VacantPossession
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Posts posted by VacantPossession
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+1.
Edited previous post. Atlantic Bridge, it seems, was wound up by Fox himself after the debacle regarding Werrity's links as a paid, but not official, advisor. The questions remain:
Why is a disgraced former minister given media access to promote his views when there are still unanswered questions about his relationship with Zionist backing of his private agenda while defense secretary and where is Werrity, what is Werrity's current relationship with Fox, and why is the media not mentioning any of the above in current reports on Fox's speech?
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One question: Where is Adam Werrity?
Another question: What is Fox's current relationship with Atlantic Bridge?
Third and final question: Why is Fox given ANY airtime on any subject, given the above two questions?
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Fact: Ed Balls was part of a government that ruined the UK economy. New Labour is in all essence the Conservative Party and has been since 1997. They did at least spend a lot of cash on the NHS but nearly all of that investment was PFI - a mechanism for keeping longterm expenditure off the books until you lose office, whereupon it comes back to bite. Ed Balls was a key element in the PFI scam that transferred tax payers' assets to the spivs in the city and now we are paying for it. Network Rail is another scam and New Lab were as much to blame for giving away good national assets as the Tories were under Major and Thatcher.
Balls and his ghastly wife are the property flipping team who when in office contributed to bringing the UK to its knees. It staggers me that Balls can have the temerity to do anything other than retire modestly to a small semi detached in a remote area of Yorkshire and do charity work for the rest of his life to make amends. As for his wife, even that would not suffice., They are both hypocrites of the highest order.
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One can only chuckle at the notion that the "return to high inflation" could be scary. The return? What? We are already in high inflation. The massaged figures are a lie and have been for many years. How is it possible that food, clothes, travel, fuel, water, insurance can increase so savagely yet reported inflation is a couple of percentage points?
Nobody believes this utter b-u-l-l-shite.
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There are only two TV correspondents worth listening to on the economy: Paul Mason on Newsnight and occasionally Faisal Islam on Channel 4. Paxman has almost zero financial knowledge and his otherwise rapier like questioning is entirely suspended when the thugs and hooligans of the City and Wall Street are wheeled on with the usual excuses for their criminal behaviour.
Paul Mason appears to be in his own corner. His excellent analysis of the Spanish Property collapse should have been repeated with a UK version, but no doubt he was constrained by the BBC who try to report on every possible "solution" to the "housing crisis" with anything other than the obvious one that prices are too high. Flanders started well but the more she is elevated in position the blander her reporting. No intelligent person believes a single thing the BBC has to say,Mason excepted, about the economy and especially the housing market.
The BBC caved in to the BOE, spivs, the city, brokers, bankers, and "experts" they invite on to explain the economy with tedious regularity. Many of those invited on to Newsnight to share their wisdom were (and still are) the very people who brought the UK economy to its knees. Ruth Lea is a classic example. She has spent the vast majority of her professional life subscribing to the kind of economic policies that lead directly to the banking meltdown. She FAILED to see the banking crisis coming despite being right in the thick of it. Yet she still appears regularly on TV and radio as though she has infinite wisdom on economic matters.
The BBC is hopelessly out of touch with economic truths, Paul Mason apart. It almost never invites any view that is contrary to the conventional thinking of the City. Time after time it broadcasts the views of guests whose vested interests are never declared. It completely ignores the different views of a vast number of more knowledgable people who never get a look in. The BBC is a publicist and by extension a supporter of all the worst possible criminals and thieves inhabiting the City of London. The crocodile tears it weeps on behalf of the consumer regarding bankers are empty exercises in platitudes and obedience.
No aware person should ever believe a word almost any broadcaster utters on the economy. They are all part of the same problem. As the great George Carlin said: Wall Street and the City Spivs, together with their sycophantic friends in the media, are all part of a big club, and you ain't in it.
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Peston does a tour of Europe at our expense, but fails to reveal anything new.
Haven't been here for a long while but I saw this comment, and would usually agree about Peston. But it's the first BBC/Peston piece which didn't have him bumbling along with that silly voice and it was surprisingly good for the Beeb. No doubt Peston is better when scripted and everything he said made sense. Should be seen daily by those who still think there is mileage in property speculation, and what the programme did achieve - for once - was an emphatic confirmation that almost all Euro debt is predicated on housing "investment".
Seems obvious to most here but for those who are still under the illusion that Euro debt is somehow a matter of misfortune or bad luck, it is ALL traceable to property speculation from money raised by profligate and greedy banks, signed off by governments that were in on the whole charade, underwritten by old, new and institutional cash, begged for by individuals who preferred speculative risk to real work, and supported by media and press that at the time were churning out property porn programmes by the hour....and still are.
