MarjorieR

https://social.linux.pizza/@marjolica

Retired Operational Researcher/Statistician/Economist.
Worked in Energy Industries/University/Civil Service. Most recently producing UK Energy & Emissions Projections.
GNU/Linux user since 1993 (kernel 0.99).
Now on Devuan Daedalus/Cinnamon (kernel 6.1).
Rower, cyclist, dingy sailor, walker, skier.
Socialist, bi, poly, she/her.
Fully paid up member of the Guardian reading, tofu eating Wokerati.

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Last Notes

2026-06-05 07:10:11 UTC

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as always assuming other things being equal. So all government actions should be linked by default. So income tax rate thresholds, benefits such as pensions and universal credit and fuel duty should all adjust with inflation unless there is a good reason not to.
And this, by choice of the government, is not happening, except for the basic state pension which is also triple locked.

2026-04-16 12:55:46 UTC

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surely not. In 1953 Arthur C Clarke wrote that they could be printed out in 100 days, with a rented computer of the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God

2026-04-05 20:32:21 UTC

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" The thing is we're actually an A-Religious country. 30% say they have no religion when asked. "
In the last (2021) Census the proportion of people saying they had no religion was 37.2%. The proportion saying they were Christian was 46.2%, so more than those of no religion but still a minority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_Kingdom

2026-03-10 10:14:05 UTC

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FWIW when I worked in DTI and later DECC the oil
and gas energy sector specialists were nearly all secondees from the industry.

2026-03-10 09:34:58 UTC

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"Some think the windfall tax on oil production should be suspended/ended to encourage more investment...."
So when the windfall goes up due to an increase in international oil prices - I doesn't cost any more to pump the oil now than it did a month ago - then the government shouldn't continue to take its share of that windfall?
Methinks lobby shilling logic here.
We are going to prevent Rosebank going ahead aren't we?
As you say, we don't need more investment in UK oil exploration or production, we want to get off oil entirely and invest our windfall taxers in promoting far more sensible renewables energy production instead.

2026-03-05 09:22:41 UTC

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I have a "reader viewer" icon (eg visible on my Mastodon website) but it doesn't appear on the FT site. No doubt they have patched that loophole so I don't have an ethical dilemma as to whether I breach the paywall or not.
So if Swindells has some sort of 'pay for advice' contract with Palantir then between their calls for advice he is entirely free to shill for them? Or did he explicitly end the contract before shilling and declare that he had a conflict of interest - that had been under contract to them and could resume it at any time?

2026-03-05 08:33:35 UTC

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Article is behind a paywall so have to ask, isn't this "corruption in public office" and when is he going to be dismissed or at least suspended from his current posts and prosecuted?

2026-03-02 10:45:20 UTC

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of course the big drop in coal use to generate electricity occured earlier, in the 1990s, with the 'dash for gas', based on bulding new gas power stations. Which also coincided with the run down of UK coal production.
"Around 20% of the UK’s CO2 emissions in 2017 came from burning coal, oil and gas to produce electricity. This is down from 34% back in 1990.
Coal’s share of this mix has fallen precipitously since 1990, down from 67% of total generation to only 5% [in 2017]."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-38-since-1990/
Note: this is a 2017 document but also includes some useful graphs.
After 2012 there was an accelerating pick up in renewable generation combined with the decline in demand (LED bulbs, etc) which allowed the remaining, now imported coal, generation to be replaced by gas without significant investment in new capacity.

2026-02-25 14:36:18 UTC

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my guess that it could mean prioritising the actually or potentially employable on the waiting lists for treatment over those who are severely disabled or simply retired.
Either that or he is actually going to commit to training and employing more staff and providing more resources to the NHS, so that everyone can get treated quicker but can you really imagine Streeting doing that?

2026-02-20 09:29:14 UTC

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my own observation from when I worked in a university some 20 years ago is that because of financialisation of HE universities have been incentivised to make available place on courses which are popular with prospective students (who are not always well educated of job opportunities in their preferred subject) even when the unversities should know better. Back then Computer Games had suddenly become popular but the games industry didn't employ that many graduates and in fact lots of universities jumped on the same bandwagon and offered courses.
Also the university then taught some fairly some rigorous software engineering which while it was material that would be need to be able to build computer games was not what the new students were expecting or well prepared to learn.
So many failed to complete their degrees and for those that did there weren't that many jobs for them in what they had trained for.
This was 20 years ago but I'd be surprised if the situation has improved since.

2026-02-18 10:11:49 UTC

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more evidence on use of weight control drugs following money not need:
"More people in affluent areas are using weight loss jabs, despite having lower levels of obesity, research suggests.
Analysis of private prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs like Mounjaro and Wegovy shows women and the middle classes are the most likely to use the drugs."
[ snip]
People in the most deprived regions were around a third less likely to be getting the jabs than those in the least deprived, despite obesity being twice as common."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/weight-loss-jabs-women-middle-class-wegovy-mounjaro-b2922087.html

2026-02-17 09:48:52 UTC

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seems to me that "buy" is another ChrisMay malaproprism too.
"support" or "buttress" perhaps.
But at least we think we know what he means (unlike with Trump).

