Permabull

I get paid in $$ yet live in the UK. Its like having a 15% pay rise. This, in real terms means my wages are probably just about rising with inflation! The yellow stuff always struggles in August I believe..

I'm currently living in africa (job reasons) and that is the exact mentality they have here. When you go to buy anything and ask the price the is always a pause whilst they try and figure out how much they can get away with asking.. We pay more to rent a house here than you would do in the UK and the influx of foreign workers has led to a mini housing boom as people throw up new builds in the hope of making their fortune from some rich aid worker.. In fact, it kind of reminds me of blighty tbh

My status is 'Bull'. Not because I don't think house prices are going to fall.. I think they're going to go down faster than a cheap hooker for $5 but that doesn't mean there's nothing to be bullish about. Gold and Silver et al look rather promising should the economy go tits up. Even if it goes really bad and some of the more tin-foiled posters here are correct then theres always Heinz products and camping equipment

The trouble with spoiling the ballot is, recently, the government have taken non voting/spoiling of a ballot as a sign that you're happy with the job they do. 'If the people are so unhappy with us why don't they vote us out?' Kind of mentality. The only real way we have of making the major parties take note is to start voting in the most random candidates possible as a protest vote. To just vote in the Tories because Labour have screwed the country this time is to prepare the country for Labour rule when the Tories screw it up royally next time. However, if the Monster Raving Loony party or UKIP or BNP or whoever apart from the mainstream 3 start getting votes maybe we could actually get some parties with real policies instead of wanna-be celebs with soundbytes.

I really like some areas of Nailsworth. It has pretty much everything you need from a local town/village as far as shops, pubs, takeaway etc go and yet it has vast amounts of countryside right on the doorstep if you want to get away from all that.. As an added bonus you can always go and watch Forest Green Rovers get stuffed on a weekly basis!

I'm from Stroud, its not that bad an area although I agree there are much better places in the cotswolds. I wouldn't mind living in the Chalford/Woodchester area or any other area that is that far away from the town but still quite picturesque and has some land. Ideally Amberly area or the like. Tetbury is rather prone to flooding IIRC from last year. Chelteham has always been delusional about its status and Ciren is like a mini Cheltenham so I'd expect large amounts of unrealistic prices there and a stubborn refusal to drop until the very bitter end. Could always be worse.. Could be Durlsey

At the risk of coming across as cynical, would these be burnouts that then get to have 'x' amounts of weeks off at full pay to recover? You'd get just as many burnouts in the private sector if people could afford the time off.. So when they do have to cut, they get rid of services (which is what they're actually paid to do) instead of investigating and culling the waste within the various departments? I'm not saying that most LA don't try and do a good job, its just the fantastic amounts of waste with no accountability I object to.

Actually you could conceivably wait until the crash had started taking place before cashing out as long as you bought in at the bottom, or somewhere near the bottom. As many people here have said, calling the top is just about impossible, so you could wait until just after the top, take a 10-20% loss from peak and probably have a similar sized STR fund than if you'd tried to call the top in 2006 and rented for a year.* * Admittedly you need to be able to sell your house now, but IMO a lot of houses aren't going now because they're still wildly overpriced.. If somebody accepted the loss and dropped a bit to sell it may work** ** I also accept the fact I could be 100% wrong.

Reading these statements has me wondering, just how stupid are our MP's? A serious question. Are they quite intelligent people who know what they're doing will have repercussions like this current crisis years down the line, or are they nothing more than slightly drooling retards who'll do anything, no matter how ill-advised and stupid to hang onto the helm for a few more days? Take Brown as an example. He is always portrayed as having a very powerful intellect, but looking at the speeches he gives and the decisions he takes you either have to question this or admire the mans acting ability.

Actually I think he gets a good deal more than that. An ordinary MP gets $*60-odd but I think members of the cabinet are on more like $*130-140-odd or something along those lines.. *$=GBP I'm using a yank computer and don't know how to get the pound sign.

*Runs in* *Catches breath* Fixed

I really hate this phrase. How on earth did anybody think it was ok to take a word associated with something bad, add a 'good' word in front of it like 'positive' and it would make it ok? Does it work with anything else? 'I'm going out to try some positive raping later.' 'I'm off to try a bit of positive embezzlement.' Etc For me the phrase really sums up everything about NL. A pointless, nothing-speak 'buzzword'. Spun well enough and catchy enough to fool the average person into thinking its a good idea to screw somebody over because they don't fall into a certain type of pigeon-hole that they've decided everybody needs. They may as well start teaching people 'TWO LEGS GOOD, FOUR LEGS BAD' Erm, rant over. I feel much better now!

Actually I've been working on a solution to that problem. All we need to do is to set up a 'Logans Run' type society except instead of age, people get renewed (= eaten by the rest of us) once they hit a certain weight. Solves loads of problems with tubbies overwhelming the NHS, means plenty more room in public transport and means they'll be plenty of ribs for all.

I'm pretty sure its not due to food prices. More likely to be the 'size 0' culture. Food prices may have gone up but I'm pretty sure they could afford some supermarket own brand bread and beans. Have a look at pretty much any country in Africa to see what real starvation looks like..

I wonder if he got paid for the story? Say they chucked him a grand or so for the privilege of having vast amounts of DM readers snigger at you from inside their high-walled fortresses.. That means hes only got to sell it to another 74 papers and hes back on track..

Fags here = 200 for $20. Its enough to make you take up smoking May well do the gold buying thing as I stop over in Dubai.. I'm not sure which would get me rear-fingered worse at customs though, coming from a country like Sudan (Named as a 'supporter of TERROR) with a huge stack of $$ or a bar of gold. On the plus side, the rent in Guantanemo is meant to be cheap..

Thanks for the replies. I'll expand a bit more; I'm currently in Darfur in Sudan. The bank account is with a local bank here, this is why I'm reluctant to do any type of electronic transfer with them as basically they couldn't find their rear end with both hands. The account doesn't have any type of bank/payment card so the only way I can see to proceed at the minute is to withdraw all my cash in $$ and take it home and change it.. Obviously I'm not overly happy at the thought of wondering around with any large amounts of cash and even less happy at the thought of the poor currency rates but can't think of any other way..

Isn't that being rather generous? I thought government figures assumed an annual growth of something in the region of 2%. If, as seems likely, we enter a recession period surely the government black hole will then be much, much more. I don't think theres any wriggle room for more government borrowing (already at over 3% of GDP?) which leaves them well fecked. Unless I'm missing something..

Hello all, As per many on here, I'm normally a lurker but, having seen a fair bit of decent financial advice handed out thought I'd try my luck with my problem; I'm currently working abroad, being paid in USD. I don't want to transfer money using the banking system as I've heard horror stories from people who've tried it here in the past. This means, my remaining option is to just withdraw the cash and take it back to blighty when I return home and change it there to pay in to my UK bank. I've tried this option before (with Euro to GBP) and I know that with any decent sized sum of money, you take a fair hit with the awful conversion rates. I can't think of any other way of doing this though so I was wondering if anyone had any bright ideas?