needsleep

If national debt is repudiated then will personal debt follow. Those people in big houses they can't afford. Will they get them for free?

Going to be needing a lot of popcorn

What is this shit? When you have a chancellor threatening to wreak havoc on your family's future are you supposed to go and divert your savings to a big stupid telly and a new car? When you're out of a job and your kids need new shoes having those things ain't going to help. FFS I know I'm describing exactly the mentality people adopt in times like these but isn't that what the Tories want us to do, look after ourselves? Reckless purchases of items I don't even need are not in my best interests. If they want people to spend they should be working on building confidence, not destroying it. They can't have their cake and eat it.

Anecdotal again but a chap I work with has a big 100% mortgage (5-6 times income) and is on IO. He didn't self-cert though - his parents are guarantors.

Sure, for clinical accountability as always. But let's imagine your GP consortium contracts service A to a too expensive company then runs out of money to pay the private provider of service B meaning that service B is stopped. Who is accountable then? What redress do the local public have? How are the GPs accountable for that business, rather than clinical decision? Who would we complain to? To a GP consortium business? We're on potentially very shaky ground with this and people need to realise the potential consequences. I genuinely hope it works out for the best but I'm worried.

Step 1 of the dismantling of the NHS. Quite clearly what will be created for primary care is a larger number of local health businesses, each run differently, each with different levels of buying power, each forced to buy services from the private sector. I worry about the accountability of these GP consortia. They will be businesses not public organisations. Most GPs are effectively businessmen contracting to the NHS anyway. It's Dave's big society. If it all goes wrong we take the blame. It will be our own 'local' fault and up to us to sort it out. Still if the local GP business screws things up we can have a whipround to buy poor old Mrs Miggins a new wheelchair from Lidl.

What's the point in being 20% through a mortgage that is 50% more than the value of your home.

Older, less pure coins can be cost effective. Main reason is that second hand coins can be free of VAT. To give an example Weighton does a silver crown lucky dip deal. Got one a while back and the average per troy oz was £12.20. At the same time I was stacking generic rounds at £15 per troz oz. The second hand coins are great for bringing down your average £/oz but core rule as stated above - bulk in well known coins and a little diversity if you feel that way inclined. I tend to stick 80-90% with the well-knowns.

There is a lot of theory behind how redundancy schemes operate but in simplistic terms think of it as the goal of ensuring the most efficient separation between a company and a worker. Make of that what you will - you will probably need to do a bit of thinking for yourself. Sorry.

If HP is anything like other IT companies they will be shipping work to India and China. Fundamental problem with that is all the knowledge is shipped out there too. And there is a massive churn in staff in those places, particularly India. The knowledge then ends up with staff at companies like Tata, Infosys and Satyam. It won't be long before the big Indian IT companies stop being staisfied with the crumbs that the likes of IBM etc... throw from the table. They'll be going for big UK government IT contracts in their own right. And why should we care - swapping IBM for Tata is just swapping one foreign company for another and most of the work is done abroad anyway.

Because when they let you go, you ensure they let you go on the best possible financial terms for you. You can either let the company get away with its minimal legal obligation (i.e. £300 for every year you worked there) or you can be part of a collective process that ensures that a company like HP (which makes $8bn profit a quarter) gives you a fair payout. It's quite simple.

The books are not top secret. Anybody who works in the civil service will know that the Cons and Libs were fully engaged with civil servants in all departments for months before the election. It happens before every election in order to manage transition between parliaments. It happened this time too. They will have had the key details of the books, but the again it perhaps only takes one discrepancy for them to generate a story that the books weren't what they thought they were. All spin I'm afraid.

In light of this news people should indeed be planning for exactly that.

Ah, that old chestnut. And the moon is made of cheese.

It's just an opinion piece. Unfortunately for the knockers on here he's a highly respected Nobel prize winning economist. I don't know if he's right but let's put it this way I trust him a lot more than I trust Osbourne. Anyway, in the doomsday persistent recession outcome he describes isn't HPC assured? That's good innit?

