Ben from Dover
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Posts posted by Ben from Dover
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1st April? Really?
1 st April I'm back in the Gulf for two weeks. Oh the land where I can fill up a whole tank for a fiver, don't even have to get out of my car to pump my own gas and somebody cleans my windows while the other guy is filling up for me!
If only it wasn't for those bloody fake islands and the $800 Bil of debt...
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Heretic!
How dare you question the public sector bashing?
Burn him!
don't get old fashioned burning past the heath and safety department these days. Instead we are just going to have to give him a job doing nothing, earning loads more than he deserves, with loads of holiday and a final salary pension scheme. That ort to sort him right out.
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"Pot-ash Hugh"
Told everyone a few years back to buy Potash Don't BUY GOLD!!!!!!...........................Gold Rocked, Potash fell.
Either:-
A.Tosser
B.One of "Them".
Mike
I love watching the man argue though. He has this nack of winding people up but doing it in a really calm voice which makes for great viewing.
Obviously he is more qualified than me to make such guesses but the way I see it he gets things half right. He is switched-on enough to work out that the economy is going to crash and that there are bubbles everywhere that are about to pop and that a defensive investment strategy is the best one. However his solution to it is to buy government bonds/gilts.
How anybody who predicts what he predicts can come to the conclusion that sterling denominated government bonds are the way to protect yourself is beyond me. His investors must be pretty pissed as well, He was going on about how this was the time that his investment approach would shine about 6 months ago, whats happened since is that he has missed a massive bull run in the stock market.
I like watching the guy but would never invest with him.
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It is going to happen if the idiots keep printing. The CB's can jawbone all they like, they can call low inflation, they can lie but the reality on the ground is going to hit soon.
It is going to happen even quicker with sterling devaluation.
See graph - very near peak pricing already.
I wouldn't put it past Brown to temporarily reduce the duty on Fuel as a sort of pre-election, everything is alright type give-a-way
I'm glad I've got my hybrid
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Could you not argue that we are already experiencing about as soft a landing as we could possibly have done.... eg frith blown off in the first phase which gets us back to 2005 prices ( or something like that) and that with low interest rates ( as long as they stay low) theres no real reason for prices to crash and one option is for further mixes of falls and rises ( with falls outweighing rises) for a relatively prolonged period....... I certainly see this as a distinctly possible scenario ( sure high interest rates/changes in repo policy/ a returning recession/ overly zealous public sector cuts etc etc could push is to a crash but I am siding against that)
This is exactly right. the will be a partially engineered soft landing that will take 10 years to complete.
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Come on, saying it when even your dog can get a credit card is one thing, that is trying to predict the problems of the future, which many on here did quite well at IMO, but saying it now is just stating the obvious, if a years worth of emergency measures are still producing drops how could the housing market possibly hang on for ten years? When it goes it will go quickly because people will lose their bottle without the "social proof" of doing the right thing that others are doing, and they will start to see their losses piling up. Fireworks could start before the clown calls his election at this rate IMO. The problem for sellers is that there is no more money and no more greater fools with credit. 50% off prices here in Edinburgh is still way out of reach of the Tesco generation.
I take my hat off to everyone who was on here saying it 5 years ago, you guys saved me a chunk of money as I said in my first post.
However I do think it is going to be gradual. We have already seen a significant drop, did that cause people to 'lose their bottle' - no, what happened was the market shrunk and we ended up with increasing prices for 6 months +.
Do you really have 50% falls in Edinburgh. On the south Coast where I am we have had some decent drops and are probably ahead of the curve but it is slow and will take years till we hit the bottom.
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You would think that some cleaver marketing company somewhere would come up with a way of finding out which households actually open, read and then buy stuff when receiving junk mail. I'm sure that I never have and it is a total waist of their money sending it to me.
Its a bit like adverts on this site. right now I'm being offered posh home insurance from John Lewis and better broadband from virgin. The this site is full of the the sitingiest people in the country. Imagine what a waist of money it is for the people who pay for fancy google advertising only for their ads to end up on a site full of gold-bugs, hermits and people saving every penny they have so they can buy a house in 20 years.
