Rachael McKelvey

• A national parking app you say?
• No longer the worst post pandemic performers in the G7
• HSWhooooo
• Biggest tax-raising parliament since records began
• So long Google Podcasts

A national parking app you say?
While most of the Prime Ministers suggestions under tag line “I’m slamming the brakes on the war on motorists” are quite frankly insane. 20mph speed limits reduce child deaths, 15-minute-cities just sounds nice, the hours on bus lanes are fine & if anything I wish parking enforcement was a little more zealous for path mounted cars. All that being said, the one thing I am in wholehearted agreement with is a national parking app.

I live, love and work across three counties, I have a folder on my phone named “parking” and it contains FIVE PARKING APPs – PaybyPhone, RingGo, Saba, JustPark and Apcoa Connect and resolving this is definitely in my top five “When I’m in charge” manifesto ideas, maybe the current Transport Secretary, Mark Harper, was listening, he has been in the role long enough it’s a distinct possibility, happy year in role this month Mark.

Allegedly the announcement is due this week that people will be able to download just one app to pay for charges wherever they are in the country, but that’s the announcement, that’s it.  It’s hoped “The National Parking Platform” pilot will address payment problems with various apps. Can’t wait to see what they’re saving for Party Conference.

No longer the worst post pandemic performers in the G7
The new national accounts data from the Office for National Statistics landed this week, the full set of revisions now mean that we can say the economy rebounded from Covid faster than forecast with GDP now 1.8% above the pre-pandemic level and we are no longer the worst performers in the G7, now leaving us mid table a head of Germany and France.

But what the data revisions don’t do is change the view on our current stagnation and flatlining economy. Recovery is still significantly weaker than the pre-pandemic projections (5%) and miles behind the pre-financial crisis projections (22%) so we clearly have a long term stagnation problem that is nearly old enough to vote.

I think it was hoped that the revisions to the prior year comparative would make this year look a little better but if anything I think it’s quite the opposite, growth is still incredibly weak and just avoiding recession in recent quarters against strong domestic demands and significant business investment, up 4.1% in the 2^nd quarter of the year.  

HSWhooooo
I can barely drive anywhere without seeing ripped up countryside for HS2, which breaks my heart a little, I’ve friends whose forever homes were compulsory purchased so it’s been a long transition for me to believe if this is what we have to do that we should, when they axed Birmingham to Leeds I said nothing, which was a mistake because actually this was the bit that probably added the most value to the whole project…who wants to get form Manchester to London 15 minutes quicker really?

Then they removed the link between Manchester and the West Coast mainline and the section between Old Oak Common in London and Euston has been no work in progress for a while and who wants to land in Old Oak Common when you want to be in Central London and this morning the Prime Minister has failed to comment on the commitment of Birmingham to Manchester.

I think Tom Peck on X, formally but lets face it still known as Twitter, Tweeted “HS2 now feels very much at the point where Kevin McCloud reappears to find the wife gone” and he is not wrong, in the Grand Design analogies we all know that Government funded projects are always the equivalent of finding out the guys an accountant and project managing the entire build himself while insisting his pregnant wife is fine about living in a caravan with a children under 2 for the next 5 years.

The PM rightly believes the costs are out of control, they are. The original budget was for £32.7 billion, even with significantly truncated route this is now at £100 billion…with European high-speed rail projects costing £25m per km…we are already topping out at £200m per km, will it 7 times nicer per km for that money? No this is Britain.  

Biggest tax-raising parliament since records began
Tax revenue is due to rise to 37% of national income by the next election, which I think we can be pretty confident will definitely be next year, you can’t organise a general election in 3 months but who honestly knows, a level of tax that has not been seen in 75 years since 1948.

Households are facing paying £3,500, on average, more in tax that we did when Boris Johnson came into power in 2019 according to the Institute For Fiscal Studies. Making the current iteration of the Tory party the biggest tax-raising parliament since records began, so if you get a leaflet through the door claiming they’re the part of low tax you now know that’s not true.

