NEW: the Iran war may have cost households nearly £1,000 a year by 2029 – and wiped out any gains in living standards for this parliament! Why is Britain so bad at withstanding energy shocks? 1/2

Amid all the talk of freezing the price of groceries, I looked at what goes into the cost of a pint of milk. Two things jump out... 1/3

Voters like the idea of cutting welfare in principle, but singling out an undeserving group — eg stripping winter fuel payments from pensioners, or reducing payments for those unable realistically to work — quickly becomes unconscionable (£) www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/... By @tomcalver.bsky.social

Labour’s Achilles’ heel: has welfare doomed Keir Starmer?

When the party’s history of rebellion on benefits collided with a low-growth, high-debt economy, a leadership crisis was quick to follow

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Are resident doctors still underpaid? The BMA’s case for industrial action is undermined by the way the union uses data. 1/6 www.thetimes.com/article/895f...

There are two big problems with the triple lock One: it makes future spending impossible to predict. If we keep it, pension spending by 2050 could be a just a little higher than it is now. Or, if we have anything like recent volatility, it could be tens of billions higher. 1/5

1/ Good explainer in today’s Sunday Times from @tomcalver.bsky.social on why renewables are not cheap. I’d add this: The wholesale market price of electricity is the *short-run* marginal cost. When renewables dominate, it will often be close to zero.

Why is the rush into renewable energy not lowering our bills?

Wind power is hitting records, yet bills are set to rise. From the ‘dark calm’ to a £70bn grid overhaul, here is why green energy costs a premium

thetimes.com

The Greens are doing well in urban areas with insufficient incomes and poor access to housing. They have gained traction among the growing cohort who have gone to university and moved to the city but are struggling to keep up. (£) www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... By @tomcalver.bsky.social

The Green Party is soaring in the polls. Who are its supporters?

While Reform leads among men, some pollsters now have the Greens closing on first place among women

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Green support is rising under Zack Polanski. Who are its new voters? The party's new voter base is younger, student-y, more female, and less financially comfortable than their 2024 voters. They are the heirs of Corbynism: 39% of current supporters backed Labour in 2019 1/2

Will the rush to net zero save us from future energy price shocks? Since 2004, the UK has engaged in a risky experiment: generating less electricity. The bet is that enough wind will reverse that by 2030. But gas – overtaxed and neglected – will still matter www.thetimes.com/article/0227...

This week's column: choose your university wisely Post-1992 providers have been rapidly expanding business, law and computing courses. Yet the returns for students 5 years after graduating from these courses have, to date, been woeful 1/4

The death of the housing ladder The average income of a first-time buyer is £61k. But the average second or third-time buyer is earning £91k! Poor price growth in starter homes, plus rising moving costs, is trapping Brits in the first homes they buy www.thetimes.com/article/9302...

Scrapping the Equality Act would not conjure up better schools in coastal towns, or new graduate jobs in post-industrial areas. The real divide is between thriving places and surviving ones, which is a far more expensive problem to fix. (£) www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... By @tomcalver.bsky.social

Is class a bigger obstacle to social mobility than race?

As class and race collide in the debate over social mobility, new data suggests socioeconomic background is now the primary driver of inequality

thetimes.com

Here's the real reason the government keeps freezing the student loan threshold The part of the loan that's repaid is classed as an asset on Treasury spreadsheets. But when plan 2 student loans started to be repaid, the percentage received back was less than expected... 1/4

What happens if Britain’s population starts shrinking - which could happen as soon as 2029? Really enjoyed recording this edition of @thetimes.com's story podcast podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

Is the UK’s official child poverty measure about to be revised downwards? The survey used by the DWP to measure poverty misses an astonishing £43bn of benefits income a year! 1/4

Great article by @tomcalver.bsky.social on why income is often a poor indicator of whether someone is in poverty. Income is under-reported in the main survey used for poverty stats. A correction to that could soon shrink our official poverty figures overnight. www.thetimes.com/article/fb88...

Is child poverty really as widespread as official figures show?

