ShedDweller

Exactly my experience .. I went to four different garages to buy a van, when I asked for the best price I got a lecture on leaseing/HP etc .. ended up giving them my card and telling them to phone me when they had a price. The only ones who did were Citroen and they gave me price but told me they had a demonstrator for significant discount. I told them I would have it and made an appointment .. the chap was a bit phased and after tryingto sell me credit said "Well it's not as if you are just going to make a debit card payment for £9500 is it" I did .. and because I have prewarned the bank it went through .. I got the feeling that I was not a popular bunny though ..

Well he no longer owns the house .. as it was repo'd .. I guess if he bought it before 2002 then I can't really see any defence that would not be laughable ..

You remember, he fought for a United Ireland then claimed it was his human right to declare bankrupcy as a British Subject. Well the silly person forgot to tell the Irish Offical reciever that he had stashed a load of Euro's under the bath, doubtless he will say it was an oversight as 150k is (was) as little to him as a tenner for us (and lets face it who hasn't lost a couple of quid down the back of the sofa). Is there any way he can get out of this one? I would say that regardless of any story he comes up with .. it's beyond reasonable doubt he was trying to cheat the official reciever .. or am I dreaming here?

I didn't quite get this .. as the story does not seem to have been told well .. I'm assuming that the landlord refused to cough up the deposit ? I'm assuming as happened the last time I moved out of a property, if the landlord meets you at the property and thanks you for being such good tenants, does the electricity and gas meters .. has a bit of a poke about then exchanges the keys for an envolope of cash containing your deposit he/she is in the clear regardless of wether it was protected or not .. Or am I wrong?

A firiend is a traffic policeman and " I have the bulb and can't change it" is now the no1 Excuse for a dead headlight .. Come back Lucas prince of gloom all is forgiven ..

It's possible that it's only people I know and the area I live in .. But there seems to be a bit of bicycling "Craze" going on at the moment .. and other than the Boardman bikes Halfords has totally missed out on it. There are plenty of people who will happily spend £1000 on a frame, and have a number of bikes "fixed wheel" and "Coggers", There is whole range of these people from the "Occasional weekender" to the obsessive who thinks a decent holiday is doing over 100K a day in the alps .. My experience (I have no data i can quote) is these guys and girls tend to be high earners and happy to spend, but they require some knowledgeable service. Halfords does not have the expertise to exploit this ..

And the exception that proves the rule! There is a lady I know who looked after her parents from her 20's (when her mother first became ill) until her mid 40's When her dad finally died after a long illness. She gave the best years of her life and had no career or other interests, which in truth has sent her a little batty (think of a 45 year old with the outlook of a teenager). So yep the fact that she was left the house without mortgage that she can live in in security for the rest of her days strikes me as fair, She has a sister with whom she was left the house 50-50 and sister (A lawyer who was busy building a career when the parents were ill) was scandalised and made a trust so that the house was 100% the other sisters but was left to her children when the first sister died ..

A friend of mine who has a portfolio of property bought from the mid 60's to middle of the 90's in London told me that he could no longer get bank financing because the banks now have a blanket rule that they will not grant new loans to anyone over 65(I suspect he had IO loans on alot of the property) So he has had to go for bridging finance, which is expensive because he has a very high LTV ratio (he's transfered alot of property to his children without mortgages). So the increase in bridging loans may well not be a positive thing ..

I'm not sure that's true .. I think that the maintainance is included in the rental cost. Another friend (same industry) who wanted a new van was given the super hard sell to lease by the salesman the whole "How much do you spend on your van" chat and make the £300 a month look like a bargain because maintainance was included. But I don't know if you CAN put a dog in it .. My guess would be if you are "Renting to Buy" then it's no problem as there is no inspection at the end of the rental .. but if you do not intend to keep the car then No you can't put a pet in it .. Also do you intend to modifiy it? A big thing fro my friend was that the racking had to be done by the supplier .. and had ot be removed at the end of the lease ..