Taxes are headed for an all time high and I don’t necessarily think that’s always a bad thing but all I hear is the “restore public finances” argument post pandemic, which while true seems counter to how we have dealt with the associated costs of any other similar shock to the public purse in the past, write them off over a longer period of time and invest in infrastructure, education, levelling up and just making life nicer. Don’t hold your breath, a spokesperson for the Treasury has said “Driving down inflation is the most effective tax cut we can deliver right now, which is why we are sticking to our plan to halve it, rather than making it worse by borrowing money to fund tax cuts.”

Ps: Lowering the rate of inflation does not lower the cost of living like a tax cut, just FYI.

So long Google Podcasts
This week I got an email from Google formally announcing that Google Podcasts will be discontinued from next year in the UK and will be moving over to YouTube Music, which was launched in 2015. Google had already announced that YouTube Music would support podcasts in the US and that it was due to expand globally before the year end.

Google also announced it was increasing its investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music wanting to capitalize on discovery, community and the ability to switch between audio and video, with Spotify also working on the same thing! Apparently the stats on Google Podcasts usage are surprisingly low…she says as a user only for those podcasts that have yet to make it to Pocket Casts…despite this Google Podcasts will be offering user a migration tool to help with the inevitable switch over so you won’t lose your subscriptions and will make the file available for users to move to any platform if they don’t want to use YouTube Music.

Google are looking to streamline their products to ensure YouTube music keeps up with Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music, in much the same way Google Play Music shutdown last year. “We know this transition will take time, but these efforts will allow us to build an amazing product and a single destination that rewards creators and artists and provides fans with the best Podcasts experience,”.

Current watch: Neighbours – Oh if the charm hasn’t always been it’s so bad it’s good what has it been? It’s back and we are expected to believe two years have gone by in the last 18 months since it disappeared from screens, it’s not Neighbours if it doesn’t start with a wedding and you won’t believe whose it was! Toadies kids seemed to have aged about 6 years in this time, Harold is back, Mischa Barton (Off of The OC…whoooo) has appeared, Guy Pearce is there but not there and Karl and Susan are having a big fight. It’s everything I’ve never wanted but somehow didn’t know I even needed.

Current read: Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects by Chad Orzel – Physics was never my strong suit (still isn’t btw) but that doesn’t mean I don’t find it interesting. You certainly need a grasp of how it works to find the enjoyment in this book, but Orzel uses everyday examples to bring you along the evolution of quantum physics. It’s in everything we do, from sunrise to sunset, which is how I still marvel at how little I understand it despite best efforts. I didn’t find this the easiest read, but I am glad I stuck with it. One for an inquisitive mind.

Most Impactful Listen: Today, Explained: Why the US is suing Amazon – The Federal Trade Commission has bought a landmark case against Amazon in the hopes of changing the way the US regulates monopolies and you don’t get much bigger than Amazon (even Google also have antitrust problems of their own). The antitrust charges leveraged at Amazon accuse the giant of wielding it’s “monopoly power” to inflate prices and degrade quality for consumers and squash competitors. The Verge’s Makena Kelly and former FTC director Bill Baer walk is through the complaint and why it matters.

• Cash is trying to be king once more
• Shrinkflation & skimpflation
• Brewing Habits have become Tea-dious
• 16 jobs for 3 years & never showed up for work
• Girls are sad in record numbers

Cash is trying to be King once more
Industry body UK Finance this week revealed that for the first time in the last decade the use of cash has risen 7% which equates to 400,000 more transactions rising to 6.4 billion cash payments since 2021. For a long time, cash has been a declining payment method, compounded by the pandemic where tapping a machine became the norm over passing around notes and coins, so why such a significant return in usage?

The increase is thought to be because more people are relying on cash to manage their finances, it’s an easy tangible way to budget in a cost-of-living crisis, with an increase in smaller limited shops it makes sense to have that physical stop in cash value as it is the mental want to reduce your spending. A spokesperson for UK Finance acknowledges, “It’s something we do tend to see in times of falling consumer confidence and economic uncertainty”.

The stats from the report are fascinating, 13% of all payments made in the UK in 2022 were by businesses but this accounted for 82% of the total value of payments made with the flipside in consumer spending, with debit card payments accounting for over half of all consumer payments made.

