UK house prices have risen by 81pc since early 2009, with regular weekly wages rising by just 3.4pc when adjusted for inflation during the same period.
Are those house prices also adjusted for inflation or not? That is, is that a fair comparison or not?
Roma people in Europe: how do you feel about the lack of Roma MEPs?
In what has been described as an ‘unprecedented’ situation, there are no MEPs who identify as Roma in this European Parliament
This request for people to write in has been up for well over two weeks now. Still front page on one version of the paper. The follow up article composed of the people who wrote in has not appeared as yet.
Could it be that no many people give a damn?
First time in decades, actually bought – as in, paid own cash – for a British newspaper. £4.50 for a Saturday Telegraph, eh?
Be another few decades I think….
In a letter to Lord Lebedev, newsroom staff at risk of redundancy hit out at “devastating” plans for 70 job cuts and said that the terms on offer were “among the worst ever seen in the industry”. As many as six women on maternity leave are expected to lose their jobs.
Lord Lebedev is the son of a former KGB officer who received his peerage from Boris Johnson in 2020. He has proposed to make statutory minimum redundancy payments plus £1,000, capped at £21,000.
Clearly government is perfect and has set those stautory rates at what they should be. How could anything else be true?
Kamala Harris is mixed race, I’m mixed race – and Donald Trump is a dusty old relic
Arwa Mahdawi
So race does exist and is something to consider then? But I thought that race – among humans – wsa an unscientific concept?
It’s so hard to keep up these days as definitions are changed according to what is useful in the moment.
Of course, there’s also an entire missing of the point being made:
Lo and behold, this is exactly what happened. When asked about Kamala Harris, Trump complained that the vice-president seemed to have undergone some sort of racial metamorphosis. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” Trump proclaimed. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
He added: “You know what, I respect either one. But she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person. And I think somebody should look into that.”
When it was convenient for Kamala to present herself as being Indian she did so, later when it was convenient to present as black then and therefore….
While somebody is looking into that, they should probably also investigate what year Trump thinks it is. I know the guy was born in 1946 – 21 years before the US struck down state antimiscegenation statutes – but it’s 2024. It feels laughably out of touch to be publicly bemused by multiracial people when they are the fastest growing demographic in the US. This growth is partly down to an increase in interracial couples, but it is also because the 2020 US census added more nuance to racial categorisation, allowing for better data capture. People whose identity didn’t fit into a neat little box didn’t have to tick “Other” any more.
That is, it’s nothing to do with being multiracial, it’s to do with the changeability of Kamala’s presentation.
His comments come after years of discontent among farmers, who have been forced to contend with post-Brexit Labour shortages, EU red tape and soaring fertiliser and energy costs after the invasion of Ukraine.
There’s an errant capital letter in there…..
Labour is right to ditch the winter fuel allowance – it isn’t ‘robbing’ old people
Polly Toynbee
Scrapping the so far universal benefit for millions of pensioners means money can be diverted to those who need it most
Her usual argument – about hospitals, schools etc – is that they must be universal services. Because if something becomes only for the poor then it becomes shit.
That principles change dependent upon politics is evidence that they’re…..
Quite why this bloke has a regular column about technology is unknown:
But these are rationalisations rather than solid justifications. The truth is that my old iPhone was fine for the job. Sure, it would need a new battery in time, but apart from that it had years more life in it. And if you take a cold, detached look at the evolution of the iPhone product line, what you see from the 2010 iPhone 4 onwards is really just a sequence of steady incremental improvements. What was so special about that model? Mostly this: it had a front-facing camera, which opened up the world of selfies, video chat, social media and all the other accoutrements of our networked world. But from then on, it was just incremental changes and price rises all the way.
And this is true not just for iPhones but for smartphones, generally.
And:
Development of ChatGPT and its ilk will plateau, just like it did for smartphones, and then what are we left with? More ho-hum consumer tech
Err, yes?
This is what happens to all technologies. We have a new one, it’s pretty ropey but it just about works. The first 5 to 10 generations make it really work. Then it plateaus.
And?
That’s just the way all techs work. The airplane hsan’t got much, if any, faster since the 1960s. And? We’ve also had the internet, smartphones, Facebook and all sorts of lovely stuff since then. One the new tech is “good enough” it’s “Let’s look for the new new tech” time.
So we perfect the moldboard plough – time to get to work on that new copper smelting tech then. This is just how it works!
Medieval hilltop villages with baroque churches, their chimes echoing across piazze doused in evening sunlight, olive groves and vineyards rolling towards the Adriatic, the chirp of cicadas and distant laughter
Have Tuscany’s €1 homes saved Italy’s rural dream?
