F0ul Thought

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/regional-statistics/index.html National Statistics do a Neighbourhood section which can help. Thee is also the EU NUTS2 and NUTS3 stats - Hope this helps!

Rather than working with hypatheticals, why not work with real examples? Land ownership in Ethiopia is illegal - its also have no private sector. It makes its money from agriculture and has a GDP of $65Billion - or about $900 per head. Compare that to Wales, which has a GDP of around the same level, but about $30K per head. Wales would have had the same level of GDP as Ethiopia about 400 years ago but thanks to land ownership, and the idea of property rights, people could make money without having to be a part of the land owning classes. Land ownership is definitely a good idea - without it, there is nothing to build your wealth on, so you end up scrabbling in other people's dirt!

Where unions don't get it is that they think that its the people on the shop floor who do all the work while everyone else is just sucking the money out of them. The reality is that without the management, there wouldn't be any roles on the shopfloor. More honestly, its the connection of the management and the shopfloor which makes the company profitable - one doesn't happen without the other! Quote - Rubbish. It is the workers on the shop floor that create the wealth. All management do is optimise the smooth running of the workforce to extract maximum profit. Of course their would be roles without management. Workers can self manage themselves and so have no need for management. It seems quite obvious from that comment that you wouldn't know a successful company if you fell over one. The shop floor create the goods, using the equipment owned by the company. Their labour doesn't create wealth, it creates widgets. Those widgets only have a value when the management find a customer, which normally happens before the workers produce the widgets in the first place! The management have to build a team of people who, between them, are able to give their customer exactly what they want. That is their skill - without management, the workers are just widget making monkeys. Each with their own little role, which has a value in the final product, but by its self, their value is nothing. If workers are able to self manage, then it means the company is inefficient although I can't see how a company can finance a project to find a customer for a widget, design it, make it, deliver it and offer support then collect the payment for it while ensuring that all bills are paid on time including the wage bill all without management - unless you just use different names for them such as team! In such a place, there is no room for a union to put obstacles in the way! In not saying that unions have always been a bad thing - they used to do the role of the benefit system, before they got the tax payer to do that role. At that time, the Union was a good thing, but by today, they are just another relic of a bad time in our past!

Argh! Unions - I loath unions more than anything else in the working environment! They are the parasites which such all the inovation out of a company - they are the reason there is a them and us within a company. I have mostly worked in non union companies - in most cases, unions were banned - and everything worked great. We got a pay rise when we asked for one, and could justify the need for it. We were also on performance based bonuses - so the pay was sort of irrelevant because when we worked harder, we got paid more anyway! Where unions don't get it is that they think that its the people on the shop floor who do all the work while everyone else is just sucking the money out of them. The reality is that without the management, there wouldn't be any roles on the shopfloor. More honestly, its the connection of the management and the shopfloor which makes the company profitable - one doesn't happen without the other! Unions spend all their time looking at the angles, trying to work out how they can ensure as many useless people can keep getting paid for doing a bad job! The end result is a failing company, and a union complaining about the number of jobs being lost due to management incompetence!!

If it makes you feel any better - the PI Cycle is peaking this weekend - this daft idea about everything being ok will finally be thrown out! As for your impatience - did prices rise by 50% in only a year? NO, of course it didn't. So why would you expect prices to go down in that time? Prices seem to be dropping at about 2-3% a month, so, you are looking at the bottom being hit in 2011. The only issue I have, which I think is being missed by lots of the tin foil brigade on here is that we are not going to see the system be cleaned out properly before it booms again. In a properly, regulation, intervention free market, the market would be burnt to the ground to remove all the toxic elements and once it was solid again, then the market would start to grow. The issue here is that we are not in an ideal free market, which means that there will be influences on the market to start growing again before it was totally detoxed. That is why I think we are only going to see the market drop so that average house prices reach average wage income times 3.3 or so - it won't go any lower. The delay will be when we wait for wage inflation to catch up - after all, there are two numbers that make up this formula. There will be another property boom - because we always have property booms. There was one in the early 70's, there was only in the late 80's, the late 90's one, and the mad one we have just seen drop. There is no reason to think we won't have another in the late 2010's!

