The Iran war has led to a surge in pessimism in the UK as half of households are already struggling to afford everyday essentials.
What’s an “essential”?
Savings are shifting from a safety net to a lifeline, with a quarter (26%) of households now regularly dipping into savings to bridge the gap between their income and the cost of essentials.
People far poorer than Brits manage to cope with their incomes. Sure, they might well go without things they desire – as Brits do too – but if people poorer – yea, after adjusting for the cost of living! – manage to cope then these things are not essentials.
What’s actually happened is that all the things which make up the slightly ahead of median lifestyle – because that’s the way humans work, “not poverty” is always defined as a bit ahead of reality – are now clled essentials. Which, of course, they are not. Nice to haves and essentials just are not the same thing.
Weird. I’m very optimistic about the Iran War.
Didn’t want it, because we don’t want wars, but after I heard they turned down free uranium in favour of continuing their weapons grade enrichment program, war was the only responsible choice.
Trump and Bibi could have easily kicked this can down the road, and Tel Aviv could easily have become a smoking radioactive crater by 2030, what would that do to the price of butter and plane tickets, eh?
Britain is feeling the pain now, not because of Trump, not because of Israel, not even because of the terror regime in Iran, but because we’re a high tax, Net Zero Economic Growth zone run by cunts.
Without tax, petrol is only 60p a litre…
It’s also weird how people who were enthusiastic about massive, blood-churning WW1 style war within the borders of Europe are suddenly verklempt at the US and Israel kicking the shite out of Iran with barely any casualties to the good guys.
A lot of this pessimism seems to be anger that the United States and Israel are winning.
“A lot of this pessimism seems to be anger that the United States and Israel are winning”.
Not if judged by the UK/US MSM they aren’t.
Essentials – fags, Stella, mobile phone, Sky TV, Internet, 65″ flat screen TV, take away pizza / Chinky / Indian / kebab once a week, etc., etc.
And adjusted for inflation, the price of oil is about the same as it was in September 2005 and lower than the price between June 2007 and November 2014 (excepting a few months from October 2008 – June 2009).
Not if judged by the UK/US MSM they aren’t
Wolfie, we are through the looking glass on this one. The combination of:
* The lanyard class going dhimmi in response to the Gaza war, and
* Orange Bad Man
has broken their minds.
They’re not reporting the war, they’re trying to cast word spells to make the US and Israel lose the war. Iran’s only strategy is to try to scare the infidels away with the threat of economic depression, and the ‘Western’ MSM is dutifully trying to make it so through their reporting.
When you look at what’s actually happening, the kinetic part of the war, it’s like seeing Real Madrid destroy a pub team. Rarely in human history has a major conflict been so one sided – Iran is doing worse than Serbia did in 1999. They can’t defend their airspace, they can’t shoot down any US or Israeli jets, they can’t stop their regime from being physically changed via bunker buster. All they can do is enrage their neighbours with low intensity missile and drone attacks – not powerful enough to dent their enemies’ capabilities, just powerful enough to make the Arabs want to bomb Iran too.
This is a demonstration of the United States’ mastery of modern warfare. Russia and China will be shitting BRICs at how easily the Great Satan overcame Iranian air defence. If Russia tried to do something similar, they’d have sustained tens of thousands of casualties and lost dozens of warplanes by now. But the USA is untouchable, like Road Runner.
Meep meep!
And we now see the scope and scale of missile development and the significant build up in inventory of rockets and drones, which is why for those listening carefully, Israel & US chose to strike now because obviously something was brewing.
Apparently Iran bragged about the 400kgs of 60% enriched uranium they had, followed by an assessment by the IAEA that it takes just two weeks to get to weapons grade. The Friedrich Mertz comment is profound.
According to the Shield of the Republic podcast there was serious concern that Iran was close to having enough ballistic missiles and big drones to overwhelm the air defences of all the neighbouring states and Israel. If it got to that point it would then be impossible to stop Iran going to the next step in developing nuclear weapons.
Those guys are reasonably plugged in so I wouldn’t dismiss that reason out of hand.
Yes. “Essentials” are now culturally relative; and relative poverty is a measure of inequality, not poverty.
