mightytharg

Are you sure he said that? I thought he was a lefty oik. Surely getting latin right is more of a Boris-style move?

It may be £2,000 in some grim Northern town, but its > £20,000 for a London flat. A year's pay FFS. That's why people are excited about getting rid of this obscene and unfair tax. It's all about kicking people when they're down. First they force us to pay ridiculous prices for a house, then they make us work a year of indentured labour to pay for permission to move.

Makes sense if the 8% is when you don't have to make repairs or cover voids. I thought you meant 8% profit after you paid for all that stuff, which sounded like an excellent profit. My bad.

Stop scrounging and learn to spell its. HTH.

quoted by idiots? or is there some reasoning behind this figure?

1. Does this mean that if, for example you came from a country with an average wage of £1/day you would have to earn 5 times this - the princely sum of £5/day to qualify? 2. I heard that some people from the U.S. came over and claimed asylum, so they could get a free house + medical care + a bit of a holiday. Is the U.S.A. one of the VERY limited number of countries?

This is great. Stamp duty was always an evil tax. Labour voting areas mostly don't pay it anyway, decent people in the South have to pay £20,000+ for permission to buy a grotty flat. How was that ever fair?

I hate Shelter, they are a government-funded fake charity. If people bought houses they couldn't afford and then compounded their problems by borrowing even more money for consumer goods, then they should be repossessed. This is a GOOD thing.

If something costs 5 cents to make and you sell it for $3.50 how exactly do you make a loss? Creative accounting? Maybe the commodities boom doubles your costs to 10 cents, $3.40 a cup should still be enough to pay minimum wage to a couple of teenagers.

I always to buy stuff from out of the EU. Those scrounging European farmers have enough of my money already. What's wrong with that? The reason a relatively high proportion of the price goes to the shop is because farmer Brown's Mercedes has already been paid for by the downtrodden taxpayer. He's more interested in subsidies than growing and selling food.

"there may yet be the danger of another, more thoroughbred, horse kicking the stable door down ..." Are the saying it's Lloyds?

Have you been away for the last eight years?

It looks to me as if the amount of credit IS going up. Presumably because the stupid tax payers have given away hundreds of billions to the banking industry. Are you saying that it's existing borrowers who are borrowing more and FTBs less? It doesn't seem to make sense since FTBs have been an endangered species for years. Imagine what would happen if there was some sort of a credit crunch and the amount of credit went down... I still think this is a possibility, but I expect the extra 12% is what's keeping prices up around here for the moment.

or 12% more...

Yes, I know we live under socialism and he's legally entitled to be a sponger. My question to him is: why wasn't he grateful? Oh, and everyone knows that people involved in "property" don't pay taxes like the rest of us (mortgage interest tax free, no VAT, no income tax, no National Insurance, not even stamp duty if you were oop North). So he didn't even pay a fair amount of tax in the first place. I didn't hear much remorse from him about not paying the mortgage back either.

Why are you spongers so ungrateful when the hardworking taxpayers pay for your bed AND breakfast? I had some sympathy for you until that part. Someone's tax goes up so they can't afford bed and breakfast on their own hoiliday, at the same time their paying for your family of spongers. Fair enough, perhaps you needed some help (although I guess you could have sold the junk you wasted all your money on and stayed in your Dad's spare room). But what I can't understand is your complete lack of gratitude. HTH.

I think they've narrowed it down to which religion. HINT: the same one spreading the anthrax and warning its people to keep away from WTC.

At last someone who understands that bankers are doing God's work! Too much negativity on this board. Most of the rest of what you said sounds good too. Although I don't see how you can pin Iraq on the tories - that was all Blair lies and killing the whistleblower was bad form.

Loads of farmers kill themselves. I like to think it's through remorse as they finally realize the damage they've done with a lifetime sponging off the taxpayer. Probably just the chemicals in the sheep-dip though.

I think "Chopper" Ben will sort this out in a matter of months not years :angry: Doesn't mean the savages won't be even poorer though...

Yes, I've owned them for a while and they've made a modest profit which is a bit surprising. You are right about the genius thing though

What an excellently timed post for those of us who use this board as a "what not to do" signal. Here's how my banking stocks did today JPM 4:02PM ET 35.94 4.92 15.86% GS 4:01PM ET 172.86 15.06 9.54%

Does anyone know the symbols for S&P out-of-the money put options? I'm thinking of buying a few to protect against the falling market. Is +RDQUP a good one to use? It seems to be a Sep 30 2008 Put on SPY, but I've never bought an option before so I'm not really sure.

Their senior oil trader thinks that the price of oil is mean reverting. I pointed out to him that this can't be true (peak oil). Seems he didn't listen...

This board is getting high-brow. I got an A in my 'O' level and I still found that article a bit tricky! But how can Russians ewven read it? They didn't bother to transliterate Halifax