I'm trying to sign up for men's #cooking#lessons here in #Japan to placate my busy #Japanese wife. While she was away, I made this cheese omelette; beginner's luck! A #community center has me on a waiting list, or I could spill for more upscale lessons. It is astonishing and unJapanese that single-person #households are approaching 40%. #Single#men of all ages have a poor #diet, which exacerbates the #lifespan gap with #women. #Loneliness is also a #health hazard. Many men are #widowed, never #married, or their #wives#divorce them, often after the children become independent and the husband is useless around the house after a busy career. Single men, or married men interested in cooking or helping their wives, possibly fearing their wives' pent-up anger, can find #companionship as well as #survival#skills in cooking lessons. Men's classes start from zero; women #cook and #socialize.
Swati Dhingra who sits on the BoE MPC who make decisions on #interestrates, told the BBC:
'The economy’s already flatlined. And we think only about 20% or 25% of the impact of the interest rate hikes have been fed through to the economy. So I think that there’s also this worry that that might mean that we’re going to have to pay a higher cost than we should be paying'
In other words, if you think the pressure on #households has peaked, the #Bankers want you to know you've seen nothing yet!
You'll be unsurprised to learn that UK #households are worse off that their US equivalents... and that much of the difference lies in #housing costs & the continuing problem(s) with #productivity in the UK.
Perhaps (a little more interestingly), one thing that stops the wealth gap between US & UK growing is expense of #healthcare in the US & their dire #publicservcies (although here the UK is trying to catch up).
More evidence of UK's continuing decline into poverty
By 2030, the EU wants to introduce legally binding targets to reduce food waste. In July, the EU Commission proposed to reduce food waste by 10% in processing and manufacturing and 30% per capita in retail and consumption. These proposals though still need to be discussed by the EU parliament and the member states."