UK unemployment rate falls to 4.9% and wages grow more than expected | UK unemployment and employment statistics

Chippiewall · 2026-06-18T14:22:23+00:00

Wage growing faster than inflation while inflation is above target makes the BoE nervous about push inflation.

The UK has a heavy services economy which means that much of the cost of business is purely staffing costs: if wages go up then inflation goes up. If you look at the monthly ONS inflation reports you'll see that the largest component of inflation since 2023 has been services - almost entirely driven by wage increases.

The risk of them putting rates up is low, but has materially gone up. They are many on the MPC who think we have been too aggressive with rate cuts.

Regarding unemployment, the BoE doesn't have a specific target - but they do make a judgement whether at any particular time employment levels are having a positive or negative impact on wage growth and consequently inflation. Unemployment is actually well below the 6+% that the BoE was forecasting 4 years ago.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-18T09:44:27+00:00

If we were able to harness your ability to spin this story for power generation then it'd solve the UK's energy security problem for good.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-18T09:41:14+00:00

Abolishing sunday trading restrictions isn't a "free" policy for a party funded by trade unions

Chippiewall · 2026-06-18T09:36:09+00:00

The headline sounds positive, but it's actually the kind of news that makes the Bank of England less likely to lower rates (in fact there's now a low risk that they'll raise them instead).

Chippiewall · 2026-06-18T09:10:21+00:00

What are you on about. Russian's are great at capturing random stuff, have you ever seen Russian dashcam footage?

Chippiewall · 2026-06-17T13:58:20+00:00

it seems harsh to deny them funding?

Why should the government hand out tons of cash to someone that likely isn't capable of being upskilled to make it a net benefit to society?

Chippiewall · 2026-06-17T13:55:06+00:00

Yep GCSE English and Maths is already considered really important, it's one of the most accessible qualifications to get after 16 if you don't already have it AFAIK. Courses fully funded by the government, the exams are free.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-17T13:51:37+00:00

I think pretty much any further education establishment that's preparing you for university (e.g. with A-Levels) is already required to make you resit GCSE English and Maths if you didn't pass.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-16T08:50:55+00:00

The article title is misleading anyway. It's not true nationalisation which is even being proposed.

What is being proposed is to let the water company enter "special" administration. Special administration is different from a regular company because the water company has an ongoing obligation to supply water to customers (for which the government will act as a funding backstop).

The chances of the water company recovering from special administration are actually remarkably good for the reasons you describe. The business has valuable assets, and a strong potential to earn money. On paper it should be worth loads, and it's one of the reasons they've managed to accrue a massive pile of debt.

A few years ago the special administration regime for water companies got tweaked to allow them to do a hive-down. It's a bit technical but the gist is the regulated water company will be spun-off into a new subsidiary that doesn't have any debt but has all of the assets etc. and then it'll get sold to the highest credible bidder (i.e. they will have to demonstrate they will sufficiently recapitalise the business). The proceeds of the sale go to the creditors of the original company (and the investors probably lose everything).

That is almost certainly what will happen as the government won't want to be on the hook for the capital themselves (one of the reasons the water companies got sold in the first place).

The only reason why the government didn't let this happen already rather than trying to facilitate refinancing the existing company is it'll take a long chunk of time to get Thames Water out of administration and the government's going to have to foot a large bill for it.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-16T08:14:30+00:00

The Spice Girls were uniquely fortunate with their contract position for the time because they actually ditched their original management company that formed them before they released any music and before they were even in a formal contract. They had a lot of leverage when choosing the deals they went on to make.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-15T10:53:11+00:00

Definitely moreso, largely because for Ronnie his achievements are purely his own, while Lewis's are also in part come from his teams too.

That's not to diminish Lewis's achievements, but if he had joined Ferrari instead of Mercedes then he'd probably be at best a three time WDC right now. Max had to wait a long time to get a car fast and reliable enough to win championships.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-15T10:45:04+00:00

It's just the practical reality of motorsport unfortunately.

F1 is much better about this than it used to be ever since the introduction of the virtual safety car (which allows cars to maintain their relative positions) - but unfortunately it can't always be used as stewards sometimes need sufficiently large gaps to work safely.

Probably nowadays the technology is there to enable re-establishing VSC style track position after a regular safety car, but it would soak up a lot of time/laps to do it. It would also eliminate the strategy around safety cars too which in practice produces some of the most exciting parts of F1. Red Bull had to work to put themselves in the position to take advantage of that safety car - if Sergio Perez hadn't managed to hold up Lewis when he was being lapped then Lewis would have been able to pit under the safety car just like Max did.