100%.
“There is never a right time to do something like this but there is a time when it is too late.” – Friedrich Merz (of all people)
Yarp it was uncommonly sensible.
Yer.
Quite a bit of that, in fact.
A Kraut pol speaking like that? Would even Helmut Kohl have done so?
I am ackshouallay a bit discombobulated by this statement of Merz’s.
Ah well. The Hun is always either at your feet or at your throat. And it is about time for a bit of Hun-at-the-throatishness.
That was in February, though, when the US had just whacked the Ayatollah and he was hoping it would be all over and home for tea and medals the next week.
Since then he’s tried to disavow the whole project and refused to get involved in keeping Hormuz open, which is kine except that that’s where most of Europe’s energy comes from.
The US is energy self-sufficient these days, thanks to fracking (and Venezuela), so Trump has no particular interest in whether it opens or stays shut (and may prefer it to stay shut for a bit, since we also can’t now buy oil or gas officially from Russia – and even if we could our uncorrupt Ukrainian chums blew up the best pipeline years ago).
Agreed, Steve. But, note, Putin is helping Iran with intelligence – eg in the destruction of that US AWACs – while Ukraine is courting the Gulf states…
Russia-China-Iran-North Korea is a consolidating axis of evil that must be defeated, deterred and contained.
Yes, the Russians offered to not do that, in exchange for the US no longer providing realtime ISR to Ukraine.
Well, if you don’t ask…
But Russia isn’t holding any good cards. There’s no real comparison between what the US is doing for Ukraine, and what Russia is able to do to assist their ally Iran. It’s worth losing a few planes on the ground over imo.
Whatever happens, we have got
Starlink
And they have not
Ukraine, on t’other, is the most experienced country in the world at drone warfare and are assisting the defence against Iran. Smart of Ukraine to make themselves useful to the only superpower. Dumb of Starmer to put us on the Hegemon’s shit list.
NB that Iran has been getting pummelled for a solid month, and their greatest ‘victory’ involved damaging some aircraft on the ground. They can’t shoot them down.
That said the AWACS strike was shockingly accurate, targeting the fuselage under the radome. That was a drone with extremely accurate terminal guidance, which knew the AWACS was in that position. Much more valuable than a KC-135.
Dunno. It was a mixture of missile and drones. They either retained guidance throughout the flight path of the Shaheds or got very lucky with the missile CEP (and they’ve been using a lot of cluster munitions to make up for the inaccuracy of their missiles).
If Iran could precisely strike military targets in general, they’d go after the carriers. Less impressive to attack a large military base that wasn’t going anywhere.
Compared to the 13,000 air strikes the US and Israel have launched so far, a non-event. But it does show why these people shouldn’t be allowed nukes.
It was deffo a drone rather than a ballistic. Just explosive payload rather than kintetic whammo plus explosive. The largely intact radome just fell into where the fuselage used to be. It seems too accurate to be merely internal guidance, but luck is a factor.
Oddly enough, the US Air Force has a doctrine to cover this. Note 1-21, “Agile Combat Employment” says basically:
Disperse your aircraft.
Move them frequently.
Make targeting harder.
Dunno why they didn’t follow it. The luck factor works better when you raise the odds for your enemy. The US Army had six highly trained specialists killed (and many wounded) because they placed an important command post in an above ground semi-permanent tent.
…the Russians offered to not do that, in exchange for the US no longer providing realtime ISR to Ukraine.
1. Vlad is a psychotic loser: he would break any agreement, as Trump knows. 2. Ukraine’s drone expertise is helpful to the US, so the US is unlikely to withdraw ISR help. 3. Trump now sees Russia as in the enemy camp…
Russia went on his enemies list the last time they refused to wind down the war in Ukraine. But look at what’s happened since – their ally Venezuela is no longer an ally of Russia. Their much more important ally Iran is either going to get regime changed, or become a broken free fire zone forever. Cuba next.
Russian and Chinese military hardware has been humiliated in front of the whole world by the Americans. Crying about the “multilateral world” didn’t prevent the Iranian leadership being immolated.
