Latest Moan From You and Me 2023

This has gone on for years but because of the long run of increases recently it's become more noticeable.

 

I think the key point is the gap between credit interest and debt interest is getting bigger.

I think it's stealth tax. I was watching a finance video the other night where a guy was explaining what happens with the interest debtors pay. Some goes to the banks profits, but importantly, some goes to paying higher interest on government bonds. I'm not a financial expert, but my take on that is that some of the interest goes back to the government, and those that invest in government bonds.

 

I've been saying this all along I know, but there has been massive profits made since the start of covid then followed by the Ukraine war.
They all have their noses in the trough, not just the energy giants who were mostly singled out because their profiteering was obvious, but others have been making billions also but not in obvious ways and it will all come out eventually, when its too late to do anything about it.

 

Part of the problem is related to the supply chain. And part of that is apparently because lots of older workers decided to leave the workforce. I wonder why they did that. The sad fact, as much as people try to deny it, is that age discrimination is rife in the workplace. Then they were told not to go to work for a while. Then inflation went crazy meaning their pension savings were unlikely to grow in real terms, so they might as well start drawing from it now. If I could afford to retire I'd be out of there.

 

I often wonder how someone in his or her early 50s can suddenly say, I'm not going to work anymore, must be some very generous pension schemes out there.

I think people found out that going to work was drudgery, so lots jumped on the long covid.

I'm not denying it, just think there are a lot using that as an excuse not to go back to work, they had rubbish jobs and poor pay and got used to getting money for nothing.

Add to that no body seems to be lined up for manual work from school age and we rely on foreign workers.
Local fruit farmer moaning again on TV the other night, fruit growing in Kent is in danger of disappearing because we cant get foreigners to come here and pick the fruit.
You have to ask, if we need to rely on foreign workers to pick the fruit is there really any point in growing it here????

 

See: "Seasonal Worker visas and UK agriculture" (- House of Commons Library):

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9665/CBP-9665.pdf

Also DEFRA's "Independent review into labour shortages in the food supply chain" (- HMG):

Independent review into labour shortages in the food supply chain

There are all sorts of reasons for the worker shortage; latterly, the problem has been the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and its effects here and abroad, the aging UK workforce and the disinterest of young workers in the sector, the increase in demand from Central European economies (which are having to recruit non-EU workers themselves), the situation in Ukraine especially and also in Belarus and Russia, which combined supplied nearly 80% of the seasonal workers in 2021.

It's all a bit of a mess at the moment, as you say.

 

Lets face it, its nothing new, we rely on foreign labour for anything slightly hard or unclean, pay them poor wages and send them home.

Its a hell of a way to run a country, and quite a lot of the developed countries have been doing it for years, maybe its time the dung hit the fan.

 

Argh!

"Yodel"

GrrrrrRRR!

Thrown over a 10' (3m) fence and landed on concrete.

 

I don't have that problem as if i know it's coming i'll be waiting and alway get my parcels from the van i don't give them any chance to do anything like that and i have cctv so if they did it will be on camera

 

Not a fan of Yodel, but as with most of these its often down to your particular delivery driver.

 

Indeed that's true. I've had to resort to checking which courier company an online supplier uses before ordering. If it's TNT, I'm not receiving it. It will turn up at an off license across town about a week late.

 

It's like any commodity, importing all your basic supplies from elsewhere is fine until something goes badly wrong with the supply chain and food either becomes unavailable or extremely expensive.

 

We might as well just import the fruit if nobody here wants to pick it, seems stupid growing it then importing labour to pick it.
That was my point.

We could just build more houses.

 

Our dependence on foreign workers is testament to the failures of successive UK governments for decades. Brexit happened, and suddenly we've got a labour crisis. I'm not going to get political, this is just a cold observation. It seems to me that people can easily blame Brexit, or they could ask what happened to our education system and culture that meant we can't produce our own workforce.