2026-02-14 13:17:57 UTC

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and possibly a budget effect - from what I've seen of the current monthly costs of the new weight loss drugs, unless you are getting them on the NHS, the cost will far outweigth what you save on food so less money to spend on other, hopefully unnecessary, goods or services.

2026-02-12 10:29:50 UTC

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add to that he's also been getting UK government subsidies for his INEOS chemicals company, while investing that money abroad and closing Grangemouth refinery in Scotland.
I gather he was also touting for government help to redevelop Old Trafford.
Just another rich sponger off the state.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24183731.uk-government-snubs-grangemouth-pledges-600m-belgian-project/
https://worldsoccertalk.com/news/ratcliffe-wants-to-use-taxpayer-money-to-rebuild-old-trafford-20240207-WST-488097.html

2026-02-12 09:30:29 UTC

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UK refinery capacity has shrunk significantly over recent years, down from 18 in the 1970s to 4 today. The most recent casualties were Grangemouth and Lindley. Seemingly it's not economic to refine here anymore.
While some of that is due to the decline in domestically extracted North Sea oil and gas, at the same time the Gulf states have heavily invested in refining their own crude, so capturing the value added. I suppose we should recognise this as a form of decolonisation.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2025-0235/CDP-2025-0235.pdf

2026-02-01 13:04:27 UTC

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though somehow much what is currently growing in the economy, such as AI data centres and arms manufacture, at the expense of other useful things such as jobs and living wages for people, is not exactly what most of us would have in mind as something we want even more of. But this is their, and Starmer and and Rachel Reeves', wet dream of unsustainable growth.

2026-01-17 10:10:26 UTC

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and of course weight loss drugs are even more expensive than gym subscriptions (£169 for 4 weeks Wegovy [1] vs. £40/month for my local LA gym membership [2]) so maybe hard to pay for both, albeit less effort to buy a drug. Even though you probably need to do exercise and make other lifestyle changes in addition to taking the drug to make it stick.
But maybe, given the cost of living, more people can't afford either.
[1] https://www.simpleonlinepharmacy.co.uk/health-advice/weight-loss/wegovy/mounjaro-wegovy-cost-stock-uk/
[2] https://www.teignbridgeleisure.co.uk/price-list

2026-01-16 22:42:00 UTC

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wondering what happened to the cancellation rate for 'elective' operations? Asking as a friend's husband had his scheduled hip operation put back to March.

2026-01-15 18:05:03 UTC

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nevertheless the majority of the local councils asking for a postponement are run by the Labour party.
"According to the BBC, which contacted the 63 councils, some 22 of them have asked to postpone their ballots ahead of Thursday’s deadline. Around 34 will not delay the elections, while seven are yet to confirm their position.
Most councils that have requested a delay are Labour-led, but three are Conservative-controlled and one is run by the Liberal Democrats. "
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/local-elections-delay-councils-b2900962.html
So draw your own conclusions.

2026-01-14 10:01:36 UTC

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noting also the use of the 'One of ours, all of yours' Nazi slogan on Noem's DHS podium, even if she didn't actually say it.
https://news.meaww.com/fact-check-did-kristi-noems-podium-at-dhs-use-problematic-slogan-one-of-ours-all-of-yours

2026-01-12 15:59:39 UTC

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The UK's National Coal Board applied similarly complex but also somewhat naive LP models to decisions about which coal mines to close in the 1960s, when the industry was being run down - over 500 closed between 1953 and 1976 when there were still some 300+ mines working.
When I joined them in the mid 1970's the LP approach had been abandoned.
I had a look in the National Archive for more detail but the Operational Research Executive Reports from back then having yet to be digitised.
ORE did continue to use LP and related optimisation models for mining supplies tender allocation - a much better defined problem - into the 1980s.

2026-01-12 14:29:32 UTC

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not to mention trying to find finding an exact item (including perhaps a part number) on Amazon. And it is isn't just their 'sponsored' results that pack out the results.

2025-12-31 10:16:22 UTC

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canals and rail for commerical use coexisted for a long time. And some canals were actually converted to use for railway lines. Commerical use in the UK almost stopped after the WW2, but some of that was because we were the first to build canals and initially only built narrow canals, on the continent they started later and build wide canals that are still in use .
These days canals in the UK are used for leisure and they are still an important part of the UK's water distribution network - I was involved in modelling that at one time.

2025-12-31 08:35:08 UTC

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I doubt that data centres built for AI and full of GPU with very limited lifetimes and mostly powered by polluting gas turbines will have any consequential use.
They may well become the modern equivalent of coal mining's slag heaps.
Current attempts to repurpose cryptocurrency mining data centres to AI illustrate the problem of finding new uses for data centres.
https://digitalmarketreports.com/news/25353/transition-from-crypto-mining-to-ai-data-centers-faces-significant-challenges/

2025-12-20 10:51:27 UTC

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well I'm sure he had his reasons - clearly the extent of his actual involvement in Epstein's crimes must be enormous and he thinks politically unsurvivable for a President.