People like the strong horse. The US just proved that’s not Russia. If they’re smart, they’ll agree to some sort of peace settlement in Ukraine. I also think the purges in the Chinese military are related to the CCP suddenly realising how much danger they’re in if they fuck with Taiwan.
Russia went on his enemies list the last time they refused to wind down the war in Ukraine. But look at what’s happened since…
It’s not how the West views the overall situation, but how Russia (and the Chicoms) view it!
In Russia, you have a rogue, nuclear-armed, expansionist state, disgruntled with the decadent West, with delusions of ultimately establishing a Russian Empire stretching from Lisbon/Dublin to Vladivostok….
And, meanwhile, the Putin fanboys on here have gone quiet…
How come the territory currently being annexed is the Russian speaking, Russian Orthodox church worshipping, wanky Russian TV watching types who might want their brightest getting scholarships to study engineering or medicine in Moscow.
The places that elected deputies who voted against the anti-Russian language acts before 2022.
Don’t get me wrong, Putin’s the aggressor, Ukraine is *our* underdog, so Brits side with team Ukraine, but Ukraine is literally a fascist enterprise using the Warren Smith definition – the authoritarian pursuit of national purity through force.
This is the pathetically obvious Russian propaganda view. Ukraine only started going after “things Russian” after Russia started using them to forment rebellion, and Russia started to do that from the moment Ukraine chose to go independent (all the oblasts so chose, including Crimea). The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine ended up being the fucking FSB, and weren’t shut down by the “fascist enterprise” until well into the war. An actual fucking invasion and the cunts were still allowed to conspire. We would never have put up with that shit in WWII.
And today, if we want to survive in this country we’re going to have to engage in “the authoritarian pursuit of national purity through force”. We’re going to have blast through our institutions and remove all the Islamo-communist influences. We’re going to have to have mass deportations.
And we can imagine the whining fuckers wittering about fascism.
It’s amazing to see the internationlist left and isolationist right coming together on so many issues. A great conglomeration of stupid.
The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine . . . weren’t shut down by the “fascist enterprise” until well into the war.
Shouldn’t have done it, even in a war, peoples like their connections to the past. You make my argument for me.
And today, if we want to survive in this country we’re going to have to engage in “the authoritarian pursuit of national purity through force”.
Hits different now.
Don’t despair.
Technical aside: they shot down an F-35, as in they successfully hit it with a targetted IR missile, damaging the aircraft and injuring the pilot who thankfully managed to make an emergency landing on friendly territory. Pilot and plane are out of the war.
But obviously Iran can’t do that at will. But, to but the but, that doesn’t mean they can’t have other victories, or that they can’t win. To quote the second to last known sentence of Moradmin Bast, “We’ve analyzed their attack, sir, and there is a danger.”
To be clear, I support the war and am not going wobbly. We should just be cognizant of the dangers of asymmetric warfare, for which the Iranians appear to have prepared quite well. All that you say that America and Israel have done to Iran is true. The question is whether all that matters? The IRGC still control Iran. They still control the nuclear materials. They control the Strait of Hormuz (and probably the Bab-al-Mandab). They control the energy output of the Gulf. They still have effective if limited command and control. They still have limited contact with allies who can still supply them to a limited degree. They can still choose and destroy remote targets to a limited degree. They are undoubtedly limited, but they still have the advantage of possessing the things their enemies are trying to take from them.
Can America and Israel just bomb that advantage away, or do they have to invade? Can a limited IRGC oulast the stockpiled arms advantage of America and Israel? Can a limited IRGC then outlast a limited America and Israel? Will the Gulf Allies remain stable for long enough?
A mere month into a conflict with a dedicated war entity is too early to answer these questions. We’ll get no help from the fog of war or the cuntstream media. So, standard practise:
Stand fast. Keep tipping it in. They’ll fold.
Nb warplane pendantry: the combat debut of the F-35 in Venezuela and Iran. It’s the most impressive technical demonstration of a new weapons platform this side of Alderaan.
The advantage it offers vs 4th gen is more militarily significant than the advantage the early jet engine offered over pistons. Almost Maxim Gun vs Fuzzy Wuzzies stuff. A few days before the war, Iran was bragging about its new, Chinese, F-35 defeating wonder radar. Does Ali Express do refunds?
