Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Original poster

Keir Starmer has warned us to prepare for inflation in a recent speach.

119 replies

EvangelicalAboutButteredToast · 03/05/2026 14:29

errr haven’t we just had a 50% ruse in food prices alongside huge utility and energy/fuel hikes? I heard that and thought how much fucking higher are we going before people are unable to pay their bills?!

OP posts:
Thread gallery
11
GeneralPeter · 09/05/2026 21:52

@WaryCrow

I see the issue now. By “ever” you mean “since the 1980s”.

The data still doesn’t back you up if you are talking about hours per worker. This has fallen steadily since 1980:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker?country=~GBR

And real wages per hour have grown throughout that time too (see graph).

So that is the opposite of working harder than ever and getting less than ever.

It’s not really about gall. If you think this is wrong, share the data you are relying on and let’s work out where we are differing.

Keir Starmer has warned us to prepare for inflation in a recent speach.
GeneralPeter · 09/05/2026 21:57

MushMonster · 09/05/2026 21:42

Of course it is global data, because billionaires do not live in a set country and off we go. They can live anywhere for 5 min at a time, or own their own island.
With personal big wealth and corporation wealth you have to go global to get the real picture.

Show quote history

For a claim about trends in this country, countering with global data doesn’t really work.

I’m not denying that billionaires in the UK have highly concentrated wealth. That’s true pretty much by definition. I just don’t see anything yet to support your claim about concentration at unprecedented rates. I don’t see how that could possibly be true.

(I do think it might just become true in the coming decades, becuase of AI, but that’s a different question).

MushMonster · 09/05/2026 22:01

GeneralPeter · 09/05/2026 21:52

@WaryCrow

I see the issue now. By “ever” you mean “since the 1980s”.

The data still doesn’t back you up if you are talking about hours per worker. This has fallen steadily since 1980:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker?country=~GBR

And real wages per hour have grown throughout that time too (see graph).

So that is the opposite of working harder than ever and getting less than ever.

It’s not really about gall. If you think this is wrong, share the data you are relying on and let’s work out where we are differing.

Edited

This graph shows a tendency to lower growth values for wages, not higher. It even goes below 0% growth, so meaning real wages were cut, not increased. Though I cannot see the full meaning of the Y axis, neither on the graph or legend, so I may be missing the actual message of it.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

Cost of living
MushMonster · 09/05/2026 22:05

That is about the graph you posted as an image, which has not copied on the quote for some reason.

GeneralPeter · 09/05/2026 22:13

MushMonster · 09/05/2026 22:01

This graph shows a tendency to lower growth values for wages, not higher. It even goes below 0% growth, so meaning real wages were cut, not increased. Though I cannot see the full meaning of the Y axis, neither on the graph or legend, so I may be missing the actual message of it.

Show quote history

Falling growth, yes. But any
growth above 0 (which it is for almost all the post 1980 period) is growth. I shared it because Wary’s modified claim seems to be that we’ve been working more and more for less and less since 1980. Whereas on a per-worker basis the data shows the opposite: working less and less for more and more. I think it might look different on a per-household basis but I could not find any dataset for that. Still I don’t think Wary’s claim really stands up. Certainly not in the terms she made it.

MushMonster · 09/05/2026 22:13

Screenshot

Keir Starmer has warned us to prepare for inflation in a recent speach.
GeneralPeter · 09/05/2026 22:19

MushMonster · 09/05/2026 22:13

Screenshot

I think we are talking at cross-purposes becuase the claim I’m responding to is about wealth concentration (/growth) and whether it’s unprecedented or not. The Oxfam data seems to be saying that absolute billionaire wealth has grown a lot in a one-year period. They really aren’t the same claim.

I’m also not saying high wealth concentration is good, just that both the concentration level and the trend we see now is far far from being unprecedented.

MushMonster · 09/05/2026 22:23

@GeneralPeter the graph would need to go from 2020 till today. Post covid, Ukraine war and the conflict in the ME will have an effect, I think.
I am not sure where to find one that would cover recent times.
But it does not feel like we are getting wages growth above inflation. Yes my wage is going up, but my shopping cart is going up faster. I would really like to know the basics inflation, rather than the overall. You know the % increase on baked beans, pasta, ham, sausages, fruit, eggs, electricity and gas, fuel, car insurance, council tax, water.... the actual household bills. Because many of these items prices have almost doubled since covid/ Ukraine war cost of living started.

GeneralPeter · 09/05/2026 22:33

MushMonster · 09/05/2026 22:23

@GeneralPeter the graph would need to go from 2020 till today. Post covid, Ukraine war and the conflict in the ME will have an effect, I think.
I am not sure where to find one that would cover recent times.
But it does not feel like we are getting wages growth above inflation. Yes my wage is going up, but my shopping cart is going up faster. I would really like to know the basics inflation, rather than the overall. You know the % increase on baked beans, pasta, ham, sausages, fruit, eggs, electricity and gas, fuel, car insurance, council tax, water.... the actual household bills. Because many of these items prices have almost doubled since covid/ Ukraine war cost of living started.

Definitely the cost of living squeeze is real. I’m think real wage growth is pretty close
flat, and it did turn negative in Covid. If we’re having a general chat about the economy I think it’s been dismal for almost 20 years and no party seems to have a real plan for changing that. We are still getting more prosperous but it’s slowed to a snails pace which is depressing.

BiteSizeByzantine · 09/05/2026 22:36

WaryCrow · 09/05/2026 21:08

No they aren’t and I don’t know how you have the gall to claim so.

