After reading this article whos to blame is this the ruin of the Labour party will people suffer as much in the future as what they say,is this because of the false economy which the labour party have made people believe, or is it just the way we live.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/busines...d396708?source=

The BOE, they stimulated the economy knowing full well all they were encouraging were high levels of debt, an increasing cost base and naff all else but unfunded consumption.

Do you think they tried to avoid the boom and bust cycle,has there ever been a boom without a bust?

After reading the chat site posted on here from Aussie lad, all this MEWing and credit boom looks like an idea conjured up by all the super powers. I always thought that Oz would be a great place to move to to get away from all the things wrong with England but they are all on it. I think its a matter of seeing which country triggers the global recession.

No-one put a gun to these people's heads and forced them to borrow. Personal responsibility seems to be an alien concept to the vast majority of the UK population, the "blame culture" is endemic.

In a way, they have created a bigger "boom" of sorts - it's just a boom in debt whilst the real economy gets further hammered and personal finances reach breaking point for some whilst others get the money drop in the form of increasing assets. Looks at the jobs situation, years of meddling and manufacturing is going further down the pan, increasingly outpriced and out-invested. Isn't it odd that now that the housing boom is coming to the end the £ gets hit, so much for low rates creating a competitive advantage by lowering the currency - the last few years have seen the opposite.

No,
New Labour have invented a newParadigm called the Boom-Boom cycle, its like the boom-bust but without the bust part

zzg,

A lot of people have had a gun to their head - outborrow A.N.Other potential purchaser or miss out on the house house purchase. The press has been full of it for years, all those poor saps that believed they would never be able to afford property in the future unless they mortgaged up to the eyeballs now.

Has there ever been a boom without a bust in the housing market?

You are right of course, but there's more to it.

The end of the boom will be many times worse due to the reckless habits of the lenders and those who took out the debt. We will all suffer in some way or another, due to the failure to regulate the system.

No one's forcing anyone to take hard drugs, but the problem isn't limited to them. If someone mugs me because they need to pay off their dealer it's suddenly my problem.

Like hard drugs, the problem is a lack of regulation. With drugs being unregulated (just crudely and ridiculously criminalised), an anything-goes chaos errupts - shootings killings, muggings, suffering, gansterism, untreated addiction, social break up.

Similarly, with few limits on how much a lender can lend and how much debt someone can take on choas errupts - no cheap housing, family breakdown, suicides, economic meltdown.

Unfortunately there used to be limits and that is what held this country back and gave us the winter of discontent and the end of Labour rule

Maggie de-regulated the mortgage industry and it is for that reason most people in the UK now own a house. Under Old Labour we would all be in council housing paying even higher taxes than we do today.

Tax and spend, its a Labour Party thing.

laurejon,

Not sure I agree with the cause/effect you put forward, there was a recent article showing the levels of private ownership - contrary to popular belief we are not streets ahead of the rest of Europe in terms of %'s. The benefits of private ownership are debateable if is at the cost of finding the money from future earnings for overpriced rubbish. Look around your average building site and look at the plot size and construction quality and the materials used, makes some of the imported Chinese tat look like quality items.

France is wrongly held up as an example of a place where 'everyone rents'. Actually, as many people buy during the course of their lifetime as here. What France has is cheaper rents. No not, 'rents in London have dipped a bit and you can rent a slum shoebox for 250 quid a week now' - proper cheaper rents.

For instance, I have a friend that rents a one-bed flat 20 minutes from the centre of Paris for E550 per month, or about 380 quid.

I would still want to buy, even given cheap rents, so I'd jwait for when I'm married and starting a family and put down a big deposit, which you'd need to get a mortgage in France. Just like French people do.

But flats in Paris are f*cking tiny. And I mean graze-your-elbows-on-the-walls-when-you-turn-around tiny.

Under Labour in the 70's they had a vice like grip on the money supply.

Today we see the complete opposite as Blair has now abused the deregulation by selling off the gold reserves and printing money like it was going out of fashion.

He keeps telling the rest of the world and us that we are a rich nation, not suprising seeing as he has a sea of HP printers working flat out in his own money printing factory.

