There seems to be a race to the bottom when it comes to pay across all industries. These are wages from almost 30 years ago for a middle level IT person. In 1994 a typical high end IT manager for a national corporation was around £70k+.

Edit: I just remembered that in 1996 the company I worked for paid £1k per day for an external contractor to provide Unix and IP networking consultancy services to one staff member. That went on for five days per week for about a month at least. That staff member was on about £40k.

Here’s a reminder of what the water companies have been doing to get into this mess.

It’ll be interesting to know the level of impact of turning arable land over to solar farms.

The clue might be France.

Closing corporate tax loop holes will help a fair bit. I doubt much has changed since this article in 2012.

It’s a shame wages weren’t keeping pace.

It’s very rare that we watch broadcast TV or record anything to a PVR. It’s all streaming on Netflix/Amazon to TV or on my phone. Haven’t watched TV in the conventional sense for some years now.

It’s been happening before Brexit. The Tories hate the NHS and want to replace it, as you say, with a private healthcare system. However, saying so publicly would be political suicide so the NHS has been gradually privatised within by outsourcing backroom services to the private sector. Having said that Brexit has not helped the NHS.

Such privatisation has failed in a lot of cases.

Here’s a list of such services privatised.

The common phrase “The NHS will remain free at point of use” is used to side step accusations of privatising the NHS.

Privatisation through defunding

Chip shops will go the same way as pubs.

I think this story will be around for a while.

Mmm Gerhard Schroeder and Russia rings a bell …

Putin’s man in Germany.

Why Gerhard Schröder won’t unfriend Vladimir Putin.

Putin’s pal Gerhard Schröder won’t be kicked out of Germany’s Social Democrats

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

I’ve heard these grandiose announcements over the last 15 years where it is already known that rural areas have rubbish broadband. Plans were announced, huge amounts of money were given to telcos , usually BT, and nothing happens in the rural areas but towns and cities get super fast fibre.

The telcos do not want to upgrade Comms infrastructure in rural areas as they are invariably sparsely populated so the profits don’t exist. But they’re happy to take the tax-payers money though.

With the onset of mobile phones, wired/fibre solutions become increasingly expensive and less likely in such areas and we’re still waiting for a decent signal.

And so it goes on.

This shouldn’t come as any surprise as many people can’t afford basic day to day living costs because of low wages and reduced employee security.

An investment savings fund built up over ones working life to provide an income in retirement.

I took things into my own hands. Once my 12 months SIM only contract was up almost two years ago I moved over to a rolling 30-day. I will not go back to the big players on anything more than 30 days. Fuck the greedy bastards.

Mmm earlier it said £94, the extracted body text said “X and X” and now it’s £19.

Definitely needs a TL;DR.

We’re only now feeling the effects of the water privatisation of a few decades ago along with the selling off of the council houses.

Yes you certainly have.

For clarity, I have not stated any excuse whatsoever, certainly not for Tories, but rather a reflection on where we are at present, where we could possibly be in the future and what has happened previously.

The realistic prospect of an armed conflict with Russia is what has changed.

Whether we cannot afford it is irrelevant, we may have no choice. We couldn’t afford it in 1939 and it wasn’t long ago that we’d only finished paying for our WW2 debts.

Unless something drastic happens that Putin comes to his senses we are in most likelihood heading for very dark times.

We’re not the only country considering a return to National Service/Conscription.