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I’d say that the median household in the US might be wealthier. But that’s of no benefit to the 10m’s literally on the bread line, their life expectancy lower than the middle class who have quality health insurance. The model in some nordic nations is high personal taxation for almost all...

Speak for yourself :wink: Be interested to read that theory, one day.

With tapering, to deter tax planning at all levels to £1 below the next tax band. Personally I’d cap any marginal tax rate to 45%. Two reasons - so the recipient always keeps the majority of every £1 earned or gained. Also, again to deter tax planning, encourage enterprise etc.

Mental health issues are class and wealth less. I realise people in the ideal world should have equal opportunities, but interestingly many, many folk from the wrong side of the tracks (the state system, grammar schools, rough and tumble comp's), excel in life. I put this down to a hunger to...

Fertility rates have been declining for 2 decades across the EU/UK for 20 years (except France), particularly amongst the populace born in the country. Our current 1.58 sits in the middle. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20210323-2 That’s despite childcare...

One bit of advice to save oodles of cash, do not use Sainsbury's for your main food shop! The West Hove store is very convenient to us, but we broke the lazy and expensive habit, paying far less at Lidl or Aldi. We made the mistake today of getting half our weekly groceries at Sainsbury's =...

Totally agree. Savers, often the retired, getting a paltry extra x% increase in interest from building societies, but they’ve been used to those rates for 14 years. Doesn’t balance the damage of higher rates to those with variable mortgage rates for generally younger households up against it...

(Shetland Pony)

Exactly. There is no raging consumption boom to quell. The opposite, credit card and loan debts reduced with folk unable to spend on travel. Inflation this time has been caused by unique factors outside of the traditional reason of demand from consumers. Car fuel, home energy, food, supply...

I'd love to see the back of The House of Lords, full stop. Only if we absolutely have to, a 100% elected second chamber.

It was here too. Loads of 'hard men' throughout refusing to wear masks, plus we saw aggression to staff who asked for mask wearing, along with the spells of panic buying. Seems okay lately.

I agree on that. Since the first North Sea gas brought ashore in 1967, later oil, there was no long term strategy. Just consumption and using tax revenues to service our ever growing national debts as we lurched from crisis to budget deficits to crisis.

They exported their oil and gas, we used much of ours.

Norway had a population of 4.2m when it started the two sovereign wealth funds in 1990. The UK's was 57m. So a hypothetical wealth fund here would've been 7.4% per capita that of Norway's. (Not dissimilar reserves). Moreover, the higher population UK rapidly used it reserves, by 2004 we'd...

We never buy ready meals. Sainbury's and Waitrose have taken the p in the pandemic, bills there exploded upwards. Opportunists. But there's no way our Aldi/Lidl annual spend has doubled since January 2021. 5% maximum.

Food inflation has been a tiny fraction of that, but it's definitely crept steadily upwards over the years, compound amounting to a lot of money. Do you have a nearby Aldi or Lidl? Slightly more effort for me that popping over to Sainsbury's, but the savings by shopping at those two are...