The Germans did it, and the Japs and they all suffered.

In the real world us idiots Joe Public all know you cant spend what you aint got. Its time someone told the Totalitarian Labour Party.

Couldn't agree more.

What worries me is that in the growing culture of 'no win no fee' litigation in this country, when 'the crash' does occur these idiot irresponsible folks who have put themselves in deep debt will simply pass the balme to the banks and lenders for lending them the money in the first place and start legal precedings to 'bale them out' of the sh*t they've got themeselves into though their own greed and stupidity.

There you go - the next boom !! Become a lawer !!

Who's to blame - well IMO an awful lot of people, but it all stems from those weaknesses of human nature called greed and envy.

We live in an age when there are even more 'baubles' to collect - whether its kids toys, to DVDs, new cars, new houses, new kitchens - its human nature to desire these things and be envious of others, to the point where you feel bad about yourself if you don't have them.

All these things are advertised down your throat by business because thats how business get richer, by selling these things. So greed is driving this.

The guys who lowered the IR's knew what they were doing. They knew this would cause people to run up debts because people want to have that standard of life they see on the television and they'll borrow to get it.

Having stoked up the fire for the past few years,they've now got the problem of how to keep it going. That's why they are talking about lowering interest rates again. All it does is put off the day of reckoning though.

Debt has been rising at 4 times the rate of earnings for the last 5 years. Thats one big problem we have got there ! That will only be cured by a recession or rapid inflation, which will probably cause a recession aswell. Either way, I think its going to be painful for an awful lot of people in this country.

I think that the massive drop in mortgage lending is the start of the correction on this but it will cause a recession - just not sure yet how bad it will be and over what time period.

Not to my knowledge which makes it even more laughable that millions of ordinary folk believe that IT NEVER GOES DOWN.

The same people who believe that if you pour hot water on an icy windscreen, it just freezes again because hot water freezes faster than cold.

A girl I worked with actually told me that.

Both cases are examples of a simple concept completely misunderstood and then spread around like the word of gospel

I bet the debt counsellors will hear this excuse many times.
"It was not my fault I got into debt, they should not have lent it to me."
Well that`s what someone said to me today, when asking if I wanted to buy his plasma TV

Its a shame that Kilroy is nt on anymore - every so often they show a program with people with XX amount of credit cards and debt.

Now its just oceanfinance.co.uk adverts to look forward to.

perhaps Kilroy will start doing Ocean Finance ads?

It is scary just how easy it is to get credit.

About a year ago i needed a new car 'cos mine was on it's last legs. At the time my employment wasn't that scecure and was only poorly paid. I also didn't have much in savings. So for the first time in my life i decided to get a loan for £4000 - enough to get me a reliable car which would last me a few years and the repayments on the loan over 3 years i could meet without sleepless nights - ie RESPONSIBLE debt!

I applied for the loan via several companies and was blown away with shock when i was bombarded with phone calls from the loan companies i had applied to informing, or rather giving me the 'hard sell' that, 'no, you don't want to borrow £4000 for a car when we will loan you upto £10,000'. It would have been so easy to say 'yeah, why not. If they will give me £10k then why not take it'.

They are FKN vultures the lot of them...............

Does hot water really freeze faster than cold water?

The phenomenon you describe is one of modern science's few remaining mysteries and the source of much debate in certain circles. Given the right set of conditions, hot or warm water can freeze faster than cooler water.

This strange phenomenon was described by the likes of Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes, yet is named after the Tanzanian high-school student who demonstrated it in 1969. The Mpemba effect only occurs under very specific sets of conditions and is still not completely understood.

Though the effect has been reproduced successfully in a number of experiments, no one can say with certainty why it happens due to the great number of variables involved. However, it is generally believed some combination of factors, such as evaporation, convection, conduction, and supercooling, may account for the Mpemba effect.

You'll be glad to know that however mysterious the phenomenon is, the Mpemba effect is put to good use by many ice-cream makers, who use warm milk instead of cool to help their ice cream freeze more quickly.