2025-12-18 14:47:44 UTC

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I had a new hip (having fallen off my bike) about two years ago at RDE and they were excellent. Of course mine wasn't elective so no waiting. Exeter developed the Exeter Hip about 50 years ago. The ward I was on - Robin Ling - was named after one of the inventors.
And 7 months ago my wife got a new knee (elective), surgeon was from Torbay but hers was a day op at the Nightingale, but I know some other friends who were done (on the NHS) at local private hospitals. Waits were not unbearable.

2025-12-16 10:06:06 UTC

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surely the "underlying policy logic" of the MPC is a consequence of "The Government sets us a 2% inflation target" and that the current inflation figure is 3.8% (and a Bank Rate of 4%)?
So it's the government (currently Reeves) driving this, not the MPC - if only by default - I don't think this government has ever considered changing a policy set long ago in a very different time and driven by an outdated model of how the economy works and what the scope of 'BoE independence' should imply.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation

2025-12-15 13:50:50 UTC

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as a (retired) Operational Researcher while I agree with the inapplicability of JIT to hospital bed and staff provision, JIT was intended as a way of managing production process without having to hold large buffer stocks of inventory between processes.
However what is relies on is not that demand is entirely constant but that the demand changes can to predicted and that material can be supplied at relatively short notice and processes speeded up when needed.
In the case of hospitals although there is a roughly predictable variation between summer and winter it is not entirely so - witness the latest flu surge - or the effect of snow increasing the number of falls. And the workforce can't be varied much in the same way to follow load.
In practice what hospitals do is postpone scheduled 'elective', non-emergency admissions (such as hip and knee replacements) to try and create capacity for emergency ones. They also end up having to put patients from the in-demand speciality into other wards. This simply increases problems elsewhere and increases overall waiting times for treatment.
I doubt if anyone in the NHS actually thinks it is operating a JIT system. It's entirely inappropriate. At a strategic level they are just not managing it well and not putting what money they do have into tackling the biggest bottlenecks in the most cost-effective way.

2025-12-15 13:20:41 UTC

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to be honest I didn't think there is much wrong with how eye testing works in the UK.
Many people are entitled to both a free eye test and support from the purchase of glasses.
While the cost of the test for those that do have to pay is (about £27) is similar to the cost of a NHS dental check up, there are plenty of (private) opticians you can book with whether your eye test is free or not. Clearly the support offered to Opticians to provide the test is sufficient to get them to provide the service.
This is certainly not true of Dentists. It is basically impossible to sign up for NHS Dental treatment here is Devon.
I do still get NHS Dental treatment, having been a NHS patient for many years, but my family don't any longer as they were with another practice that went entirely private. Even my practice only has one NHS Dentist, I suspect it's basically a job for initiating foreign qualified dentist: all my dentist have had a foreign qualification and once the dentist has a track record they also go private and I (eventually) get a new one.

2025-12-14 09:12:29 UTC

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Also noting that this source gives the current Microsoft p/e as 34, somewhat different from the F/T chart. Perhaps a bit more digging is required?
https://worldperatio.com/stock/msft/

2025-12-14 08:57:14 UTC

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wondering why they've included Oracle from 2000, but not Oracle today. It's current p/e is 44. So now higher than all the other big players except Tesla.
https://worldperatio.com/stock/orcl/

2025-12-12 09:51:24 UTC

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Paying generators, such as gas fired, for the cost of just sitting there not generating is what the Governments Capacity Market is for.
I am of course assuming it works as originally designed (I worked in DECC when they devised this more than 10 years ago, before I retired but this was not my direct reponsibility).
"The Capacity Market ensures security of electricity supply by providing a payment for reliable sources of capacity. "
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/electricity-market-reform-capacity-market
I doubt it there is any call at the moment to actually invest in new gas generation capacity, we just to keep the existing plants available so the price they get should then just largely reflect the cost to them of buying gas, and their conversion efficiency (about 60%). I would hope that we never need new gas plant - we should be looking at, and investing in, other non-fossil fueled means of filling in for intermittency.

2025-12-12 08:17:58 UTC

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maybe it's time to stop chasing unsustainable GDP growth, particularly when it seems to involve investment in stranded assets such as AI data centres, oil and gas exploration, nuclear power generation, grey hydrogen and CCS?
Maybe put our money into improving peoples lives by insulating people's homes. improving flood defenses and investing in a publically run NHS and Care system.
And meanwhile use the tax and benefits systems to do a bit more redistribution from the rich to everyone else.

2025-12-12 07:50:41 UTC

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at present we already pay gas, and previously coal, generators to be there to run idle, it's called the Capacity mechanism.
And if we followed Ecotricity's suggestion those generators would still get their bid price, just everyone would get their bid price, not what the gas generators, as the most expensive bidder gets.
In my view what each type of generator should get should be determined by their long term cost of supply, which surely is set through their Contract for Difference price, not the cost of the marginal supplier on the day.

2025-12-08 08:31:11 UTC

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confusingly mortgage interest costs are not included in the inflation measure (CPI) that the BoE is targeting.
And these days most mortgage's interest rates are fixed over a period of 2-5 years so changes to interest rates take a longer time to impact household outgoings.