Alot of the people I know are like me and their income can vary enormously .. and pay comes in big lumps. Credit has always been to be avoided. A friend of mine had just been paid from a really big job and he wanted to buy his wife a new Audi. The way he tells it (and I have no reason to doubt him) the conversation went like this .. Figures are not exact) Him "What's the price" Salesman "Well the deposit is £4500 and then there are monthly rentals of £350" Him "No what's the cash price?" Salesman "Well the deposit is £4500 and then there are monthly rentals of £350" Him "No what size of cheque do i have to write to buy the car" Salesman "Well the deposit is £4500 and then there are monthly rentals of £350" Him "So you will not sell me a car for cash" Salesman "I'll check with my manager" Him "Check and phone me with a price" Two days later the chap phones and says .. "There IS a way to do it .. you can make all the payments in a three month period, they don't like it, but they can't touch you for it" My friend declined this kind offer and his wife got a second hand car ..

I'm not so sure .. obviously the banks were losing deposits but my understanding was that there was 100% certaintly of a bailout which kept alot of the money in place ..

From the BBC .. on the delay of the debate in the Cypriot parliament. "However, his Democratic Rally party - which has 20 seats in the 56-member assembly - needs support from other factions to ratify the bailout." So this is not a "Done Deal" yet ? Or am I missing something ? What I read into that is they need 9 people from other parties to vote for the bailout and think as I might I can't see anyone not in the ruling party WOULD vote for this .. I guess if they don't get a deal the banks will stay closed on tuesday .. edit to add here is the link to that .. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21820237

I guess that's the difference .. I go to work to feed my family .. you go to work for some higher purpose ..

A quick route around the internet comes up with these figures .. Price of petrol in 1964 5' (25p) Average weekly wage £16 Today it's £505 Which if petrol had gone up in line would make petrol £7.89 a gallon. I wonder how much the price would have to go up to get back to 1964 traffic levels ?

I think Legislation is unlikely .. but I can see that car purchase may become a thing of the past .. A friend of mine was looking for a new BMW for his wife, he runs a small buisness so he would not take out a loan for a car. He asked the sales person again and again for the price of the car and kept being told .. Well the advace rental is £6405 and then you pay 240 a month and a final payment of .. He left the salesman his card and asked him to phone him when he had a price .. The salesman called back and told him .. "They don't like it but you can pay all the payments in six months and they can't touch you .." But still wouldn't tell him a Cash price .. He agreed to the lease terms .. then the computer said no .. So he had second thoughts and bought a second hand one instead, It's so odd that you can be sucessfull in buisness have plently of cash int he bank and yet be excluded from buying a new car ..

I think this is the ethical dilemma of our generation, not just the medical profession but for all of us .. do we spend a million pounds keeping a baby alive who would not have survived a day in 1980 and will always be 100% dependant on medical intervention ? Who decides when to withdraw medical care? What medical care should be give to people at the "end of life" who decides when "End of life" is ? Should we spend more keeping Dr Steven Hawking alive than someone with the same physical problems but with learning disabilities as well ? I've no idea what the answers are here .. and pity the poor bastards who have to make the choices ..

Oddly at a hospital that I have a (Loose) connection with they had a new catering manager, and for six months he cooked up the most astonishing and varied meals, not expensive but lots of fresh veg and interesting. Some of the staff were getting takeout boxes usually reserved for staff who could not get into the canteen and taking them home to their families, which was initially frowned upon until it was revealed that the canteen was running at a profit for the first time ever .. At one point there were more lawyers eating in the canteen than doctors .. Then there was an NHS reorganisation and the catering manager was moved to catering procurement for the region and he lasted about 3 months. It took a week for the food to get back to normal ..

