ralphmalph

You have misread that graph. The common perception is that the UK banks exposure to Ireland is to the Irish banks, it is not with the exception of Barclays. As the graph says RBS exposure to Ireland is primarily because it owns Ulster Bank and the loans that Ulster bank has made. The same with Lloyds, HBOS had a fantastically bad Irish subsidiary (even by their fantastically bad standards of lending) and Lloyds liabilities come from these loans. So if Irish banks default then it will be minimal impact on UK banks because it is not their 100% owned subsidiaries that are defaulting. It would be very bad for German and French banks though.

Of course when the Euro was introduced I noticed a massive collapse in the amount of business that US, Chinese and Japanese businesses did in Europe. They could just not compete with the benefits that the Euro brought to businesses based in Europe. If fact when the Euro was introduced Greek and Portuguese businesses had such benefits that they went on to dominate the world in all sorts of "business." To businesses the currency is immaterial, businesses will trade in any currency they have to with no concern at all. In the UK and in Continental Europe I have invoiced customers in Euros, USD and Sterling no one has ever make an objection. The Euro is a political vanity project introduced as part of the process of creating a Federal European Super state. The logic being that if the people all use the same currency they will have a common bond so we can then move onto have common government and then common taxation and spend polices. Also being one of these Neandathal Brits that does not do it that often unlike you who does it plenty, when I do "do it" as if by magic there are cash points in Europe, amazing, I know for people that only carry cash around like you, my card goes in an Euros come out. Where is the hassle? I do not even get charged commission. Of course the 50% of youths that are unemployed in Greece or Spain are not rioting or protesting over the fact they have no future they are actually celebrating with joy that when they have to use paper currency it can be used in different countries, but then they dream that they could afford to visit different countries and they will be dreaming for a very long time. The Euro means so much to the political elite that they are going to sacrifice the hopes and dreams of the millions of southern europeans to ensure that their vanity project survives.

Both the above two are incorrect in there analysis it was discussed in the thread this morning when the figures were released.

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/04/13/china-climbing-the-value-chain-in-germany/ Going to be interesting to see how this pans out. Just remember when Vodafone bought Mannesmann the German govt basically took the board of Mannesman and the bankers, Deutsche Bank boss to court because a British company had dared to buy a German one. They seem to be welcoming Chinese companies with open arms because the German banks can not support the businesses themselves. Cue outraged voters in my opinion.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/04/13/544976/generation-u-and-the-greying-of-uk-employment/ Some analysis of the employment stats today but they also have some graphs of the redundancies over the past three years by age group. It seems that the young 16-24 bore the brunt of the cuts with firms hanging on to older staff. Well we know that the under 24's could not afford a house so they could not be repossessed. Whereas it seems many prime house owner workers 40+ age group saw a very limited number of redundancies and even now of the 300K+ jobs created in the last year 221K were taken by over 55 year old men. So not enough redundancies amongst house owners to cause mass repo's and then a HPC and even the ones that may be in trouble/behind with the mortgage are getting the new jobs (and before anybody says it the new jobs must pay more than benefits and this may include SMI meaning they are not low paid jobs), meaning a further easing of the potential repos on the market. Looks like the house market with keep stumbling on for the foreseeable future. On a separate subject I feel really sorry for all the youngsters with there shiny bits of paper with A* written in over it, coupled with a belief that they are entitled to a well paying job. They have been sold a massive pup.

Chris Grayling on R5L at the moment has said that it is basically because they are moving single mothers off Income support to Jobseekers because they have been told to get a job. Nasty Tory's.

I suggest you read the report in full then you can comment based nn fact not what you want to believe. Employment of bankers is one of a few sectors, construction being another that has seen a reduction in employment over the past year and was still contacting this quarter. Yes, there are less bankers being employed in the UK now than before and is this not what you want a rebalancing from banking to productive employment.

Having read the report the explanation is that the unemployment figures are based on the age group 16 to 64. Whereas the total employment figures are not based on age i.e they include all the over 64's that are working. I assume they do this because over 64's can not claim unemployment benefits they get a pension but can still work and seem to be working in every increasing numbers.

page two of the report linked in the first post for the summary. The detail is in the tables at the back.

Basically he is a fan of slave labour. This could be Albert Speer talking to Adolf.