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Been reading the daily mail too much again?
Why is that employers refuse to take on British workers of lesser skill to work in fields instead preferring to use cheap foreign labourers who quite often have good quality post graduate qualifications?
If you refuse to invest in training/retraining the bottom 10%, out source all the less demanding jobs abroad and then you flood the place with higher quality but cheaper foreign labour, how exactly do expect the bottom 10% to compete?
Or as is becoming increasingly the case, the bottom 20%.
Or bottom 30%...
Repeat until collapse.
What are you proposing as a solution?
A nice sign saying 'Arbeit Macht Frei'?
How about 'not buying a house Macht Frei'
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Hi guys
I've seen some flats to buy in Florida for as little as $50K with sitting tenants (supposedly achieving $800 PCM rent). The US have had their crash. We haven't.The USA will beat us out of recession. The UK is still shafted given the incompetance of Browns government and the size of the debts. Merwyn Somersert Webb said the US looks good value a few months back.
I am worried also about having all my STR fund in £. And also about inflation. If £35K of it were in housing surely that would protect it against inflation too?
Would you do this?
Personally I think the are better investments and easier ways to diversify away from the pound than buy property so far away.
You will be totally reliant upon managing agents ect and you won't be able to sell in a hurry if you need to. the prices are good and if you can find a job moving out there is probably a great idea but the combination of it being illiquid, so far away and out of your direct control would worry me
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let the poor ones fail.
How this plays out is probably the thing that will determine how long it is until we see a real hpc
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I seem to remember they put the price up for standing for eleciton a few years ago.
it used to be relatively cheap.
They said it was to stop pointless people standing.
I think it was to stop people standing.
I think it is something like £2000 which you get back if a certain number of people vote for you. quite a sensible investment really, considering the gravey train that is the life of an MP
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not for me
end fractional reserve banking
allow competing currencies
reduce the red tape and taxation of businesses and individuals
allow people to opt out of the welfare system and over time remove the dependancy of people on the State
end the central banking cartel
over time end the income tax - ideally replace with nothing but perhaps replace with sales taxes for now
reduce the size of the States share of GDP - again over a period of time - ideally down to 0%
do you really think the competing currency thing could replace FRB? I think it is just too complicated for your average man for it to really work. a money system needs to at least appear to be simple.
Totally agree with point 3
and 4 - but again, how / what replaces them for issuing money and setting IR
end income tax yes, why are you in favor of sales tax over land tax
0% state would never work and never be voted for, but a wholesale reduction and culture change to increase effectiveness yes.
How about stopping measuring our success by GDP. Its the most stupid measure in the the world and I'm sure holds society back. I like what Butan does with there general happiness index thing.
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You sure about that?
Our education system has become an international joke.
Last year over 25% of all grades awarded at 'A' level were A grades. Universities now have to put on special exams to determine which of the students applying with all A's actually know anything.
Private schools have been at a virtual state of war with the government for years about dropping gcses and A levels in favour of the international baccalaureate because our exam system is no longer fit for purpose.
Professors get hounded out of jobs by management if they try to enforce standards or plagiarism rules, at one university the grade inflation for a pharmacy degree has gotten to the point that a the pass rate is effectively 25%.
Go to any university department and look at the names of the people doing the PhDs. Do they sound chinese and indian to you?
But surely we get the basics right?
Nope.
Try watching that channel 4 documentary about primary maths teaching. In a self selecting anonymous group of primary school teachers asked to take a sats level maths test, only one teacher out the hundreds that took the test managed to get all the answers correct.
Our education system is not something you want to be holding up as an example of success...
I agree that it is not something that we should hold up as an example. I had a long debate with that public secotr troll guy on here yesterday about just that.
There are lots of countries whose education system is much better than ours and as you say people at attaining the very best of often from places link india / china. However what we have done well in educated everybody to a level where they are able (if they choose to) to contribute something to our economy and make a living. (what we get wrong is we give them the choice not to).
Go to India, Africa, poorer countries in the Middle East (they are just the places I have been living recently I'm sure there are more exapmles - we are light years ahead.
