Mailwatch(ed) Forum

May be that some lower productivity jobs have been lost with the increase in employers NI and the minimum wage. The labour market should be settling down now. See if the rise is sustained.

I noted before that lots of people thought that these jobs shouldn't even have existed because the wage was too low and the tax payer was picking up costs of tax credits. I'm not sure about that argument- some jobs are genuinely low productivity, particularly in areas where there's not much money about. That's not really anybody's fault in lots of cases (poor paying jobs in eg Central London are a different matter). But anyhow, it seems that some of these jobs don't exist any longer, but I'm sure lots of the complainers aren't any happier than before.

We'll have to see if unemployment starts to fall. Might turn out that the changes were an economic masterstroke.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 8:03 pm Some changes of tax treatment, and restrictions on some of the more expensive models, apparently. My guess is that, in the words of Arthur Daley when buying a second car, "these fall out of bed price wise" rather rapidly. But I don't know much about the scheme, admittedly.

Either way, it's kicked off a hornet's nest.

“Life costs more if you are disabled. Energy and day-to-day living costs remain stubbornly high across the board. The government shouldn’t be looking to ramp up costs on disabled people. They could leave more disabled people isolated, and less able to get into work.”

Emma Vogelmann, the co-chief executive of the disability group Transport for All, said: “As disabled people we often find public transport is unusable – broken pavements, nonexistent bus routes, and packed stations we can’t navigate. A Motability car changes that – it allows us to work, shop, and do the school run. Scaling back the scheme would lock disabled people away from daily life. Does the chancellor want to take away our freedom?”

Stuff like that would please the berks that want "Motability" emblazoned on the side of such cars so they know who to hate.