Yep from 15-17.5% I think the total cost to the nation of the polltax was 10billion someone once told me that because of the non-payment campaign it would have been cheaper to just wipe off the moneys owing and return the money of anyone who had paid .. However I found this .. felt a bit dirty .. http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/342223/Poll-tax-dodgers-to-get-away-with-debt-that-totals-320m I think it was the least sucessfull tax in history Here is a very learned paper on it (written in 1991 so the full cost had not appeared yet) http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CFkQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fntj.tax.org%2Fwwtax%2Fntjrec.nsf%2F0%2Fe305afecd2f4d7028525686c00686d48%2F%24FILE%2Fv44n4421.pdf&ei=GpCWUIPqGsu7hAfk2IGwBA&usg=AFQjCNHE1gd9A9QvoiEoMgoBGsXZwcdqxQ&sig2=ObNeqYEaE0ynk5niMy8Gfg A quote from my favourite bit .. A final consideration for any tax is its administrative complexity. The British property tax had been established for many years, and had become easy for local gov- ernment to administer. The technical complexities of deriving valuations were of course considerable (Hepworth, 1984). However, a clear (though arbitrary) methodology for valuation had been de- veloped over time, and valuations were rarely challenged. The most serious dis- putes occurred in the non-residential sec- tor, and were relatively small in number. In addition, registration of property was straightforward, compliance costs negli- gible, and evasion very difficult. The ma- or administrative shortcoming of the property tax was the need periodically to revalue property, although the conse- quent difficulties were usually of a polit- ical rather than an administrative na- ture. The inevitable problems of administra- tion that the community charge would give rise to were dismissed as "not insupera- ble" in Paying for Local Government. They were, however. an important reason for the very strong opposition to the propos- als amongst local governments, even those under Conservative control. In the event, the worst fears of opponents of the tax were realized. Registration of residents was an intrinsic problem because, unlike prop- erty, residents exhibit a high degree of mobility. The Audit Commission (1991) found that, even in rural areas, 36 per- cent of entries on the community charge register changed in the first year of the tax. The figure in inner London was 55 percent. Furthermore, the high degree of resistance to the poll tax led to a reluct- ance amongst many citizens to register, in spite of the threat of heavy fines. The extent of non-registration is unknowable, but almost certainly important. It is in- structive to note, for example, that the 1991 Census of Population indicates the first drop in population in the United Kingdom since 1801 (Office of Popula- tion, Censuses and Surveys, 1991). The census office had unprecedented difficul- ties in obtaining responses, particularly in inner cities, and most commentators attribute this directly to widespread fear of being identified for poll tax purposes. Moreover, the extent of non-payment has been considerable. Most local govern- ments budgeted for a certain amount of non-compliance and unrecoverable tax bills. However, by the end of the first year, only 90 percent of the poll tax had been collected in England, indicating a much larger prevalence of non-payment than local government had anticipated (De- partment of the Environment, 1991d). The Audit Commission (1991) estimates that 21 percent of poll tax payers require a summons before making a payment, a sevenfold increase over the volume of summonses issued under the residential property tax, and the courts have been overwhelmed by actions from local gov- ernments to recover unpaid debts. A fur- ther complication is that the costs of re- covering unpaid taxes are often in excess of the debt, particularly when the indi- vidual involved is a low income welfare claimant. In narrow accounting terms, collection of these debts cannot be justi- fied, and pursuit of such creditors is therefore prosecuted principally in order to discourage others from defaulting. In the first year of operation of the poll tax, the administrative costs of collecting local taxes rose from E200 million to 9605 million in England (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, 1990). This excludes the increased costs of court actions and debt recovery, and the short- fall in revenue arising from non-pay- ment. John Major's stated reason for abandoning the poll tax was that it had become "uncollectable," and so the ad- ministrative difficulties associated with the tax were intrinsic to its failure. The problems of administration were in fact insuperable, and the lack of consideration of this issue at the design stage was therefore clearly a major shortcoming. To summarize, the 1990 reforms were based on an economic concept-account- ability-which has been shown to be flawed, and which is clearly in need of further research and intellectual devel- opment before it can be applied to local taxation systems. The poll tax contra- vened the benefit principle it was in- tended to promote, and little attempt was made to address another important eq- uity issue-ability to pay. No account was taken of the administrative difficulties the tax would give rise to.

