(1) She says that the spread of insecure, short-term contracts and part-time work, together with benefits cuts and paltry wage growth, have meant that many people in work are struggling to make ends meet.
(2) Let’s leave that discussion to another day, but imagine a combination of the two – sort of Transformers meets Ex Machina – in which a race of giant sexy robots battles it out with another race of really mean giant sexy robots while paltry human beings look on in awe, and teenage boys (and girls) experience incredibly conflicting and disturbing sensual awakenings in the front row of the Beckenham Odeon.
(3) Only Orange's pay monthly deals come with Wi-Fi access and they only include a paltry 750MB of Wi-Fi browsing – again through BT Openzone's network of hotspots.
(4) In 2010 Bedder 6 paid out total dividends of £1.68m — which saw Clarkson pocket a comparatively paltry £850,000 when his share is calculated and his annual service payment is added in — meaning his income from Bedder 6 has almost tripled year on year.
(5) A paltry 50g of brown rice takes up over a third of your daily calorie count.
(6) By his own lofty standards Cavendish's return of two stage wins from this year's Tour has been paltry and myriad signs of hitherto unseen fallibility, a team that is clearly not good enough to work in his service and suggestions that his star is on the wane will leave him with much to ponder.
(7) If the recession results in interest rates remaining low for years, as many in the City are now predicting, then annuity rates will also remain at paltry levels.
(8) Frontex’s annual budget is a paltry €90m (£65m).
(9) Russia and China , meanwhile, have contributed a paltry $17.8 million and $1.2 million, respectively.
(10) It is the result of rejecting the world of public disengagement and laissez faire that delivered one paltry gold medal in Atlanta just 16 years ago.
(11) The value has now decreased slightly and their share probably sits at a paltry $10m.
(12) In 1959, US intelligence estimates suggested that the USSR would be in possession of between 1,000 and 1,500 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) compared to America’s paltry 100.
(13) Co-operative customer #3 is making do with a paltry state pension, subsidising the cost of groceries with a fortnightly package from the local food bank and unable to afford energy bills.
(14) The food industry spends over £1bn a year on marketing in the UK, compared with the paltry £14m spent on the government's anti-obesity campaign.
(15) The Italians are earning paltry returns from knocking out white goods in competition with the Chinese and Koreans.
(16) A paltry £1,000 for each marginal Labour candidate hardly buys a poster site.
(17) The sums are so paltry that the animus seems deliberate.
(18) As he itemises the contents of the pawnbroker's shop ("a few old China cups; some modern vases, adorned with paltry paintings of three Spanish cavaliers playing three Spanish guitars; or a party of boors carousing: each boor with one leg painfully elevated in the air by way of expressing his perfect freedom and gaiety …") you sense that Dickens barely knows how to stop.
(19) Yet he went on to pretend a paltry array of stimuli will fix the problem: he cannot possibly believe that loose change from the petty cash will arrest the plunge in employment and growth.
(20) Growth for the UK in 2012 will be a paltry 0.6%, the IMF says.
Piddling
Definition:
(p. pr. & vb. n.) of Piddle
(a.) Trifling; trivial; frivolous; paltry; -- applied to persons and things.
Example Sentences:
(1) But I'd be piddling myself laughing and couldn't get myself together, meaning there were many retakes.
(2) A pugnacious Nick Clegg really got the Remain side going when he accused outers of behaving as if Britain was just “a piddling little island”, always being bullied by Brussels.
(3) Why would she give up her cosy life as a columnist and novelist working from home in Notting Hill to be editor of a title she described in the documentary as "a piddling magazine no one cares about or buys"?
(4) Hunt is locked into a no-win confrontation about a piddling amount of cash that – if the ballot that goes out tomorrow supports strike action, as it looks as if it will – could cost hundreds of lives.
(5) We do the best we can all day, every day to produce great product on piddling budgets and they call that success.
(6) That the Thames triumphed over competition from the mighty Amazon and idyllic rural waterways such as the Piddle in Dorset, can be explained by the prize's focus on restored and well-managed rivers.
(7) Aside from that, we see only two solutions: grab our culture by the lapels and convince everyone it’s fine to sit down for five piddling little minutes to have a coffee, or convince people to go down the reusable route.
(8) But the culture budget is pretty piddling anyway and transport argues that it is supposed to deliver a lot of the infrastructure spending that the coalition is now committed to increasing.
(9) Later she says of the title: "In the real world this is a piddling little magazine that nobody cares about.
(10) "The Piddle and the Amazon don't have those environmental pressures – the sewage, the industry."