In the news

Sensible suggestions, which means they won't happen...

Idk should any of us that have spare cash go out and pick someone struggling and pay for groceries etc?

I

I've am doing that, somebody stuck cos of the home office. She'd been homeless otherwise.

What do we do? There's also food banks, donations etc. I know some of you work for charities.

Mobilize the middle classes! (In the 5th and up percentile as the rest is also skintish now)?

It feels the government really gives no fucks so it's up to us.

I’d been waiting for these sorts of stories, about what sacrifices people are going to start to have to make from their regular outgoings. Monthly rolling subs of any kind would logically be the first to go. I wonder if this halts the current wave of new streaming services in its tracks.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/mar/21/golden-age-of-streaming-could-cost-viewers-up-to-2500-a-year

The data is from the ONS here .

(Table A6 "Detailed household expenditure by gross income decile group (cont.)", section 4, "Housing (net)1, fuel & power")

Mortgage interest is excluded.

And what we know is that money creation of this sort did not create inflation in the previous 11 years, and nor is it, or will it, now.

I really struggle with this tbh. I can't see how increasing the money supply will not lead to inflation (or quality reductions, smaller kitkats etc), even if the onset is / has been delayed by interesting features of our markets (high levels of competition and high price sensitivity to keep prices low, lots of information on pricing available, cheap goods from China etc, falling cost of manufacturing high tech devices). I suspect QE has driven huge inflation in things that cannot be simply replicated or the supply increased, like Houses, wages of Tech bros and other skilled people ...and now Gas and fuel.

Exactly. Inflation currently spiking horrendously - is this a result of QE over the last 15 years? maybe not, but hard to prove

I added net housing to other housing lower down (mortgage interest, council tax etc) it just seems surprisingly low

Can you not use QE to invest in raising lower income areas/groups in combination with a wealth tax/etc.?

The previous round of QE went into the hands of big companies not bothered with job/wealth creation where it matters.

I’d been waiting for these sorts of stories, about what sacrifices people are going to start to have to make from their regular outgoings. Monthly rolling subs of any kind would logically be the first to go. I wonder if this halts the current wave of new streaming services in its tracks.

Instead of cancelling, we recently started sharing various subs with my parents and in-laws and vice versa.
Sorry Netflix et al :(

Looks like they're starting to crack down on that
https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/netflix-charge-fee-password-sharing-revenue-1235212426/

Just reading this and my phone flashes up that my DisneyPlus has just renewed £79.90, Bastard!

It must be our least used of the services. I'll make my daughter watch Lion King again later to make myself feel better about it.

Ha! Snap!

QE is the government buying back government bonds, essentially. If you don't have government bonds or other assets whose price is somehow related to government bonds QE isn't going to help you. Therefore aside from "controlling" inflation (lol) it can't do anything for poor people.

Besides these are the Tories which renders the proposal moot

If you stick it all in green government bonds backed by strict rules for companies (pay your taxes etc) that create jobs it also won't work?

You'd think the government has the power to do something useful with QE .. (lol optimism)

As a means to combat inflation on goods we need on a daily basis it's clearly no use. Tax the profiteers!

Just reading this and my phone flashes up that my DisneyPlus has just renewed £79.90, Bastard!

Same thing happened to me today too, put me into my overdraft, I was not impressed.

Glad I can finish Dopesick though

I'm very much here for the reactions to Sunak pretending to be a man of the people, but being found out to have borrowed a Sainsbury's employee's car for his photo op and subsequently demonstrating that he doesn't even know how to use a contactless card to pay.

Did he make them pay for the petrol that went in? I bet he used their card and added a can of coke for himself the cheeky bastard!

John's Crace remark that poverty is relative, and he's practically penniless compared to his wife cracked me up.

Trouble over the border. https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20010381.record-holder-josh-quigley-calls-helmets-made-mandatory/?ref=twtrec

What a knob. Him, not you.

A P&O ferry has been impounded by the Coastguard because lack of crew training makes it unsafe. Hah! It's a start. If it's simply a matter of the captain not being able to produce the crew's training certificates it's pretty dumb. Maybe it's more complicated. Interesting. Presumably all the ships will get the same inspection asap. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60881550

A local ex employee said on the radio that 30 years of staff safety training will not be covered by someone doing a induction into shipping for a week .

At the risk of sounding like I'm siding with P&O, I've never met anyone in a work context who didn't think their skills were special and irreplaceable.

Normally they're wrong.

Also that person didn't start their first day with 30yrs training. Nor did their colleague who started a few years ago.

For me the concerns are; 1) having essentially all your staff being new (although no one knows what training they've had elsewhere), and probably more importantly, 2) will people being paid a pittance GAF about doing safety procedures properly?

will people being paid a pittance GAF about doing safety procedures properly?

The entire shipping industry is built on people being paid a pittance, P&O have just made the mistake of lifting the curtain and letting people see in

In that case ignore point 2).

After some initial teething problems it'll be fine.

Fingers crossed the population boycotts them, they go under and their management get syphilis.