dr ray
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Posts posted by dr ray
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I object to the spin term 'legislators' for MP's. Law is made by the aggregate decisions of British juries, not MP's.
Legislators is what the American press call them and it seems to be catching on here. I suppose they do pass laws and they have been telling the Judges how to judge and sentence but this is not something which should be accepted. It is an example of our transformation into a totalitarian dictatorship over the last decade.
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I am looking to sell a number of £10 proof Britannias and other British gold proofs.
Dealers I have spoken to are only prepared to pay around bullion prices.
I find this rather surprising as they rend to charge a 25% premium when selling.
On Ebay gold proofs sell at around 10% premium to bullion prices but the fees are some 13%.
I have searched the archives and can find no advice on selling proofs.
Plenty of excellent advice on the forums regarding bullion coins but nothing about proofs.
Any suggestions to maximise returns would be appreciated.
I would message you if I could but you need to enable PM on your profile page and I think you might need to have your account ungraded to receive messages (not sure about this)
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You might also want to lend less to a designer-clad working woman about to have her second child
Can you imagine the outrage had a man said this?
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I'd be up for that. I've absolutely had it with the current system.
It would be tempting to close all of my bank accounts apart from one for salary/bills/etc and simply have no savings with anyone.
I might start living on a cash only basis, perhaps with some gold/silver buried in the garden...
...or i might just go and blow the lot on a nice car.
Thats what government ecomomic policy is intended to achieve. Immediate VAT boost to the shinking tax base and a nice revenue stream for the future.
If you feel the need to spend it buy some gold or stocks with earnings abroad or lend it out on ZOPA
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"Before this bank run occurred, although the bank was not in the best of all possible positions, it was not near bankruptcy. A few weeks before this bank run, the central bank issued a statement saying DSB had sufficient capital and sufficient liquidity."
Clearly untrue, as subsequent events show.
I don't necessarily think bringing down a bank in the UK would be helpful but it is important that as little money as possible is left in no interestr accounts. Think of it as a civic duty to chase the highest rate available and to move money around. It is because of saver apathy that they can offer savers such low rates while awarding themselves bonuses.
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Thought it might be worth bumping the ZOPA thread
Putting some savings in PMs and lending out through ZOPA seems a way of telling the financial sector to spin on it and has the advantage that the banks and the government can't use our deposits to support house prices by offering mortgages.
There aren't many ways to tell the banks to keep their poxy savings rates.
I have started putting some money into ZOPAand anticipating a return of 6.5% gross after estimated bad debts. Done it in the wifes name so that only basic rate tax will be payable.
Any thoughts on this. Is ZOPAs estimate of bad debts credible? What happens if ZOPA goes bust. Is the money in a nominee account or is it part of ZOPAs assets? Is their any way to recover money before the 36 or 60 month periods if personal circumstances change?
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But surely, if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear.
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I am looking to sell a number of £10 proof Britannias and other British gold proofs.
Dealers I have spoken to are only prepared to pay around bullion prices.
I find this rather surprising as they rend to charge a 25% premium when selling.
On Ebay gold proofs sell at around 10% premium to bullion prices but the fees are some 13%.
I have searched the archives and can find no advice on selling proofs.
Plenty of excellent advice on the forums regarding bullion coins but nothing about proofs.
Any suggestions to maximise returns would be appreciated.
I buy such coins off ebay and privately and I pay well below the issue price even for coins issued 3 years ago despite the rise in gold. I'm afraid you have discovered the Mint are running a bit of a scam since the collector value of these coins is nowhere near the premium they charge.
Ebay is still your best bet and the premium is a bit higher than you say with a 1995 or 1996 sov selling for around 190-200 but you take a bit of a chance.
If you want to pm me we might be able to do something to mutual advantage if you live near.
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All the "we buy gold" adverts springing up will just increase the supply as people empty their bottom drawers.
How people view this as something that will increase the price of gold baffles me. This is basic economics people.
Who said the "we buy gold" adverts increases prices? It clearly doesn't and the flow of scrap onto the market is one reason cited for gold not going higher in the months following Leemans.
However the amount of scrap is not infinate and once the broken and ugly stuff is scrapped people will not be so keen to part with the nicer stuff unless the price goes higher so the adverts exist because the price is higher not the other way around.
Incidently, anyone thinking of selling gold by mail should read up about the cash4gold scamswhich are robbing punters of their gold. HPC still hosting their banner?
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Does the jewellery market have that much of an influence over the price of gold?
The media are confused (or uncritical) by the term jewellery trade. The so-called jewellery trade in India isn't really jewellery trade at all. Gold is bought as a means of saving. To the rural Indian a gold object is as much a decorative object as a bank statement is a work of art to the Westerner. To a lesser degree the same applies to Turkey and many other countries with a less sophisticated or corrupt financial system.