You may also be interested to know that for such a seemingly simple substance, water is surprisingly complex, and its behavior is poorly understood. The Mpemba effect is just one of 38 anomalies of H2O.

Does hot water really freeze faster than cold water?

The phenomenon you describe is one of modern science's few remaining mysteries and the source of much debate in certain circles. Given the right set of conditions, hot or warm water can freeze faster than cooler water.

This strange phenomenon was described by the likes of Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes, yet is named after the Tanzanian high-school student who demonstrated it in 1969. The Mpemba effect only occurs under very specific sets of conditions and is still not completely understood.

Though the effect has been reproduced successfully in a number of experiments, no one can say with certainty why it happens due to the great number of variables involved. However, it is generally believed some combination of factors, such as evaporation, convection, conduction, and supercooling, may account for the Mpemba effect.

You'll be glad to know that however mysterious the phenomenon is, the Mpemba effect is put to good use by many ice-cream makers, who use warm milk instead of cool to help their ice cream freeze more quickly.

You may also be interested to know that for such a seemingly simple substance, water is surprisingly complex, and its behavior is poorly understood. The Mpemba effect is just one of 38 anomalies of H2O.

Ya' right there trev...

Before getting this loan i had pretty much always paid my way and was quite nieve just how keen banks and loan companies are to load folk up to debt.

What I am describing is this..... A beaker of boiling water 100C will cool down to 60C faster than a 40C beaker of water will cool to 0C. If you plot the temp of the boiling water versus time on a graph you get an exponential curve...the rate of cooling is initially fast but it slows down as the water loses energy.

This is the crux of my argument. The colleague has confused rate of cooling with actual cooling and is therefore saying that the boiling water actually freezes on the windscreen before the cold water would.......which isn't true.




Nice to see you've been googling.

It would be interesting to find out which of these sites has the correct version as many web pages are written from other ones, which themselves were cribbed from a book and subjected to the chinese whisper treatment on route.

The only bit that has any significance to everyday life is evaporation. However I've been sad enough to do this in a lab and I got the results that I stated.

What determines the rate of decrease in water tempeature with time for the example you have mentioned is the heat transfer coefficent(s) between the water surface area and surface area(s) the water is in contact with! There is no black art involved here - just a simple bit of simple thermodynamics/heat transfer. It is really MUCH simpler than it seems and not worth getting your knickers in a twist about!

Thermodynamics is so simple that it's no longer on the A Level syllabus . Hasn't been for years.

My initial point (many moons ago) was stating the confusion of rate of with actual

Yes, very simple concepts.

Those words again.....rate and actual.

Thankyou....and Goodnight.

Who is to blame for Credit Card Debt (as well as consumer debt for cars etc)? The individual. Believe it or not you can live without the widescreen Plasma or a phone that takes photo's (get a camera)

The question of who is to blame for the large housing debt is more problematic. In my opinion Mewing to renovate your house / buy a car / buy any number of toys it is the individuals fault. Btl is a bit more iffy. I can't blame people wanting to try and secure their future. Maybe a realistic pension isn't so expensive after all ? Also people who have borrowed to buy their first property aren't entirely at fault.


Just my opinion

Sorry pioneer31 - my reply came over as a bit arrogent! No bad intent was ment.

Best wishes to all on HPC.co.uk - it's good to be part of the HPC family

Time to call it a night too.

Good night all

The English are stupid, greedy morons who cannot manage their finances. Just because some Shylock offers to lend you 5 times your salary so you can buy a room to exist in, or offers to extend your mortgage so you can buy a holiday or a conservatory or a new car or a new kitchen or whatever other bit of consumer crap you need to make you happy - doesn't mean you HAVE to borrow it.

Bring back credit controls for the children.

For what it's worth - never put boiling water on your windscreen if it's frozen - there's a good chance the thermal shock will crack the glass.

Happy New Year to you and yours....

