Rolf Harris

If you look in the mirror in the bathroom shot you can see the bald dude taking the pics. I love it when that happens.

Yes, or mandate that funds allocate a certain % of assets as government bonds. It would be interesting to see how the UK govt. would try to go about doing this after they tried to tie private fund payout increases to CPI.

Maybe the local councilor in charge is waiting for a meeting with them, at which point a brown paper bag stuffed with cash is supposed to change hands. That's how it normally works in Australia.

At least he wasn't claiming that clearing up the floods will be good for the local economy. Just a matter of time before someone does...

True, I'm all for the barter system however just about everyone I know thinks "Barter" means "Haggle". Whenever I point this error out I'm told I'm a nit picking pedant.

This Troy Buswell dude who is suggesting the increased first homebuyer's grant is better known for his chair sniffing antics, a total ******: Emotional Buswell admits to chair-sniffing incident Western Australian Opposition Leader Troy Buswell has had to hold back tears while acknowledging more offensive behaviour towards a female colleague. Yesterday Mr Buswell refused to be drawn on an allegation that he sniffed the chair of a female staffer in late 2005. On 13 occasions he described the allegation as an unsubstantiated rumour. Today however, he admitted the allegation was true. "All I can confirm is that the events described in the paper by the former female staffer are accurate," he said. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/29/2230492.htm

AA1 still sounds really, really good though.

OK, any "hypothetical" decent govt. then!

"The new proposal would apply even where RPI has been explicitly spelt out in pension scheme rules or a trust deed, the legal document governing each pension fund." Any decent govt. would protect legal contracts, this one is shitting all over them. Bunch of crooks, no better than Liebour.

UK likes to copy some of Australia's policies e.g. points test migration. Maybe Libcons are going to propose something like they do over here - give a 50% discount on the CGT if the asset is held for more than 12 months then apply tax at the taxpayers marginal rate. Seems pretty fair to me and discourages short term speculation.

AA+ still sounds really good though doesn't it?

Check out this insanity... Revealed: The home loan that could save you a fortune * By Nick Gardner * From: The Sunday Telegraph * May 22, 2010 10:29PM HOMEBUYERS are to be offered never-ending mortgages in a bid to overcome Australia's affordability crisis. ING Direct, Australia's fifth largest lender, is preparing to sell loans that have no fixed term and no requirement to repay any capital along the way. At current rates, the interest-only loans would cut repayments on a $300,000 mortgage by $5000 a year. Repayments would be kept to a minimum, allowing borrowers to benefit from capital growth in their property. "People are needlessly being denied the chance to buy a property while prices spiral rapidly out of their reach" ING Direct CEO Don Koch said. "There is an urgent need to provide more affordable options and borrowers should be able to choose whether they want to repay the capital, or not." Mr Koch wants to position the bank as a "mortgage partner for life", with borrowers carrying the same interest-only loan from property to property for as long as they wish, accumulating equity from rising house prices as they go. Then, as they near retirement, they could sell their property for a big enough profit to pay off the original loan and buy a smaller place outright, leaving them mortgage-free. Or, they could keep the mortgage going and repay the original capital from their estate, after death. These loans has been popular for years in the UK and Europe, where repaying capital is seen by many as unnecessary and prohibitively expensive. "It has worked fantastically in Europe as a way for people to get home ownership and build wealth throughout their lives. It just requires a change in mindset about how you live with debt," Mr Koch said. "Some won't like carrying a mortgage for so long but, for a lot, this will make home ownership cheaper." Banks already offer interest-only loans, but borrowers often are allowed to keep them only for five to 10 years. Then they must start paying the capital. But ING says this preoccupation with paying off the loan is unnecessary. "There is no economic reason for banks to insist on regular capital repayment," Mr Koch said. "It just makes the loan more expensive for the borrower. "If this catches on and people carry the same mortgage around for life, instead of switching every five or six years, then the cost of providing mortgages should come down and make them even more affordable." Financial comparison website InfoChoice CEO Shaun Cornelius said the move was a welcome innovation: "Depending on the size of the loan, it could add hundreds of thousands of dollars to a borrower's cash flow over their lifetime." http://www.news.com.au/money/property/revealed-the-home-loan-that-could-save-you-a-fortune/story-e6frfmd0-1225870019522

I'd MEW my house to the max for $50 gold.

We're all in the same boat, apart from those holding precious metals. Those people would be in a bigger, better boat.

Look who's stalking!

That won't be their job, they will have another "proper" job with the Equality and Diversity element tacked on. The page states "If you are interested in becoming an Equality and Diversity Co-ordinator, please contact Kate Devlin by email or phone: 01392 722037" [edit] just seen Baby Eating Boomer has already said as much [/edit]

Australia's biggest customer is Japan, followed by China. http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/taag/index.html But you're right when/if China's bubble bursts Australia will be in the shit.

Good luck to her I say. She's a MILF too.

Great tip, thanks for that.

Great place to live and work, been here 7 years. Wives usually have a hard tile settling though.

You hear it all the time here in WA. People leaving careers like teaching and nursing and going into mining, even just to drive dump trucks and doubling their salaries. Slightly OT but I was just thinking, in my street (which is a nice street in a good suburb) the flashest houses are owned by a builder (from London) a plasterer (Aussie) and a car mechanic (from Eastbourne). The bank manager and the doctor in my street live in far more modest properties.

I can't blame engineers for packing their bags and getting out of the UK. Here in Western Australia engineering is a highly respected and well paid profession, especially if it is in the oil/gas/mining sector. Salaries always well into 6 figures and even the tradesmen weilding the spanners in the workshops are on 6 figure salaries. They come from all over the world too, plenty of Brits. No wonder people don't want to stay in the "old country" to earn peanuts and be looked down upon people like that wife of the credit card manager (FFS, who needs friends like that anyway). Also consider Germany where engineers who are highly respected have the title ING, a bit like doctors having Dr. as a title.