2025-12-06 22:16:43 UTC

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meanwhile the Bank of England seems to have other concerns.
I know the BoE is supposed to be independent but maybe it would be sensible for the Treasury to listen to what they are saying.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/12/06/the-bank-of-england-is-warning-a-financial-crash-is-coming/

2025-12-05 13:25:20 UTC

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surely the OBR forecasts include government policies?
They are never policy free business as usual projections, though the projections are likely to change when policies are announced in the budget.
Since the government keeps talking about controlling benefits by various means, although it has to keep revisiting what those proposed measures are, then surely the OBR are including their assumed impact?

2025-12-03 07:38:15 UTC

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and as is spelt out in the article it's very clear that privatising some services lead to crap services for patients and is eye wateringly expensive at the same time.

2025-12-03 07:34:42 UTC

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on the other hand, many people are missing out on benefits they are entitled too, clearly at odds with this idea that poor and disabled all know how to game the system.
https://policyinpractice.co.uk/blog/missing-out-2024-23-billion-of-support-is-unclaimed-each-year/

2025-11-25 16:31:36 UTC

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"Now the key issue is why the change, and what impact that will (and perhaps was intended to) have on the conduct of the review & the conclusions reached."
From the article it seems they already have form on this:
"In the F-35 exports judicial review, Chamberlain was replaced by Steyn and Lord Justice Males. They found that Britain’s decision to allow the export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel was lawful, despite accepting they could be used in breach of international humanitarian law in Gaza."
Noting Chamberlain was the original judge in both cases.

2025-11-25 07:43:45 UTC

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I remain amazed that PFI can even be considered.
The government can always borrow more cheaply than the private sector, so given the financiers will always also want to take a cut as well then it will be always cheaper for the government to finance any such investment themselves. PFI has never been anything but another very expensive way of massaging the statistics.

2025-11-25 07:36:13 UTC

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they are still green lighting expansion at the regional airports too. We don't need more airport capacity, full stop. For environmental reasons we should be taking positive action to discourage air travel whichever airport is uses.

2025-11-25 07:31:32 UTC

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also, although not a target for the revue, still no action to remove the cliff-edge design of the carers allowance, where a small overpayment leads to the whole payment being withdrawn, rather than just the amount overpaid.

2025-11-24 18:42:04 UTC

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And £12k per person is also £24k if you are a couple.
Like most of the other stuff being trailed in advance ("Benefit Clampdown", cuts to heat pump grants, EV mileage charges) this seems to be purely performative, to give the appearance that she is actually doing something, whereas all she is doing is avoiding doing anything about the real issues we face as a country.

2025-11-24 08:26:54 UTC

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and, on the other side of the ledger, by the amount of unclaimed benefits.

2025-11-21 08:46:18 UTC

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so under this plan presumably all migrants will also get income tax and national insurance exemptions too?

2025-11-19 12:08:36 UTC

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surely it's ideological?
The Labour Party Leadership has been captured by right minded nutters who actually believe in what they are doing and fooling themselves that some of their dog-whistle idiot policies* will also prove popular.
Starmer's and McSweeney's reputed 'pragmatism' seems to be merely limited to lying to the party members and the rigging the choice of MP candidates to get them into power and keep it for this parliament.
* not widely publicised, but there have been a few policy proposals (such as on workers rights and stopping profiteering by touts and tickets resellers) that if sold properly could appeal to the voters.

2025-11-17 08:31:02 UTC

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puzzled by the rows with blank country names in the chart, even though they have life expectancies shown.
https://www.health.org.uk/evidence-hub/health-inequalities/trends-in-international-life-expectancy-at-birth

2025-11-17 08:22:58 UTC

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so, relative to other countries, the UK is not doing well for either sex.
"In 2000, the UK ranked 20th out of the 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for female period life expectancy at birth. By 2022 it had fallen to 26th place, with five countries (Ireland, Denmark, Republic of Korea, Slovenia and Chile) overtaking the UK in female period life expectancy estimates during that period.
Although the UK ranks better for male period life expectancy, improvements between 2010 and 2022 were smaller than seen in other OECD countries. When ranked by male period life expectancy, the UK fell from 13th place in 2010 to 19th place in 2022, of the 38 OECD countries."
Could the difference between the improvement in life expectancy at birth sexes relate to our relative poor performance in maternity services (keeping mother's alive)? Or are there any other suggestions?

2025-11-17 08:00:03 UTC

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dose have a chart showing the difference in life expectancy between the UK and other countries for males?