The blond Irish man is desperate to blame anyone but himself, as are almost all bankrupt property "developers". Banks can't lend cheap money to spivs unless spivs exist. They are all in it together.
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Sony have had it coming to them for over a decade. Overpriced, pseudo "quality" computers which are no better than other makes at half or two thirds the price. Over-expensive black, and white goods that didn't notice others had caught up and overtaken. Snobbish "Sony" centres all over europe all struggling to survive Sony's restrictive franchise rules (please indicate where your own local Sony centre has closed).
And of course the shift to download music and software away from Sony's premium output which it did not discount enough.
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This programme is about naivity in the extreme. The one thing it demonstrates is that in order to be a millionaire, it requires a great many other people NOT to be a millionaire. I see that even a couple of very gullible and sad people on this thread have been taken in by this unmitigated rubbish.
Nearly all those claiming "success" on this programme fall into two categories: Either they are tapping in to the end of a property gambling boom by sheer luck, or they are making cash by teaching others how to....er.....make cash. This IS multi level marketing of the worst kind. Not a SINGLE ONE of the "successful" people interviewed are doing anything whatsoever that is productive, useful, or even viable.
To claim that "anyone" could be a millilonaire merely by believing they could be is utter tripe. How gullible do you have to be to believe the garbage these people trot out?
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Just a few words on the posts about "culture". Culture is everywhere. To say that Australia lacks it is a poor excuse for not staying there. You can trawl the streets of Colchester, or London, or Oxford, and if you are determined not to find "culture" you won't see it.
Aussie has priced itself out of housing, just as the UK has done. Thousands of Brits emigrated there between 2003 and 2007 having made an enormous tax free profit on their sold houses before they went. But now Australian housing is ludicrously expensive and there HAS to be a major property crash sometime soon. It's just a matter of time, just like it is here.
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Climate change is a preposterous subject to be a "minister" of. You might as well be minister of thunderstorms, or earthquakes. Anyone who has absorbed the exposure of the IPPC, East Anglia University, Al Gore and all the dramatis personnae of the climate change lobby who have been shown to be charlatans, spivs, vested interests and promoters of panic stricken hype out of which many have made fortunes, will know that pollution has many sources, and global warming through carbon is the LEAST worrying aspect of all of them.
But even if you do not accept this, the hypocracy of those who control our budgets for and access to energy, planning and the "countryside" is staggering. When every hill, valley and seascape is festooned with a million wind turbines (at a huge cost that will never ever provide alternative energy on the scale needed), you can be sure that those with castles in Scotland, or agreeable vast residences (see Simon Jenkins et al) who want to stop everyone else getting in on their act, are merely examples of that hypocracy.
As usual, those in power who lecture us to save energy, respect the countryside, and use less carbon, never apply the rules to themselves. The pathetic excuse the minister uses when referring to using "energy saving" lightbulbs as somehow relevant to his multi bathroomed, multi bedroomed second home several hundred miles away (and therefore a huge carbon footprint just to get there every weekend) is no different from Al Gores multiple vehicles, mansions and corporate jet.
The chasm between those who seek to control our lives, and their own profligate consumption of the very things we are made to feel guilty about, is the abiding indicator of just how out of touch they are and how separated they have become from the lives of those they insist on manipulating.
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Let's cut to the quick. Is Santander safe, or not?
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If people would just stop posting about the Express, it might go away. But everyone here insists on quoting it. You might as well quote the Beano. Actually that would be more useful. Can't we give the Express a rest?
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Each European nation that is bankrupting itself has several things in common. Too much money invested in property as a SUBSTITUTE for real wealth. Too much roulette playing instead of building infrastructure. Too much reliance upon fluff rather than solid economic growth. Too much speculation. Too much reliance on what "markets" say and do rather than looking at the reality of backbone economic productivilty. Too much concentration on the "Euro", which is just an exchange of currency, not a representation of productivity. Too much reliance on the word of economists and "experts" who are all part of the chattering dilittantes who say a lot but produce nothing. Too much money poured down the wrong black holes in pursuit of recovery. Too much reward for those who contribute little but claim a lot. Too much power vested in those who CONTROL markets but contribute nothing to them.
All these factors are shared in common with those nations who have allowed those who manipulate economies for their own gain to take hold, while diminishing the influence of those who are actually doing the work.