Interesting article from Australia's Money Morning website: http://www.moneymorning.com.au/20091109/britain-and-its-near-death-economy.html "Last week we briefly mentioned how Britain was now “actually insolvent” compared to being “technically insolvent” when it went begging to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1976. As we explained: “In 1976, the UK government went begging to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for £2.3 billion. In today’s money that’s the equivalent of around £12.4 billion. At the time it was labeled as an embarrassment for the UK, with claims it made the UK technically insolvent. Well, in practical terms apart from the much bigger number, there is little difference between the £2.3 billion bailout in 1976 and yesterday’s announcement that the Bank of England will increase its money printing programme to £200 billion.” You’d think that would be enough to get the financial markets concerned with what’s happening in the UK and global markets. Wouldn’t you think that if a nation is unable to pay its bills with free cash flow that the alarm bells would start ringing? I mean, stop and think about it. When you strip away the fancy terminology the banks like to use – quantitative easing – what you’re left with is money printing. Or to be precise, clicking a mouse and suddenly £200 billion appears. In other words, the UK government has spent all of its tax receipts, and it has spent all of the money it has from selling government bonds… The cupboards are bare. It does not have one single dollar of spare cash left. And so to remedy that, what does it do? It does exactly what every ‘good’ government should do, it opts for Plan B. It knows increasing taxes is never a good look, especially when the next election is just round the corner. And of course it’s worried about increasing the amount of debt on the market. Plus the government wants to ‘inject’ cash into the economy so that it’s spent rather than invested. So the only option is to do what only a government and central bank can do. It prints money. If anyone else came up with the same idea it would be called counterfeiting and you’d get hauled off to jail. But that’s not the case with governments and central bankers. They can get away with almost anything. And they’re helped by the hopeless analysis of the mainstream press. As evidenced by these comments from BBC economics editor, Stephanie Flanders: “By voting to inject a further £25bn into the economy, the Bank’s policy makers have signalled that they do not think the economy is out of the woods yet. But they have halved the rate at which that money is being spent. In the first five months of QE, the bank was spending £25bn a month. Since August, the monthly purchases have fallen to about £17bn. Now the MPC plans to spend three months purchasing assets of £25bn – a monthly average of about £8bn. If the economy behaves more or less as the MPC expects, you could say they have put themselves on a path to put an end to QE at their February meeting, or at least put the policy on hold.” Got that? At least it now only plans to spend £8 billion per month. Which is down from £25 billion per month. But can we really believe the Bank of England will stop printing money next February? We wouldn’t have thought so. The interesting point about all this is that we could be witnessing firsthand the death of an economy. Seriously. It’s something the UK has come close to experiencing several times in the last hundred years. Each time it’s either been bailed out by another economy or by a group of economies. The United States helped it out of trouble after the first world war and second world war. The IMF bailed it out during the 1970s. And then during the 1980s and 1990s, the growth in the global economy and the increase in financial market sophistication helped bail out the UK economy. But who will bail it out this time? Well, the US doesn’t have any money left. It can barely take care of itself let alone throw a few bones to the partner in its ’special relationship.’ The European Union (EU) is hardly likely to bail out an economy that’s scoffed at it from the sidelines for the last twenty years. And besides, the EU is nothing more than an imperialist oligarchy anyway. There would certainly be nothing to gain by Britain falling further into the clutches of the Europe. The phrase, “out of the frying pan, into the fire” springs to mind. But then again, things could get so bad for the UK that it has no other choice. Is there a chance the new superpowers of Asia and the Middle East will come to the rescue? Again, we don’t see this as being very likely either. The main reason is, why would they want or need to? You know, we’re struggling on that one. We’re struggling to figure out just what China, Japan, South Korea, Dubai or Bahrain would get out of propping up the UK economy. Besides, they seem more interested in just buying up the Premier League football teams than anything else. Quite frankly, it’s very hard to see how Britain can get itself out of the current pickle without causing itself and its citizens a massive amount of pain. With the billions of pounds of debt and the billions of pounds spent each year on unaffordable and bankruptcy-inducing social programmes (such as the National Health Service) there is absolutely no way it can get itself out of the mire without doing something drastic. It can’t merely hoped for an economic recovery. After all, where is the economic growth going to come from? It’s rested on the laurels of growth in the financial sector since the 1980s. Even if global financial markets do recover and even if they do start flogging more fancy products, the odds are London won’t be the centre of the action anymore. Its natural resources from the North Sea are coming to an end, and thanks to the heavy hand of regulation and social engineering, its manufacturing industry is virtually dead. That’s why I believe we are potentially seeing the death of an economy. The only possible solution for Britain is to default on its obligations directly or indirectly. It can do this openly by defaulting on its debt, or it can do it by continuing the programme of quantitative easing. The second option is of course the coward’s way. By continuing with this programme, the government and central bank are in the process of unleashing the cruel fate of rampant inflation and the destruction of any wealth its citizens have left. Until that happens, the hapless economic analysis from mainstream economists and the mainstream press will continue to idolize the efforts of the Bank of England to drag the UK economy out of trouble. The reality is the Bank of England is dragging it further into trouble."

Mine is 28.56. Can anyone beat that? I live in Australia, big detached house, 2 cars one 3 litre one 3.2 litre fly back to the UK once a year on holiday with wife and 3 kids. Good job the Aussies won't bend over and take a tax like the one proposed otherwise I'd be skint.

Bardon, I wouldn't say it was entirely neutral, here in WA I paid $40k stamp duty when I bought my house 2 years ago, If I decided to move I'd have to find another $40k or more if I were trading up. That's a lot of cash, or interest on loaned money I won't be spending.