profitofdoom

Just wait until these TSi's hit the streets at 3+ years 60k+miles.They will have the guts knocked out by their high specific power output. It's always been the same,the more power you produce from a small unit the lower the life expectancy. A recon will be as expensive as the car is worth.

What like the bankers?

I went semi-liquid last summer taking a semi in part ex for my farmhouse.Since then semi has been on the market - with no offers. It isn't a worry as my capital is split 2:1 roughly with the smaller part the house.I am currently negotiating for a building plot,around a fifth of an acre in a good part of town and I have been quoted around £100k by a small builder I know quite well to put up a 4 bed detached house.Even assuming that Mrs.P runs away with another £30k for "posh" fixtures and fittings (Posh in POD world means that they work and look ok) I calculate the whole caboodle at £250k ish.Then sit back and wait to die!

This sector has been struggling for many years as the pub declines as an institution.Much of the change is demographic with people drinking less in pubs and more at home.It's really another area where the supermarkets have wrought havoc.So the business model is to persuade some poor dupe to put his/her savings into the "ingoings" and stock, typically £20-£40k with the promise of earning a living as a publican. In practise the incumbent quickly discovers that the rent etc,combined with the requirement to sell tied products at a far higher rate than the free market can buy at makes it a job where they typically earn £2 an hour.If by any chance they do good food and build up trade the pub owners raises the rent to take that profit too.Now they seem to be running out of dupes.

Yes that is correct.I have been running my business for 34 years next month and I intend to wind it down.At the moment I employ two other people plus one on a part time basis but wiith the VAT rise which I pay on my profits it really isnt worth it anymore.I have calculated that by downsizing I can keep the same net profit and work part time.So thats another two and a half jobs gone. Has the added benefit that I can de register for VAT too.

It's quite simple economics.If you have the cash sitting there and you buy a hotel/pub/holiday complex it will make money.Not loads of it,but enough for you to live in a reasonable way.However if you need to borrow the capital forget it.To begin with you will be competing with those who own the businesses outright and they can afford to take you out.Similarly if you think that the kids can go to private schools and the Mrs swan around in a Porsche on the proceeds you are heading up sh*t creek in a paddle-less barbed wire canoe.

Apart from the NIMBYs.

I think your local planners might have some input on this scheme,No way are they going to allow it,it would undermine the profitability of the big developers.

That's the nearest to my way of thinking that I have seen.I can't actually stop work on the 20th of the month because I run my own business,but the philosophy is spot on.

I broadly agree with that analysis,apart from Clegg being finished.I think that after the May elections he will take to his bunker.On current projections the LD's could well lose 90% of their council seats with all that this portends for their grass roots support.

I bought several devices from Bennetts.They were ok actually and I much preferred them to the Currys/Dixons hegemony.

I would be less concerned about where it comes from than where it goes to.The admin would be charged at "market rates" by private companies,thereby creating yet another tranch of bonus millionaires.

Winston Churchill,Maggie Thatcher,Clement Attlee....we gave your boys a hell of a beating!!

I always thought UB40 were from Coventry.

An interesting piece of information.I must say that when their vote held up in Oldham I was convinced that this was on the back of borrowed Tory votes,not least because their own candidate was a muslim.I think in May it's going to be a wipeout with LD seats vulnerable to anyone who cares to throw their hat into the ring.

Yes that is certainly true.I am solidly Labour and the twists and turns of the LD's are amazing to see.I was a Labour councillor for fourteen years and I always got on best with the wet Tories.

This happens in the Motor Trade.Little old biddy goes into a main dealership with a light out.They raise a job card and a mechanic fits a £1 bulb.She gets a bill for the bulb,probably charged £4, half an hours labour,£30,+ VAT on both : result £40.80 on the invoice.

It's the average not the median.The average is skewed by relatively few very high earners. e.g. 100 people earning £10million each will push the average up by £30 or so.The median wage would most likely be nearer half the average.

I buy a £7 corn fed free range chicken and roast it with fresh veg.Then use the remnants to make enough soup for the next two days. Total cost with veg about £9 for three days food. £1.50 a day each.

If you compound inflation up for the last five years it comes to 16.2%.House prices need to be that much higher than Q1 2006 to have maintained their value. Halifax figures for East Anglia (My own area so not chosen for any other reason) show a decline from 557.8 to 520.7 - 6.7%. So the real value falls have been in the order of 23%.

You are right about everything apart from the weather.Brittany isn't really any different from Cornwall in that respect.Where I think it really does score is that it is very different from Britain,especially Finisterre in the far west.,It has a bit of a 50's feel to it and yes you don't get ripped of as badly either.

What gets me is the current crew's enthusiasm,it's clearly ideologically driven. The planning policies are going to have the effect of exacerbating the housing shortage because it's all one way pandering to NIMBY's and Countryside interests.Maybe there will be a revolution,which no doubt Dave will support- or do all his people love him?

£99,000