2025-11-12 16:51:54 UTC

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it's not clear to me how simply putting more of the ONS's bodies to work on it is going to help with the Labour Force Survey.
The main problem it that relies on surveys being returned and these days very few are. It need a strategic rethink first.
"Response rates to the LFS, which involves a letter sent to households and followed up with a phone or in-person interview, were already falling before 2020, then plunged during the pandemic and remained low afterwards – hitting a nadir of 17.4% last year. The Living Costs and Food Survey – used in the GDP readings – receives similar response rates increasing the chance of GDP revisions, Bloomberg reported.
Economists are concerned that the labour market survey may be more likely to pick up people who are at home – potentially overestimating economic inactivity. The Resolution Foundation thinktank has suggested the LFS may have “lost” up to 930,000 workers.
That matters, because one of the key worries about the economy since the pandemic has been that the employment rate – the share of the population in a job – has never returned to 2019 levels, making the UK an international outlier.
The ONS has been building up a new index, the “transformed labour Market Survey”, to replace the LFS. But repeated twists and tweaks mean it may not be ready to launch until 2027."
This is from nearly a year ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/23/ons-job-figures-labour-force-survey-data

2025-11-11 08:39:38 UTC

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if the purpose of the inflation measure used in these negotiations is to include housing costs and to be reasonably accurate both the government are using the wrong measure.
The ONS do produce a measure based on CPI that includes housing costs, it's called CPIH.
The RPI does include an estimate of housing cost inflation but the way it measures inflation contains a indexing mistake which gnerneally overstates inflation by around 1%. The ONS did produce an experimental version of RPI that corrected this but the government didn't adopt it, probably because RPI is used for inflation linked gilts and they don't want to annoy their city masters who they owe money to. They also use it to calculate inflation when people pay them, eg student loans and rail fares while pensions use CPI (also wrong as it excludes housing costs).
It would be interesting to see the numbers if they could all agree to use CPIH. Maybe split the difference?
https://obr.uk/box/the-long-run-difference-between-rpi-and-cpi-inflation/
https://www.icaew.com/library/research-guides/price-indices/rpi-cpi-and-cpih

2025-11-09 12:59:54 UTC

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good interview, though at the end he rather sidetracked around the issue of 'pregnant people' rather than pregnant women in the BBC guidelines by just criticising a journalist for eye-rolling.
Surely the reason is clear enough: a man, a trans man, can still become pregnant and several actually have and given birth.

2025-11-07 07:48:35 UTC

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surely the biggest threat to the Labour party is the authoritarian right wing faction that's its current excuse for leadership.
Only by reclaiming it's own party can the soft left have any hope of continued existence.

2025-11-05 09:07:16 UTC

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John Deere tractors aren't cheap, to buy or to repair.
I wonder where the Chinese got the idea of software/IP lock in from?
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/15/deere-in-headlights/#doh-a-deere

2025-11-04 13:31:37 UTC

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that's old news, membership is now over 150,000.
https://greenparty.org.uk/2025/10/28/greens-within-touching-distance-of-labour/

2025-11-03 10:06:29 UTC

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public services make up 20% of GDP, and measuring their productivity remains a challenge.
AsI recall the way we different measured this was one reason the UK's GDP dropped so much during the start of the COVID pandemic.
There was a recent (March 2025) Statistical Authority report on measurement issues here:
https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/publication/national-statisticians-independent-review-of-the-measurement-of-public-services-productivity/

2025-11-02 10:55:24 UTC

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a lot of us have old (mine's 10), but still serviceable, cars doing little mileage (we don 5,000 miles/yr) and it's hard to justify investing in a large expensive lump of metal with a battery we might have difficulty charging. My 10 year old car also has physical controls and an actual handbrake and is not connected not the internet. This doesn't mean that I don't think all new cars should be full EV for those that can justify a new car.

2025-10-22 16:17:11 UTC

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and, of course at least in respect of Trumps support for fellow ultra right winger Milei in Argentina, it doesn't seems to be working out very well.
From the article:
"Whatever the rationale, it’s not clear their strategy is helping much. The Argentine peso sank to record lows yesterday, with little indication that the midterms were going to turn in Milei’s favor (who could have guessed that voters may not like the idea of being run by an American-puppet government?) and traders seemingly unimpressed by Bessent’s pitch of the currency as a prudent investment. The United States is now the proud owner of $20 billion in increasingly worthless Argentinian currency. America First, baby!"

2025-10-18 08:44:59 UTC

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well goes to show how unrepresentative your #Fediverse readers are. According to Mt Altman most people just love their ChatGPT girlfriends.

2025-10-17 18:27:27 UTC

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further investigation finds:
"According to The Financial Times, under present laws, a new foreign resident, or a returning Italian who has lived abroad for at least nine years, can pay a flat tax of €200,000 per year on any overseas income and assets for up to 15 years while being completely exempt from inheritance tax on foreign assets during that time."
So it's a voluntary quid pro quo for shielding their foreign assets from inheritance (and income?) tax.

2025-10-17 18:19:55 UTC

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I'm guessing that's not the rate for all even moderately wealthy foreign residents, most of whom I expect earn less than the current €200,000 pa. surcharge.

2025-10-17 07:33:53 UTC

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taking you to be talking about LLMs (Chatbots) when you say "AI" they are actually worse than a distraction from the climate crisis - hyper-investment in data centres to run the awful things is actively bringing it on.