As our own financial system has been shown to be corrupt interest in buying gold as a means of saving in the west has increased.
The cost of gold in retail jewellery is a relatively small proportion of the retail price so a $50 or $100 rise is not going to make a lot of difference to a $10000 engagement ring or Rolex.
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So large complex organisations employ all sorts. Big deal, and the extra administrative staff in the NHS are a direct result of the introduction of market forces, nothing else. How useful smoking cessation staff are I don't know, but given the enormous cost to the health system of smoking related diseases it is surely worth trying a proactive approach, even if it takes a while to discover how to do this. There is a lot of attacking public services at the moment that is not accompanied by any analysis at all. Kneejerk nonsense. We are in a capitalist mess made by capitalists, and without public services there would be no capitalism at all. Enough of the insinuation, it's unintelligent.
Yes but the point is that these jobs are replicated in every primary and secondary care Trust in the country and then there are more people employed to oversee these organisations and then the whole lot is overseen by the Dept of Health. Then there are various bodies set up to inspect and monitor that the organisations are doing their jobs properly.
I have been a doctor for almost 30 years and dispite all the changes and increased costs of the NHS in that time my job and the hours I work are almost unchanged since 1985. Everything that has changed in the NHS has barely touched the basic interaction between the doctor and the patient apart from attempting to place barriers between the two. But then again I refuse to use email at work and insist that people come to see me or my secretary personally if they want something from me so that stops a lot of interferance with my work.
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Peter Hain continues to tell the British people that they are so thick and impressionable that they must not be allowed to see people on TV who he vehemently diagrees with.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8323638.stm
I'm certain that the implication that he is a totalitarian who wants to deny the opportunity for people to be exposed to arguments is lost on him,but it's what he is.
Just think how much else he would conspire to keep from the people? The case for Islamic "extremism"? The real state of banking and the UK economy?
+1
I have been listening to the condemnation of the BNP and BBC and not one person has stood up and said "why not the voters decide"
I think the problem Hain has is that having elected NuLabour three times he knows the UK voter is basically stupid and cannot be trusted to vote.
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Yes, thank heavens this has come and can be latched onto him. But he will just fall back on "it started in America" anyway.
I just started a topic complaining about the annoying black rectangle that flashes up whenever you open a new page here and the unusable format and it was pulled straight away, not even moved to off-topic. Why is that?
As annoying as it must be, I don't think it affects house prices or the economy. Should have been posted in the thread about the forum update.
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Are you serious?
The logical thing to do when it's no longer worth saving for retirement is to run up the biggest debt the fools in the financial sector will let you have, max out all you credit cards, get yourself a nice comfortable house with a massive mortgage and die in debt.
The new mantra is any money you haven't spent (even if its someone elses), by the time you die, is money wasted.
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Its been funny watching Gordon Browns boasts being revealed as hollow, one by one.
After he had banished inflation and boom-and-bust and put the UK on a path of endogenous growth more able to withstand the downturn, and reduced inequality in the UK, he continued to boast that however bad it was at least house repossessions and unemployment were not as bad as under the Torys and that he had presided over the longest period of economic growth in UK history (which actually started some time before Labour even came to power such was the anticipation of Nulabours economic genius)
Now he has a new boast as the Prime Minister who presided over the UKs longest recession but, somehow, I don't expect to hear it from him.
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Some fair points there doctor but you conveniently forget that thatcher and reagan were the ones who push the ball off the cliff in the first place. Don't succumb to revisionist myopia, is my advice.
Can the mechanic who rescues an old wreck from the scrap yard, fixes up the engine and gets it running be blamed when some joyriders drive it recklessly and crash it some years later?
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If incomes are falling and it is hard to get credit, if there are several million households in negative equity, unemployment is rising and there is a large stock of unsold houses, it is hard to understand how house prices could increase any time soon. I guess if you are an estate agent or a seller it is optimal to say it isn't so. And, as we know, last month house price/earnings ratios actually went up - from 4.36 to 4.39 - because house prices supposedly increased, though average earnings hardly moved at all. So, please explain to me exactly the source of those house-price increases? I suspect we are going to see more down months shortly
I shall explain: The reason house prices are rising is that some fvckwit economists have thrashed sterling and put the UK on the path of inflation and the ungrateful proles are trying to preserve the value of their savings even if it means risking a loss on property.
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I think the title should be: Darling Has Highest Credibility GAP Of Any Politician
If you could go back in time I wonder what his Trotskyist student-self would say about him now?