Working hours used to be 9-5, with an hours lunch break and 2 tea breaks on top. That was standard through the 80s and really started shifting with so much else at the turn of the millennium. Management of course frequently buggered off for 2 hr working lunches in pubs. 35 hours was full time. Now working hours are usually 8.30-5.30, hour long linch breaks are increasingly uncommon and tea breaks very much curtailed. Staff are usually much thinner on the ground relative to service needs and are all working harder. The crap about productivity and cuts, cuts, cuts everywhere result in one person doing jobs that would in the 90s have been done by 3 or 4 from my experience, looking at council, NHS, journalism and cleaning jobs. Formal full time hours are considered to be 37.5 in some public organisations, 40 in many others, and I know far too many youngsters working 60 hours a week to make ends meet. That used to be called Victorian, and Victorian was considered bad.

Those staff also have to be much more qualified to get the jobs - do you want to dispute that too? - and requirements to carry out higher skilled tasks have been passed down the chain in every public sector organisation, every ex-public sector organisation (eg higher education) and the private sectors that I know of too. We aren’t given more staff to do these extra tasks: it’s just normalised and expected. Tbh I always feel a bit guilty of having been one of those who enabled that. I used to do more than was expected of my level because I was building my own confidence, coming from a shit background, and building up proof that I could do the higher jobs. Only for those higher jobs to be made redundant and to be told that I could carry on doing that formally, and nowadays it’s expected.

Training is constantly required in all employment now, with portfolios and CPD mostly done on your own time elsewhere it won’t get done. You never had that in the 90s.

Women of course could retire at 60, men at 65, and many women were still not working once they had kids. Those that did usually worked part time. The phrase “working mum” became common again around the millennium. Nowadays it would be considered a patronising term, because it’s normality.

Edited
Show quote history

Thank you for this post this is EXACTLY spot on.

daisychain01 · 10/05/2026 07:32

WildGarden · 03/05/2026 21:41

Someone, somewhere in the UK is making a lot of money out of this.

BP making a killing on the fuel crisis.

A free range chicken in Sainsbury's on Saturday was £18. My cousin in Australia bought the same size free range chicken on Saturday for £8.

This is all a piss take isn't it?

A Sainsbury Taste the Difference free-range whole chicken typically costs about £7.50 to £9.00 not £18.00.

daisychain01 · 10/05/2026 07:53

BiteSizeByzantine · 09/05/2026 22:36

Thank you for this post this is EXACTLY spot on.

Show quote history

The crap about productivity and cuts, cuts, cuts everywhere result in one person doing jobs that would in the 90s have been done by 3 or 4 from my experience,

Jobs have to change, organisations make decisions because 3-4 people are no longer needed and business needs change, demand for different service change, in the case of public sector we're in this mess because changes weren't made much sooner.

Businesses including public sector can't stay frozen in time, unfortunately it does mean people's jobs are no longer needed, or needed in a different way, which is disruptive.

people need to reskill themselves (which many people are reluctant to do), they need to have skills that are useful to business not expect to keep their job exactly the way they were 2 decades ago.

there are many roles in public sector that took 3-4 people because the technology was last century and investment wasn't made to upgrade earlier which now costs a lot more to put right.

WildGarden · 10/05/2026 08:28

daisychain01 · 10/05/2026 07:32

A Sainsbury Taste the Difference free-range whole chicken typically costs about £7.50 to £9.00 not £18.00.

Edited
Show quote history

Totally agree with you. They were £18 last weekend.

WaryCrow · 11/05/2026 05:42

GeneralPeter · 09/05/2026 21:52

@WaryCrow

I see the issue now. By “ever” you mean “since the 1980s”.

The data still doesn’t back you up if you are talking about hours per worker. This has fallen steadily since 1980:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker?country=~GBR

And real wages per hour have grown throughout that time too (see graph).

So that is the opposite of working harder than ever and getting less than ever.

It’s not really about gall. If you think this is wrong, share the data you are relying on and let’s work out where we are differing.

Edited

Really. And exactly which cherry picked date are you talking about. I’m talking about the changes over my lifetime, affecting the generations now working, not the worst times of British history. No one wants to go back to Victorian levels of squalor and lack of rights except for the very richest (incidentally those who survived the Black Death were able to improve their lot due to the reduction of Labour. It is demographics more than any other single factor which sets the price for Labour which is why our upper classes are all so keen to increase the population whether we like it or not).

Is this how the economist managed to produce an article claiming that private rents only increased by 2-odd percent in the early 09s and wages kept pace with the change?

Lies, damned lies, statistics… now extended to British statistics. All you are demonstrating is the destruction of information and with it the destruction of this age of the world. The destruction of democracy and the return of authoritarian propaganda. Are you personally so sure you’ll survive the new dark ages?

WaryCrow · 11/05/2026 05:55

Assuming you are a person not an AI bot, or something based in Russia of course. We can’t even be sure of that now.

GeneralPeter · 11/05/2026 05:59

WaryCrow · 11/05/2026 05:55

Assuming you are a person not an AI bot, or something based in Russia of course. We can’t even be sure of that now.

This is the paranoid style that serves both far left and far right so poorly.

GeneralPeter · 11/05/2026 06:06

@WaryCrow
And exactly which cherry picked date are you talking about.

I’ve provided my data. Where’s yours? No one forced you to make the claims you did. If you can’t back them up, have the grace to say so.

Labour cost: demographics very important yes. But productivity is the main driver. Eg population of virtually everywhere is higher now than 50 years ago, yet real wages also massively higher.

WaryCrow · 13/05/2026 13:30

I gave you real history. Real history which any human there at the time will recognise.

Im not bothering with you anymore. Unfortunately this is destroying the internet and basic information completely.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page