The Great Permacrises

My friend works at Accenture where the DEI programme and initiatives were all cancelled on Friday globally (despite previously being something ‘core to the corporations values’). The rollback is quick and real, and could easily happen here.

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It’s genuinely quite scary when you think they have access to the entire payments system. I understand it’s now only ‘read only’ access (still quite scary) but was actually write access for a while and no one fully knows what was done in that time.

Trump already showed he’ll stop at nothing to retain power. Musk and Trump show every signal of wannabe dictators. One can only hope the signs and signals of what might be happening are exaggerated or misleading, but it doesn’t look great at all.

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I couldn’t disagree more. I have problems with our government sure. But they aren’t:

  • actively stamping over LGBT rights, forcing the removal of things like health advice for gay kids to be removed from websites
  • blaming plane crashes on ‘DEI’
  • giving their mates access to the whole countries payment system
  • advocating for ethnic cleansing in Gaza so that they can ‘build condos’ on it
  • frequently advocating for aggressive expansionism that would seriously threaten world peace, like Greenland and Panama
  • initiating a trade war with China that will hurt the world economy

And one can hardly see Kier Starmer leading an armed mob into Westminster in an attempt to take it over after an election defeat.

I’m actually quite glad our prime minister is boring, generally sensible, and also respects democracy and the rule of law.

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I know that these sorts of policies are being changed publically, but I still have doubts that anything will change much practically.

Corporations may stop banging on about diversity publically, but many of these things are deeply embedded and culture doesn’t change overnight.

When doing our performance reviews last month, we still had to sit through training on unconcsious bias etc. Having a diverse, inclusivne workforce isn’t just a DEI tickbox. It has all kinds of real business benefits.

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I think inherently most people are good. If you’re the sort of person that needed DEI to make you be fair, you were probably doing your best to ignore it anyway.

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I don’t want to be complacent, but from the past few years it feels like our system is more resistant to clueless clowns riding rough shod over everything.

Boris was ultimately booted out for being a lying ****. Trust very quickly found her position untenable to the extent that she actually resigned (could you ever imagine Trump doing so!). The Tory voted completely collapsed due to their 14 years of calmity.

We are still (thankfully) able to hold people accountable, so they can’t just do what they want.

One of the biggest issues in America right now is that Congress is an abslutely joke, which rather than holding Trump to account is literally letting him shit all over the law/constitution.

The last few years make me feel like Parliament would still never stand for this sort of behaviour.

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I would make a point of going to see that :rofl:

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I agree. There are so many obvious, horrendous character flaws that I could never bring myself to vote for Trump.

But he does manage to hit on some important issues. The USA is spending more on defence than much of Europe, and Europe needs to keep up. Government departments are often inefficient, and bureaucracy and bloat has been getting worse despite governments of both colours promising to tackle it. There are other topics where he talks some sense.

And I think it’s this “America First” stuff, as well as being a disruptor that isn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers to get things done, that creates an incredibly powerful and attractive narrative.

What shocks me is how much Americans appear to be willing to overlook (the sexual assaults, the insurrection, pardoning the rioters, etc, etc) to chase this narrative.

In terms of its relevance in the UK? I think it means that the traditional parties are running out of time to tackle the big issues here…. Housing, the NHS, social care, migration, etc all need an overhaul and we can’t keep tying ourselves in red tape. For now, at least, I don’t think the UK is quite so willing to overlook the kind of bad behaviour we’ve seen from Trump.

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Are we going to keep letting supermarkets keep upping the prices?

Can we please make a pact to stop buying at these prices?

£4.50 Bacon pack of 12

£5 Box of cereal

£5 kitchen towels

£5 Bin bags

£6 125ml of toothpaste

£1 for a Broccoli now

:broccoli:

At what point do we all go enough, you’re taking the piss.

What’s odd I find is something like clothes hasn’t gone up in the same way so you can now measure a pair of trousers as being valued at three packs of sausages.

Went to M&S and boomers just flittering away inheritance buying things like £15 a pop on meat and £8 “prepared” potatoes dishes.

