LeeT

The Telegraph article is from 2004. Ah, Blonde beat me to it whilst i was reading.

They are helping to mitigate it, the Radi-Aid charity is showing compassion for our (well Norway's) inclement climate by supplying radiators. Radi-Aid

Just read a Facebook post from somebody in Cyprus. 'i have some money on deposit in Hellenic, not a fortune, but the only way i could access it was by taking out a loan at 2.5 percent interest.... ludicrous....' It's a funny old world.

I generally just don't pay the last months rent and the landlord keeps the deposit (which is coincidentally nearly always one months rent). It's not the 'correct' way but has always worked out fine. How much notice have you been given? Is it in writing and all correct?

I don't know enough about UC to comment on the taper rates for that. Tax credits are withdrawn at a rate of 41% for every added £1 gross income. What you're not including are the other variables to get an effective marginal tax rate. Many people will currently find added earnings reduce their entitlement to housing benefit and council tax benefit too. These start being withdrawn on net incomes over £5 above the £71 JSA rate the person would be entitled to if they were unemployed. Housing benefit is withdrawn at a rate of 65% and council tax benefit at 20%. That makes the marginal effective tax rate a massive disincentive to work. My understanding is that it goes something like this (any resident benefits experts please chip in and correct me). Earn an extra £1 gross. Pay 20p income tax Pay 12p NI Lose 41p WTC Net better off by 27p Reduce housing benefit by 18p (65% of 27p) Reduce council tax benefit by 5.4p (20% of 27p) Get to keep 3.6p of that £1 earned. Add in costs of working (added food. travel, clothes) and you're worse off. In fairness, if you earn little above the minimum wage for the 30 hours per week needed to get WTC escaping from the CTB trap is relatively easy unless you have a bargain rent on an expensive place. escaping the housing benefit trap is relatively easy oop North if you're prepared to accept a lower standard of accommodation than you could get on benefits. I don't see how you escape the housing benefit trap if you live in the South without resorting to house sharing. There are going to be huge problems by the end of May when people fail to pay their first CTax payment on time, lose the right to pay by instalments then get clobbered with a mighty and unaffordable court summons. Shares tip 'buy bailiffs.' Edited a bit for sentence structure and missing spaces.

Not these then?

This is the email referred to in 98% Chimp's Guardian link earlier in this thread.

Can't public sector pension promises be made affordable by a heavy tax on post retirement public sector pension payments?

One thing missing so far is that I'm guessing the OP's article is referring to mean wages, not median wages. The top few percent have got disproportionately richer dragging up the mean by more than the median. I remember salads used to consist of lettuce tomato and cucumber. You might get to add one or two of spring onion, raddish, beetroot or cress if you were middle class., Salad cream was optional and mayonnaise hadn't been invented. Vinaigrette was for chips and olive oil was to loosen ear wax. Food and clothes were expensive. TVs were rented as were washing machines. 3 generation households were not the exclusive preserve of ethnic minorities. An 82/83 ad but bloody expensive and that was their good offers..

So if you're on a low income and your kids are squaddies or you foster and live in council or housing association property you get extra bedrooms paid for you. If you're on a low income and your kids are squaddies or you foster and own a house or rent privately you pay for your own spare bedrooms. That makes sense.

A nice summary of the more mainstream ideas which will mostly fail. They even seem pretty rational compared to Mark Serwotka's ideas in the link below. http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/2013/03/08/this-is-the-alternative-the-ten-step-programme-to-u-k-national-recovery/

And for the gas fitter there's all those btl properties that need a gas certificate.

For context RBS • The average salary for all employees is c.£34,000. • 21,500 employees earn total remuneration between £50,000 and £100,000. • 9,275 employees earn total remuneration between £100,000 and £250,000. • 1,950 employees earn total remuneration over £250,000. Pay band No 'ees £1,000,000 - £1,500,000 56 £1,500,001 - £2,000,000 14 £2,000,001 - £2,500,000 12 £2,500,001 - £3,000,000 2 £3,000,001 - £3,500,000 5 £3,500,001 - £4,000,000 1 £4,000,001 - £4,500,000 1 £4,500,001 - £5,000,000 1 £5,000,001 - £5,500,000 1 From Page 24 RBS Remuneration Report Wikipedia reckon a group total of 141,000 employees I got my calculator out for the next bit. So the highest paid 32725 employees receive at least £2.628b between them (that's assuming they're all paid at the bottom of their respective bands). An average of £80305 each. That leaves the remaining 108275 employees on, at best, an average of £20004 which is pretty comparable to nurses.

As bar work is something many people have done in the past it's something a lot of people think of as an interim job when they lose their previous job. With so many pubs closing down there's less vacancies to fill for all those looking. A licensee friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day asking if anybody was interested in Friday and Saturday night work and got a dozen replies in about 3 hours. There really is no need to advertise bar vacancies.

I found this interesting when I stumbled upon it yesterday. The Chinese also live in interesting times.

i think it's down to making small changes to a relatively large GDP number over a long enough time frame ironing out the wrinkles . This chart at Google shows variation in growth. If anything, the trend is for lower growth over time but the correlation looks weak. I'm a bit surprised by falling growth rates from 1997 to 2007. Doesn't chime well with the idea of that period being a debt fueled boom.

Much the same point made in this Bond Vigilantes article a few days ago. It is good too see it in the the more mainstream Indie though.

My guesses. I'm not an insider though. I think it's because the Euro has been saved and their healthy banks are paying back some of the LTRO money. Meanwhile it snowed in the UK meaning we'll be in recession when Q1 2013 GDP figures are released. We're going to lose our AAA rating.

The last major release from Tullet Prebon that I read was 'Thinking the unthinkable - Might there be no way out for Britain? - Project Armageddon - the final report'. It's still well worth the time if you can spare an afternoon crying into you whisky. The latest paper has the less dramatic title of 'perfect storm - energy, finance and the end of growth', but I don't expect it will have a happy ending either. Thanks to OP for the heads up, it's been bookmarked for weekend reading.

Julian Richer is also majority owner of Cambridge Audio whose products Richer Sounds sell by the container load. These are sold internationally too. They do seem to have switched more heavily into the TV side of the business in recent years. I think they'll continue to do OK.

Couldn't resist. BBC Article today High Street retailers: Who has been hit hardest?

This from neighbouring Bradford. What are we considering? We want to consider: ending the Council Tax exemption for properties that are empty for less than six months. This means that people who own empty homes will have to pay full Council Tax from the time that they become empty ending the Council Tax exemption on empty properties that are undergoing major structural repair. This means that people who own empty properties that are undergoing structural repairs will have to pay full Council Tax ending the 10% discount on holiday homes/second homes introduce an additional 50% Council Tax charge for properties that have been empty for over two years. This means that owners of all properties that have been empty for over two years will have to pay 150% Council Tax for their property My link My landlord came round to have a moan about this last week when he collected the rent. As he always has at least one empty house or flat it might mean he has to take less foreign holidays. With the summons costs levied for late payment of Council Tax and now these changes, the Council Tax collections department is really beginning to rake it in. It's just a pity our Council are always more inventive at finding ways to spend money.

These are rents for purpose built student accommodation. The image is from Page 11 of the linked survey. Not sure where the missing year went. I don't see how they arrived at some of those numbers either come to think about it.

Unipol Student Accommodation survey 2012/2013

Just on Radio 4 Not sure what's going wrong with embedding the video link. It worked the other day.