Jon Mills

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26

NO - 41%
YES - 38%
UNSURE - 21%

Picture 1: doctor looking at chart tells patient, "Your body has run out of magnesium." Picture 2: patient replies with a smile, "0mg"

This second strategy you are going to be paying down your debt in your early 60s that's the reality. The worst scenario is you fall in the middle, borrow £30k and spend your life paying it off

IMO with Plan 5 student loans you should consider two strategies. If you are going in to a well paid industry borrow as little as possible, overpay straight away and aim to have paid off in 10 years. Otherwise borrow everything you can get, use family help and savings to pay for a house instead.

This second student - they could borrow £30k or £50k or £80k it makes no difference to how much they pay back

Here's two scenarios - assuming no inflation shocks over 40 years. Both students borrow the same amount and earn about the same. One retires early and works part time for a decade. One has a 10 year break to raise a family - this student pays £22,000 more and is still paying back their loan aged 61

Also - all the talk now is about Plan 2 and people's outstanding debt, but the outstanding debt isn't super important, the amount you pay is the critical bit.

When you vary the different fields to model different scenarios - like a career break to have children, or a decade with high inflation, or an early retirement it is wild the different totals people will pay.

Plan 5 Student Loan Calculator Calculate your Plan 5 student loan repayments over 40 years

Lots of talk about #Studentloans and my daughter going to uni next year so I made a website to forecast her #Plan5 repayments. We can only guess at RPI and earnings over 40 years so the site lets you add an average for each decade studentloandebtcalculator.abacusai.app

Basically the British class system is about despising the middle classes for not knowing their place. They're not aristocratic enough to be deferred to and are seen to look down on the working class. And the people who despise the middle classes the most are the middle classes

This is fascinating ⬇️

Plan 5 Student Loan Calculator Calculate your Plan 5 student loan repayments over 40 years

I made a website to try and get a handle on how Plan5 loans might work out over their 40 year repayment period studentloandebtcalculator.abacusai.app it's possible we're going to see some people owing £300k and women are hugely disadvantaged

Were you able to talk to any people who had been subject to a judgement delivered by a Sharia council?

Tfw you didn't study much medieval history at school

Mom & I Cover Creep By Radiohead (she is a classical Indian singer 🕉️) YouTube video by Avie Sheck

This duet cover of Radiohead's "Creep", between a son and his Shastriya Sangeet classically trained mother, is the mash-up I didn't know how much I needed in my life. Totally spontaneous sobbing may have taken place.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZoH...

Plan 5 is worse if you are poor, better if you are rich

Doing a vox pop in Failsworth, Jim Ratcliffe's childhood home.

// Barry, 83, said the issue of immigration is constantly in the spotlight.

He said: "There seems to be a lot of it, it's always on TV.

"You get the impression that it is [a problem], because it's always on the news." //

Ok thanks. Im still just in my 40s

@basspunk.bsky.social Könntest du mir bitte folgen, damit ich dir eine dringende Nachricht schicken kann? Ich hoffe, du kannst mir bei einem Nachrichtenartikel helfen, an dem ich gerade arbeite.

a big scaffolding construct with snow on it and it's very very steep

a big hill in gloucestershire that is also very very steep and people chase cheese down it.

fun fact: the big air snowboarding ramp at the winter olympics is only 5° steeper than the cheese rolling hill.

OK the I Paper found someone to do the math on this. Assuming career earnings are average a student on Plan 5 who never clears their debt will pay back MORE THAN TWICE the total of a student on Plan 2. Wealthy students on the other hand are better off

BBC News headlines: Education School caterers 'confident' of meat Missing children data 'worrying'

Happy 13th anniversary to this pair of matching news headlines.

As a French electricity consumer (17p/kWh) I get info on reducing energy use, a clear message about social responsibility and tariffs to save money and C02 emissions

As a British consumer (23p/kWh) I get a monthly game to win octopoints

I don’t know how old you think I am but I didn’t go to university because I couldn’t afford it. I know each generation are getting a worse deal than the one before. Thats why i was pointing out how bad plan 5 is and why im giving advice on how to make the best of the current situation

And that £18 pizza is going to cost you £40+ if you are living on student debt you literally cannot afford it

If you don’t pay off your student debt by the age cut off you are going to be paying more than £2 back for every £1 borrowed. That means the lifetime difference between rent in cardiff or rent in london would be like £30k+

You still find Martin Lewis saying don't worry about the total debt - just accept 9% as a graduate tax. But the truth is students (+parents) need to accept the reality - unless you can self fund the entire cost, study somewhere where the rent is cheap, work part time and stop getting food delivered

I do feel sorry for any student carrying this weight of debt but the idea it was mis-sold is a cop-out, it was crystal clear from the outset that rpi+3 was going to be punishing for poor students. Plan 5 (the current system) changed things, now it is going to be extremely punishing for poor students

Lucky to see Yann Tiersen in Bristol tonight. Piano, techno and a track dedicated to Dolores Ibárruri, the Spanish anti-fascist.

Wait til you see what Plan 5 is going to cost low earners.