eztiger
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Posts posted by eztiger
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Telegraph click bait strikes again,
To be honest I stopped reading after this paragraph:
"The idea is to buy a flat as “cheaply as possible” before he is 25. Nick currently lives with his father in Surrey, and his mother owns a home in Essex. Buying a flat in either area means Nick would be able to stay with one of his parents while renting out his property."
Lamb to the slaughter.
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I went on holiday to Hong Kong over Christmas. I'll admit I couldn't resist the urge to do a bit of local EA window shopping when I was there and the prices are on par with London when you took the exchange rate into consideration.
I also noted a fair few miserable looking property touts on the streets of Central and Kowloon desperately trying to hand out brochures for new build apartments to disinterested pedestrians. I took sympathy on one and took a brochure for a tiny 1 bed new build apartment in Kowloon. It was being flogged for about 400k but it had a harbour view so obviously worth it!
Apparently according to my mate who I visited while I was there the increased stamp duty for foreigners has made zero difference to curbing demand as the majority are mainlanders who just cough up without issue.
Property prices aside Hong Kong was such a fantastic place. It's so safe, tidy, orderly with zero anti social behavior / attitude and excellent cheap public transport. I generally detest busy cities but I would happily live in Hong Kong if given the chance.
Arriving back in the UK and traveling home through London was a depressing affair to put it mildly.
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Not a 100% Nigel Farage fan, but that guy has a London city financial background which he does not even try to hide, but he has pointed out that there is more to life than money and if a fall in our prosperity means reclaiming our culture so be it.
Sorry that's incorrect. Nigel Farage was a metals trader at the London Metals Exchange before becoming politically active. He may have drank in the same city drinking holes as the bankers but he's never been one of them.
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McDonalds is going to be in for a rough time for a number of reasons methinks.
1. The minimum wage farce both here and over the pond.
2. Lack of value for money. Up until the 2008 crash McDonalds was always reasonably cheap and was always the poor mans Burger King when comparing quality. In the late 90's / early - mid 00's a large big mac meal would cost just under £4. It has now crept up to just under £6. Strangley though Burger Kings prices have barely moved to the point where if you can afford a Mcdonalds nowadays you would be better off going to Burger King instead.
3. The quality of food has started to go down hill. New franchises are using new cost cutting kitchen procedures which involve storing alot of food in hot cabinets instead of cooking fresh to order, resulting in lukewarm burgers containing cheese that wont even melt. Existing franchises are also being pressured to adopt these new practices aswell resulting in only one McDonalds locally that still cooks to order.
4. Store saturation that doesnt make sense. Recently a new McDonalds opened up in Swindon, its less than 5 mins drive on the the same section of ring road from another that has been there decades.
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Wow I knew alot of the land around here in Marlborough was owned by the wealthy but after looking at that map im shocked to see that approx 70% of the land in this area is owned by offshores registered in the cayman isles, panama, jersey and luxumbourg. The Rothchild family having a significant presence here might have something to do with it maybe?
It also appears to be the largest blob of tax evasion in the entire UK for freehold according to the map.
Proper rotten borough.
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To the shock and fury of residents in Cramlington (inset), Tyne and Wear, the dream homes they thought were a bargain came with a very big catch as many don't actually own the land their house is built on. While the bricks and mortar belong to homeowners such as Robert and Claire Snedden (left, with their son Andrew) and Nadia Karim, 33 (right), the ground their properties stand on is held on a lease. Estate agents estimate that three-quarters of the town's properties were sold leasehold, with leases typically lasting 99 years and ownership of the property reverting to the landlord once the lease expires.
"They bought it 11 years ago but now need something a bit bigger."
So they were no doubt informed about the leasehold by their solicitor prior to purchasing and they've been paying ground rent for 11 years and have now decided its not fair.
" She bought her 1960s-built flat a year after the Sneddens. She’d just left university and it cost her £74,000.
Last year, after talking to neighbours, she decided to check how long her lease was — and discovered it was for less than 50 years."
These retards deserve everything they get.
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The obvious question: If their stock timing model is a good as advertised, why didn't Morgan Stanley issue a 'crash' call last year similar to the one they made in 2007?
