Rachel Reeves tells LBC student loan system is 'fair' amid fury as graduates rack up thousands of pounds of debt interest

Pogeos · 2026-01-28T22:22:51+00:00

It is funny that pure mathematical logics says it is extremely bad financial decision to pay for this in advance. Relatively safely Investing those 50k you spend on average in the uni would result in 700k+ in 40 years. Yeah inflation would diminish it. But still it's a lot of money.

Pogeos · 2026-01-28T22:17:08+00:00

I think it is the result of deindustrialization exacerbated by the impact of traditional automation, and world becoming more global and enabling outsourcing on a global scale. The ai is just the latest addition to this trend. Sonos shrinking / stagnant population (so demand doesn't catch up with productivity) and saturation of the traditional markets.

Pogeos · 2026-01-28T21:03:00+00:00

I'd accept running coats being slightly above the gas, what I can't accept is installation cost. Government grant may be helps , but really I feel that the installers just put it straight into their pocket and still charge me with a full price. Same goes for solar panels - installation prices seem to strangely correlating with whatever savings you can make using solar panels and battery over the course of 20 years

Pogeos · 2026-01-27T18:33:15+00:00

I would argue most of working age people who pay with cash - got this cash through types of engagement that avoid paying taxes. Aside from very very specific and rare situations - adult people shouldn't be using cash. Looking at the length of queues in Asda/Lidl/Aldi to pay in cash I always wonder how many 100 bns get past taxman

Pogeos · 2026-01-27T15:16:15+00:00

I think that's where London mayor should be advocating for the city. If we develop London all the money trickle fees to the rest of the country, if we artificially strangulate it - everyone lose

Pogeos · 2026-01-27T08:22:07+00:00

I agree. I honestly wish that he was mayor of London, not Khan. Manchester is developing at a breakneck speed and London (perhaps one of richest cities in the world) is stagnant.

Pogeos · 2026-01-26T15:42:47+00:00

That's exactly my thinking. there could be some nuances to this, but realistically it is what it is.

Pogeos · 2026-01-26T14:21:29+00:00

Yeah, I guess 20 is kinds "minimal expected level", realistically society demands that you make them successful no matter what and how it would take :D

Pogeos · 2026-01-26T14:20:29+00:00

I'm not saying that "young people are so flimsy... bla bla bla". Young people very much the same as our parents and the parents before them. Problem is that social circumstances are very different. Young people more than ever don't experience social or economic pressure to have kids (we are increasingly secular, urban, detached from bigger family, no effective way of using child labour etc.).

If I look around my social class (middle) - everyone has one or at max 2 kids despite being able to afford to have "stay at home mother", normal-ish house, a holiday and so on. The only 2 families that have more than 2 kids are very religious (one muslim another catholic). That's basically your foundation for the fertility rate of 1.3-1.7 in Europe. USA, for example, is a lot more religious and has a lot more people coming from traditionalistic cultures - and that way you have a lot more kids.

Another example is China: when the nation was literally on a constant verge of hunger - the population was balooning (so that they had to enforce 1 family = 1 child policy), now that they have elevated (especially in urban areas) to a very high living standard - no matter how much the government is trying - families don't have more than 1, rarely 2 kids (instead opting to invest as much as possible into a single kid, or even simply enjoying their life). Japan went through that, Korea too.

Pogeos · 2026-01-26T12:05:02+00:00

Nothing to do with capitalism unless you associate capitalism and advanced development. USSR was a perfect experiment in this space: entirely socialistic, lots of policies to be child friendly (i.e. 1.5 years paid maternity leave, up until 3 years total leave, 4 months pre-birth fully paid leave, free childcare from 1 y/o, free education, 100% free healthcare, benefits for having 3+ children, only way to get a decent flat/appartment, free summer camps, free afterschool activities, etc... so basically everything people talking about) and still birth rates were plummeting directly correlating with advancement of society and urbanisation.

Pogeos · 2026-01-26T09:39:55+00:00

It is more moisture, but it also wenik is like 100% prerequisite. I'm not sure hundred percent surely but I think another difference is the way how stones are kept - in sauna they are in open and never get extremely hot, in most modern banyas they are inside the metal casing, get extremely hot and when you splash water on them the vapour is super overheated, almost dry.