2025-10-16 09:14:50 UTC

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and then there's now CIA ops (widely reported):
"Trump gives CIA permission for ‘covert’ action in Venezuela as president says military ‘looking at land’ strikes"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-cia-venezuela-boat-strike-land-b2846191.html

2025-10-10 15:15:12 UTC

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you should have used a Samsung!
https://www.howtogeek.com/879508/no-moon-photos-on-samsung-galaxy-phones-arent-fake/

2025-10-09 12:41:37 UTC

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private ('Public') schools and grammar schools were there when I went to school in the '50s and '60s. More so in some areas than others and I'm not sure this has changed that much.
Some comprehensives had and maybe still do have a more representative class mix. Both my kids went to a comprehensive, but selective schools were available.

2025-10-04 12:02:14 UTC

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short of police manpower today? Maybe we could have cancelled a few football matches instead? Very disrespectful playing football on such a day.

2025-10-01 19:01:44 UTC

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McSweeny and Blair getting Starmer to come out in favour of something is clearly the kiss of death for a policy.
"SUPPORT for digital IDs has plummeted among the public since Keir Starmer announced a plan to introduce them.
In an awkward development for the UK Government, a More In Common poll has shown net support for digital ID cards fell from 35% in the early summer to -14% at the weekend following Starmer’s announcement, The Guardian has reported."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/support-digital-ids-plummets-keir-130512618.html

2025-09-28 08:37:24 UTC

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so, given that (I understand) we already attribute notional rent paid to themselves by owner occupiers and include that in GDP can I also assume that we include the value of both paid (whether notional by Carers Allowance or when a carer is employed) and unpaid care in GDP as well?

2025-09-26 06:40:27 UTC

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surely if Scotland were to be able to take a more civilised and sensible approach to asylum seekers any greater security on the England/Scotland border would be to stop people, whether immigrant or not, fleeing this benighted country not coming here?

2025-09-22 08:58:59 UTC

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is the gender gap really men doing the same job getting paid more or that men are better represented in the better paid jobs?
Usually (in the past I've had to look at this in a government department) it's more of the latter rather than the former and some of that is that women, often with more broken careers, both go for promotion less and then more frequently fail to get promoted when they do.

2025-09-20 08:57:58 UTC

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what it doesn't say is what they have 'saved' by reducing the number of Georgians who would otherwise be entitled to receive Medicaid.
Either it stopped a lot of poorer ill people claiming or it costs more than it saved.
Presumably cruelty is the point.

2025-09-17 07:12:32 UTC

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is that wealth net or gross of debt (e.g. mortgages), particularly in housing. Appeciating that a good proportion of pensioners who were buying their homes have actually paid off their mortgages.

2025-09-15 14:57:31 UTC

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I'm sure what he simply wants is no more updates (showing everything is tanking) before the US midterm elections.

2025-09-12 11:59:32 UTC

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there's a new article by Richard Murphy covering Phoenixing in more depth, with some suggested ways of tackling it here:
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/09/12/how-to-end-phoenixing-now/
I doubt any of this is being covered in the Civil Services Tufton Street briefings discussed here by George Monbiot though:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/11/tories-rightwing-junktanks-no-10-government-civil-servants

2025-09-11 08:15:48 UTC

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(fellow former NCB employee here).
At least in the coal industry lessons were learned and safety measures continuously improved, more so after nationalisation. And the death toll fell, if never entirely eliminated.
On the other hand a feature of financial markets is that they are cyclic: after each bust regulation is tightened and then after a while the market and their regulators forget, while new means of creating the Bezzle* are invented.
This was well understood and documented by Kenneth Galbraith.
Currently, in the latest, post-2008, market boom Private Equity (Vulture Capital) operates such a Bezzle: they buy undervalued companies using borrowed money, load them up with debt (leverage), sell and leaseback their assets and use their capital for shares buybacks rather than productive investment so they can extract dividends and falsely inflate the price of the shares. Once they have gutted the company they then sell them on to more naive investors such as pension funds.
A recent example for this is what Macquarie (a PE vehicle) did at Thames Water.
Note to Rachel from Accounts: do some reading in Ecomonic History, start with Galbraith. No doubt this wasn't included in your PPE economics.
TL;DR these vultures needs policing not encouraging.
* The Bezzle
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_bezzle

2025-08-27 15:37:29 UTC

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the Independant bring us details of the ONS's surprising take on air fares prices July 2025 compared to July 2024.
Unfortunately, as we have now come to expect, their approach made little sense.
The move of expertise out of London to Newport (many of their better and more experienced statisticians didn't go) doesn't seem to have turned out well.
"In summary, the ONS chose to compare air fares in 2024 with no significant “school holiday effect” against those this year on which the inbound legs sustained strong demand and therefore higher prices.
Unsurprisingly, statisticians saw a sharp increase in July 2025 compared with a year earlier. It was the largest monthly rise in air fares recorded since data collection began in 2001, and was enough to impact significantly the headline rate of inflation."
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/inflation-uk-summer-air-fares-price-rise-ons-b2814973.html

2025-08-27 08:51:34 UTC

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rather than remove the words, since he says he was the one who included the words "take account of" perhaps he can come up with an explanation as to why UK counrt shoudn't 'follow' ECHR decisions. Surely following case law is very much way UK law works and the existing words also imply the UK courts do have discretion to deviate from ECHR decisions when this was justified? Maybe they follow because the ECHR was right.