The UK has NOTHING to be superior about. It's all very well saying X is toast or Y is toast. WE ARE TOAST, or at the very least are approaching being so. Look at the first paragraph and see if there is anything there the UK has practiced over the last twenty years. I think you'll find that the UK is very near the same situation some gloat about in describing other nations.
What is the difference between Gordon Brown/ Tony Blair/Thatcher/Lamont/Lawson and the long list of current Euro leaders? Very little in terms of allowing economies to be based entirely on speculation, city-led gambling and over-reliance on property as a driver of economic "wealth". Our indebtedness is very close to the level experienced by all those states. QE has failed. The cash is disappearing down a black hole. We are in danger of being next.
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A mobile 'phone is definitely a luxury. Ubiquitous, extremely useful - but NOT essential.
I see. How many public BT telephone boxes have you witnessed working in the last five years? My point is that you cannot really compare what was considered a luxury 20 years ago with what you might perceive is a luxury now.
Of course the biggest luxury of all nowadays is to have a reasonable roof over your head. Strange contrast.
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The other point that is required for qualification is that by and large, VAT is a choice. There are very few items which charge VAT that could be described as essential.
What do you mean by essential? Your phone bill has VAT. As does your mobile bill. Are you proposing that is not essential? Any computer has VAT added. Are you suggesting a modest computer is a luxury? Are you proposing that buying a shirt (assuming you are an adult), or a pair of socks, is not "essential". Have you never had to eat a meal not at home? Is it a luxury to buy a sandwich at a take away?
Poorer people pay a higher portion of their disposable income on VAT goods because they are poor, not because they buy more bling (except perhaps if you feature in that ghastly programme about Essex).
Poorer people pay an enormously higher rate of tax in comparison to their disposable income than anyone else. Almost everything they buy is taxed in some way or other. Add to that their Council tax, which in some cases is equivalent to more than 20% of their disposable income after food, clothing and "essentials".
VAT is not a choice. It is the equivalent of the mafia arriving at your business, if you have one, whereupon virtual thugs tell you they need protection money in return for leaving you alone. Like council tax, VAT, as levied on businesses, is a legalised form of theft with menaces. For the consumer, it is just another layer of tax put on top of alrady taxed income. And that's leaving "duty" out of the equation.
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QE is failing because the creation of notional cash by pouring it down the wrong funnel (ie the banks) is not emerging as a practical way of promoting economic growth or even stemming the tide of recession. That's because as QE money descends the banking funnel, it is leaking like a giant sieve from the sides, to the benefit NOT of national infrastructure, employment or productivity, but leaks back into the hands of those who caused the crisis in the first place: The Bankers and other lenders.
If QE cash is to be effective at all, the LAST place it should go is to already failed institutions. It should go directly into federal, or national infrastructure investment that bypasses the need for banks to be involved at all, or at least as involved as little as possible. QE of the kind that supposes the cash will somehow filter through in the form of private loans is wasteful and futile because banks will still not lend to those who are considered any real risk.
If you look at the more successful economies which are riding the recession better, they all have one thing in common: They spent money on infrastructure like road, rail, public utilities, culture, education and health. They didn't spend it on proppping up existing house prices, which make no contribution to the economy, or at best very little. UK's QE has been aimed almost solely at keeping mortgage payments of the already well-off immune from recession, while those not in possession of a mortgage are footing the bill.
Banks like Northern Rock should have been allowed to fail. It would have been cheaper to guarantee deposits rather than guarantee the bank itself.
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Almost every bank would be theoretically bankrupt if all its cash vs liabilities were accounted fully on any one given day. So the question is, how exposed is a given bank when it has absorbed several other banks all over the world and particularly in Europe? And if several million investors are hit overnight by a bank failure as big as one might expect in these circumstances, do we really believe the government could possibly guarantee every single depositor, with a total liability of hundreds of billions - and perhaps trillions?
Quantitive Easing is the conventional answer, but all that does is pour money down the same funnel that caused the failure in the first place. QE is a substitute for rescuing depositors, which would arguably have been the preferred option rather than "saving" Northen Rock and other failed banks.
Each time European governments pour endless tax payer funds to save either other states or banks, they simply inject billions of funds down a black hole which, rather than re-energising the electorate's power to spend or even tread water, merely flushes even more cash down the existing sewer of waste.
The only option for those with any deposits left is to spread them wisely and hope that they are lucky enough to hang on to at least some of them should a financial apocalypse occur. Even the mutual lenders are not immune and nearly every single bank in Europe is over-exposed once the dominoes begin to fall.