Yes, the system is broken, and you can moan about it - but that isn't going to fix it. The sensible thing is to take advantage of it - after all, that is exactly what the clever money is doing. Get a job in the public sector, use your private sector work ethic to get your reputation for being a hard worker. Make enough contacts to be able to start your own company as a consultancy to the public sector after you have already been involved in enough networking to make sure everyone thinks you are great! The worst part is moving from a debt living system to a cash based system - because that is when you realise that you have been living beyond your means to keep up with all your co workers who have also been doing the same! I think the system has always been broken, but its not been as obvious to the common man before. Thanks to the internet and sloppy generations of people not keeping the pretense going, the truth is slipping out ...!

Um, No. The answer is to pay your debts for spending the last few years, an average 5.8%, more than we earnt on stuff. We were producing more than we could afford to buy using the wages we had. That is the whole point of a bubble. Your solution would create a new bubble using public money to allow people to return to buying stuff we couldn't afford to buy using the wages we earnt! The jobs that are being lost by this overproduction are jobs created by a bubble. A better solution would be to find jobs for these people to do which would add to society, but wouldn't need us to borrow to pay for. That is the difficult job!

Have a look at the figures - the next lot are out on the 22nd of April. https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/default.asp

One company which went into administration a few months ago ended up in that position because their payroll caused them to go over their overdraft limit by 2%. That was enough for the banks to pull the plug on them. 2 months later, the 90 jobs that were lost were revitalised when a new company was created at a new site. That bit never hit the headlines because it happened over 2 months in dribs and drabs! The biggest problem was the bank employees were doing accounting by process rather through using experience - the company is now viable in the long term as it was able to look at all its internal practices, clear the deadwood and will be a good long term investment - especially in that they are now exporting most of their products. Yes, companies which are bloated or have lost direction will have job loses which will not be replaced, but that doesn't mean that all companies that go bust will leave a void which cannot be filled.

A lot of companies which are going into administration are being forced into it by over zealous bankers although there are some which are victims of other companies not paying their debts. At their core, these companies are still viable, its just a case of sorting out the paperwork and making it look good for the bankers again. If they have confidence, then the cashflow can be managed, and before you know it, the profit can be used for expansion and jobs etc!

While this thread is great sky is falling fodder, what always seems to be missing is the job numbers created by the phonixed companies. Our area has had a number of high profile job loses, however, most of the jobs lost where then taken up by the restructuring of the company - the end result is that there are fewer lost jobs in reality than the headlines would suggest. Sometimes the company would have a management buyout, sometimes they would sell off sections of what they did, sometimes they went bust and then start again under a new name. It does depend a lot on why the company is closing - some of the really bad news has hit low pay assembly plants where the HQ is in a different country, and those jobs are lost - but the actual jobs lost number is still going to be a lot lower than the headlines suggest. Sorry for ruining the headless panic with a dose of reality!

What is missing here is the concept of risk - If you buy a car, you accept that you may die while driving it - and you can't sue the manufacturer! All that has happened here is that the experts were wrong. It happens. Its like I watch a comedian such as one of those mentioned - the critics tell me I really will laugh lots and lots if I go and see them - and don't laugh at all during their performance. I am not going to sue the comedian for not entertaining me. I'm not going to worry about the money I was conned out of to go and see them in the first place - not because it was a small amount, but because I understood the risk! While you don't need to be able to be a mechanic to drive a car, you do need to turn a steering wheel when you get to a corner!

Everyone has the ability to do due diligence. You can use the internet, you can check feedback. You talk to people, you visit the CAB, you talk to the thousands of free public services which are set up to help people make the right decision! If I am thinking of buying a car, I do this, If I was looking to invest well over £100K, I would certainly do it - unless I didn't actually value that sort of money as being worth the effort?! If things don't work out the way you wanted them to, then that is the action of risk. If there was no risk, there would be no reward. Why do people think that successful business is a right??!

He should do what others do - it is called Due Diligence!

I think the one thing nobody seems to have done is actually watch the programme! Last one I saw, the contestants ended up not being able to sell their houses and in the credits we find out both are now with Estate Agents. I understand this is quite normal! It would seem to me that this programme is more likely to make people choose an EA than go it alone!

There is a phrase which helps put things into perspective here: Easy Come, Easy Go! I do wonder with these celebs, if they had made the mad profits these schemes were promising, would they have gone public and complained how morally corrupt it all was - and given it all to a token charity? I didn't think so!

In the real world, my job brings me into contact with a number of businesses which blame the recession for their mis management. This is much more likely when the boss has an ego or a reputation for being good at what they do. The likes of Ramsey will have to be very careful that his ego doesn't force him to over expose himself on TV and this poisions his brand. Its the downside of using the media to grow your brand. Technically, it can be considered mis management when it goes wrong - getting your marketing wrong is just as bad as not being able to get your accounts to add up correctly!