Shrinkflation & skimpflation
Oh I don’t want to talk about inflation anymore, yet here we are. The Bank of England is expecting inflation to stabilise during August which comes at a crucial time for the BoE whose policymakers really need to ensure that inflation doesn’t become baked into publics minds, but that’s easier said then done, even if interest rates do fall and inflation reduces that doesn’t mean the prices are right.

Inflation is rise in all prices without a distinctive reason, everyone needs more money to buy the same amount of things, remember when Chomps cost 10p? They now retail at 25p per unit. Freddos are also a great example of how inflation gets baked into items, but there are other kinds of flation that consumers need to consider when looking at their spending power.

French supermarket Carrefour has started to warn customers about “shrinkflation” with stickers on shelves that point out where there is essentially less stuff in packets for the same price. Some big brands have been. named and shamed but arguably shrinkflation is practical way for suppliers to raise prices without having to calculate an entire new pricing strategy when nothing is certain. Another way of continuing to maintain margins is skimpflation which also seems rife across the market with reduced quality of ingredients in food, or a decrease in quality in service standards. It really has never been harder as a consumer to make informed purchasing decisions.

Brewing Habits have become Tea-dious
It’s been a rough week for PG tips, who this week revealed they had spent an eye watering £50 million on teabag innovation that will now yield the perfect brew in a mere 60 seconds. Everyone knows it takes 3 minutes to brew the perfect cup of tea but apparently times have changed, PG tips commissioned some research and found that people typically leave their teabag to brew for less than a minute so they are launching a new teabag, where the particles are now the perfect size to brew much faster and the purists are FURIOUS.

Jane Pettigrew, course director at the UK Tea Academy said “I really abhor this kind of ‘innovation’. It is not progress but a massive retrograde step backwards in what tea should be.” PG Tips account for 5 billion cups of tea a year and obviously want to meet their customers changing needs, but I can’t be the only person who thinks this is kind of a sorry state of affairs – who doesn’t have three minutes to properly brew a cup of tea please? This is also a big contributing factor in why I don’t drink tea…the only person I’d trust to make me a cup of tea is Neil (hi Neil I really love your cups of tea & even though you’re not a big coffee drinker that you heat the machine before you make one is EVERYTHING)

16 jobs for 3 years & never showed up for work
Sometimes I worry that I am committing wage fraud when my brain isn’t working and I’ve stared that the screen wondering why my formula won’t work only to realise it’s because I can’t spell but it was reported this month that a Chinese women, known only by her alias Guan Yue, held 16 separate jobs for 3 years and never showed up for a single days work allegedly netting herself a whopping $7million.

My tiny mind cannot comprehend the effort required to commit this level of fraud, except the only two qualities of an individual required to commit fraud are for them to be crooked and stupid, because apparently Yue co-ordinated this massive effort entirely on a piece of paper with 53 other fake employees. When she got too much work she would pass work off to friends and take a commission, she would take pictures of the interviews and put them in companies chat channels as proof of client meetings.

It all started to unravel when one of the fake employees shared a screenshot that looked like they worked for someone else in a work chat. In total 53 people have been arrested, apparently labour fraud isn’t uncommon in China with an estimated 700-800 groups taking on multiple jobs.

Girls are sad in record numbers
Girlguiding released their 15^th ‘Girls’ Attitudes Survey’ this week exploring how girls feel about their lives, their aspirations, the pressures they face and the things they care about. This years findings revealed that girls happiness has significantly declined over the past 15 years with only 17% of girls aged 7-21 saying they feel very happy compared to 40% in 2009, which seems a lot especially coupled with the statistic that over the same time span there has been an 11% increase in feelings of anxiousness and worry around their appearance, online harm and sexual harassment.

The report is well worth a read, but is quite a depressing read, they believe finding a job when they leave education will be harder than ever, they are placing greater value on owning their own home over having a partner or being married or having a worthwhile job…which seems understandable given the current climate, but well…a little sad.