2025-08-27 08:43:35 UTC

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presumably they are also asking to be renationalised?

2025-08-23 18:12:26 UTC

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Starmer's total failure to represent Labour Party members is also shown by the fall in membership. It's dropped from a high of 534,046 in 2019 to a new low of 333, 235 now. A drop of over 200,000 or 38%.
What's the point in staying in a party when its leaders take no notice of what you do or think?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce83jgnx4w5o

2025-08-23 11:26:41 UTC

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our plum tree (we live in South Devon) is several years old now but this was the first season we have had a useable crop. And it was a good crop: several kilos pitted.
However fearing the birds would take them, like they always do the cherries, we havested it a month or so ago and we have now a good supply of plum jam.
We also got a good picking of greengages from a friend who otherwise couldn't reach the higher fruit.

2025-08-22 14:58:41 UTC

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eek. Can a Waymo change nappies?
What happens if it never arrives?
If the baby is lucky social services will have taken it off their hands (that what the do if parents are uanble to look after theri children).

2025-08-20 13:30:07 UTC

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the ONS claim that the rise is air fares and that might be due to changes in where uropean summer holidays fall, so essentially a measurement error (not comparing like with like).
You would not neccesarily expect it to correlate with air freight costs, which as you say would eventually appear elsewhere in the retail prices of food and other air freighted items.
However I would interested in how ONS do their surveys, weights and explanations: much of summer holiday traffic is package holidays and even if families are just buying flights they are often bought well in advance of the actual month of travel. So what air fares do they sample in their survey?

2025-08-20 08:03:29 UTC

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this is what the ONS says about transport prices.
The big increase is in air fares, seemingly to due with changes in the school holiday dates.
Road fuel prices are up from last month but actually down from a year ago.
The devil is in the detail.
"Prices in the transport division rose overall by 3.2% in the 12 months to July 2025, up from 1.7% in the 12 months to June (Figure 3). On a monthly basis, prices rose by 2.2% in July 2025, compared with a rise of 0.7% a year ago.
The rise in the annual rate reflected a large upward effect from airfares which rose by 30.2% between June and July 2025, compared with a rise of 13.3% between the same months in 2024. The monthly rise in July 2025 is the largest July increase since collection of airfares changed from quarterly to monthly in 2001 and was probably influenced by the timing of school summer holidays. Returning European flights were during the school term in 2024, whereas returning European flights were during the school holidays in 2025, which may have made these flights more expensive.
The rise in the annual rate also reflected a large upward effect from motor fuels. The average price of petrol rose by 2.0 pence per litre between June and July 2025, compared with a fall of 1.4 pence per litre between June and July 2024. The average price stood at 133.9 pence per litre in June 2025, down from 144.4 pence per litre a year earlier.
Similarly, diesel prices rose by 2.9 pence per litre in July 2025, compared with a fall of 1.1 pence per litre in July 2024. The average price stood at 141.4 pence per litre in June 2025, down from 150.4 pence per litre a year earlier. These movements resulted in overall motor fuel prices falling by 6.7% in the 12 months to July 2025, compared with a larger fall of 9.0% in the 12 months to June.
There were also upward effects from sea fares and from roadside recovery services."
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/july2025

2025-08-17 21:31:07 UTC

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there is an explanation (not sure I fully understand it myself and I doubt it makes sense in MMT) by the OBR, here:
"Unfunded pension liabilities represent the second-largest government liability after gilts, but are not included in the PSNFL measure of debt.
In this box [i.e. article], we analysed the treatment of unfunded pensions in the National Accounts and the fiscal risks they create."
https://obr.uk/box/fiscal-risks-from-public-service-pensions/

2025-08-17 18:02:58 UTC

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I think the sums for the TPS are done by the government's actuaries.
I also have a British Coal (BCSSS) staff pension. It's a parallel scheme for to the Mineworkers in that it has a Government guarantee. But both schemes are both closed and funded but have actually accumulated a surplus in a sub-fund to buffer the government in the event they proved underfunded. The Govt. committed and delivered on returning the Mineworker surplus to their pensioners. We are waiting to see what they do about the BCSSS scheme.
So could both the teachers and university lecturers scheme actually br overfunded and employers contribution could come down while not affecting pensions? Of course the Universitty Lecturer scheme has money in Thames Water, which must be a bit moot.
Of course how the sums are done by the actuaries is a bit odd, so I understand current high interest rates makes them all look good.

2025-08-17 17:05:30 UTC

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the majority of both current and former staff at the post-92 universities (which includes me) are in the Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS), that also covers school teachers. The TPS is not a funded scheme. Are there parallel proposals to change future pensions of those currently working in Education?

