In the news

That you can opt out of, no? I suppose if it's free money on top of your minimum wage, you're not going to say no.

I wonder what % of minimum wage jobs are on a permanent contract?

Not precisely related but this is grim reading.

https://www.livingwage.org.uk/news/more-3.5-million-people-low-paid-insecure-work

Re: zahawi, yep, totally agree.

Re: sunak, I don't think anyone should be losing their jobs for something quite so minor (notwithstanding the acceptance of a FPN not being de facto accepting guilt of the offence, but that's just a pedantic / semantic view).

Surely Sunak seat belt a dead cat to move the news cycle on from Nahadim Zahawi?

There's two ways of contributing to your pension - salary sacrifice and a normal relief at source contribution. The former is usually more generous and the one that would not necessarily show up on a P45. https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/building-your-retirement-pot/salary-sacrifice-and-your-pension

You can still pay into a pension if you're on minimum wage, just not via salary sacrifice

Nadhim Zahawi 'transparent' over tax affairs - Raab

It's all fine, Raab says so - as you were

(From BBC News)

Yeh party line is all taxes were paid in full, which is probably trues but omits them being years late and incurring a penalty and interest and only after an investigation by HMRC and SFO

I don’t think Sunak should resign for getting a fixed penalty, but his stupidity concerns me.

It doesn't strike me as stupidity, more an entitled worldview where he can do as he likes. See also; partygate.

Overseas but good to see this irritating prick getting his fucking due;
https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0120/1349929-enoch-burke/

Seems to be just one of a whole family of arrogant cunts.

So much this.

Neither he nor the camera holder had the sense to consider how it would be viewed. It’s the sort of foolish lack of care I no longer need to tell my 11 year off for.

The stupidity, for me, lies in videoing your misdemeanour and uploading it to IG.

I would guess it happened because he’s probably in the habit of not wearing a seatbelt generally - he wouldn’t have taken it off in order to make the video.

Also the driver either not being confident enough to tell him to put his seatbelt on or them just ignoring the driver

Ah I see - thank you.

Prime gobshite material, he will end up making a living as a spokesperson for some religious grouo playing the victim.

That you can opt out of, no?

I don't think you can anymore apart from a few circumstances, I managed to opt out of mine as a director because I can't afford it at the moment but they really didn't want to let me.

My previous company will only give start data, finish date and last job title. They have a ban on managers giving references.

I once gave a reference for a mate, had never worked with him, not even worked in the industry I said I was his manager for, he got the job.

I think the money is in the states for his sort, the religious right lap that shit up. When you read the reports of the matter him and his family come across as just horrible.

Sounds like a problem and solution combo

Now that weve cleared up my ignorance on human rights (a humble pie dont wory) can we get back to how terribly the police has handled this?

Why should anybody give you that consideration, when most of your ignorant rant was attacking people here in the worst of bad faith, ascribing the worst motives you could think of to their comments? I didn't see people taking the positions you accused them of, I saw people talking about basic legal principles and also moral ones. The undeniable fact that the police often forget those principles when dealing with (and protecting) their own is not an argument for the rest of us asking for those principles to be broken when we don't like the defendant. That's what I saw people saying.

You rode in on your high horse. The fact that this made your face-first fall into the horse shit all the more embarrassing is your fault

"Humble pie, don't worry. But I'm so humble that I want you all to forget how embarrassed I am or that I did anything embarrassing, immediately."

The British economy is in a generation-long slough of despond, a slow-burning economic catastrophe. Real household disposable income per capita has barely increased for 15 years.

This is not normal. Since 1948, this measure of spending power reliably increased in the UK, doubling every 30 years. It was about twice as high in 1978 as in 1948 and was in touching distance of doubling again by 2008, before the financial crisis intervened. Today, it’s back at those pre-crisis levels.

It’s worth lingering on this point because it is so extraordinary. Had the pre-crisis trend continued, the typical Brit would by now be 40 per cent richer. Instead, no progress has been made at all. No wonder the Institute for Fiscal Studies is now talking of a second lost decade.

https://www.ft.com/content/ef830f78-75ee-4b91-a48e-04defa0f96d4

This is not normal.

Since 1948, this measure of spending power reliably increased in the UK, doubling every 30 years. It was about twice as high in 1978 as in 1948 and was in touching distance of doubling again by 2008

Unfortunately, I feel the need to ask... what if this 60 years, when charted amongst the preceeding, let's say 1200 years, simply wasn't normal, but was a blip?

Not a new suggestion. There's a strong argument that the post WWII growth period was an unusual phenomenon at least partly born from the rare cross-class shared experience that came from the war. Creation of the NHS, free public education, those and other things that were a huge factor in that period of prosperity and yet conservative-minded people want to think that was just a part of being naturally British and they've been deconstructing those foundations ever since.

The following paragraph....

Go back and look for historical precedents for this, and you will not find much. In the National Institute Economic Review, economic historians Nick Crafts and Terence Mills examined the growth in labour productivity over the very long run. (This is defined as the total output of the UK economy divided by the total number of hours worked; labour productivity is closely connected to material standards of living.) They do find worse runs of performance — 1760 to 1800 was not much fun — but none within living memory. Nowhere in 260 years of data do they find a sharper shortfall from the previous trend. The past 15 years have been a disappointment on a scale that previous generations of British economists could hardly have imagined.