Current watch: Daisy Maskell: Insomnia and Me – KISS FMs breakfast presenter Daisy Maskell examines the prevalence of insomnia in young people, she has suffered herself since early childhood. As you can imagine still being up at 3am when you’re a early morning radio DJ is not the one and she is concerned about the long term impacts on her health but she is not alone. The stats in the documentary are quite something, apparently almost half of 16-24-year-olds stated that they sleep significantly fewer hours than they did before the pandemic compared to a third of those aged 35 years and older.

Daisy speaks to friends she’s met through her insomnia diaries and experts to get advice and support to see if she can get a better nights sleep. Sleep is such a big thing, I don’t think I’ve spoken to many regular people in my life this week without talking about sleep. The emotional impact and the links to other mental health conditions in this documentary is really important.

Current read: Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights by Helen Lewis – Oof, this book. Well-behave women don’t make history, difficult women do but so rarely are the remembered in history, all too often erased for being difficult. Helen Lewis beautifully articulates the complexities of feminism, through some truly imperfect women who have all but been erased from the stories of the feminist movement from the start of the movement right up to the present day.

I couldn’t put this book down, I wanted to know who was coming next, the perfect blend of narrative, interviews and archival research from some of the dustiest and mustiest places and while I’ve made this sound probably rather depressing, the book does highlight the successes of the movement and what it should do next with the words “The battle is difficult, and we must be difficult too” ringing in your ears.

Most Impactful Listen: Lego Overboard – This was fascinating, you can’t have missed that a significant amount of Lego is found by beach combers on the south coast, back in 1997 a cargo ship called Tokyo Express lost 62 containers in severe weather, only one of which contained Lego but even today, there are still some remnants to be found. The inventory of the container has been made available and the hunt is on to find it all, the real impact of how something that happened nearly two decades ago is still being washed up on the beaches and hidden by sand and sea. This episode is just fantastic, it speaks to a number of breach combers about their favourite finds, the dragons, the octopuses, the tiny flowers, the pirates cutlass. I am absolutely obsessed with Lego Lost At Sea on Twitter for exactly this reason, they share their finds. A lovely bit of escapism

• Happy 25^th Birthday Google
• Why are so many councils going bust?
• Can B&M save enough of Wilkos
• New words coming this autumn
• How much a day?

Happy 25^th Birthday Google
Born in 1998 this year Google turns 25 years old this week which is quite a significant milestone and what a ride it has been! Starting life as the brainchild of Larry Page and Seregey Brin while students at Stanford University just hoping to better organise web pages online.

It went on to hit the big time in the early 2000s with rapid growth and significant investment, along came Gmail in 2004 which is still the best of all the mails, in 2005 they launched Maps & bought Android, the following year they acquired YouTube and become an actual verb in the actual Oxford English Dictionary! 2007 saw them launch Street View, 2008 was Chrome, they launched their own phones in 2010, launched the Play Store and Google Glass – remember Google Glass? In 2012. They underwent their current facelift in 2015 and massive fines aside have been pretty steady since working hard in areas like driverless cars and AI in the intervening years.

Sudar Pirchai, current CEO of Google and Alphabet has reflected on the last 25 years in an open letter to all those who’ve made Google great which includes you and I.

Why are Councils going bust?
Birmingham City Council is the latest local council to issue a Section 114 notice effectively declaring bankruptcy, in the case of Europe’s largest local authority, serving over a million people across 69 wards, Birmingham City Councils bills from a Supreme Court ruling from 2012 relating to (un)equal pay seem to have been the real driver of their financial downfall. The second received by the council, requiring it to back pay bonuses to largely female employees who had missed out unfairly, but what about the broader crisis going on across Britian’s Local Authorities?

There are a number of local authorities also facing similar fines and fees relating to equal pay disputes, but the finances across the board have stopped adding up. Many local authorities have issued Section 114 notices this year, with slashes to budgets as a result of continued cuts in Government funding and the impact of reduced spending power of that money. Most councils are experiencing a significant increase in demand for high cost council services in social care, coupled with a reduction in business revenues and crippling interest rates on borrowed funds to survive. Many local councils took on significant debt to furnish their commitments but every time interest rates go up, so does the money required to service those debts.

