u/DownBadBrody

COVID ENDED. THE PRICES DIDN’T.
Using 2019 as the pre-Covid baseline:
2019
2026
Bread £1.00
~£1.30
Milk £1.00
~£1.35–£1.40
Eggs £1.00
~£1.50+
Butter £1.00
~£1.45
Chicken £1.00
~£1.30
Beef £1.00
~£1.30
Cooking oil £1.00
~£1.40–£1.50
Timber £1.00
~£1.40–£1.50+
Bricks £1.00
~£1.50–£1.60+
Rent £1.00
~£1.25–£1.30
And while ordinary people were paying more for the basics: Tesco**:** ~£1.8bn → ~£3.1bn operating profit
Centrica**:** £240m loss → £6.5bn pre-tax profit
Energy companies: record profits during the energy crisis. Not every company benefited, and profits alone don’t prove price gouging. But six years later, we’re still paying 25–50% more for many basic necessities than we did before Covid.
The crisis ended.
But the cost of living continued.
Sources: ONS, UK Parliament, Tesco, Centrica.

The UK median full-time salary is £39,039 — around £2,650/month take-home. And median literally means the middle Sources: ONS — Employee earnings 2025⁠ · ONS — Family spending 2024–25⁠: 50% earn less and 50% earn more. By age, take-home is roughly: 20s £2.2k | 30s £2.75k | 40s £2.95k | 50s £2.8k | 60+ £2.25k.

Now consider roughly £2,490/month for one adult: rent, council tax, energy, water, food, phone, car, fuel, insurance, maintenance and basic social spending. In your 20s, you can be below the cost of simply living; even at the overall median, there’s only a few hundred pounds left. The ONS says the average UK household spends £676.60/week (~£2,935/month).
So if you’re on median pay or below — literally half of full-time workers — working full-time can still leave very little room to save, build wealth or get ahead. You can work, pay your bills and still feel like you’re permanently treading water.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, FTSE 100 CEOs are taking home millions: Pascal Soriot (AstraZeneca) £17.7m, Emma Walmsley (GSK) £15.6m, CS Venkatakrishnan (Barclays) £15m, Wael Sawan (Shell) £13.7m, Bill Winters (Standard Chartered) £12.7m — with the top 10 ranging into the multi-million-pound packages. Across the FTSE 100, £856.6m was paid to executives, including £550m to CEOs, with bonuses and long-term incentives making up a huge proportion. The median FTSE 100 CEO package is now £5.06m — about 130× the median UK worker’s pay.

Sources: ONS — Employee earnings 2025⁠ · ONS — Family spending 2024–25⁠

The bottom 50% of British households own roughly 10% of the country’s wealth.
The richest 1% own roughly the same.
The top 10% own around 41%.
And it doesn’t stop there.
The IFS found that children born to parents in the bottom 20% of wealth are far more likely to remain near the bottom themselves.
Only about 5% of children from the poorest fifth make it into the wealthiest fifth.
For children from the wealthiest fifth, it’s 42%.
That’s an 8× difference in the chance of reaching the top fifth.
So when someone says:
“Anyone can become wealthy if they work hard enough.”
I think the better question is:
How much does your starting position matter?
Because some people inherit money.
Others inherit a house deposit.
Others inherit a safety net.
And some inherit none of it.
It’s still possible to climb.
But we’re not all starting at the bottom of the same ladder.
Sources: Institute for Fiscal Studies; ONS Wealth and Assets Survey.

