Fed Up

I remember visiting the one in Oxford Walk, a little shopping arcade near Oxford Circus in the Smoke. Kudos to Branson, even though I don't like him - or his persona - at any rate, Virgin signed a lot of the great bands from that era. These chappies from Swindon for example. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JRNHbBg6HVc

Me too, but I've been frugal all my life anyway; but then I am the wrong side of 40 and just old enough to remember the power cuts and three-day working week of the early 70s. I have to contain my immense frustration when younger work colleagues think that there is something wrong with having to save up for a deposit in order to get a mortgage. They don't understand that that is normal and that recent years have been the abberation.

You've all missed the most important issue which is that more and more people, through unemployment, will become entitled to council tax benefit. They will also be able to access leisure services at a discount, meaning less money into the council's coffers.

Yes, Darling should be following in the footsteps of Denis Healey fairly soon. IMF bailout within 6 months methinks.

'We' are not all up to our eyeballs in debt - for the defaulters, well tough, they will get a long overdue lesson on how to manage their finances. I have no sympathy for them any more than I have for the chavs who have been living on equity withdrawl who will now get turfed out of the homes they should have been paying for.

Hey, but next December's article will read 'Bargain Homes for £75k' and December 2010's will read 'Bargain Homes for £50k'. It's getting better all the time

The notes are country-specific, according to the serial number: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes None of which excuses the Ambrose story except that he quoted it from http://www.handelsblatt.com/

Please do us all a favour and hang the dishonourable member for Edinburgh South West - and while your at it, pop across the Forth and do the same to the even more dishonourable member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

Look on the bright side everyone and imagine how the even more heavily indebted Republic of Ireland is going to export its way out of debt, when it will lose its largest single export market.

Neither the Channel Islands nor Gibraltar are part of the UK. I have never been to the latter, but in Jersey and Guernsey they have their own Sterling notes which are still very much in circulation. As for the Euro, speculators will short it when they feel the time is right. If it does not fall back to parity with the US dollar then the German car industry is fecked, even with large bailouts.

If 'now' had been 18 months ago then Euros would have been a good buy, but to be honest I really don't see the point, because for starters you need somewhere safe and easily accessible to keep your savings. Will the pound fall to parity? Who knows? At some stage - next year? - speculators will move in and start shorting the Euro, to bring it back down to parity with the dollar.

When I saw the title of this thread I thought that it referred to the chav's mag, which will soon migrate to the top shelf, on the grounds that photographs of breasts are 'obscene'.

The global currency markets will decide that, not the Eurocrats.

I've thought of it that way as well. The tsunami hit Ireland then Iceland, it has hit Spain and now us. It will carry on eastward through Europe.

I haven't bought a TV Licence for over a decade. I don't need to make a 'pledge'. The 'pay up you b@stard' letters just get shredded and put in the recycling tub with all the other junk mail.

Exactly, the issue of joining the Euro will have gone because so will the Euro. It will not survive this recession. To reply to an earlier post the German auto-industry is in very serious trouble and will be seeking the same bailouts as car manufacturers in the USA.

Cable is just another inflationist who wants to devalue Sterling to wipe out mortgage debts, though it will make the international debts of the mortgage lenders more difficult to pay off. He is just as bad as Osborne and Darling.

Chancey precisely because the IOM economy is based on financial services. Could its government afford to guarantee all those deposits without help from the UK, of which it is not a part?

This from the Nationwide International site http://www.nationwideinternational.com/home_files/scheme.htm It used to be 75% up to £15k

Never mind them, the S is HTF in Germany with its motor industry needing bailouts every bit as big as those in the US. The ECB is going to be under intense pressure to devalue by the über-capitalists of the Eurozone or they will have no industry left. Broadly speaking other interest rates seem to be settling down with the US dollar regaining its place as the 'standard'. At the beginning of the year the Canadian dollar, the 'loonie' was the above parity with the 'greenback'. Now it has fallen back to below $0.80 USD. The Aussie and Kiwi dollars are falling back (with the markets costing in further rate cuts). The Aussie dollar was almost at parity with the US dollar but has now fallen back to about two-thirds of a US dollar.

Why should they be off limits? The building societies which offered 100%+ mortgages and borrowed in the wholesale markets are just as legitimate targets and easier to bring down. Pick one based in a strong Labour-supporting area and see how the government reacts.

Anyone who thinks that the Euro can survive at $1.29 is a fool, because the Eurozone will have no export economy left. The ECB will come under intense pressure to devalue soon.

Am I the only one who thinks that the Euro is seriously overvalued and that if it doesn't fall back to parity with the US dollar then Airbus, Alfa Romeo and Audi to name but a few will all go to the wall? The £/US$ exchange rate is about right, it is the Euro that is the abberation.

It won't work for another reason that the banks and building societies will have even less money available for them to lend as more savers withdraw their deposits.

Fast-forward two years and ask yourself how many couples will have two full-time salaries coming in compared to now?