Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Events, dear Boy, events might be on the near horizon to get Rach out of her bind (the growth one, not something manufactured by that scrawny northern twat), and lead her to easing her financial chastity belt in favour of defence investment.

"A penny on your tax or your sons will be in the trenches" has suddenly become an easy sell rather than purely hypothetical.

I would suggest that Starmer needs to light on his feet here, too, especially if Kemi and Lord Rothman's pivot to the national interest.

Indeed. People could do with a reminder that historically, income tax was introduced in order to pay for Britain to fight the Napoleonic wars.

Of course it's all Reeves's fault.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg7gewqevqo

From April, employers will have to pay National Insurance at 15% on salaries above £5,000, instead of 13.8% on salaries above £9,100 at the moment.

The government has said the rise is necessary to fund public services and fix a "black hole" in public spending plans. it claims it inherited from the Conservatives.

The Treasury told the BBC it had delivered a "once-in-a-Parliament budget to wipe the slate clean and deliver the stability businesses need to invest and grow, while protecting working people's payslips from higher taxes, ensuring more than half of employers either see a cut or no change in their National Insurance bills, and delivering a record pay boost for millions of workers".

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has consistently defended her Budget, acknowledging she had made "difficult decisions" but that they were "the right decisions in the national interest".

But it has led to a political row, with opposition parties arguing it will dent future economic growth and make companies less likely to hire workers.

The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), estimated that the UK unemployment rate edged up from 4.3% to 4.4% in November.

Fancy that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gwgpjgl5zo

Average wages are continuing to outpace inflation with pay packets rising for both the public and private sector workers, official figures show.

Pay, after taking into account the pace of price rises, rose 3.4% between October and December compared with the same period a year ago, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The UK's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.4%, although the ONS has advised that its jobs figures should be treated with caution because of low response rates to its employment survey.

The figures follow warnings from businesses that they are planning to cut workforces and raise prices ahead of higher employment costs in April.

Employers have raised concerns that paying more in National Insurance, along with minimum wages rising and business rates relief being reduced, could hit pay rises going forward and also affect investment.

Without taking account of inflation, the ONS said annual pay growth, excluding bonuses, was 5.9% from October to December. which was up from the previous figure of 5.6%.

Earnings growth for the private sector was 6.2%, while for the public sector it was 4.7%.

I Guess Rachel from Accounts does know what she's doing after all.

Unsustainable. You know full well that the economy will only be deemed successful when the rich take all the gains and the poor know their place.

"Despite" takes up less space than "thanks to".

Economy grew by 0.5 in February.

Hope it's confirmed later- the ONS is having some problems at the moment. It would be an excellent performance. How has Mel Stride taken it?

Badly he's still banging on about an emergency budget.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 2:21 pm How has Mel Stride taken it?

In his... No. I can't.

Wasn't there some terrible survey data, which told us everyone was being laid off because of Labour's Jobs Tax?

Ha ha ha. They've been getting away with "Labour inherited the fastest growing economy in the G7" for too long and all. That was 2 quarters. The previous 4 quarters were, in total, negative. A bit of catching up doesn't make you an economic genius.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 3:28 pm Wasn't there some terrible survey data, which told us everyone was being laid off because of Labour's Jobs Tax?

I realised the changes Sainsburys wanted to make to their Pizza and Hot food counter and which they claimed was due to the NI lift was something they had already been doing anyhow in some stores.

mattomac wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 10:10 pm

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 3:28 pm Wasn't there some terrible survey data, which told us everyone was being laid off because of Labour's Jobs Tax?

I realised the changes Sainsburys wanted to make to their Pizza and Hot food counter and which they claimed was due to the NI lift was something they had already been doing anyhow in some stores.

Those counters, along with the delicatessen counter disappeared a few years ago at the Sainsbury's I used to shop at.

Most of the big supermarkets have now done away with specialist counters in order to compete with the likes of Aldi and Lidl. Tesco's have handed over most of the their cafes to Costa in order to cut costs and many of the supermarkets that were open 24 hours a day have scaled back on hours to cut costs but this has been happening for years.

There's a Tesco in a town up the railway from me that opened a butchers' counter, saw off the local independent butcher, and then promptly closed its own counter, leaving the locals with a like-it-or-leave-it selection on the shelves. They're probably not clever enough for this to have been a deliberate tactic, but the effect is the same, whatever.

Luckily we have the inverse here - the local independent butcher is thriving, sells its meat to several cafés around the area and expanded into owning a deli offering local and not so local produce. I wish they didn't sell that fuckwit Clarkson's beer though.

We've got a couple of excellent independent butchers locally.

Which is odd for a foetid shithole full of snowflakes.

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 10:49 pm We've got a couple of excellent independent butchers locally.

Which is odd for a foetid shithole full of snowflakes.

Money to burn, up that Lundun.