If people want to argue this is technically a bubble then fine. But if it is then it is early and the key thing about that is as long as you have a solid buy-in and exit strategy there are huge profits to be made.

Totally agree. The bulk of your stack should be in well known coins. If it floats your boat diversify a little but not too much.

Premiums aren't that high. I paid marginally over spot for a couple of 1 Ducats recently and just 3% over spot for a Vreneli. There's absolutely no problem selling these coins either. I have about 85% in CGT-exempt bullion, the rest in other mainly european bullion coins. And a few proof half sovs that I've earmarked for sale at some point.

No bubble yet. I have a number of proof half sovs to shift and contacted a dealer. Not interested as they already have too much stock. If we had a bubble there would be frenzied speculative buying of everything, exactly the same process as in housing. It just isn't happening. Even decent bullion sovereigns can be picked up at spot on ebay or even better. My recent £/oz on ebay transactions in May/June is £815/oz even allowing for postage. That doesn't look remotely like a bubble to me. People just haven't fully woken up to this yet.

http://www.potato.org.uk/ They have many sites www.lovepotatoes.co.uk www.potatoesforcaterers.co.uk www.potatoesforschools.org.uk www.lovechips.co.uk www.potatoposters.co.uk www.growerpanel.co.uk Some in Welsh too. No doubt we will be treated to some Indian ones eventually. www.lovealoo.org.uk. We can only dream.

It's interesting. They will keep spending on IT. No doubt awarding big bloated contracts to services providers that will employ hundreds, even thousands to do the work - but don't fear most of the staff will be based in Bangalore or somewhere else suitably Indian sub-continent so we won't have to worry about having lots more public sector workers. So while we are putting our feet up in between visits to Jobcentre Plus (if any offices remain open) and battling with the new incomprehensible online self-service facilities the government provide us with we can rest assured that all the billions we still spend on IT will be keeping plenty of people in jobs in India, China, Phillipines or wherever.

Why provide £500bn of toxic loan guarantees if the banks won't bother to use it? Are the banks in a position to cynically transform 'regular' debt into toxic debt by turning the screw on ordinary families and in doing so qualify for more bailout money? I think we know the answer.

A few months ago I found one of those abandoned ROC bunkers next to a golf course. Complete surprise when I was out for a walk. The hatch was open too. Next time I'm up that way I'm bringing a torch. Bunker hatch

It's at times like this that the lyrics of Nick Berry can provide comfort. I'm convinced he knew something WE NEARLY MADE IT WE NEARLY FOUND THE PERFECT COMBINATION THE ROAD WAS RIGHT,WE MUST HAVE READ THE SIGNS WRONG AND NOW IT'S ALL GONE BUT IF WE'D MADE IT COULD WE BE SURE THAT IT WAS FOR THE BETTER WHO COULD SAY WE WOULD HAVE STAYED TOGETHER NOTHING IS CERTAIN IN A CHANGING WORLD EVERY LOSER WINS ONCE THE DREAM BEGINS IN TIME YOU'LL SEE, FATE HOLDS THE KEY AND EVERY LOSER KNOWS THE LIGHT THE TUNNEL SHOWS WILL SHINE ON YOU AND ALL THOSE WHO KNEW THAT WE COULD MAKE IT BUT SUDDENLY WE SEEMED TO STOP AND LOSE OUR WAY BUT DID IT REALLY MATTER ANYWAY FOR THAT WAS YESTERDAY AND WE MUST LIVE FOR NOW EVERY LOSER WINS ONCE THE DREAM BEGINS IN TIME YOU'LL SEE, FATE HOLDS THE KEY AND EVERY LOSER KNOWS THE LIGHT THE TUNNEL SHOWS WILL SHINE ON YOU AND ALL THOSE WHO KNEW THAT WE COULD MAKE IT STAND UP AND COUNT ME I KNOW YOUR ON MY SIDE SHINE DOWN ON ME AND THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT WE COULD MAKE IT

Totally agree with this. It's like people are desperate to suffer pain just so they can blame it on Labour.