Been looking into who actually owns the land we live on, and the concentration is crazy.
🏰 **Aristocracy & landed gentry:** \~30% of England
👑 **Royal family:** \~1.4%
🏛️** Public sector**: \~8%
🏠 **Ordinary homeowners:** \~5%
💰 **Top 1%:** estimated to control around **50% of England’s land**

**If land is finite, and a tiny number of people control so much of it, how much influence does wealth actually give you over housing and development, what does it mean to be a regular person working 25 years for a small plot in the middle of nowhere?**

**No hate, Late night maths, just curious for opinions**

Sources -
[www.committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/108111/pdf/\](http://www.committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/108111/pdf/)
[www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/totalwealthingreatbritain/april2020tomarch2022\](http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/totalwealthingreatbritain/april2020tomarch2022)
[www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/privatelyownedwealthintheuk\](http://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/privatelyownedwealthintheuk)

Sure, some will. But most teenagers aren’t tech enthusiasts. If social media platforms require age verification or digital ID to create accounts, it’s no longer as simple as downloading TikTok and signing up in 30 seconds. A barrier doesn’t need to be perfect to be effective.

The bigger question is: should children have unrestricted access to adult strangers online, graphic content, pornography, self-harm communities, and algorithm-driven feeds that many adults struggle with themselves? I’d argue no.

As for the digital ID concerns, I understand the hesitation. But Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon, Uber Eats, banks, mobile providers and countless other companies already hold huge amounts of personal data about us. So is the objection really about privacy, or is it a lack of trust in the government to handle that data responsibly?

No system will stop 100% of underage users. That’s not the point. The point is making access harder, reducing exposure, and shifting social media from the default childhood experience back into something age-restricted.

For me, that’s a net positive.

Whilst you have pro Palestinian marches all over Europe, nobody stops to ponder. The October 7th attack was aimed and perpetrated towards Israeli civilians. Israel with all of its military power could flatten its enemies if it chose to do so. But yet Israel continues to poor everything into the intelligence collection of Hamas soldiers and the ending of their being. Not civilian slaughter, not mass murder like on October 7th.

How is it that so many people refuse to look at the overbearing nature of Hamas as an organisation that’s whole purpose is to bring terror? To live under the victors rule after losing a war, which may include limiting movement inside of their gained territory is something that we have done as humans for a very, very long time.

The fixation on Israel is unfounded, there are true, horrid, genocides happening all over the world that the west is blind too. Yet many non Muslim, non Palestinian western born people are sucked into the narrative that Israel is the worst country on the world stage, and deserves to be destroyed.

Forced migration is how you live where you live, how humans transversed the globe for billions of years and the plot that is now Israel was once called Palestine, but where you live now, once belonged to a group of people native to that land before you.

The choice to elect an illegitimate, terroristic government is a driving reason for all issues facing Palestine today.

The lack of acceptance from any other Arab country is a clear and obvious statement, that Hamas is the problem.

Problems that were likely worsened substantially by Hamas rule
Many experts believe several major issues became significantly worse after Hamas took control:
1. Much stronger blockade and isolation
After Hamas seized Gaza:
Israel and Egypt imposed much tighter border controls,
many Western governments cut direct engagement,
and Gaza became internationally isolated.
Without Hamas control, it is likely:
trade would have been broader,
travel easier,
and investment higher.

2. Repeated large-scale wars
Hamas’ armed conflict with Israel contributed directly to repeated wars.
Without Hamas governing Gaza:
some major wars may not have occurred at the same scale,
rocket fire may have been lower,
and infrastructure destruction might have been far less severe.
That could have allowed:
more stable economic growth,
better infrastructure,
and more outside investment.

3. International investment and diplomacy
If Gaza had remained under a more internationally accepted Palestinian government:
more countries may have invested economically,
development projects could have expanded,
and trade relationships may have improved.
Because Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by many countries:
businesses and governments became far more reluctant to engage economically.

4. Internal governance priorities
Critics argue Hamas prioritized:
military buildup,
tunnels,
rockets,
and armed confrontation
over:
civilian infrastructure,
economic reform,
or institution-building.
Supporters argue Hamas focused on resistance because of blockade and occupation pressures.
Still, many economists believe Gaza likely would have had:
better economic prospects,
more foreign aid investment,
and greater mobility
under a less militarized government.