Tom Calver

The irony is “RPI + 3%” was meant to be progressive, a way of making sure high earners didn't pay their loan back too quickly

Yet freezing the bands is anything but.

More in my column www.thetimes.com/article/a660...

So the Treasury pulls a lever. Every time it looks like future graduates won't pay enough back, it freezes repayment thresholds and the rate at which higher interest kicks in.

Had these risen with wages – as was intended – these thresholds would be £38k and £70k by 2028

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Treasury modelling had assumed post-2012 graduates would continue to enjoy the wage premiums that pre-2012 graduates enjoyed.

This didn't happen. Grad wages were lower, and so were repayments.

By 2021, the government expected back just 46p of every £1 repaid.

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Here's the real reason the government keeps freezing the student loan threshold

The part of the loan that's repaid is classed as an asset on Treasury spreadsheets. But when plan 2 student loans started to be repaid, the percentage received back was less than expected...

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bsky.app/profile/tomc...

What happens if Britain’s population starts shrinking - which could happen as soon as 2029?

Really enjoyed recording this edition of @thetimes.com's story podcast podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

An alt measure that looks at lack of access to 14 amenities (a warm house, three meals a day) found 2m children living in “deep material poverty”.

Yet nearly half of them would not have been covered by the official poverty measure!

More in my column

www.thetimes.com/article/fb88...

Dodgy data aside, is an income-based measure of poverty still fit for purpose?

According to DWP data, 315,000 children living in relative poverty - defined as earning 60% of average income, adjusting for household size - were in households with more than £10k in savings!

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The DWP has known this for years and will finally link results of the Family Resources Survey to administrative records from next month

The difference is hard to predict, but a previous estimate suggests child poverty could be 550,000 lower than previously thought

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Is the UK’s official child poverty measure about to be revised downwards?

The survey used by the DWP to measure poverty misses an astonishing £43bn of benefits income a year!

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Is child poverty really as widespread as official figures show? Labour has staked its credibility on cutting it, so it’s worth straightening out the data

Great article by @tomcalver.bsky.social on why income is often a poor indicator of whether someone is in poverty. Income is under-reported in the main survey used for poverty stats. A correction to that could soon shrink our official poverty figures overnight.

www.thetimes.com/article/fb88...

How difficult is it to get sacked from a civil service job? Whitehall is widely criticised as underperforming and oversized — yet just 0.76 per cent of civil servants were dismissed or made redundant in 2024-25

None of this is an argument for mass sackings or football manager turnover rates. Stability and institutional memory are important. But we accept a system in which officials are much more likely to die than be sacked for weak performance
(£) www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
By @tomcalver.bsky.social

This week's column: how can Scotland afford tax cuts?

Its tax system may be more progressive the than rest of UK's. But the answer is not because it has cracked the code of Scandinavian-style democracy: it is because England pays the difference

www.thetimes.com/article/ede4...

In short, we have traded one form of drudgery for another: less toil, but more distraction.

More in my column, free to read: www.thetimes.com/article/d87c...

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One reason is that we're increasingly having to multitask. Time use surveys show nearly half of all young adults are on their phone when they say they are "relaxing"

Another is that key activities have become less enjoyable. Work is less fun than it was 40 years ago!

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This week's column is about how we spend our most valuable asset of all: time

Life has become less obviously strenuous. For women, unpaid work is being replaced with paid work. Men enage in more leisure than ever. Both sexes sleep more.

Why, then, does life feel rushed?

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Today’s songs are designed to narrate to be listened to alone, narrating our immediate physical desires. But there is an interesting counter trend in the data…

More in my column (free link) 🔗 www.thetimes.com/article/c060...

Most telling of all, I think, is that music is becoming considerably more self-obsessed.

It was common for popular songs of the past to contain lots of collective words “we”, “us”, “together”.

Today’s songs, however, are narcissistic, dominated by “me”, “myself” and “I”

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Affection and desire have, and always will, dominate music.

But while songs in the 80s and 90s typically spoke to the devotional side of love - “forever”, “soul”, “always” - modern songs are more likely to reference the physical: “taste”, “body” and “sex”.

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But as well as social norms, the lyrics also reflect deeper societal moods.

Back in the 1980s, sentiment analysis shows, pop songs were often about positivity and anticipation. Since then, they have taken a turn towards anger, sadness and even disgust

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Music both reflects and shapes our culture.

When I turned 18 in 2011, it felt like most pop music was about partying and drinking. The frequency of words like “club”, “bottle”, “vip” peaked in this year - then fell dramatically in the late 2010s…

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What can 40 years of song lyrics tell us about society?

I analysed the lyrics of 1,600 pop songs going back to 1985.

Our music appears to be getting gloomier, less future-looking and more self-obsessed

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Could Britain’s population actually start shrinking soon? By 2029 the ONS expects more deaths than births

Net migration was negative as recently as the 1970s. The difference was that Britain had a surplus of young people. We have never before been an ageing country that is also shrinking.
(£) www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
Interesting by @tomcalver.bsky.social Britain on trend to shrink + consequences

Could Britain’s population actually start shrinking soon? By 2029 the ONS expects more deaths than births

The upshot is that as soon as the next election, there is a good chance Britain’s population could actually be *shrinking*.

More on what that means for politics and the economy in today’s @thetimes.com column

www.thetimes.com/article/e242...

At the same time, natural change - births minus deaths - is basically flat at the moment.

It is expected to fall below zero, and stay there, before the end of the decade

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Official migration figures are always a lagging indicator. Net migration peaked in early 2023, when immigration was relatively low salience vs now

Multiple changes to visa rules by Tory and Labour governments have had a drastic - albeit late - impact on applications

@jamesbowes01.bsky.social

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Britain’s population could start shrinking sooner than we think

Successive changes to immigration rules are seeing visa applications plummet. Meanwhile, revisions to data - plus an expected student exodus next year - should send the official emigration figures higher

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More in my column, free to read

www.thetimes.com/article/d7ed...

Britain is not unusual in facing winter pressures this year: hospitals are struggling with flu across the northern hemisphere.

What makes us unusual is the chronic shortage of beds, which makes winter crises inevitable, year after year

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Britain’s hospitals average 90% bed occupancy throughout the year, and 95% in winter.

This is not normal!

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