Labour has staked its credibility on cutting it, so it’s worth straightening out the data

thetimes.com

None of this is an argument for mass sackings or football manager turnover rates. Stability and institutional memory are important. But we accept a system in which officials are much more likely to die than be sacked for weak performance (£) www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... By @tomcalver.bsky.social

How difficult is it to get sacked from a civil service job?

Whitehall is widely criticised as underperforming and oversized — yet just 0.76 per cent of civil servants were dismissed or made redundant in 2024-25

thetimes.com

This week's column: how can Scotland afford tax cuts? Its tax system may be more progressive the than rest of UK's. But the answer is not because it has cracked the code of Scandinavian-style democracy: it is because England pays the difference www.thetimes.com/article/ede4...

This week's column is about how we spend our most valuable asset of all: time Life has become less obviously strenuous. For women, unpaid work is being replaced with paid work. Men enage in more leisure than ever. Both sexes sleep more. Why, then, does life feel rushed? 1/3

What can 40 years of song lyrics tell us about society? I analysed the lyrics of 1,600 pop songs going back to 1985. Our music appears to be getting gloomier, less future-looking and more self-obsessed 1/6

Net migration was negative as recently as the 1970s. The difference was that Britain had a surplus of young people. We have never before been an ageing country that is also shrinking. (£) www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... Interesting by @tomcalver.bsky.social Britain on trend to shrink + consequences

Could Britain’s population actually start shrinking soon?

By 2029 the ONS expects more deaths than births

thetimes.com

Britain’s population could start shrinking sooner than we think Successive changes to immigration rules are seeing visa applications plummet. Meanwhile, revisions to data - plus an expected student exodus next year - should send the official emigration figures higher 1/4

Britain’s hospitals average 90% bed occupancy throughout the year, and 95% in winter. This is not normal! 1/3

I am helping man the phone lines for @thetimes.com Christmas appeal! We are raising money for three amazing charities this year, covering restorative justice, loneliness and bicycles! Give us a call on 020 7782 5555 if you can spare anything and fancy a chat

Great to see @tomcalver.bsky.social using this IFS chart in his (excellent) piece about the UK's economic and fiscal travails. The combination of low growth and high debt interest really does make for some unpleasant fiscal arithmetic. It's a tough time to be Chancellor.

Tom Calver@tomcalver.bsky.social · 9mo ago

After Liz Truss's mini-budget, just 15 per cent of people felt the Tories were the best party at handling the economy Today, the equivalent figure for Labour is 12 per cent www.thetimes.com/article/470f...

After Liz Truss's mini-budget, just 15 per cent of people felt the Tories were the best party at handling the economy Today, the equivalent figure for Labour is 12 per cent www.thetimes.com/article/470f...

Her decisions may have had a small impact on borrowing costs & inflation. Other factors, like BoE policies & decades of poor growth have done more combined damage. Perhaps Reeves’s greatest failure has been to not see all of this coming (£) www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... By @tomcalver.bsky.social

How much of our economic mess is Rachel Reeves’s fault?

The chancellor was at pains last week to blame everyone else for the tax rises she is likely to announce in the budget

thetimes.com

Superb work from @tomcalver.bsky.social and @jburnmurdoch.ft.com showing how the UK's upper-middle classes have born the brunt of our 20yr long productivity stagnation, whereas lower earners have been insulated from this via ongoing minimum wage hikes, compressing earnings across the spectrum.

Fair-minded discussion by @tomcalver.bsky.social on the Brexit impact. I'm more worried about the trade data though - goods exports volumes declining since 2019 is a big problem, and finance and transport services have significantly lagged other advanced economies. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Would UK be better off without Brexit?

Ministers may be tempted to use it as an excuse for tax rises, but there’s far more to it than that

thetimes.com

Fascinating as always by @tomcalver.bsky.social on the impact of Brexit. Would UK be better off without Brexit? www.thetimes.com/article/860b... 1/2

Would UK be better off without Brexit?

Ministers may be tempted to use it as an excuse for tax rises, but there’s far more to it than that

thetimes.com