Defying Expectations?

I was born in September 1977, so I shall be in the first year to have to wait until we were 68 before qualifying for our state pensions. My father died when he was 68. I shall be that old, if I made it, before I got what, if I had it now, would be the lowest pension of any comparable country, but which is nevertheless routinely described without challenge as "unaffordable". Heaven knows what little will remain even of that by 2045. But then, heaven knows what little will remain of me.

That inflation has remained at 2.8 per cent does not mean that prices are staying the same. It means only that they are going up at the same rate as they were the last time that anyone officially checked. They are still going up. A lot. Whatever happened to the impossibility of mass unemployment and galloping inflation at the same time?

Will there be any improvement once the Strait of Hormuz had reopened? Things were bad before it closed. But I was 24 on 11 November 2001, and I am 48 now, so for half my lifetime I have been told that the big one was going to be Iran. That war has now been fought, Iran has defeated the United States, and they have both defeated Israel to the point of humiliation. Reza Pahlavi and his entourage are back to being a joke, while the PMOI/MEK is back to being a lot worse than that, though not so as to constitute a serious threat. Benjamin Netanyahu must now get out of Lebanon with his tail between his legs, or face the wrath of Donald Trump, who has deals to do on behalf of himself, his family, and his made men.