Because 'This time it's different'
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From what I've been reading the 'smart' money has been selling since the tops earlier this year. It looks like Morgan Stanley are just trying to pull in more mugs to bail themselves and their 'smart' money pals out.
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My friend had solar panels installed about 6 months ago and was banging on / bragging about the subsidies. When I told him that it was all going to come to an end and the govt cant afford it he got rather defensive stating that "the govt have promised and they have to pay out"
I laughed so loudly out loud, i think his neighbours heard it.
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I've noticed a noticible drop in service at some places, most noticeably fast food outlets and convenience stores owned by the likes of Coop and Tesco.
With the fast food places around me Mcdonalds and Burger King are the worst for service. If you order onion rings in the Burger King around here the whole operation grinds to a halt and adds another 5 minutes onto the 10 you have already accrued waiting for your standard menu selection.
Standing at an empty till for minutes on end waiting for a staff member to notice I'm there seems to be standard practice for me at my local Coop / Tesco express. Management seems to be trying to copy the Lidl/Aldi work ethic without the pay and staff quality it seems.
While I'm an honest man, the temptation to empty the ciggie shelves and do a runner out of spite does on occasion cross my mind while waiting.
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From what I've read he's screwed himself and his company.
From what I remember:
1. Two of his most valuable staff members left after working their backsides off just to see the post boy end up on an equivilent salary in the future.
2. He fell out with local technology CEO's as they felt they were being shown up by him.
3. Existing contracts were lost due to not believing that fees would not increase / business not being run properly.
I think theres more but I cant remember, If you trawl through Zero Hedge posts for last month you should find it.
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The wheels seem to be falling off the BTL bandwagon at moment. Its one measure after another, they don't like it up them do they.
But they do love those illegal fuzzie wuzzies paying for their retirement.
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"The Telegraph's Emily Gosden reports that Richard Lambert, head of the National Landlords Association, said he was “slightly concerned we are breaking 40 year old principle that it has to be a court that ends a tenancy” and landlords had been concerned that they were “being effectively asked to do the work of the border control”."
Oh what a surprise, true colours out on show!
Scumbags.
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That's still what I think of as somewhere decent, when I left sixth form not many went on to a degree but those that did in the main went to those type of places. A couple of my mates went to Keele which we joked about beforehand but they really enjoyed it.
I agree too.
In hind sight I would have loved to study at one of the top tier universities and experienced a 'classical' university experience instead of the college v2 box ticking experience you get at former Poly's.
I never made it into 6th form, I applied for a laugh just to see the reaction on the head of 6th's face when i turned up
. It was never a serious consideration anyway, my school had pretty rubbish computing facilities and I was far better off attending a nearby college (a far more liberating experience than the rather insular 6th form culture at my school).Back then (98/99) you were the exception if you did NOT go to university, no doubt helped by that snake Blair's 'Education, Education, Eduction' mantra.
p.s While i didnt study at Keele I did play against their rugby team once while I had a very short stay at the terrible UCE. It struck me as quite a nice campus & surroundings.
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If they could go somewhere decent and do a subject in which they are interested then he should be encouraging them to go as it is a great life experience that a correspondence course cannot replicate. Not everything is down to money.
If of course they were looking at doing media studies at some glorified technical college then they are spot on with not wasting their time or money.
Well the step daughter took the Art route so she's probably made the right decision. The son from memory is currently studying engineering. While he could benefit from university I dont think he likes the risk/reward profile.
Based on my experiences I'm not so sure university is such a great life experience anymore. Unless you go to univeristies such as Oxbridge and the like and study a 'respectable' degree, most univeristies are now nothing more than trumpted up Polytechnics full of students of questionable ability studying questionable degrees who are only there because the Poly needs to balance the books and the student can get loans to attend.
If I could wind the clock back I would have saved 15k's worth of debt and not bothered with my degree. In my profession very little of what I learnt at university is still relevent in my day to day work due to advances in technology and the general cluelessness of academics that have never had to work in demanding commercial environments.
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Wow at those Swindon prices. And there's a lot of jobs there.
£105,000 Flat, Leasehold 07 Nov 2014 2 bedrooms £260,537 Flat, Leasehold 30 May 2003Its getting better, A quick search on the SN2 2EF reveals that 2 bed flats are now changing hands for 98k (all STC though). The lowest I can find for SN2 2EE is 102,950.
