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  Once again, Rachel Reeves has a thorny problem on her hands…it's a significant one, and not one she can ignore.... We’re all starting to feel the pinch as a result of the latest economic shock – Trump’s ill-advised Iran War.  We knew the economic pain it would cause; even before it started, a large slice of our population, on low wages but not entitled to benefits were really not able to make ends meet without taking out additional high-interest loans. For some of them, yet another economic shock will bring them to the brink of bankruptcy. The excessive electricity and gas price rises imposed by the supplier ‘cartel’, and sanctioned by OFGEM have been particularly injurious. Many consumers have been left with large personal debts in the form of unpaid utility bills, just because they opted to keep themselves and their kids warm and fed this winter. With a large hike expected in the cap in July, next winter looks to be even worse for them.  We have also allo...

Amazon’s Kindle eReaders were ahead of their time when they first emerged in the late noughties, and were the first of the e-ink readers to hit the mass market. They have amassed a large following of dedicated reader fans since then, and have proven themselves robust and long-lasting devices, and the preferred vehicle for reading eBooks.  Amazon have been steadily deprecating their older devices for the past couple of years, but there has been considerable concern voiced amongst the Kindle fan-base over the recent 'final' announcement   by Amazon that they are withdrawing support from their older devices from May 20th. This means that readers will then no longer be able to use them to buy books from Amazon or access any books they have stored in the Amazon cloud. The range of devices affected is quite significant . To add insult to injury, in a separate measure designed to control access to their books, Amazon also recently confirmed they are no longer allowing books p...

  Donald Trump has a problem on his hands…and the USA as a nation now has an even bigger one.... Having been persuaded by Netanyahu, and his own White House advisors, that an all-out attack on the Iranian regime and its military wing, the IRGC, was the best solution to the ‘Iranian problem’, Trump was clearly expecting the war to be over in a matter of days. This still seems to be his 'default' position for any campaign he starts, despite the lessons already provided by the Ukraine war and the continued attacks by all 3 of the Iranian proxies in the face of the massive bombing campaigns meted out to all 3 since the October 7th HAMAS attack. All this does beg the question of how closely he is really being kept informed, and who is actually driving US foreign policy... Despite the intense battering his military and the Israelis have administered over a wide area of Iran in the last 5 weeks, and the cumulative and continuing decapitation of the old leadership in targe...

Please see also recent update of 7.4.26 at the end of this text for interpretation of UK.Gov's announcement on the 6% interest rate cap for Plan 2 loans.  ------------------ UK Student loans, and more particularly the repayment thereof, is a hot topic in the news at the moment.  The student body, both past and present, are all clamouring for more favourable terms, given Reeves' recent threshold freeze, the burgeoning cost of living, and progressive rises in student fees.  There are particular concerns about the affordability of the legacy (i.e. Plan 2) scheme which still applies to all loans taken out between September 2012 and August 2023. The majority of outstanding loan balances currently fall under this plan (5.8 million loans were taken out under the scheme in total in England before it was superseded by the current Plan 5 variant).  The terms of this legacy scheme have resulted in crippling interest rates due to the full built-in 3% surcharge ab...