ScrewsNutsandBolts

Classis reply... it genuinely shocks me that people as stupid as this exist Reading comments from people who are better off telling me its 'my fault' makes me mad. i havevn't run up these depts living beyond my means, i just want my family to enjoy the same standard of living as everyone else. why should we suffer?

Another thing to bear in mind is the true effect on take home salary... A 5% cut on 60k salary would mean a take home reduction of 1200 (lost amount of 3000 would have been taxed at 40%). A 4% cut on 30k salary would mean a take home reduction of 936 (lost amount of 1200 would have been taxed at 22%). I would suggest something with gives level percentages losses on take home for all salaries, so it would step up at the tax brackets. That would be a minimum. It would be fair to put a additional cuts on top of that which are exponentislly proportional to salary, to get some real savings from the 100k+ earners.

A bit off topic... but just spotted a Krugerrand for £860 plus postage on Ebay (item number 180518073002) It s also open to bids so you might have to be quick otherwise the BIN price will go. Absolutely 100 percent not my listing (or anyone I know), just seems cheap for a krugerrand as it is exactly spot price. This is only for information... not a recommendation !!

It is worth pointing out there is a big difference between manufacturing and assembling... The plant in China looks to be an assembly plant, i.e. one that receives all the components and sub-systems that make the car and assemble them together. I can't give any precise figures, but my educated guess is that the final assembley of a vehicle accounts for less than 5% of the man hours involved in the total production of the vehicle. Assembly is the easiest step in the process, far more so than the manufacture of components. It is much easier to imagine successful assembly in China than manufacture, and there is no reason why the final vehicle should be poor quality as long as the components are all high quality. That will remain true as long as they remain sourced from European and Japanese component suppliers (it is at the design and component level where "quality" is really added.

erm... rich and successful ?

"ENTJ"... by any chance would that be a self-rated personality type ? I suppose you are good looking and well hung too

Very similar to my position then... but of course not in prosthetics. So do you feel you earn your 70K+ then ? And if so, is it because you work hard and long hours, or because of what you know, or a combination of the two ?

An honest question with no sarcasm intended... if you are on over 70k a year do you really believe you "earn" that amount ? Or are you just "paid" that for the job you do. I am very lucky and in a well paid position, but when you see how hard some work for low wages I think it is hard to say that you can genuinely "earn" that amount. What sector and what kind of job is it... no specifics required...

Had to laugh reading this from one of the Cube buyers on their new facebook page: My main concern is that we are legally committed to buy an apt. at a price that we agreed in 2006, with a completion date of 2008. We also agreed in 2007 a mortgage offer that had to be taken up within 1 year. Of course the mortgage offer lapsed, The apt is being delivered 2 years late, the property market has collaps...ed. and I dont know about all of you. Perhaps you are all paying cash !! But we will have to raise funds and that is going to be difficult in todays market. I would like to find out from Knight Frank what is the value of the apts now, and then as a group try and negotiate a todays price for our purchases. Thats if every body still wants to go ahead with their purchase. otherwise it may be better to loose the deposit, than buy some thing that will take 10 years to recover its original price. Would that bit be in the contract ? Nope... didn't think so ! Why would the developer sell to you at "market value" when they could have your 10 percent deposit and sell to someone else for the same "market value". And besides, you are all contracted to buy at the originally agreed price. If you weren't happy with the contract you shouldn't have signed it... oh you didn't read it ? People have to accept that they were making an investment, and investments can go down as well as up. When I sold some Barclays shares at a loss last year (a very regretable panic sale) I didn't go bleating to the FTSE saying I wanted to renegotiate the price I bought them at.

The numbers in your post seem to have gone a bit funny on the formatting front. If you are saying £61334 in 1997 and £164518 in 2010, then the increase has been ((164518-61334)/61334) x 100 = 168 percent over that period. If you are saying it is twelve years, then you can not just divide that by 12 and say that it is 14 percent per year. The percentage increase in the second year, would not just be on £61334, it would also be on the increase from the first year. Basic principal of compound interest. You want to find Y in the following: 61334 x Y^12 = 164518 which gives a Y of around 1.085 which means 8.5 percent average increase over the 12 year period. Probably not very clearly explained

What a mistake... Gman was partially right !! I sold all my gold holdings at around 155 each not so long ago Gman warned me I would regret it, and to a certain extent he was right. It is not the missed profit that I mind, but the fun of the ride ! Like people say it seems there is no cap on prices any more and the sky could genuinely be the limit...

A quick nethouseprice search of Harborne (which is one of the nicer parts of Birmingham) throws up a load of good examples of terraced houses that would be miles better investments. Number 21 on Regent road (postcode B17 9JU) sold for 160k in 2002 which was less than a Mailbox 2-bedder at the same time. It resold again in mid-2007 for 264k, and even considering price drops since then this would surely net a tidy profit. You could just about say that the Harborne terrace is worth double the Mailbox apartment today, even though it was fractionally cheaper back in 01/02. This example was at the lower end of the profit scale, so I assume there were no significant improvements made between purchase and sale. So to say that the city apartment dream has turned sour seems a bit of an understatement.. it has curdled to the point where it won’t come out the bottle even when shaken upside-down

