Michael

it's true that economic growth during the'' boom'' years was not very high like in Ireland but what growth there was, was funded by credit expansion.....If at the time i knew there was something wrong with this then why didnt the BoE ? Mortgage Equity Withdrawal (MEW) made up 6 or 7% of spending in the economy between 2002 and 2008 for heaven's sake ! I remember serious economic commentators at the time saying this was fine if the money was spent on lasting, sensible things like house extensions but personally i thought there'd be a problem even if the whole lot had been spent on lasting and sensible things ... You see, if you borrow money out of thin air (actually, indirectly from saver countries like Germany and China and Japan) and pay a builder £60000 for an extension to your house the money obviously goes into the economy through purchases of building materials, builders' wages etc.........and this is clearly unsustainable as a way to run your economy ! End of rant!

Why is there this gang and gun culture amongst some Caribbean immigrants?...Why cant they just live like our Jewish and Chinese and Indian immigrants? Enoch Powell was instantly dismissed from the shadow cabinet in 1968? for his ''Rivers of Blood'' speech.....when of course he was bloody well right...... Caribbean immigration to this country has been a disaster.....Percentage of them living on benefits if you include tax credits must be very high and they are 7 times as likely as whites to be in prison and 10 times as likely to be in mental hospitals so they are net takers from the system

to get the same retirement benefits as a person on an index-linked state pension a self-employed person on the same salary would have to save 37% of his/her income !!!!!!

'' I just remember the late 1950s. There were two car owners on our street. The milk float was horse drawn. 405 lines black and white television. No central heating or double glazing. My mum had yet to acquire her first washing machine. We didn't have a fridge. Back to the 1950s? I bl00dy well hope not. Edit: and my Dad bought a decent house for an affordable price so it was not all bad.'' I bloody wish! in the 50s you could buy a small terraced in my town ( Harrogate, North Yorks) for £500 which was roughtly equivalent to a working class annual salary..... and now such a house is 7 times such a salary....... but a tiny b and w TV cost £80(equiv today £2400)..........a twin tub washing machine £60(£1800), a lost distance phone call the euiv of 85p a minute in today's money

yes, over 50 years paying in £75 a month you'd need a return of about 8% to get £750 k ....and such high returns normally imply inflation of about 5% pa which over 50 years would be about 1100% compounded.....meaning the £750k in 50 years' time would be only worth about £65 k in today's money! Misling people with inflation in this way was one of the biggest tricks of the pensions misselling scam in the 1980s........

Haves and have-nots in London!........try Islington......whilst i'm sure there are many middle income single people and double income couples............. the people living there with their children either seem to be poor immigrants in council flats or people who can buy £1 million houses......with no happy medium......

Scotland would cop out of military spending like Ireland did when it broke away...... Ireland is too small to defend itself against England or other potential foes so has never bothered with a serious army/navy/airforce, only spending about 0.6% of its GDP on defence v about 3% for the UK

the remit of the BofE is a lot wider than most people realise.............because it is to keep inflation below 2% and maintain economic stability and in the current situation it could be argued these 2 aims conflict................so they could argue that economic stability is best achieved by printing money and letting inflation go up to 5 or 10%

but if inflation is almost 5% with no sign of it going down anytime soon why aren't the bond markets punishing the BofE for printing money??? Yields on Uk government debt are negative in real terms.... As a previous poster suggested the hidden agenda of the BofE is to inflate away both government and private sector debt//////////////// General inflation of 5 or 6% for 8 or 9 years would halve the real value of this debt mountain and is the EASIEST way out of the mess we're in.... Expect salaries and prices to go up 80% in the next 8 or 9 years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/16/house-prices-tumble-austerity-inflation

'' *****! ''But there is a better way – five or six years of 5% inflation does the job nicely. That way we get to inflate our debt away and we don't have to go through all this austerity nonsense. In the long run, interest rates need to rise back to some normal level – say 4% – so that when the next shock comes the Bank of England can cut rates. For now, interest rates have to stay at 1% or lower until at least 2015, which hopefully will create some inflation. And more quantitative easing would help, as that adds more stimulus to the economy – which is positive for house prices.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/16/house-prices-tumble-austerity-inflation

It's plainly obvious the B of E WANT to inflate away the mortgage and government debt........That is why we have negative real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates....... and why precious metals are in demand..... This is how Brtiain rid itself of the burden of its huge war debt...which by 1945 had taken government debt to 250% of GDP.........By 1961 this had shrunk to 100% largely due to inflation in the 1950s

Labour ran deficits during the boom years because of their natural tendency to like spending other people's money...... By 2005 or 2006 because of the crdit boom we'd gone a lot longer than usual without a slump so Gordon brown who had been Chancellor for 7 or 8 years convinced himself he'd ended boom-bust and that tax revenues would rise in perpetuity.........................and planned his spending accordingly

i love the idea of it but even a cursory look at the idea of a citizen's wage shows it's unworkable......... because you could never make it high enough to support the people at the bottom without giving them top ups and by the time you'd done that you'd be back to something like the set up we have now............. if for example you made it £120 a week per adult and £60 a week per child it would cost about £400 billion which is about 28% of the GDP and you'd still have the problem of the poorest not able to afford rents so housing benefit would still have to be paid