Can B&M save enough of Wilkos
B&M an odd favourite (we all have that colleague who is obsessed) in the British discount retail sector on Tuesday announced its intention to buy up to 51 Wilko stores from the collapsed chain for around £13m, a nifty little fit with their current expansion plans with “The consideration is fully funded from existing cash reserves and the acquisition is not expected to be conditional on any regulatory clearances.”

Nearly a month after Wilco went into administration, the clock is running down for the homeware and household goods discount retailer on finding ways to secure 1000’s of jobs with the Administrators at PwC also in talks to with the other big discount retailers, Poundland, Home Bargains and The Range about saving some of the other stores.

It’s a tough time for Wilko, a significant deal ran into problems as a result of their big suppliers wanting their debts settled ahead of further deliveries, with many shipments cancelled on announcement of their intention to file for Administration & the significant delays across the sector to get product on the shelf.

New words coming this Autumn
Dictionary.com have given a sneak peak into the new words they will be adding to their dictionary this autumn and you don’t need to be a lexicographer to be intrigued by the way language is evolving and how we make words, borrow words and change or update existing words.

Dictionary.com are revising 2,256 existing definitions, adding 346 new definitions and adding 566 entirely new entries. The art of language is never solely new words, but the capture of that evolution through the generations of how we play with language.

I think my favourite pop culture addition has to be Blursday, an informal noun to describe a day not easily distinguished from other days, or the phenomenon of days running together – this week was entirely made up of Blursdays, happy year end to one and all!

For any language fans out there, I highly recommend The Allusionist podcast by podcasting royalty Helen Zaltzman, it’s a podcast all about language and there isn’t a bad episode, the one about all the swears is obviously my favourite.

How much a day?
Technically not this week’s news but I cannot stop thinking about it. We might have all at some point made a joke about wishing setting up an OnlyFans account was a credible alternative to the task at hand, but we definitely need to be aiming higher. Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans took a $338 million in dividends for the financial year 2022 according to the parent companies (Fenex Internation Ltd if you’re wondering) financial statements. There are only 260 working days in a year, that’s over $1m a day. A DAY. On top of his actual salary. ON TOP OF HIS ACTUAL SALARY.

Apart from that being an obscene amount of money that no one actually needs, it just goes to show how good a year OnlyFans had in 2022, with revenue soaring to $1.09 BILLION for a platform whose original intention was never built around not safe for work content.  So next time you’ve a high functioning low dopamine task at work and think there has to be an easier way to earn a living, this is your sign.

Current watch: The Lovers – Forgive me, it was year end this week and I just wanted something easy to watch I didn’t have to care about. Well, picking The Lovers was a mistake. Johnny Flynn and Roisin Gallagher are so wonderfully suited to the dynamics of the characters they play in this show. Political TV broadcaster Seamus instantly clashes when he meets supermarket worker Janet but they are inexplicably drawn to each other despite having very little in common. The series moves through their false starts, their arguments and their biggest fears.

Current read: Dirty Laundry: Why adults with ADHD are so ashamed and what we can do to help by Richard Pink & Roxanne Emery – Written by the couple behind the brilliant ADHD_Love on Tiktok this book is a duel perspective on living with and loving someone with ADHD. Rox is very honest in sharing her experience of the most common traits of a neurodivergent brain and Rich shares his insights from a neurotypical perspective on how they can meet in the middle. There is no science here, this is a real life first person account really written as a conversation you’d have if you were lucky enough to be their friends and asked them both the same question, it was heartwarming, illuminating and really positive.

If there is anyone in your life, or you think you might have some neurodivergent tendencies, then this book is a wonderful book to help you understand the what’s and the whys and how you can support your neurodivergent friend or yourself in a world very much not set up to accommodate anything less than neurotypical.

Most Impactful Listen: Today in Focus: How safe are the priceless treasures in our museums? – This was fascinating, you can’t have missed that a significant amount of historical items are thought to have gone missing from the British Museum care and it turns out when it comes to historical artifacts it’s not as uncommon as you’d like to think. They speak with Art Crime investigator Arthur Brand on how it happens, why it happens and more important how restoring items to their last known address isn’t even half as easy as you think it should be.