Lovely to hear - thank you!

An endorsement of Exile Economics as bed time reading - don’t have nightmares!

Really sad to see this - UKICE has been a fantastic font of quality and impartial analysis and relevant information on the UK and its EU relations for journalists for a decade - will be massively missed

ANOTHER ADD (for completeness) There were 3 years in the last 15 where inflation and earnings growth were below 2.5% so the triple lock kicked in, meaning the state pension grew by 2.5% when otherwise it would have increased by less

Thanks - glad it was helpful

...How would the Andy Burham proposal change this? It's complicated because the annual uprating formula would keep an arbitrary 2.5% floor. But probably the simplest way to think about it is that - over the longer term - growth in the state pension would be closer to growth in average earnings 5/5

...Put those together and the result is that over 15 years the triple lock has pushed up the state pension in cash terms by more than growth in average earnings and more than the increase in prices...4/5

...Second, think about how the state pension has grown relative to inflation. In 10 of the past 15 years it's gone up by more than inflation because of the triple lock...3/5

...First think about how the state pension has grown relative to earnings. In 7 of the past 15 years it's gone up by more than earnings because of the triple lock...2/5

Thinking about the impact of the triple lock on the state pension can be confusing as there's a number of interacting moving parts (earnings, inflation, 2.5%). 🤷‍♂️❓ But here's a visualisation that hopefully might help...1/5

So why is the global oil price high and still rising? Not a consensus view from oil analysts, but likely related to fears about the sustainability of oil flow via the Saudi East-West pipeline after an attack this month & Houthi threats to Saudi tankers in the Red Sea...7/8

Which - all together - suggests that in September the oil coming out of the region was around 85% of pre-war flows, up from less than 50% in March...6/8

And Saudi Arabia has been pumping a lot more through its East West pipeline since the war began, which takes oil to the Red Sea rather than Hormuz/Gulf of Oman, reaching 2m barrels a day in September...5/8

And the flow of oil through pipelines that go *around* the Strait of Hormuz with terminals in the Gulf of Oman has increased, reaching 3.5m barrels a day in September...4/8

But ship trackers reckon a growing amount of crude is getting out through the Strait on secretive passages and via ship to ship transfers of oil in the Gulf of Oman - around an extra 2m barrels a day in September...3/8

The flows through the Strait of Hormuz collapsed from around 16m barrels a day in February to less than 2m in March. They've since risen to around 7m according to conventional ship tracking techniques...2/8

What's happened to crude oil flows from the Middle East since the US war on Iran began? 🛢️ Has Iran effectively choked off the Strait of Hormuz? Or is the Strait now basically open as the US claims? & what's happened to other exit routes? Here's a helpful way of visualising it...📊 👇1/8