birdie

An article I mentioned on a similar thread earlier. May be relevant here too. Fry Group

Excellent!!!

Since it seems that the powers-that-be seem to be starting to finally acknowledge that house prices will not continue to rocket upwards, this proposal will probably go ahead after all… The Fry Group One way for Brown to keep to his Target.

Does anyone know of a website (or elsewhere) where a person can see exactly how the CPI is calculated? With actual calculations and prices to show how the most recent and previous values were arrived at, and details of any changes in the way it has been calculated over the past few years.

One or two things I have noticed in my area recently: 1. In a new ridiculously overpriced housing development, a very obvious on-site sales office appeared about a year ago. A large board later replaced it: “For sale: a selection of 2, 3 & 4 bedroom homes”. Followed much later by a huge “ONLY ONE REMAINING” sign. This was not up for long - three weeks at most, before the original “For sale….” Board reappeared. Possible explanations include: too many specific enquiries about the “one remaining unit” or buyers pulling out. 2.Many “for sale” signs outside houses have been replaced by a board with only the EA logo (at least 2 different EA’s) in large letters, conveniently leaving no space for the words “For sale”. Oddly, at the same time “sold” signs have not disappeared – in fact there is one “sold” sign a few houses down from me that has been there for over a year. It fell over in a storm recently and was up again 2 days later. Anyone else noticed this, or similar?

Back to something Needle pointed out earlier ('scuse the pun): The idea of dropping prices of supermarket goods is worrying. They should be increasing if petrol prices are going up. No, instead, prices are dropping and supermarket profits increasing!? Farmers and factories are paying the price: South African fruit farms are going bankrupt, Scottish fish farms and British vegetable & stock farmers are in financial trouble and Chinese factories are squeezing more hours out of their sweatshop labourers (who earn about 27p per day!) - as a result of British supermarkets having such powerful control over the prices. There are few competitors left! Eventually there will be very few suppliers of goods left solvent and there will either be serious shortages, and/or prices will skyrocket. What happened to the fight against world poverty?? Supermarkets seem to have a big hand in making it worse.