The gap between earnings and inflation is showing little sign of closing. Real pay — the amount people take home adjusted for inflation — has fallen for the 15th successive month, data from the Office for National Statistics shows.
Regular pay, excluding bonuses, dropped by 2.3 per cent in the three months between December last year and February, with inflation remaining at double digits despite successive interest rate hikes. Simply put, wages are failing to keep up with price rises.
It comes after a catastrophic 2022 for living standards, which saw a 3.3 per cent hit to real disposable incomes — that’s £800 per household — the largest annual fall in a century, according to the Resolution Foundation.
Yet today’s figures have also fuelled speculation that the Bank of England may have to raise rates at its May policy meeting, further increasing the cost of borrowing for homeowners at a time when many had hoped the peak had been reached.
Ultimately, the challenge for the Government has not changed — how to boost the economy and improve people’s living standards, while at the same time bringing inflation down. It is yet to demonstrate an ability to do so.
NHS strikes hurting
If we needed any further evidence of the disruption wrought by last week’s junior doctors strikes, it is in the sheer weight of cancellations.
Nationally, more than 196,000 appointments were cancelled during the strike. And the capital suffered the greatest number in the country, with 54,588 hospital appointments and procedures cancelled or postponed over the four days of industrial action. That equates to tens of thousands of Londoners not receiving the treatment they need.
And these walkouts are separate to those by members of the Royal College of Nursing, who will return to the picket line for 48 hours from April 30 after rejecting a pay offer. The necessity for all sides to reach a reasonable agreement has never been more urgent.
Homage to the Bard
William Shakespeare was a literary revolutionary and a great experimenter in the spoken word, inventing or popularising terms such as ‘jaded’, ‘zany’ and ‘rant’. So it is in that vein that London’s newest museum, dedicated to the playwright, will embrace the latest AI technology to immerse visitors in Elizabethan times.
The proposed site, on the remains of Shoreditch’s Curtain Theatre, was the main venue for Shakespeare’s company before the Globe was built, and hosted performances of Romeo and Juliet and Henry IV Part I and Part II.
Visitors will enjoy animated performances that bring to life the sights, smells and sounds of Shakeapeare’s London in the late 16th century, a timely reminder that “What is past is prologue.”
