rw42

On the subject of H2B, does anyone see that as a market segment which might be supported by the govt? If you've just taken out a 20/40% equity loan from the govt and prices significantly i think it'd be pretty unpopular for them to stand back and watch you get repossessed by the bank!

And where the f*ck was our referendum on that?!

I had a play with it a few months ago out of curiosity. Got as far as downloading the software, setting up an encrypted wallet - then it told me i'd have to wait a few days while it downloaded the complete keychain(?) to date - a few Gb of stuff at not great speeds. That killed it for me - there any solution for that on the cards?

A third of 67,000 jobs filled by romanians/bulgarians. So, this would be a story if there were 22k jobs waiting to be filled, which for some reason no one else was looking at before these romanian/bulgarians decided to take them?

Ouch.

wtf.

Managed to get £15 on cyprus first to leave the euro at 14/1 - wish i'd been less lazy about it yesterday! Betting closed now.

Not every price advertised results in a sale.

If they did try and hand it back, it wouldn't be $140b. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-07/einhorn-will-not-take-it-anymore-demands-aapl-buy-his-stock-higher-prices If i understood the articles right, they take profits before they've paid tax, and dump it into the stock market. To pay it out to shareholders they'd have to sell off whatever they put it into, pay tax on the profits, and *then* send out the dividend - will be interesting when it happens but doubt any time soon!

"It also said the depositor protection rules did not mean a country itself had to fund the deposit guarantee scheme. " http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9831785/Iceland-wins-Icesave-case-at-European-court.html

I thought it was a bit of a sensational headline - further down in the article: "Britain has a higher state debt than the eurozone average" Which is a bit different..

I don't think she should get child benefit. I'd be happier if they stopped all the circle-jerkery of tax credits and benefits, payed out a lower living wage and taxed people a lot bloody less.

Random question - how many people actually use all the 'cheap' advance fares? I never know in advance to the nearest hour when i'll be going somewhere, and especially when i'll be coming back. Which usually means i'll be getting the standard off peak return if i'm lucky, and they're sure as hell not cheap.

I'm not bloody struggling to get a mortgage. I've looked at what i've got in the bank, the mortgage i could get, and the sort of flat it could get me, and have decided to wait and save more.

Can i? I can put more money into the pension at any point if i want to make up a deficit or increase payments. I can't take anything out of it for another 20 years yet if i find out i've paid more than i can afford (suddenly lose job, decide to stop working or something).

The illustrations used for pensions put me off contributing anything more than the bare minimum. Pretty sure when i first started working the figures used were examples of what the eventual pot would be with 5/6/7/8% annual growth, which was completely unattainable. I figure i'd rather save the money now and have it to spend if i want before i retire, than lock away money that can be printed out of existence at any point in the near future. Edit: If the choice is: Save enough for what seems like a decent pension at *current* buying power of the pound, but by doing so be unable to afford to buy a house, and hence keep renting till retirement, or Save nothing for retirement, try to buy somewhere and pay off the mortgage, thus reducing your eventual outgoings when you have to retire on state pension. Which would anyone choose? it'd be interesting to graph income W versus house price X, pension income buyable Y and living costs at retirement Z - at some point it makes more sense to reduce Z rather than try to increase Y?

"He had often gone to Barclays to ask for more money on his overdrafts, living off borrowings as it was cheaper than taking profit out of the business." I'm guessing taking profits out of the business was a bit like getting blood out of a stone, as surely thats what they should have done instead once the overdraft was withdrawn? "He said they bought Melksham Court for £2.1 million in 2004 When it was eventually sold following the couple’s financial problems, it went for £2 million, leaving Mrs Gatt personally £900,000 out-of-pocket" Was 800k of her losses the profits which they failed to imagine into being?

The no transfers out thing caught me with barclays - put in the maximum one year, open another one for the next, deposit cash in it, then attempt to transfer in cash from the old ISA. What happens? They don't reject the transfer, they deposit it in my current account. Now both accounts are sitting there with 1p in, from now till hell freezes over.

I'm really looking forwards to seeing their explanation of this. Nothing so far has come close to explaining it. I find it impossible to believe that it was any genuine IT outage that can take them out for a full week - best guess here is that they were hacked and literally cannot risk bringing their systems back up until they can guarantee their integrity.

I'm going to start lobbying - the name of the fund shouldn't be ESM, IMF, ECB, or whatever else. It shall forever more be known as the circlejerk.

4th leader this year? Maybe the 5th will write in his resignation 'no matter how hard you try, or how many people you employ, polishing turds is not a sustainable industry'.

Does that mean the volume of mail they deliver has halved, or have they really become that much more efficient?

I don't get all these experts saying how people dislike advertising on mobile platforms. I've despised adverts since i first got on the interweb, from the banners that my eyes learnt to ignore to the popup/unders that got my close window reflex twitchy, till i got adblock and just don't see adverts any more. As far as i'm concerned i'm doing the companies a favour - if i block the ad then they don't have to pay for a page impression for someone who has no interest in what they're selling. And thats the biggest problem with advertising in general to me - nothing i see on the adverts actually makes me want to buy 'it', the brand in question. It might persuade me that i should look into the relevant area (smartphone advert? I'll look around. Bacon advert? i'll find one without craploads of water injected), but i'd say i've got pretty much zero brand loyalty and never have. Coke or pepsi? whichevers cheapest, mostly.

Shorting it will be dangerous - you've not only got to be right, you've got to be right at the right time. Until everyone else has the lightbulb moment it'll drift upwards. Only thing FB is good for in my opinion is photo sharing - see what friends have been up to, makes it easier to keep in contact with people i don't live with any more. If i could get that somewhere else and dump all the other shite...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17946598 Facebook has set the share price for its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) at between $28 and $35 per share, valuing the company at between $85bn-$95bn (£52bn-£59bn).