But also: the F-35 only works so long as you work with Uncle Sam, knowhaddImean? It’s a hugely complex, but naturally US-centric network of suppliers who sustain the thing, being hypothetically cut off (rest in sky, Iranian F-14s) would be worse than no longer getting updates to Windows 10.
UK, Japan, and Italy are still developing a stealthy Typhoon replacement, I believe. Excellent idea. Typhoon is pre-Dreadnought. No reason why we can’t still build great jet planes on a reasonable budget, as long as the MoD has nothing to do with it, and Rolls-Royce makes the engines. Italy can do the styling and the paint job. And try to slip some St John’s Wort in the Jap’s tea, just in case.
I think the 30-year-old B2s doing the nuke sites last year, completely undetected until the big bangs, was pretty impressive too.
Might that be because of the help the USA and Euro-loons are helping “plucky” Ukraine with intelligence, satellite targeting, munitions, money?
Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
Yes but Ukraine is getting the sauce. Iran is getting ersatz sauce made from pencil shavings and spit in a factory in Omsk. I.e. there’s no comparison between NATO ISR and Russian.
If Russia could assist Iran in destroying American naval assets, for example, they would have. But they can’t. The lesson of Venezuela and Iran is that the United States is technologically still decades ahead of its rivals. Consequential.
Also, because African Man Bad, Starlink doesn’t get the love it should, but it’s a game changer.
If it’s a response by Russia, then it’s an imprudent one. Russia supporting Iran will consolidate the West’s opposition to Russia’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine.
“Britain is feeling the pain now, not because of Trump, not because of Israel, not even because of the terror regime in Iran, but because we’re a high tax, Net Zero Economic Growth zone run by cunts.”
And also as a consequence of the Met Police emboldening the traitors within by their ‘softly softly’ approach, which I don’t believe has been entirely directed by the Home Office.
I’m not opposed to doing something about Iran in principle. I’m pessimistic about the septics’ ability to think anything through.
You need a plan and to be committed to it. America’s problem is that they wade into wars over places they don’t actually care that deeply about. They kick some ass but it doesn’t take many dead Americans coming home for them to decide they don’t care that much.
You should fight wars where not fighting seems unthinkable to the people, like the Falklands. Ukraine isn’t like this. We have no treaty with Ukraine, no commercial interests, they aren’t a neighbour.
Have to disagree with you there. All this pessimism is driven by anger that the United States and Israel are winning. Even the “right wing” press is running ceaseless propaganda aimed at demoralising the West.
And TDS.
Me too. This war had to happen on our terms (by ‘our’, I mean the west, or those in the west with the requisite balls for it) or theirs, and war is always better when waged at a time and place of your choosing.
The Yanks and the Israelis are doing a phenomenal job. We should be in alongside them.
I remember back in the 1984 Miners’ Strike some woman on the TV bemoaning “‘cos he’s on strike we can only afford one holiday this year”. They instantly lost any residual support I may have had for them, we *NEVER* had a holiday at that time of my life. I had one week at Scout Camp when I was 11, and a long weekend on a municipal campsite when I was 15 – from which I had to walk home in the morning to do my paper round.
My wife remembers a miner’s wife complaining that they were reduced to eating chops.
You saw this happen three decades ago with the “social”: having your own TV, microwave etc was considered essential for people arriving on semi-permanent social security. Meanwhile, I didn’t have one because I couldn’t afford it 🙁
I don’t know whether it’s because the people doing the assessing are the type who shop in Waitrose, so their idea of ‘essentials’ is somewhat warped, or if they just don’t care about working people.
As usual, the answer could of course be ‘both’.
“Essentials” are now culturally relative; and relative poverty is a measure of inequality, not poverty.
This is no laughing matter. Do you know how many Greta Thunberg blow up dolls I go through a month ?
Get a muslim doll, they blow themselves up.
I blame inflation.
And the deflation is such a let down.
Deflation? Try sildenafil…
On this general trend I have noticed that many of the attention seekers on social media have ditched the Ukrainian and rainbow flags in favour of Palestine and the blue and pink transy one.