It seems to me that we could have 100% compliance for a fraction of the present cost if we simply charged the Council Tax to the owner of the property, you have this slightly mad situation that in some places were people are sharing a house the council has to go after each of them individually ... and in places like Hackney where there is a high turnover of tenants .. some foreign it's going to be a nightmare .. Much better to hold the owner liable for the CT, the only difference for the tenant is that they pay the CT as part of the rent .. Change the law so that the CT is the first charge on a property, or even better that no property could be sold if the CT was in arrears. A pensioner in a huge house they can't afford the CT on ? No problem we will not hassle you but the CT will be paid if the house sold. Interest on arrears is BOE rate plus 3%. In fact nobody would have to be hassled for CT at all, the money would just come in .. But there is a political problem with this .. it would look too much like the rates (which if I recall did work like this) and the CT system is supposed to combine the supposed advantages of the poll tax (ie everyone pays something) with a progressive property tax .. and when the poll tax was dropped there was a "single occupant discount" to placate people who lost out in the change, and to remove that would be a political bridge too far ..

I was never sure why these places existed in the first place. About five years ago the tumble dryer packed up, in truth it was only a bearing but I was going away and I could not arsed to repair it, also I wanted one that automatically shut off when the clothes were dry. I went to comet and was pounced on instantly by a rather nervous kid, I told him what I wanted and he told me they didn't have any that would shut off .. I took a look at the display and there were plainly at least three or four. Then he told me about the "extended warantee" and i told him politely that was not going to buy any insurance with anything I bought, and I would prefer it if he didn't mention it again. I asked if I could take it away and he told that it would be a one week delivery, but it might be quicker if I bought the insurance .. I left the store .. Then I discovered John Lewis .. walk in .. well dressed younger chap tells me I have a choice of five .. I ask about some piece of information that's not on the card .. he goes and finds out the information, coming back with the "Sales Manual" .. the machine has a two year warantee and if you want five years you have a choice of the manufacturers program or the John Lewis program the John Lewis is slightly more expensive, however you can delay the purchase of the five years for two years they will send a reminder card. Problem they had was that the delivery truck for my area had gone for this week .. so they could not get it to me until next week .. and we are discussing this and I say "could I not I pick it up from the depot?" and they say "Yes but it's in Acton .." "That's fine I'm working in Perivale this week .." They brought it round and put it in my car me .. To me the problem with so many "Big Ticket" businesses is that the simple sale is not economic, My dad has bought a New Ford every three years since 1965 Anglias, Cortinas, Escorts,Fiesta's and KA's. He is a doctor and he always felt it important to have a car with the backup of the garage, but he also does not care about cars .. so he calls up three months before he wants to renew the car and asks them to order him the most basic (and thus cheapest!) of the model he wants, Blue or Grey, just not loud .. When the car has come in he takes in the old one and accepts whatever they offer in PX and writes a cheque for balance. This was usually a pretty quick transaction as he is stealing time from his work at the hospital. In the 70's and 80's they were super efficient, even doing extra stuff like telephoning the insurance company and giving the new car details, dropping dad back to the hospital and then dropping the car in later, and they were happy to accept a cheque. By 2001 it was all sharp suits, when he gave them three months notice they laughed at him "Come in we will get you behind the wheel of a great car today sir .." Three months later they only had the KA in really loud colours, so he had an abortive journey, and then a second abortive journey when they said they had the correct car .. which was ELECTRIC blue. Finally he got to the point of the car in the correct colour and had sit through an hour and a half of the salesman trying to sell him some "seat protection compound" and a Credit plan, despite the fact that all he kept asking for was a bill so he could write a cheque. Finally you have an almost incandescent dad and a truly pissed off salesman, Yes of course they will take his cheque but they can't let him have the car until Friday as they have to wait for it to clear ... What Thirty years ago was a simple transaction that could be completed in an hour with profit to the dealer has now turned into an ordeal for both sides and the dealer profit is so low that it's almost not worth doing at all. I spoke to a friend in the motor trade and he told me that people buying cheap cars for cash are the bottom of the pile for main dealers .. they would rather sell one car on credit or lease loaded with accessories, than four basic cars for cash .. Am I the only person who thinks this is a recipe for disaster ?

