Actuary for far too many years. Welsh, but now live in the spiritual home of the Wurzels out west. Don’t think I’ve got the accent yet. Like zider though...
Joined April 2019
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So with the news this morning that the earnings growth announced today means the state pension (SP) will very likely increase by another 8.5% next year, it's time to set out once again why the SP triple lock (TL) is such a bad idea.
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Remembering the unimaginable disaster that befell the village of Aberfan at 9.15am this day 60 years ago, and which took 144 lives. 128 of whom were children, of a similar age to me, just a few miles from where I grew up.
Never forgotten.
Amongst all the air disruption, spare a thought for these passengers who just got away from Heathrow in time, bound for Shanghai, only to turn back over Romania and find themselves about to land in, er, Cardiff nearly 5 hours later.
Croeso i Gymru! 🇨🇳 🏴
A long weekend in Amsterdam to celebrate our anniversary, which coincidentally aligns with the last ever Dutch Grand Prix on the coast at Zandvoort. Not a particular fan of Max Verstappen, but sad for the fans that they are losing such a great event as F1 chases the money.
My fourth total eclipse, and a bit of low cloud just before totality meant the corona photos weren’t great, but just after it was a surreal out of this world sunset.
Is this the ultimate in absurd “review us” emails? I’m being asked to review the surcharge they put on the price, and the empty cylinder I returned.
We've now got the CMI's half year position for 26 mortality, and it continues to look extremely positive, with this year already being 2.4% of a full year's mortality better than 25, which was the lowest year yet.
Better still, all ages groups are recording an improvement.
Sitting in a hotel lobby in Bilbao and the TV news channel is live streaming Starmer’s speech. Shame the sound is off and my Spanish isn’t up to much!
In other news, Andrew woke up this morning and thought "66 today - if only I'd made enough NI contributions to qualify for my State Pension I'd be getting it today, one of the very last to do so."
#Alwaysapensionsangle
John Roberts retweeted
@ONS released weekly deaths by occurrence date with deaths recorded by mid-Jan 2026 which allows to finalize the picture for 2023 and (almost) 2024
This confirms that England and Wales was back on pre-pandemic mortality trends already back in 2023
An interesting report from 2004 linked to in the Govt's response to #WASPI is that a survey showed that 73% of those born in the 1950s (45 to 54 below) were aware of the change - slightly higher for women.
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So how WASPI can consistently claim that all women born in their 50s are WASPIs defies logic, if you remember that only the notification point is now under discussion. (The courts ruled long ago that the policy change was lawful.)
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Good to see that the government has resisted calls for compensation for the delays in notifying women of a change in their state pension age.
Hopefully this will now be the end of it… bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1je…
The final age-standardised mortality analysis for E&W for 2025 based on registrations confirms that it was the lowest year yet, and by some margin (1.9% to be precise). The flu outbreak in Dec (which appears to have been just an average year) didn't move the dial.
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A reminder that age-standardised mortality is the standard method used by professionals interested in mortality, as it adjusts for changes in the underlying population, most notably the impact of an ageing population on raw death counts.
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