How are Gen Z and Alpha dealing with these prices? £50 at the till and you only have ten items. :melting_face:

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A lot of that is because they believe it wasn’t an insurrection, that they weren’t rioters, and that they were unfairly prosecuted, thus there’s nothing to overlook. They were just freedom loving Americans whose only crime was “trespassing”.

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It’s not all that long ago that you needed one of the big trollies for a £50 shop.

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I don’t pay anything like those prices for mine, but then I shop at Aldi/Lidl in the main :person_shrugging:

I use trolley.co.uk to keep up to date with who is offering best prices for the stuff I can bulk buy, such as coffee, porridge, washing tablets, etc

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Yeah I use trolley and also lucky enough to have all supermarkets like Aldi/Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Tesco’s within about a mile so can grab whatever deal is on. Asda being the only one that’s not in the area but can get delivery.

The issue is there’s still a lot of things that filter down even if you aren’t picking the branded.

Like olive oil where you have Berio and Napolina trying to sell you 1L of oil for a £14 and supermarkets raising their’s from £6 to £9 because it’s still a fiver less.

Things like kitchen rolls are nuts, like who is buying 1 at £4.25 and thinking yeah I’m good with that.

These used to be about 30p a rasher so £1.80 for six rashers

Now £3.50. pretty much doubled :see_no_evil:

At what point do people go nah that’s a bit much for six, £6? A quid a rasher?

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It’s about one of a few green veg I’ll eat :sweat_smile:

But it’s not a case popping into Aldi will be any cheaper.

At £2.19 a kg that’s 66p - £1.10 for just one 300g-500g tree.

These should be like 40p max but it’ll be around 90p for an average sized one now :see_no_evil:

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The raise in prices haven’t just affected the branded or “better quality” products though.

And it’s not just Sainsbury’s either.

It’s just more noticeable on products going £4 > £8 than those going £1 > £2. It’s still doubled.

Its a downwards spiral thinking that don’t buy the taste the difference instead of questioning WTF is going on with prices.

It’s not always case of switching from a premium to a budget is the answer though.

As someone will a family of dietary requirements it’s not a case of buying a cheaper equivalent because their isn’t one.

It’s a pay the money or don’t. :man_shrugging:

You can see brands which are trying to see at what point they can rinse the customer before people stop buying.

Not saying this is essential but as an example Nomo because I know it well

£1.80 > 2.20 > £2.50 > £3.00 > £3.30 > £3.50 > £3.80 > £4.50

Then you could see a full stack on the shelves and magically it goes back 60p to see if people will take it at that.

£3.90

It’s just 127g of chocolate :chocolate_bar:

And that’s the “cheaper” place to buy it

This kind of greed needs to be called out. It’s not related to just increased costs, it’s seeing the max they can get away with before they get a WTF from their customers.

It’s happening to all products including supermarkets own brands that are seeing brands increase and go we’ll have a slice of that.

People are collectively having extra billions taken off them.

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Welcome to business.

The vast majority of pricing for everything is what the market will tolerate.

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The problem is there’s nothing there to prevent prices to continue to rise which will hurt those on lower-middle incomes whilst people are prepared to pay.

If a piece of broccoli turns into £3 you’ll still have people accepting that don’t need to worry about the checkout bill.

Anyone who thinks £3 is a lot is likely to give that miss. You have a case of more and more people pushed into buying cheaper stuff. Or avoiding things like fruit and veg.

Cheaper doesn’t always mean crap, but you generally get lower quality, and lower welfare.

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When it was £50 monthly grocery and income £200 that’s acceptable.

If the grocery bill was £500 and your net was £2000 that’s a acceptable.

It’s still 25%

What we are seeing in the last year or so is.

£1000 grocery but people still on £2000.

At what point do we need regulation to prevent billions profit from being extracted?

If you still only have a budget of £500 and items have an average of £2.50 instead of £1.25 that’s 200 items rather than 400.

If everything starts turning into £5 a pop that’s 100 items for the entire month.

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Price controls just lead to shortages.

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