My 0% Mint card is set to expire in Jan. 05 (I have a small balance owing) so I applied for another tonight. With the minimum of questions, Egg have given me 0% until Sept '05 on balance transfers and 0% on purchase until July 05. Interestingly, the amount of 'dealers' offering 0% on both on balances and transfers has decreased. Credit crunch in action? Maybe not. Egg have given me a starting balance of £4000.

that is certainly true and well done for speaking from the top of your head rather than cut 'n' pasting chunks of a website from google like some of our other members

see Sithclone7's post then look at this

http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20030930.html

I decided to apply for a new CC a few months ago as I wasnted to transfer an outstanding credit to a 0% deal. I went on the Egg site punched in some details. Probably took me at the most 3 mins. I was sent the card the card within a week with a £10k initial limit!! Has the world gone crazy? That means from the three CC's I have I can now borrow £28.5k

Thats nothing compared to my Deputy MD is playing the Stoozing game. To him it really is like a game you should see his face light up when he's talking about it. He must have 15 CC's that he carries around with him. All at 0% and is currently investing £80k (total credit limit I think is about £130k) in shares, ISA's, tresaury bonds you name it he's got it! Surely all this free money has got to end at some point!

I'll go with that,due to the glass being contracted and more brittle when cold, if hot water is poured on it the sudden expansion can easily crack the glass. If you wnt the full explanation i'm sure my old science lecturer will be happy to explain it for a few hours or so.

The internet has produced a new lazy style of research. I got a book for Christmas last year called 'That Book' it was full of useless trivia which the author had collated from various sources.

There is generally no editorial control like you had in the past with printed media, facts would have been checked at least to a certain extent before going to print, but with web sites you can print any old dross and eventually the general population will believe it.

Thing was he simply got together all those list people send around on e-mail about amazing facts most of which were clearly untrue. I compiled a list of 10 facts from just 2 pages that were total rubbish and included well researched evidence on why they were rubbish and sent it to him. Did he reply no, he was far to busy doing this years book.

You also tend to find people copy stuff from one website to another verbatim, which seems to give it an air of authority. "If 3 people are saying it must be true".

Not that I'm accusing Sithclone7 of such a thing but more to point out that your general public love a trivia fact but most don't have the intellect to recognise when its either rubbish or a little more complex. They are happy to accept anything people tell them.

My general rule of thumb when looking at or for information is not to use it as the fact but the starting point of future research. When a report says immigration is up don't take it as red go and check out the government sites, when people say that bankruptcy is not a problem go and look at the figures yourself.

This may seem a little cynical but it’s actually the reverse, I'd love to be able to use a bit of useless trivia but I'd much rather check it was right first.

The thing is that for every person playing the stoozing game there a plenty of people in serious debt. They are paying the money to the CC companies which more than covers the stuff payed out in interest to the stoozers.

He is also being f*cking stupid. What happens when he loses his shirt playing the stockmarket and the CC companies ask for their money back. Your MD will be up shit creek.

I agree but he seems to think he knows what he's doing so let him get on with it. I'm not sure how much of that cash is in shares to be honest.

Well, yes I agree, anyone can write their own web page and fill it with the utmost dross, either intentionally or not.



Yes, I've noticed this a lot. If you type in a subject you come up with a dozen websites and they're all the same.

Googling has become the new friend of the undergrad. In the old days one would need to sift through books and construct essays, nowadays you can obtain whole dissertations on the net!

Correct me if i'm wrong but the impression that I got about Stoozing was to place the money into a bank account so that the principle was protected? It is free money in my opinion if he did this.

Stock market crash? Your mate may be in a bit of strife.

Oh well. He might be lucky and make a bundle.

greedy bugger

surely he earns a fair whack in his job?

The answer to this thread "Who's To Blame, credit debt"

IS ONLY YORUSELF!

?Its just another trap/peril of life to deal with; a scam of sorts to avoid.

E.g. A mouse which is lured to a block of cheese on a mouse trap, if the mouse sets it off but still manages to escape, the mouse hopefully should learn to avoid these traps in future.

It's about time the great British public started doing their Maths homework and less time watching football and Corrie.

The number of people I know who are almost 'proud' of their mathematical failings astounds me. It's seen as 'cool' to be bad at Maths.

Is it cool to be scammed, conned, deceived or in debt though?

I think it's fair to say that the emotion of greed is too strong to allow the development of any such Pavlovian response.