Successive governments have spent so long treating London like a glorified tourist theme park, and more broadly neglecting to do a single thing to generate wealth in other parts of the country, that anyone anywhere in Britain who exists below the poverty line has been condemned to stay there.
I'm in the poorest 10% of Londoners. Rent and council tax alone constitute over 55% of my income - let alone food and bills.
Everyone acts shocked that the city is dead at night, or that the high street is in ruin. Why? Nobody can afford to spend or save any money beyond the cost of existence.
A couple with two children each need to earn £49,500 to live "with dignity" in inner London.
I've skipped the kids, but the combined income for two of us working full-time here in inner London barely reaches that figure.
Cost of living is going to be a killer.
bbc.com/news/article...
Describing 70% of the electorate as extremists, when many of them voted Labour until very recently, is exactly why Labour were decimated. If Labour and Starmer defenders find this okay, it's a categorical guarantee the collapse of the party is only just starting.
Sitting around watching Labour get a deserved third place whilst sitting with a group of Americans on a tour bus *in* Gorton and Denton was definitely a moment 😅
Work drinks on a country singer tour hit different. Or, I'm just old.
In both the earning examples given, it takes longer to pay off the debt than the current write-off threshold.
In other words, this policy doesn't make a single difference to most graduates, only helps the rich, and serves only to reduce funds going into the Treasury via Higher Education.
To pay off my debt without its interest, I would need to be earning £60,000 for 31 years, or £40,000 for 82 years in order to fully pay it off.
Kemi Badenoch has a policy that only helps those rich enough to pay upfront, because Tory policies made the actual debt extortionate even pre-interest.
You can rely on the Tories to create all these problems... the tripling of fees, the maintenance loans, the high interest plans... then find a solution that's actually yet again just a way to cut taxes for the wealthy types most likely to vote for them.
Self-servitude veiled as altruism. Very Tory.
All paid off compound interest goes to the Treasury, so the interest is ironically more likely to keep wealthier people paying into the system and into the country for longer.
Scrap that whilst sustaining stupidly low repayment thresholds, and you're just taxing some of the poorest graduates.
Her policy is genius... if you're a Tory.
Scrap compound interest, but keep graduates paying off the triple fees and maintenance loans the Tories also imposed.
Poorer graduates keep paying for 30 years, rich ones pay off debts, get richer, and pay in less.
A de facto tax cut for rich people.
What can I say, I'm an animal person 🙀
ngl, that Hydro lighting went pretty hard
the worker / the work
in Glasgow, going for that tired live-out-of-bag look again 🥲
I enjoy work from home, and can adapt to it with ease. But when I've got a debt of £106,000 that's still rising, and the experience was to sit next to my bed, hope the lecturer has adapted as well as I have, and sit with students I've never met who keep cameras and mics permanently off, it's a con.
Damn right tbh. We paid the same as anyone else ever did just to sit at home, struggling to pay heightened bills that we got no help with whilst work was also unavailable, to study with reduced resources, and for what? To sit on Zoom with a bunch of unresponsive strangers.
bbc.com/news/article...
Nah, 2016 was the year said President got into power, and we were saying then 'if you told me ten years ago that Trump would be President, I'd have asked them to put down the meth pipe'.
This trajectory of decline has been decade-spanning. None of it shocks any more, which is half the problem.
Long story short, basic empathy. Doesn't matter how well I know my intentions, any relative stranger does not. They're not at fault for having their guard up, least of all when the motivation for talking with them is a heated discussion where insults have been exchanged. A case of 'read the room'.
That applies especially with women - not because I have ill-intent, or because men and women can't just casually talk to one another, but because approaching a woman you scarcely know for a private chat following a rather hostile exchange where the C word is getting thrown around, looks pretty poor.
With respect, my response wasn't targeted at anyone, this has zero to do with me, and I stand by what I said in all contexts.
I'd have no reason to believe your intentions weren't genuine, but optics matter, and I think carefully before trying to shift any public discussion into a private space.
I get a share of men who follow me under the expectation that that is a prerequisite to one-to-one 'private' conversation with me, who make a point of publicly asking for it too.
Whenever it happens, I can't fathom how much harder it must be for women who must deal with it all the more 🙃
forsho 😌
Just back to my natural dark, it took a solid year and a half for blond highlights to grow out 😅
selfie
yob / boy ✌️
We all lost, and for nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Never have I wanted to be more wrong on a political issue. But every sign was there before the vote... that this was a con, a gambit in bad faith, and an immense lack of national awareness.
It's still hard forgiving those who looked the other way.
EU rants always resurface in me once I've made a pit stop to the mainland again, but every time is a stark reminder of the future I had to give up, every job I do there earns me less than it once would have, the paperwork is tedious, and *nothing* is better back home for it. We all lost.
There's not even a trade-off here that makes up for it at all... literally zero gains.
My god it's boring making the same point for ten whole years, but everyone is more broke than ever and the only thing preventing a sizeable yield here is the same old British arrogance, ignorance and egotism.
So the UK has wasted £110m on a trade border scheme, and now spends £5bn a year sustaining all post-Brexit border controls, all because 4% more voters backed a thing a decade ago and this was broadly interpreted to mean the UK can't use the existing systems. 🤡
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