God I hope this trend trickles south of the M4.
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Ok, Ok. Technically its still part of Wiltshire, I was unwaware it still has 'cerimonial' status but ever since Swindon made a big deal about becoming a borough council with its own police hq, council tax rates etc along with taxi drivers charging you more as soon as you cross the M4 because you've passed 'county lines' alot of Wiltshire residents started seeing it as its own entity and not really part of Wiltshire anymore.
Where I work currently (just south of Marlborough) Swindon is generally said with a sneer by the locals and a visit to Salisbury would be preferable if there was a choice between the two.
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I has having a chat to a colleague about paying off our student loans this morning. What was interesting is that I found out that one of his sons sat down and did the maths and decided that Uni was now a mugs game and he'd be better off avoiding it. Also one of his step daughters who's a year or two older came to the same conclusion and decided to have a crack at setting up her own business instead.
I was impressed, I hope more young'uns arrive at the same conclusion as these two.
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If Wiltshire is crash central, and the mighty Swindon is leading the charge, I think I might have found the EPICENTRE of the unfolding shires crash...
Ladies and gents I give you.. Padstow Road, SN2 !!!
Sorry to be pendantic but (luckily) Swindon hasnt officially been part of Wiltshire for about a decade now.
Those properties are in one of those god aweful socially engineered estates that have popped up en masse in and around Swindon, 'council estates of the future' as i like to call them. Saying that though Its a great place to dump your car if you want to avoid the parking charges for the outlet village 200m up the road
I'm not surprised that thats the epicentre. Unless you can walk to work the location is aweful and its bang in the middle of some of the worst rush hour congestion the town can offer (it would take you at least 30mins to get 2/3 miles up the road onto junction 16 of the M4 from there on a good day).
Im not seeing any meaningful drops in the areas of Wiltshire i'm familiar with, if anything supply remains slow and prices continue to rise.
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Indeed and quite widespread throughout China as it modernises.
I love the irony that in an allegedly communist country property owners have more rights than here with our compulsory purchase orders and forceful evictions.
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You raise concerns about its liabilities, but this is a term for deposits. The total amount of liabilities is neither here nor there. The quality of the asset side is far more important. What is the liquidity buffer? What is the credit quality of the loans?
Not just deposits, their liabilities include massive derivatives exposure (trillions) along with both quality and toxic mortgage, business, personal loans, as for thier liquidity buffer, it was reported recently that they are 70 billion short of capital.
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Brief clip of a sovereign man conference some time last year. I assume it's a guns 'n gold organisation.
The internet is a small world.
Stumbled across the 1 hr Q&A in the early hours of this morning. Was quite funny seeing a slightly drunk Schiff & Farage, a tired Ron Paul and a bored looking Jim Rogers all on the same stage
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In my opinion HSBC have done this in response to getting caught laundering Mexican drug cartel money. However HSBC's real agenda is preventing the conversion of 'virtual' balances into more tangible physical cash (which they dont have alot of and would have to 'order' in). This is why they are so keen on transfers, so they can keep their 'virtual' wealth intact in the system and not have to worry about physical cash redemptions and logistics between financial organisations.
As a HSBC customer I can say that they have been awkward with regard to cash withdrawls for years, they just seem to be using this money laundering speil as an excuse to protect themselves further from capital flight.
HSBC Uk are also swamped in debt, check out the financials in the link below as of 31/12/12 they have over 2 TRILLION in liabilities and are only worth around 180billion once liabilities are deducted (and thats just whats 'on the books')
As I have said before, this is why I never keep more than 4k in my HSBC account
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Mandela held the country together. Without him the country could slide into turmoil. Lots of mines in South Africa.
Not 'could' mate, 'will' imo.
As for the gold price I do not think his death will make much difference to the gold price even with mass turmoil. SA is running out of gold and is slipping down the leaderboard at quite a fast rate.
Pound Could Crash By 20Pc If Uk Votes For Brexit, Warns Goldman Sachs
in House prices and the economy
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Ah I see Mr Carney is using his alumni privilege and calling in a few favors.