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I would contest that. My experience of having been to some poor places where people are, presumably as you are alluding to, poorly educated and hence stupid - is very different.
One thing I have seen is that such people, living a simple life by our standards, seem to have just as much IF NOT MORE common sense than we seem to here in the 'advanced' nations.
I have long suspected that, if given the opportunity to show them a pile of bricks and mortar and and how they would go about buying it for as much as we do, woul look at me as if I am mad.
I take your point. I've lived, worked and volunteered abroad a for few years recently and the education system here teaches people to think for themselves in a way that most systems do not. I know it doesn't seems like it when you live here but we have a culture of getting things done, relatively less corruption, we have our fare share of laziness but it is mostly at the bottom of society whereas in other countries the lazy somehow seems to be the people at the top
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The main political parties are either clueless, dishonest, controlled by the bankers and big business or all three.
We are heading down the road to economic disaster, the welfare/warfare state is bankrupting the Nation (whatever the nation is). In addition more and more freedoms are being lost and the ever growing State is planning peoples lives.
Just wondering if anyone else has had enough - i dont know what the anser is or whether it can be stopped at all - maybe it just needs to collapse
dont know if this poll is going to work
So what would the HPC Party's policies be?
I'd suggest
Land tax rather than income tax
Strict mortgage lending 3 time single income
Government books have to balance every year
Personally I'm in favor of the citizen's dividend but I know that is not unanimous, so lets say a simplification and over-all reduction of the welfare state
Public Sector pay and conditions somehow linked to what is available in the market.
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aye aye to this.
ive been waiting in the wings for a fair price for a fair home for quite a number of years. hoo'ever, now im thinking that its taking so long perhaps its better to rent and spend the money on myself padding out my income. why would i want to swap the comfort of money for the tatty bricks of an accrington terrace with its pvc windows, crooked self built kitchen extension and faulty boiler. as i rent from a HA, they fix all that dog gone shit. given the two choices, its probably better for me to take it easy. i dont see the grass being so green after all.
Especially since you are HA, if I was you i'd stay for life. Use your money to see the world, throw a massive party, live with a smug grim that comes from knowing that you could tell your boss to shove it and walk out today without the slightest financial worry.
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In fact a better analogy might be that although we are in the bottom 3, the government and public are assuming that we will win all our remaining games and avoid relegation, overlooking the fact that we are so far behind the pack that relegation is a mathematical certainty.
and link the skates (Portsmouth) we are bankrupt, can't pay our players, will have to sell any assets we have and will be deducted points.
(only what the deserve for the way the screwed over the Saints a few years ago).
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are we
what % understand money
that's true,
and we have our fair share of chavs, and everybody is going to be too old to actually do a job soon but
If you go to most countries outside Europe and north America it is amazing just how stupid most of the world's population is.
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I fear that if things get really bad, there will be a stampede for the door, rather than attempts to reform society by starting new parties etc...
My reasoning is as follows: take me for example - I've always been city-hopping due to my career, so I've never settled down and got my foot on the housing ladder. Now, at 40, I see home ownership as a hopeless dream (I don't see a sudden crash in prices), so I'm forever stuck in renting-land, forever with the threat of being kicked out on a whim.
Now, if we talk of a stakeholder society, what is my stake at present in the UK? Well, it's sod all.
Maybe if I had a house*, if I could feel a little bit more settled, I would have a stake in this country and its future, and would be more inclined to stay and fight for it.
However, that's not going to happen, so the option of emigrating becomes a very tempting one.
I suspect that much the same reasoning will be going through the heads of the 20-35 generation.
* Just to clarify: I don't necessarily mean "owning" a house; rental is fine, as long as it's European-style, where the landlord can't kick you out on the street on a whim.
I think that is true in that across the under 30's. Very few of us have any real love for or loyalty to the UK - apart from supporting the football team, patriotism and a sense of responsible citizenship will be dead in a generation.
If there was a world war tomorrow I can't imagine many people who volunteer to fight to protect the country.
so injin - how do we go about push the state closer towards 'the edge'
and how do we stop it coming back once we are there. -
no. ive not had quite enough yet. i could do with a little more time for my gold to MATURE even further.
muhahahahahahah.....
