The cost of living and reasons to be sceptical

Shimeon Lee has a topical TPA piece on defects in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “cost of living tracker.”


A closer look at "JRF's cost of living tracker"

Active users of X may have seen a viral clip last week of LBC host Nick Ferrari pushing back on the claim that 7 million households supposedly cannot afford a 50p toothbrush. The figure comes from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “cost of living tracker” which claims that 7.4 million low income families are going without essentials in 2026.

This has been uncritically repeated by outlets like the BBC who featured a 77 year old woman claiming she cannot even afford to turn on her oven - more dramatic than anything actually measured in the JRF survey. The same woman has appeared in many similar articles before, making outlandish claims like only having seven hot meals a year. Stories and reports like these are used to build the case for ever more government spending, with the JRF calling for the universal credit standard allowance to rise by as much as 68 per cent, for example.

Yet there is reason to be sceptical. In the BBC article, the same woman who cannot afford to use her oven reported spending £50 a week on petrol - enough to drive 300 miles. Exactly why a pensioner is driving the equivalent of London to Newcastle every week is unclear, especially considering she couldn’t afford a car in 2024.


No surprises but the whole piece is well worth reading.


Ultimately, the problem with measuring hardship in this way is that going without some things does not necessarily mean lacking the money for it. People make different choices about how to allocate their resources. In the same 2023 JRF survey, 15 per cent of those who were “going without essentials” also said they did not intend to reduce socialising due to cost, with 15 per cent also economically inactive. More welfare should not be the default answer, and when extraordinary claims and common sense contradict, common sense should prevail.

PM urged to stick to the spirit of made up numbers

PM urged to stick to spirit of Labour manifesto and reject Jackdaw and Rosebank

The plea to Andy Burnham comes from campaigners at Stop Climate Chaos Scotland.

Andy Burnham has been urged to “stick to the spirit of Labour’s manifesto commitment” and refuse consent for the controversial Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas fields.

Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) – a campaign group made up of more than 70 different organisations with around one million supporters – insisted the new Prime Minister must block the proposed new developments in the North Sea.

It told the Prime Minister that the lifetime carbon emissions from the two proposed developments could result in up to 65,495 excess heat deaths by the end of this century – adding this would be equivalent to the entire population of the city of Inverness.

The notion of 'climate chaos' may be typical activist twaddle, but more serious would be  government policies based on such a ludicrous number as the excess heat death claim. In that case we would be marching towards chaos, not evading it.

Not that we are actively marching away from chaos. Drifting towards it perhaps - too quickly.

Razz Washing Powder

 

That Finger-Wagging Alert

Yesterday we didn't receive the national alert on our phones because we have it switched off. We have no intention of doing anything which could start a wildfire anyway.

But they know that.

 

Khan challenges Burnham - don't back away from twaddle

Khan issues challenge to Burnham not to back away from net-zero goals

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said green investment was needed to ‘get our planet back on track’.

Andy Burnham has been warned not to “slow down on net zero” by London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, who argued the heatwave and wildfires showed the need for action on climate change.

The Prime Minister has acknowledged the devastation caused by the extreme weather is due to climate change but has faced criticism over his stance on North Sea oil and gas and potentially watering-down targets for the take-up of electric vehicles.

Which suggests that climate twaddle is still fashionable among the slimy, belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable, snivelling, dribbling, dithering, palsied pulse-less lot that make up politics today.*

* Adapted from D H. Lawrence.

Europe made food abundant. Then Brussels decided to produce less

Richard Schenk has an interesting Brussels Signal piece on EU meddling with the production of what was once abundant in Europe - food. 

Well worth reading for Schenk's key point - the consequences of equating progress with producing less. It ties in with the the EU-Mercosur trade agreement.

Europe made food abundant. Then Brussels decided to produce less

The Common Agricultural Policy emerged from a Europe that remembered war scarcity. Europe created abundance so successfully that it eventually forgot why producing food mattered.

Farmers even became targets of resentment, supposedly bathing in EU subsidies. Yet agricultural support declined substantially relative to the European economy. Common Agricultural Policy spending fell from 0.54 per cent of EU GDP in the 1990s to 0.36 per cent in 2023, according to the Commission’s own figures.

Environmental protection is not the problem. Farmers have an obvious interest in fertile soil, reliable water and a functioning natural environment.

The problem begins when environmental ambitions become detached from producing food, or become entangled with a degrowth philosophy in which producing less is itself treated as progress.

The world looks different now

Amazon turning to Natural gas power plant for AI data center – To emit more CO2 ‘than any other power plant in the country’

Amazon is investing in a large-scale natural-gas-burning power plant as part of a huge data center in Texas, the company confirmed on Friday, a facility that could become the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States...

“The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge,” said Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokeswoman. Still, “our commitment hasn’t changed,” she said.

Hmm  - there is not much difference here the UK.

MPs fear one key issue could end new PM's honeymoon period

The "Burnham bounce" has largely been driven by Green voters coming back to the fold. Labour MPs warn that spells trouble if more oil and gas is approved following a summer of extreme weather...

Climate conscious Labour MPs are concerned there is a lack of urgency from the government as the UK battles extreme heatwaves, drought and wildfires.