As a Labour chancellor for Gods sake, he has presided over the biggest single transfer of wealth from the workers to the capitalists in history.
He presided over it but wasn't responsible. Remember he followed Brown who had 10 years of directing malinvestment in the UK.
The only choice Darling has faced was on that Friday evening last October when he had the decide whether the UK would still be open for business on the Monday or whether it was every man for himself.
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Pound rises after Chancellor Alistair Darling says Government will support the economy until recovery is establishedThe pound strengthened yesterday after the Chancellor said the Government would prop up the economy until recovery was established, and act to bring down soaring borrowing levels once the recession was over.By Angela MonaghanPublished: 8:17PM BST 21 Oct 2009.../The pound rose almost two cents against the dollar to a near six-week high of $1.6622, and almost a cent higher against the euro at €1.1081, the highest level in four weeks.
All sorted, all hail the next leader of the New Labour Party!
I don't know if you mean to be sarcastic but IMHO Darling has the highest credibility of all the Labour cabinet and even of most of the shadow cabinet.
He has told the truth in the face of a bullying and lying Brown and quite often openly contradicted him over the economy.
The only doubt about him is how much he is willing to bite his lip and keep quiet for the good of the Labour Party.
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Merv is clearly saying "I told you so" for the way Brown cocked up the supervisory structure of UK banks.
Brown seems to be saying that the supervision of UK banks should have been undertaken by some other global institution, which I find extraordinary.
The blame for the collapse of much of the worlds financial system can be fairly equally shared between Clinton and Brown's lax regulation of the financial systems in their respective counties.
Don't forget Browns hubris when he was lecturing the more conservative Europeans to throw caution to the wind and join the fun
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The seller I bought from had great feedback, had the charity banner on her ads showing she was donating 10% of proceeds to charity and took paypal. All the signs were good.
Still, situations like these are what paypal protection are for (although luckily I didn't need to use it in this case).
sjiff
I had a similar experience with a half sov ring.
I asked the seller to confirm it was a full sov and he said it was and had an insurance valuation from a local jeweller stating it was (and valued at £280)
When it arrived, with the original valuation, it was a half sovereign.
The seller refunded part of my money without too much hassle so I suspect he knew but I still don't know whether the jeweller was in on the attempted scam.
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As patronising and tedious as that vid was, £7,000,000,000 of savings per year against an expected deficit of £200,000,000,000 is pocket change.
Nothing but a complete raft of radical changes to the tax and benefits system, selling off government assets, windfall taxes on very large companies and currency devaluation will get us out of this mess.
What really bugs me is that Labour are effectively propping up the economy until next May, at which point whoever is in power will have to implement such proposals. Odds are they'll only make it through one term before being outed, ready for Labour to get back in again and claim some of the positive outcomes as their own, just as Labour have always done.
Add confiscation of all individuals savings in UK institutions (£44 billion in 2007 apparently - almost a quarter of the total sum)
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If you want to log in at work.....
Go to the bottom of the page and select the Lo-Fi option, when it has reloaded try logging in again. It will take you to a different log in screen that seems to work. Well it works for me, not that I log in, or even view this forum at work.
You are a genius! Thanks, that works a treat. .
PS - if you look at my posts the last 2 weeks you will see I have only been able to log in at work.
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Sorry if this has already been mentioned but I don't have time to read all the thread.
I have a PC and a laptop.
On the PC I can view the site and log in to post a comment.
On the laptop I can view the site but cannot log in.
On the log in screen after entering my username and password and clicking the button it says I have not entered a username.
I have tried clearing cookies but that has not helped.
If other people have had the same problem but don't have access to more than one PC they cannot report the problem!
Same problem here. I work on three PCs. On one I am still logged in and can post. On the other two I have not been able to log in since update. May explain why some posters have left.
Other problem I have is the very slow word processing when you try and write a post. Can take minutes to edit a line of text..
Ns&i Raise Rates
in Cash ISA's and Savings Accounts
Posted · Edited by dr ray
The joker in the pack is what they do to taxation. No doubt taxation will be increasing. If they put additional taxation on investment income it could make the return on these bonds worthless. As it is many higher rate taxpayers will be taxed at over 60% on the return of even the I year bond.
Applies to all investments of course but essentially acts as retrospective taxation on locked in investments.
Perhaps the Treasury know something we don't and can afford to appear generous since the interest on any money they pay out will be coming back to them sooner rather than later.
It was Lawson who discontinued the investment income surcharge of, I think 15% on top of your highest tax rate, in the 1980s
An additional 15% investment surcharge on someone earning £100 - 113K from employment would make the tax rate on these bonds 80% !!! (40% plus loss of personal allowance at 50p for every £1 earned plus 15%)