That is a huge scam in the Land Rover/ Range Rover market .. Search on Ebay for Land Rover 2a .. most of the cars you will see are series 3's that have had a 2A chassis plate put on them .. I have only heard one one person getting nicked for this (from a Policeman) and it was a 1988 RangeRover with a 1970 plate on it . The driver got nicked for no insurance and an "Improperly displayed number plate" and the registration was cancelled(apparently they "Did a deal" as neither of them wanted to get involved in fraud proceedings).

I don't know .. My reading is there are two bubbles here .. the cheap money driven "Premium" asset bubble and the "Canny Investor" bubble. I'm not sure about the "premium" bubble but certainly the "canny investor" bubble is about three years old .. If you drive a Moggie as a daily driver .. all sorts of people come and talk to you .. and it used to be that they would say things like "I learn't to drive in one of these .." Or "I see you drive it every day isn't it a bit unreliable?" .. about three years ago it started to change to "I bet you have done well out of that" and then ask lots of "Canny investor" questions like "how much has it gone up ?" and people continually asking if I want to sell it .. and it turns out they want to buy it as "An investment". The Model A is probably a nice buy as they don't tend to attract the canny investor .. and it's a great bit of fun ..

An old boy came over to talk to me when I was waiting for one fo the children the other day (I have a Morris Minor Traveller), he was telling me that he was thinking of selling his TR3 because the club scene has changed so much. Apparently in the old days it was a bunch of chaps in overalls who would chat about oil pumps, now however most of the cars that appear at shows are restored and maintained by professionals and last years concours winner was boasting that the win had cost him £40,000. Sadly I could not tell him what the minor club is like as i don't get involved .. but from the silly prices I see at dealers and on Ebay I suspect it's similar ..

As I understand it the loans are "rolled up" so the interest is added to the principal. So as long as the asset exists then the loan is not in default. Assume that the price remains the same then in four years time (assuming 8% interest) = £32,000 a year (keep this as simple interest for the example) the cost of redeeming the loan is £528,000. If the car is only worth £400,000 you simply leave the loan running .. Everyones a winner .. The only danger is the cost of storage .. which is about £100 a week and that HAS to be paid ..

I went to school with a chap who was obsessed with Aston Martins. When his granddad died in 1991 (we were both 21) he spunked the whole of his inheritance (£25,000) buying a DB4. His dad went MENTAL there was a whole heap of screaming and shouting and his dad pointed out lots of really important stuff like "Where will you keep it" "How will you insure it?" etc etc He first managed to insure it in about 97 or so and last year he could no longer afford the insurance, It has been in storage since last September and he has just sold it. The buyers are of course a hedge fund and they sent round an apprasier to check the vehicle over and advise on a price. My friend got chatting to him apparently in the last four years the market has just gone silly as banks will lend 90% of the value of the car on a commercial loan basis PROVIDED that the car is kept in a secure storage place. He advised my friend to ask for £400,000 and settle for £390,000 (so he asked 410 and got 398). All this is greatly to the good of the buyer because apparently they already have 6 DB4's so are showing a paper profit to the investors of more than 50% (remembering that the investors only have 10% skin in the game so the car only has to rise in value by 10% for them to double their money. The appraiser was of the opinion that it was a huge bubble "Like the one in the 80's" but that prices would rise as long as the banks were funding it .. he also thought it would take a long time to properly pop because all the loans were rolled up until the vehicle was sold so as long as someone was paying for the storage nobody was in danger of making a loss .. But in the meantime the market was white hot .. he had been looking at cars that had very few original parts in them but were mostly re-manufactured, all beautifully made but not original in any way .. and must have cost £150,000 to build but they are still being snapped up by investors .. Now he's trying to work out what he wants to do .. Buy a new V12 Vantage .. or "wait for the crash" and get a DB4 or 5 again ..