Also what is very stark in the detail is that the new jobs are being taken by men and all the redundancies seem to be women. Full time employed men has increase in numbers every month for the last 14 months. Full time employed women has fallen in number every month for the last 9 months. I wonder if this is the reaction to maternity leave and private sector employees being wary of employing women of child bearing age.

It is in fact. If you read the detail then the number employed by the public sector is down 132k on the year, it is now only 5.9 million employed in the public sector. Whereas total number of people in the workforce has increased by 300K over the year. So the private sector is creating jobs at 4x the rate that the public sector is shedding staff. Boys doing good.

I would hazard a guess at two reasons. The reasons why people in employment can increase yet the claimant count increase is 1) new immigrants or immigrants that can not claim benefits (less than 2 years NI) getting jobs and people that had lots of savings that were made unemployed and so did not bother to sign on at the dole office got jobs. Then the people being made redundant are at the low savings low wage level (so have to sign on) are being replaced by immigrant labour or better skilled labour that was previously unemployed.

Yep the man that took the free university education that this country offered him and then promptly left to use that education to educate American kids, not put back something into the country that paid for his priviledged education. But 35,000 USD tuition fees per year, sure pays big bucks in salaries for the teaching staff.

North of the Watford Gap maybe going to sh1t but you go anywhere within commuting distance of London and I include places 100 miles from London and this is having a knock on effect. There are people from London having sold houses that are moving out for decent state schooling. They all say the same thing schools in London are war zones and they are paying top dollar for any family property in the catchment area of a good state school. They may not earn banker money but they bought London property pre 2005 and are using this to pay top dollar outside. The market in the south of England is definately being distorted due to the influx of foreign money in London.

Personally I think the Spainish are trying heard to fix the problems. The one problem they have that they can not fix is Trichet. He is making sure there will be no inflation in Germany and the other Northern European countries and this means Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Greece must have deflation or at least wage deflation to regain competitivness. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/04/12/543226/for-you-southern-europe-ze-inflation-is-over/ So they have 10 to 15 years of misery ahead of them even if they do not need a bailout. Which one is worse depends on your view but the Spanish people may think heads we lose, tails we lose.

I am commenting on a specific video not AV in general or who funds the labour party, different topics. It is well known that the price of coalition for the Lib Dems was a referendum on AV so seeing as they wanted AV and the message from the majority funded by Lib Dems, Yes2AV is it will make your MP's honest when the biggest complaint about Nick Clegg and his party is that they renegaged on the main issue they campaigned on. I will complain against unions and labour when it is a Union funded labour video, which it is not.

So the main liar party i.e Nick Clegg, no tuition fees, then 9K have some of that dear Mr Voter tells us that AV is going to make Nick Clegg become Honest John. What a load of crapola.

Does VAT count as taxation?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8444081/Retail-sales-hit-by-biggest-fall-since-1995.html The telegraph have some more detail and it does seem that the BRC is spinning the figures to try to get the BoE not to raise rates. At the bottom of the article the figures from Visa show that spending growth fell but was still 4.4% higher that the year before. So inflation is about 4% odd so it seems that people are spending the same ammount of money but cutting back on certain things. Food for one. Well we all know that about 30% of food consumed in our society is thrown away so they can be big reductions here as soon a people realise that using left overs is a perfectly viable option and with BOGOFS using the second one instead of chucking it away is also good. Also entertainment hardware fell 5.1% so we have worked out we do not need a new tele, camcorder, blu ray player just because they are the latest. This also ties in with the trade data today that showed imports from China dropping. All good news in my book.

Manufacturing output from maggies election in 1979 to Major losing in 1997 increased. Manufacuturing output from Blairs victory in 1997 to Browns loss in 2010 decreased. Who destroyed UK manufacturing?

Net numbers of people in employment are up. %tage of people unemployed are up. I wonder why, perhaps mass immigration has something to do with it.

this from the ONS Labour market survey. Jan 2011 Total number of people employed in the quater up 32K over 12 months up 296K. Yep but in your world unemployment is increasing.

I had to laugh at this. KPMG? What interest do they have in ramping private sector employment. Anyway pick your non VI organisation and prove that private sector employment has fallen over the last 12 months. The ball is in your court.