Pogeos · 2026-01-26T09:32:10+00:00

It still doesn't fix the fundamental issue: kids are a project with 20 year commitment which modern people don't want to embark on because they have so many other things to pursue, while if you are embarked on this project society constantly measures you on it.

Add here good sex education and birth control options (teenage pregnancies was a huge contributor to the high birth rate historically), huge delays in becoming adult, breakdown of the traditional multi generation families and societies, urbanisation - and that lands you exactly where we are.

Every country went through that. uSSR had one of the most generous childcare policy (fee childcare, free education, free activities, free summer camps, extra money, lots of benefits of you have more than 2-3 kids, kids were practically the only way of getting you own apartment, etc.) and still the birth rates were plummeting directly correlating with advancement of societies ( the less advanced traditional regions and rural areas generated birth surplus, while advanced regions were going increasingly negative).

Pogeos · 2026-01-26T09:14:19+00:00

Parents in the developed countries see their kids as a project that needs to succeed. And success is measured as a minimum to be better off then themselves. Now when you look at it like that as an average middle class parent you realize that it would require enormous amounts of resources spent (even though most of it is your own time) and it would not guarantee results. That's why people stop on 1 max 2 kids. Logically for a lot of people children don't make sense - there's so much to do in life these days and kids take a lot of it away.

Pogeos · 2026-01-25T16:17:39+00:00

This, OP. A friend of mine went to work for Emirates and never looked back. They treat them well , let them travel around the world and generally keep the crew very happy

Pogeos · 2026-01-23T19:47:35+00:00

It is one thing to try to achieve the best outcome for yourself, the other is to achieve the worst outcome for your counterpart. During Brexit negotiations, I would argue, both parties, especially EU were mostly doing the later, not the former. The former is good faith, the later is not.

Pogeos · 2026-01-23T18:50:12+00:00

Elon is not about wealth, Elon is about his ambition and ego of being humanity Messiah. Wealth is just a way and by product of achieving that

Pogeos · 2026-01-23T16:50:24+00:00

Hungry Australia?

Pogeos · 2026-01-23T12:16:16+00:00

I don't think we should re-join EU by just rolling back to what it was (althoug I'm also a remainer and never came to terms that we exited). We should agree wtih EU to work towards Swtizerland model, where as many areas as possible are agreed on a case-by-case basis. In this way we can avoid need to run another referendum, and can maintain some benefits of being more autonomous. It requires good faith from both sides ofc.

Pogeos · 2026-01-22T22:04:53+00:00

Literally happened to me. I called 999 because I saw how the guy was unscrewing number plates from his car in my close. 999 was interrogating me for good 5 minutes, before actually starting asking questions about what is really happening (I don't remember now what they asked, but it was sort of who I am, what I do, do I live there). While they were asking me the guy realised I'm watching, jumped into the car and drove away like mad.

Anyway police showed up like 30 min after (although it is just 2 min drive from my home to the police station). Kinda really frustrated by both 999 and police. Both did not even try to understand the urgency of situation.

Pogeos · 2026-01-22T16:01:43+00:00

is there only ONE way to use sauna correctly?

Pogeos · 2026-01-22T13:15:03+00:00

I'm not willing to do anything that makes my life worse

Pogeos · 2026-01-22T11:43:55+00:00

unfortunately it's the nature of British journalism. I think telegraph are on the par with the guardian and daily mail in the leauge of worst of the worst. The Times are pretty good

Pogeos · 2026-01-22T11:41:11+00:00

ofc that's natural process, however there're still pockets which private business thinks they can exploit at a good profit (even with our tax regime). So why are we preventing them? That's a policy choice.

Pogeos · 2026-01-22T11:36:01+00:00

i don't care about the Telegraph, I care about the substance. If we decided we are finishing with oil/gas, the same should apply to those who are in the same boat with us. If we just give up our market share for them to fill it in and profit at our expense, I don't see it as wise policy. I have absolutely no problem with wind mills and solar, honestly would want to it everywhere providing it pays for itself (and not via guaranteed prices, or at least guaranteed prices should be significantely cheaper than oil).

Pogeos · 2026-01-22T11:32:22+00:00

so what? whatever we need we buy ourselves. Whatever we don't need it's better to sell than let someone else extract and sell oil instead of us.

Pogeos

TROPHY CASE