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" HPC Veteran"
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If I had a fiver for each time someone on this forum tediously "calls" something, I'd be rich. Do give it a rest.
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RICS has a long history of stating whatever its members find to their advantage. During the boom RICS consistently talked up the market. In the bust RICS is now doing the opposite and telling sellers to lower their prices. This is not RICS having a sensible or independent view. Everything RICS announces in this regard has ONE purpose alone: To promote TURNOVER for their members.
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Because 70% of the news in this country comes through the BBC.
This is an often repeated misconception. The BBC has known Lab supporters and just as many Tory supporters, and each tribe claims bias on the opposite side. This is masking a much more important subject regarding all mainstream broadcasters, with occasional and noble exceptions. The mainstream media is far too obsequious to all incumbent governments, establishment economists, the city and large corporations of varying complexions, and the BBC in particular became a bland, unchallenging, unquestioning broadcaster after the Kelly affair resulted in the Board of the BBC caving in to outrageous pressure from Blair, Campbell, the Ministry of defence and the whole PR machine of whitehall, over WMD and Iraq.
Most of the media failed on so many issues to enlighten its viewers and readers about the truth relating to banking, wars, social and economic policy while the non-mainstream press and the better internet news sites were shouting from the roof tops about these issues way before the BBC and Co even got their heads around them.
Here are some of the major disasters that everyone EXCEPT the mainstream media predicted and brought to peoples' attention:
Private Finance Initiative (started by the Tories and enthusiastically carried on by New Lab - resulting in appalling debt to the tax payer).
Sycophantic reporting on Iraq War and its disastrous consequences, until it was too late.
Unawareness of the relentless diminishment of privacy and civil rights in the name of "ant-terrorism" an "security" (Left and Right parties all had their part in this).
Failure to report on city and banking excesses which led directly to major recessions under both Tories (1990) and New Lab (2007).
Failure to report on the dire effects of poor regulation in financial and other industries.
Promotion of house price rises as the default and desirable paradigm with multiple property porn programmes.
These and many other issues had broad cross party agreement and therefore entirely complicit reporting by the media. This is not political party bias, it is a LACK of proper, intelligent, independent reporting and nearly every broadcaster is guilty of it.
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Phil Spencer: Bankrupted owing £500,000 after "home buying advice" firm wasn't so good at advice after all. Carry on Phil - apparently there are endless TV channels happy to consider your advice really sound. Let's airbrush your history and carry on.
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"How can I help you?"
Tea please.
"No problem"
I didn't think it would be, since this is a tea shop.
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Yes, it's interest rates. Solely. When those with almost, or half-paid, mortgages are paying peanuts per month, house prices will fail to dive to where they should be. Interest rates, QE, credit easing and every other "stimulus" package has one intention alone: to prop up middle class house prices. Everything else we are told is nonsense. The government is utterly paranoid about keeping house prices high, because its shallow thinking cannot stretch beyond this empty notion.
Uk Government Props To Sustain House Prices
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Osborne's mortgage prop has to be quite the most stupid thing he's done, even by his own standards. Assuming it is not just an empty PR stunt to confirm properdy owning credentials with the Tory faithful, this crass measure just repeats the very same policy that got us, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece in the mess we're all in. Seasoned House Price Crash subscribers will know we went through this artificialk propping up of the housing market long ago (see Brown/Blair) and now Osbourne wants yet another measure to keep prices up.
How utterly dim. This is a license to push prices up even further than their current absurd levels, and encourages EXACTLY the kind of debt fest that bankrupted us in the first place. Moreoever, those taking advantage of it will still have to pay the loan back and still have to pay for the capital cost of the transaction. Meanwhile the economy will not benefit one iota from this measure. The opposite is the case: Yet more debt tied up in unsustainable property prices and yet more precious cash going into useless investment which does zero to recover the economy. It will just make buying a house EVEN more expensive, and divert desperately need cash away from infrastructure and into the very same gambling that brought the UK to its knees.
Mindbogglingly dim witted, stupid beyond belief and confirmation that two successive governments are more interested in short term PR than paying off the UK's staggering debt. After many years seeing disaster after disaster discussed here, it is beyong depressing that even after the debacle of the last ten years, neither the electorate nor parliament nor the media has learned that the UK's bankruptcy is based on one fundamental truth: Gambling on property caused the crash and if this stunt comes to fruition will continue to push us all into further debt. This government, like the last, is only interested in appeasing the roullette players, and not interested in real recovery.