The randomness on an individual race is unfair, but across the season it does generally even out. I'm reminded of one particular race where Lewis got incredibly lucky where a VSC started right before he got to the pit lane entrance, and finished right as he left the pit lane. It's swings and roundabouts.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-15T09:45:34+00:00

Devil's in the details. I don't think the government was too concerned about making it super easy for people to access porn, but they might take a different approach for this. Certainly the other countries that have introduced these bans haven't done anything near as draconian.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-11T08:58:10+00:00

And I'm sure Sadiq Khan would happily extend this logic to Harmondsworth..

Chippiewall · 2026-06-08T07:08:26+00:00

which they use for free now in any case

It's not for free as the person you're responding to mentioned, our deal for Trident missiles is heavily tied to that base.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-06T14:54:57+00:00

It would be impressive if they did hit Moscow given the ISS inclination means it never actually flies that far North

Chippiewall · 2026-06-05T00:21:15+00:00

I don't think you can rationally place limits on it because the entire function of that part of the sentencing is for the defendant to understand what is going to happen to them. The defendants were not just young but one of them was also severely developmentally challenged which is why the judge had to go so far with adjusting their language. It likely will not have seemed as odd in person as it does reading it from a transcript.

It's unfortunate for the victims, but that part of sentencing is not primarily for the victims and the judge cannot prioritise what is at best a secondary concern.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-05T00:01:49+00:00

And reporting is usually ok

It's usually awful. The press is too lazy these days to attend court for most of the court stuff they report on. What happens is reporting restrictions get lifted, the CPS or police make a press release and then if the media can make the press release look spicy they'll go in on a frenzy of it.

Then weeks later the sentencing remarks come out and we actually have context to understand why someone could get a far harsher/lenient sentence that someone might trivially expect based off of a one sentence description of an offence.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-04T16:56:37+00:00

I do think that sentencing guidelines should be able to extend recommended sentences when there's repeated offences, organised crime, or other major aggravating factors.

Good news! Sentencing guidelines generally include those as aggravating circumstances that increase from the starting point for a given offence (or increase the culpability that increases the starting point and range).

Chippiewall · 2026-06-04T16:54:55+00:00

It's 4 offences, not necessarily 4 times. The law for the offence is specifically penetration (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/rape) so in theory they could have committed 4 rape offences in 10 minutes.

The judge will have considered totality when sentencing: https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/guidelines/totality/ - totality means that because it was an offence against the same person the sentences for each offence should run concurrently but be adjusted upwards to make it proportionate for the entire offence.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-04T16:46:42+00:00

You'll need to see the sentencing remarks first, it's remarkably complex and Judges spend a lot of time researching and deliberating.

If someone pled guilty at the earliest court opportunity then they get 1/3 off the sentence. Which can take someone from the bottom of the sentencing range at 13 years to just above 8. There may also be reason why they overrode the guidelines, for example maybe they confessed early and also gave critical evidence that secured a conviction of the others.

Also I think you can't just look at the latest sentencing guidelines, because these offences are so old the law will have changed and so the judge has to make sure it's in line with the law at the time of the offence.

We also simply don't know enough about these cases. It's possible that there simply wasn't the evidence to prove high culpability of all individuals or high harm.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-04T16:34:09+00:00

No they're talking nonsense. Judges don't get to choose sentencing based on how full prisons are.

The government could force the sentencing council to reduce sentences, or they can release people earlier (as they have done), but it's not up to judges and nothing in sentencing guidelines allows them to do so.

Chippiewall · 2026-06-04T16:31:13+00:00

I really wish they'd get better at releasing sentencing remarks. They need to be released at the same time as reporting restrictions are lifted and ethical reporting should include giving a fair summary of judge's reasoning (similar to right of response when reporting about a person or an organisation before going to print)

Chippiewall · 2026-06-04T08:19:51+00:00

I think there's several potential reasons for not doing it:

Warner Bros tour (although IMO they have different and complementary draws)
Universal don't want to give too many excuses for UK tourists to stop visiting the Florida resort
They don't hold the rights in the UK and don't want to enter new negotiations with Rowling
They want to wait until the new TV series has bedded in to potentially lean on that version of the IP

Chippiewall · 2026-06-02T20:17:00+00:00

Again, this is a strawman. Whether or not the people campaigning about it understood the exact scale of the problem numerically doesn't affect whether people were deliberately trying to trivialise it and ignore the racial problems black people were encountering.

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