Very interesting thread. I think that there is a little of a misunderstanding though between the comments from different people. Its all about timing. I tend to look at timing over a year or so, while others are looking at 30 days - both comments can be right, even when they are totally polar! For instance, I see the market rising for another few weeks, and then dropping for the rest of the year. If I'm right or not isn't really that important - there is no money riding on it - but at least its nice to be able to see what predictions were right, and which ones are not!

I think you are missing the point. Ramsey won his first Michelin star 3 years before he first appeared on TV and he had already been recognized for his abilities on a world wide basis before his first TV series. He really is a chef first and a TV celeb second. That is why I like him. He's a true expert and his attitude is what it takes to be the best - its not nice, but then, nice people rarely become the best in their field! Of course, that's not to say that not nice people are the best in their field!

I just did a Wikipedia search to see what you were implying. I thought the riots were mostly about these places just being rubbish places to live - shows how naive I was! I also found there was a riot in Wrexham in 2003 (also a race riot as it happens) - maybe this is more telling than anything. We don't seem to care that the politicians rob us blind, but if someone different lives around the corner, people are willing to destroy their local community! It really is mad and quite frustrating that its only idiotic causes which can get the people worked up like this!

Brixton, Toxteth, South Yorkshire (Generally!) Broadwater Estate (that was a nasty one!) then the later ones in Oldham / Bradford Maybe we just don't remember how to do it anymore?

Personally, I think there is going to be a much bigger Gold bubble coming. I have no idea what the peak is going to be, but with the other currencies going down (with the exception of the NZ$) there is nothing else to make a quick profit on! We seem to like bubbles of one kind or another and gold is as good as anything else! When that one busts, houses will be cheap again and the cycle continues!

There is are big differences between a cash flow problem, unpaid bills and a mismanaged business. There is just not enough information anywhere here to state if there is a problem - its mostly hearsay. Firstly, Ramsey is one of only a handful of chefs in the world who have proved their cooking skills through winning some very highly recognized awards over and over! Its about quality and what the customer is willing to pay - marketing I guess! But Ramsey is no foul mouthed cooking Jade Goody - there is much more than that to him. Secondly, banks are over reacting to the restaurant business. They seem to have cut credit to all restaurants and are looking for daft collateral to sure up very solid businesses. I'm not surprised Ramsey is selling his Ferrari - the cash will be very useful and he can always by a better one once the cash flow is more stable! Of course, there are plenty of people who like to see a smart **** fail - regardless of the truth!

Ready for a flame war?? ! The answer is more Health professionals - BUT - the way to actually get the economy working again is to privative the NHS! Get rid of the NHS completely. Introduce the concept of medical insurance. Get rid of the NHS NI costs to the public, and make all hospitals into self managed businesses. It would be chaos for the first year or so - but - give it a few years, you would have more than the current 1.1 million people working within the health industry - all creating a private income and a benefit to the economy. The £120 Bn a year that the NHS is currently costing the tax payer would no longer be a cost. The pharmaceutical industry would also have to be reformed as they would no longer be able to lobby government to get hospitals to buy their stock - meaning more jobs for salespeople. Losers? Firstly, I wouldn't look to the US for guidance on how to do this! If the system was started properly - that is, only using commercial concerns and leaving the moral 'think of the children' way of thinking at home. The main losers would be those who are currently clogging the system up with hypochondria and those who are expecting someone else to look after them - However, in the long term, this could be the shot in the arm that the country needs - although I doubt it would ever happen! Anyone agree?

What a great read! The article is good, and besides for the punch and judy aspect of this thread, this comments have been interesting as well! It certainly makes you see how the IMF see the world! So, they understand that banks which are to big to fail are too big to exist. Its a shame they don't seem to understand that the whole system is a farce! Yes, there is too much of a connection between the politicians and the banks, but they don't seem to understand that the banks are not free trade. Its not the freedom of regulations which is free trade, its the system where there is no restriction on entry to the market - and the IMF don't understand that. Yes, the banks are totally corrupt as are the politicians who are in bed with them - but the system is just totally broken and they don't want to fix that - just reseting everything back to 0. That isn't going to fix the problem in the long term - although it does ensure that the IMF can carry on being influential in world economics - which is nice! Thanks for posting it - I think I learnt something!