Not much Adriatic around Tuscany.
The tragic parable of Rishi Sunak: driven by success at all costs, then undone by his own myth-making
Nesrine Malik
The PM’s unbending belief in Britain as a meritocracy blinded him to the realities of race, class – and his own flawed project
Which does mean that if Britain’s not a meritocrsacy then and therefore Nesrine’s there on the basis of race and class.
Nice to know……
Uber, the ride-hailing and food-delivery giant, is heading for a £1 billion-plus tax showdown with HM Revenue & Customs over VAT payments.
The Silicon Valley tech firm has, since March 2022, been required by the taxman to pay 20 per cent VAT on its fares and delivery sales.
But Uber, which posted a £5.3 billion turnover in the UK last year, believes VAT should only apply to its profits, rather than revenues.
Bollocks, you idiot, idiot, boy.
Uber is arguing that VAT should apply to gross margin – revenue minus the cost of sales which goes to the driver – not on profit. Sometimes called “gross profit” which is still something very different from profit. And yes, he really does mean profit:
Uber’s accounts show that it made a profit of £29 million on £5.3 billion of revenues last year, and paid corporation tax of £4.5 million.
Sure, OK, this is the sort of ignorance we’d expect in the opinion columns of The Guardian but the business pages of the Sunday Times?
Sheesh.
There’s a shocking absence in this election: politicians won’t mention the Israel-Gaza war
Owen Jones
This is a General Election in Britain. Therefore the issues being discussed are to do with Britain.
That’s democracy for you……
The companies led by the boob-obsessed billionaire have faced a number of sexual harassment lawsuits. Why do his cult-like followers still consider him a genius?
The man could be a convicted rapist, murderer and genocidaire and he’d still be a genius. We would then judge him on those disparate parts as well. But it really is true that he’s a total wonder at this business thing.
Yes, we can even argue over what it is that he’s so good at. PR? Subsidy guzzling? What?
But he really is damn, damn, good at it.
*Subs write the subheads, not the journalist.
All schoolchildren should have a right to green space to play in, with private schools made to share their extensive facilities, campaigners have said.
A Guardian investigation this week found that children at England’s top private schools have access to 10 times the amount of green space that the average state school pupil can use, while there are some state school pupils who have no access to playgrounds or playing fields at all.
Look look, Mummy! They’ve got something nice! Go and steal it for me!
This piece, here, was written by a high school student.
Sure, it’s not perfect and all that, but it’s good. Bit of editorial care and attention and we could imagine The Guardian publishing it.
Under 18 Bangladeshi writing like that – and yes, directly into English, no translation.
It’s not AI to worry about, is it?
The Guardian view on Europe’s imperilled green deal: time to outflank the radical right
Editorial
The voters have spoken but fuck them, harder and faster we go!
The burden of transition on economically insecure voters must be eased via a more ambitious fiscal approach by governments
More tax, Yay!
So far at least, something being said but how true it is:
For weeks, hundreds of highly trained IDF, Shin Bet, police and special forces officers had game-planned the rescue, using models of two buildings deep inside Nuseirat in Gaza, where “precise” intelligence indicated Ms Argamani and the three male hostages were being held in two separate buildings.
The hostages, code-named “diamonds”, had all been kidnapped from the now infamous Nova music festival and were being held by armed guards in locked rooms in low-rise apartment blocks just 200 metres apart from each other.
The “high-risk” rescue was made more complex by the “cruel and cynical” decision to embed them within the dense civilian population in flats occupied by families, Rear-Adml Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesperson, said in a postoperative media briefing.
So he sotry goes – and as I say, I don’t know this – the girl was being held by a local journalist.
Just another reminder that we can’t trust the information coming out of Gaza. Because the only “journalists” in there are either Hamas themselves or under Hamas control. There just aren’t any foreigners in there.
A child contracted the rare Weil’s disease after swimming in a river, an Essex council has said.
Dedham parish council said the student “suffered a severe infection after swimming in the River Stour at Dedham, and has been very poorly”.
In a letter published online, the authority said it was a “confirmed case of Weil’s disease (leptospirosis), which can be very serious”.
The disease is spread in the urine of infected animals, most commonly rats, mice, cows, pigs and dogs.
People can contract Weil’s disease if soil or fresh water gets in their mouth, eyes or a cut.
Nationalise ’em Danno.
Except, of course, the number of rats (etc etc) in the river is nothing to do with the water cpompany….