We live in a high-tech, information driven, post-industrial age where trips to the moon can be bought at your local virgin megastore and your expecting gold to mature
Good luck! -
I thought I would share what I thought was a good analogy related to me by a friend at the
weekend -in all probability so that any lurking newspaper journos here can rip it off no
doubt! :-D
Essentially he said he thought that the UK economy was, to use another well known phrase, a
Dead Economy Walking, i.e the UK is de-facto bankrupt except, bizarrely, most cannot yet see it and
face it.
To anyone with a modicum of numerical skill and lack of political prejudice it is becoming
increasingly clear that the UK's cumulative budget deficit has resulted in the economy
reaching its own 'Titanic' moment - akin to the scene in Camerons epic movie of that ill
fated liner.
The scene in that movie which he specifically said came to mind as being most apt to help
explain the present economic situation, and the curious inability of those in power and
positions of authority, is the one is which after having struck the iceberg and been fatally
damaged, the designer and builder of the ship explains to the captain and others assembled
around, that the ship WILL sink.
Perhaps not quite fully grasping or just psychologically unable immediately accept what he
has just been told, the captain immediately cuts-in and queries the use of the pumps to help prevent the
ships sinking - only to be rebutted equally swiftly with the comment that "the pumps buy you
time, but minutes only. No matter what you do from hereon the ship WILL sink!".
An even more aghast Bruce Ismay, director of the White Star Line, still refusing to accept
reality, blurts out arrogantly that "She can't sink!". To which Thomas Andrews cuttingly retorts
"She's made of iron Sir, I assure you she CAN and she WILL!".
Many would submit that UK Plc has, over a period of time, been fatally holed below its
economic waterline. The lines in that movie scene are uncannily akin to the responses
typically being generated by far too many politicians, economists, business leaders and the
like - people aho should know better. When confronted with cold hard mathematical facts
about the state of the UK's finances, the public is immediately calmed and comforted with
all manner of unrealistic solutions (e.g QE) - akin to resorting to the ships pumps.
The question, that time will answer, is whether indeed measures like QE will only buy time
before the inevitable sinking OR whether it will allow the ship of state to be repaired.
Good analogy for our political and economic leadership. They must know and understand the problems but they won't either admit them or do anything serious about them. I'm sure we all remember the moment when we looked at the various stats - government debt, unfunded liabilities, demographic timebomb ect - and thought hang-on we are doomed.
However I don't think the UK economy will exactly sink. There will perhaps be a default, certainly a painful few years while things re-balance so that hard work is rewarded and the assets of the country are fairly priced in working hours. However we are generally a well educated country full of people who are capable of success. The problem is one of motivation, a couple of tough years are just what we need to get us off the sofa.
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http://www.freedomainradio.com/Traffic_Jams/FDR_1598_state_milk_blood_addiction.mp3
A fine mp3 about why there is no political solution.
Injin - what would you do if the future of this country was yours to decide?
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sounds good to me
isnt cutting off heads social engineering though
Hmm OK, lets stick to democracy.
Is this a serious suggestion and are you actually going to do it?
By the way, who votes 'no' to have you had enough? This site seems like a strange place to be if you are enjoying the status quo.
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The main political parties are either clueless, dishonest, controlled by the bankers and big business or all three.
We are heading down the road to economic disaster, the welfare/warfare state is bankrupting the Nation (whatever the nation is). In addition more and more freedoms are being lost and the ever growing State is planning peoples lives.
Just wondering if anyone else has had enough - i dont know what the anser is or whether it can be stopped at all - maybe it just needs to collapse
dont know if this poll is going to work
I would be well up for starting a new party / campaigning. I like the libertarian party's views but I get put off as they always seems slightly racist and a little nutty. Lets go for a sensible economic policy party and engages in zero social engineering.
Personally I think we should go with an armed resistance to public sector middle management corruption. Storm though local council offices cutting off heads
The Wilsons thread ---merged
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Your probably right. they are just what the government need though