2025-08-14 08:44:54 UTC

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currently there are 7.6m - not all unique - on a NHS England waiting list. Many more are taking prescriptions medicines.
So a lot more than 4% of us are engaged with the NHS at any one time and given the wait times on waiting lists it is unsurprising that many are not happy with the state of the NHS.
In truth it is woefully underresourced and the staff overextended.
On the other hand, according to a recent survey, three-quarters (75.4 percent) of us had a good experience of their GP practice.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/2025/07/nhs-delivers-record-numbers-of-treatments-as-waiting-list-drops-to-26-month-low/

2025-08-13 12:05:11 UTC

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surely Capital Gains Tax ia, as it says, a tax on the Capital gain not on the original investment,
And Inheritance Tax is a tax on the assets received by the inheritors of the estate who didn't make any investment at all (apart from keeping in with the person who died).

2025-08-13 09:56:17 UTC

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my thinking is that in no sense are inheritance taxes double taxed at the moment, any more than pensions are (an equally spurious claim).
But yes, CGT should be equalised to your marginal income tax rate by treating it as income (20%, 40%, 45%) by treating it as income but they should also remove the anomalous marginal income tax rate between £100k and £125k caused by the withdrawal of the personal allowance (just raise the marginal rate to 45% at £100k).

2025-08-13 08:35:28 UTC

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the (marginal) inheritance tax rate is 40%, same as the higher rate from income tax. The average rate is much less (just as it is for income tax) because of the size of the various allowances, with most estates not paying anything. unlike income tax, where most people pay standard rate. However the average income tax rate is still quite low even for most higher rate tax payers.
There already upcoming changes to include unspent pension savings and (partially) agricultural assets.
And, of course, the very rich use trusts to completely bypass it.
The media speculation I'd seing relate more to taxing gifts made before death.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rachel-reeves-treasury-inheritance-tax-autumn-budget-b2806546.html

2025-08-04 09:55:23 UTC

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we'll probably lose the ozone layer first.
So slap on your SPF50.
Also unneccesary electrical emissions due to bad design are really mucking up ground based radio telescopes. It really is the wild west up there.
https://explorersweb.com/starlink-satellites-are-leaking-radio-emissions/

2025-08-03 21:26:57 UTC

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I fail to see the logic in her intervening given her stated priorities.
Giving millions of consumers £950 or so in helicopter money would seem a very effective way on getting some growth into the UK economy, unless they all spaff it on imports and foreign holidays. It certainly worked with PPI even though quite a lot of that was siphoned off by claims managements companies.
But maybe here real priority is to line up a few dodgy bank directorships when she, hopefully sooner rather than later, gets tossed out of her current job.

2025-08-03 19:27:51 UTC

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"but yes, very odd we have no documentation of an #orca killing a human in the wild"
Maybe they don't think we taste/smell all that nice.

2025-08-01 16:15:15 UTC

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possible. I found that switching to a different DNS provider has, for now at least, restored the connection.
Google, Cloudflare and Quad9 were all not working for me. CleanBrowsing Family Filter (185.228.168.168) is.
I trust its not a geoblocking thing due to the UK OSA.

2025-08-01 15:43:41 UTC

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No, no IPv6. Apart from anything else I don't think my ISP (Zen) support it and it's not configured in my router.
And as far as I'm aware there have no configuration changes, at my end, between when it was working and now.

2025-08-01 15:03:43 UTC

Can anyone help me with a strange 'social.linux.pizza' issue I have or has anyone else the same problem?
I have three devices, a (Linux) PC, an Android phone and an Honor 12" Android Tablet. Both Tablet and Phone are on Android 14.
I can see and post on 'social.linux.pizza' on the PC and phone. On the PC I use the advanced web interface (AWI), and on the Phone Tusky.
On the Tablet, it also used to work but since yesterday, I can no longer access social.linux pizza.
In the past I always used the AWI on the Tablet but I get the same issue if I try Tusky.
On the Tablet I can dig and ping 'social.linux.pizza', so DNS seems to be be working but in the browser I get "Address not found".
I normally use Firefox as my browser but the same issue occurs if I try using Chrome.
If I type in 'linux.pizza' or 'blog.linux.pizza' or go to any other website I can connect OK.
@npub1est…r25g

2025-07-28 17:47:35 UTC

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what puzzled me about Inman's article is the reference to the tax breaks you get by retiring early.
Apart from the fact that you have to accumulate more in your pension quicker and higher rate tax relief on pensions make this easier - if you have the income - I can't think how any of you make tax savings by retiring early, in fact you get tax breaks by retiring later, after state pension age as you stop paying NI contributions.
Of course this doesn't mean so much now you have to wait so long for a state pension.
NB at one time there was a limit ('lifetime allowance') on how much you could accumulate into your pension tax free, and it used to encourage e.g. (well paid) GPs to retire early, but the limit has now gone.

2025-07-28 15:50:40 UTC

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I got up on a ladder and stripped the plums off our plum tree this morning, then stoned them to give us 2.4 Kg of fruit.
We are currently cooking the second of our two batches of jam. The first batch made about 1.5 Kg of jam and the second should do the same. It's been a good year for plums down here in Devon.

2025-07-28 08:29:58 UTC

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my own gut reaction, having to what is changing already here and abroad is that the claim that climate change and human abuse of the land could push up UK food prices by more than a third by 2050 is a wild underestimate to rival Nordhaus' Econ-Nobel Prize winning but entirely delusional claims as to its minimal impact on world GDP.