all the night trains over the last decade or so which were really cost effective ways to get across the country for people not to mention proper memory making travel (I did it a couple of times as a kid and have really good memories of it).

It's a noble goal, but in reality, unless they invest a bit more in the infrastructure, it's not going to work for long before people get the shits with it.

This study suggests

Three-fifths of this gap is explained by the growth of inequality which widened the wedge between mean and median employee wages. A further third is due to the increase in non-wage labour costs, in particular the growth of employer pension contributions.

https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2021/k-November-21/Wages-of-typical-UK-employee-have-become-decoupled-from-productivity

Hitting the lifetime allowance of £1m on your pension pot is a very golf club grumble and happens fairly often, especially for civil servants of a certain age

It's a noble goal, but in reality, unless they invest a bit more in the infrastructure, it's not going to work

Presumably the increased demand now that flight will no longer be an option will go a long way to finance the improvements.