In the Mailbox I was paying 700pcm for a two bedder (most are advertised at 850 plus but there are loads of voids and easy to knock down, I accept that 700pcm is still a lot for a flat). I know the maintenance on mine was 4.2k pa which was picked up by the landlord. I rented through an agency so I guess they took around 10% (?). Those two points alone take my 700pcm down to 280pcm in the landlords pocket. They paid 170k from off-plan in around 2001 (from nethouseprices), so the 280pcm would come nowhere close to paying the mortgage. I guess they may have been assuming good capital growth instead. They tried to sell in 2006 for circa 230k but no takers for a year (I was tennant and there was one viewing in 12 months... ONE VIEWING). I suppose they were taking rent from me so it may have been a case of trying their luck. I saw they remarketed more recently in the range 160-180k and again no takers. Not surprising as other comparable two bedders were listed at the same time for much less. Just checked and off the market again. I reckon they could secure a sale at about 120-135k, certainly no more. When you add it all up it must have been a terrible investment for them... and takes me back to my point in a previous email about investing in 3-bed semis. Had they forked out 170k for a three bed semi in a nice area 2001 how much would it be worth now ? Good capital growth for sure, no 38k spent over 9 years on maintenance, and a tidy profit at the end. Huge financial mistake, and another one that was probably made without any thought at a "champagne" launch party

At the time of the launch party I was in the Mailbox apartments and actually quite enjoyed living there as a tenant. It was really convenient for travelling as it was only 5 mins from Birmingham New Street station, there was no maintenance, the view was quite nice especially at night, there was a great feeling of security (both for my car and my possessions, there seems virtually zero chance of a break-in), and if we ran out of any food there was a tesco 2 minutes away. Perhaps all a novelty for a former country-dweller, but I liked it none-the-less. With all that in mind I went to the Cube party for a bit of research, as I figured the apartments would be quite nice and share the benefits listed above. I would have never considered buying in the Mailbox as the service charges are ludicrous (for those who don't know, think 4-5k per annum for a 2 bedder), even though during my stay there were a few repos that went for a song at auctions. I figured that the Cube apartments would suffer horrendously in a crash and was considering the possibility of picking one up for around half price after a couple of years (i.e. about early 2009). I have moved on now but it is still interesting to see that it's all unfolding as expected (bar being a couple of years late). Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to post on the Facebook page as a potential interested party to buy a flat. This is what I would have done in the current situation if I still wanted to live there. A post on their forum saying that I am a cash buyer (which I would have been) and offering to buy a flat for personal occupancy would probably start a fight for the exit. It would be interesting to watch them race to the bottom and see how low they would go. Too cruel to do though as I would have no intention of following through...

I was renting in the Mailbox (neighbour to the Cube) back in 2006 and went too the Cube launch party for a laugh. It was unbelievable that people were forking out deposits on such pokey flats with no information. I asked a few questions to the salespeople and the lack of knowledge was shocking. As an example they could not tell you what shape and size windows each apartment would have, and even where they would be located in each room. I asked if all rooms would have at least one window, and they said they couldn't be sure as no-one had checked it !! Also the apartments with internal terraces, they had no idea if they would ever get any sun, and could not comment on how the natural lighting would work. Quite how anyone could chuck 250k at a 1 bed flat without knowing if it had windows (!), or 450k for a fancy two bedder which may have a terrace that never sees any sun, is beyond me... But they did and it seems loads sold on the night. I was chatting to a lady who had bought an "investment" studio flat for circa 170k and she asked what I thought. She looked shocked when I told her my thoughts about pricing relative to other local builds, and the fact that you could see the Mailbox was already starting to turn bad at that point. I asked if she didn't think a three bed semi in a reasonably nice area wouldn't be more sensible than a 1 room apartment. She looked like she hadn't thought about it... and she had just signed away 170k. Is that not a lot on money ? Shouldn't she have thought it through a bit mre ?

As a rule yes... but an exception is allowed when you have been asked to be part of an ethnically diverse studio audience

So your father wasn't a ****... doesn't mean you aren't

Gordon is going to get flustered... please lose it... please...

Outbid I was outbid on this one at the last DVLA auction... not sure who beat me to it ?

Agree about the chance element, but I would say that changing jobs gives you another chance/opportunity to progress through skill/luck. Most people just sit out their career in one company and in those cases it is their fault for not making their own luck. If you stick with one employer then progression is not "Darwinian", but if you have the drive to move around then it is "Darwinian", if you see what I mean ?

Very fair point...

The spare capacity is generally (and I mean generally, not always) not the most talented group. Since the day they were born they often had the same "chance" as all the others, they just didn't make the most of education or opportunites that came their way. Obviously disabled people and some others are unfairly discriminated against are should not be included in the previous statement. If employers didn't employ the best then they would also limit the resource pool... it would not have anyone with real quality in it, just everyone would have the same average skills. Do you really think that is better ? Market rate dictates price, who falls into the overpriced category ? Anyone above a certain annual salary ?

Unfortunately human nature dictates that most people will follow the money when they have an opportunity to get more. Doctors would quite likely move as a result of low salary caps. In the end, most people who push for cuts on the rich are doing so because they want more themselves. It is not for moral reasons. It is there way to try and get a bigger piece of the pie by doing nothing.

The offspring of well-off boomers tend to be pretty well educated and pretty mobile in terms of employment. I imagine that many of them now work and live in different parts of the country (or even different countires), and moving back to their childhood home would make little sense. Also how would it work when there is more than one child. Most boomers houses will get sold when they need to downsize, and upon death any funds not spent on care will be spread amongst the offspring. Odds are this will then go back into the housing market but in different locations...

Pretty much bang on... I have to good fortune of being a 10 minute drive from Lois so I can go there in person to sell. If you deal in sufficient quantities you can get a little more as trade sellers. I know most porn shops and high street jewellers in Brum sell to Lois, but you can get around 2% more going through big volume trade only buyers. For those who want to sell smaller quantities they should stick with the three you listed !