There’s a lot of talk like this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg3g11z6d8o
‘We can’t justify a £52 lunch’: Middle-income families cut back on days out
When did people ever start thinking that this made sense? We always took picnics for days out. Do the time + cost on it, and you’re being paid an insane amount of money per hour to make sandwiches.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0ljpxek5w2o
Vicki Broadbent, a children’s author who also blogs about parenting, is a big believer in the importance of restaurants as her family ran one when she was growing up.
She and her husband live in Harrogate with their three children and they usually dine out about once a week.
I have this general theory that nearly all of the extra money that women are earning from full-time work is just going straight back out replacing their labour. They need a car, they need to pay for childcare and by the end of the week, they feel like they deserve a treat and spend a ton of money on it. That’s like Friday going on a meal out.
“We always took picnics for days out.”
If you go to the beach you get sand in your jam sandwich. If you go to the park, wasps.
So the best bet is a cheese sandwich with lots of HP sauce.
That was my conclusion in short-trousered days.
Wise words. Cheese and pickle has a similar flavour. If you’ve not tried it, give Tracklements onion marmalade a go. It’s not cheap but it’s lovely stuff.
I miss Branston so much!
I know. One of the things I make sure I do get at the Brit shop and have done in different locations.
And yet, and yet. Sure, chutney is great. But Branston is tunip chutney. I know they call it rutabaga but that’s just the posh name for turnip. It’s turnip chutney. Sheesh.
When did people ever start thinking that this made sense?…Do the time + cost on it, and you’re being paid an insane amount of money per hour to make sandwiches.
But sandwiches are not fungible. If I make my own sandwiches, I get exactly the bread, filling and seasoning I want to the standard/quality I want – for c.10 minutes labour (ie c.£2.11 @ NMW), often using ingredients that would have gone to waste….
The original article does not state what these essentials actually are, so we can’t really say.
The Groan has done multiple articles about “poverty” and “essentials” over the past years, to the point some of them made it into this Blog for amazement and scorn by the local Commentariat…
And yes, like some here have expressed, the Groan’s view of “essential” is …not the same as ours.
Not being able to purchase the last-generation iPhone from the Refurbished market “poor”.
Not having a second or third holiday “poor”.
Not being able to have Elevenses and Second Breakfast “poor”.
So *unless* the Groaniads have suddeny grown a brain and a spine, that definition of “poor” is still the same: The Horror of falling from a high Middle Class to a low Middle Class budget.
Lack of Luxury, not actual poverty.
So yeah, we *can* say what they mean…
‘Struggling’ is a journalistic word. A double fallacy. It is an appeal to pity. And a begging the question fallacy.
with a quarter (26%) of households now regularly dipping into savings to bridge the gap between their income and the cost of essentials.
That would be pensioners I suppose.
So everything was just fine and dandy and “households” were living high on the hog and everyone was in a euphoric state of optimism over mass immigration, focketing electricity prices, increasing unemployment and the joy of a Labour Government – until a couple of weeks ago.
Our dire situation has nothing to do with the last 30 years of Government economic policy and the last two years of sheer incompetence?
The effects of oil prices really has not had enough time to filter through to our economy. In fact the surprise is how little oil prices have been affected in comparison with 2008 financial crisis, and other Middle East crises since the 1960s.
Ah. The Grauniad’’’ ‘nuff said.
Focketing is not a word but in this context it damn well ought to be.
Focketing is a fucking brilliant word and anyone who says otherwise is a cunt.
Savings are shifting from a safety net to a lifeline, with a quarter (26%) of households now regularly dipping into savings to bridge the gap between their income and the cost of essentials.
Isn’t that the point of savings?
Your savings are for a rainy day and pensions for retirement.
So I take it Which? will be slashing its subscription price?
I imagine the Consumers’ Association chief exec Anabel Hoult can afford most of the basics on her paltry £462,777 remuneration package (2024/5 accounts).
What did Which? ask the government to do?
Lemme guess: “consumer protection policy” means harassing business. I’d also recommend they stay off the world stage and concentrate on UK instability.