peemac

Doesn't surprise me that you didn't make a loss. No one ever makes a loss on HPC. I think HPC must be home to the finest financial minds in the world. On the other hand no one ever informs anyone of a trade before they do it. Perhaps the mods should enforce a strict 'no after-eventing' rule when it comes to talking about trades because the constant boasting and after-eventing is really getting my goat.

I love these 'facts' How, prey tell were they accurately measuring CO2 in the earths atmosphere in 1860? How can we be sure their methods were accurate? How do they extrapolate locally measured concentrations to global means? Same with temperature. How do people know exactly how hot it was 100 000 years ago? Fair enough you can use proxy data such as tree rings etc. but the margins of error are huge (about +/- 30-70%). I'll remain sceptical until I se irrefutable evidence that convinces me otherwise. Another annoying thing. Why is water vapour never mentioned as a greenhouse gas? It absorbs in the IR region much more strongly than CO2 and is present in the atmosphere in much larger concentrations. Where are the water vapour doomsayers? Why is no one pointing out that if we moved to a Hydrogen economy the major emmision (i.e. water) is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2)

Have you factored in this professional couple on 30k each (hmm, not really a typical couple ) deciding to have kids? If not what's the effect of the birthrate tending to zero? Who's going to keep us all once we've retired?

He wasn't missing the point, it was a rather insightful and pertinent comeback. Watch crimewatch next time it's on. The majority are either Eastern European or Black. What conclusions would you draw from that? How should we treat Eastern European and black people by MarkGs reasoning? If it all depends on where you live why stereotype according to dress? Surely you should be stereotyping according to area. What you're really stereotyping according to is socio-economic class.

Christ, talk about missing the mans point. When it comes to law and order I'm about as right wing as it gets. As an example, I'd happily see recidivist burglars executed. I really wouldn't give a 5hit. But so-called 'hoodies' do need to be cut some slack. We all know who the biggest thieves are in this country - the politicians, bankers and lawyers. They rob us left, right and centre everyday. Are we turning our anger on them? No, people prefer to believe the hype that you're at severe risk of getting stabbed everytime you leave your house. It's just not true. Same a there isn't a paedophile on every street corner and behind every bush in every park.

Much like Crichton's later stuff. You just know it's written as a pitch for a film. Although if anyone likes a sci-fi read and hasn't read it yet 'Andromeda Strain' by Michael Crichton is well worth picmking up. Agree with the 'anything by Vonnegut call' An amazingly clever writer, although I prefer his short stories to his novels. Decent shout with Silence of the Lambs. Not a bad read, although I prefer Red Dragon, which is the only book that ever scared me. At the minute I'm reading Boo-hoo, the story of boo.com. The famous internet startup that spent £80M of venture capital then went bust. Tthey were valued at almost $500M dollars by one bank before they'd sold a single item , anyone interested in the follies of unbridled capitalism will enjoy it. Fave book of all time is 'Hard times'. How else can you form the mind of a reasoning animal than by facts? Genius

Yes, different to the last time. Different to crashes previous to that I don't know. You know what, I don't think anyone really knows. We're all sat about being armchair economists, but I'm not convinced anyone on this site knows the real situation. I'm not sure the majority of professionals know what's coming. You know what they say - anyone idiot can make money in a boom. All these financial whizzkids making big fat bonuses might be contemplating the leap off the top floor should things start to go awry.

If the dow opens down the FTSE will go into freefall, I'm convinced of it.

Wouldn't it depend on the reasons for the crash? Didn't the 2000/2001 crash come largely as a result of financiers realising they were pumping far too much money into and placing far too high a valuation on companies that were never going to make a profit? You could argue that the money that was pulled out of high-tech stocks was then ploughed into property, which was still undervalued at the time. Surely this scenario is different, property is overvalued by most yardsticks (income multiples and rental yields) and the stock markets have been driven up by the force of easy money. On the point of the 2000/2001 crash I'm just reading boohoo at the minute which is the story of boo.com, who notoriously burned their way through $120M of venture capital in a little over 12 months. Total madness and well worth a read.

lol, I was going to say he was doing very well up until that point Just explain how people spending their money on other things can possibly the problem. The problem is that people are spending the vast majority of their income (IMO an unsustainable proportion) on their house. Everything else is going on credit, including the kids.

This is where the liberal left's destruction of the family unit comes into the argument. In a decent society, that cherished the stable family unit with 2 parents and one acting as breadwinner there's no need for both parents to work. And no need for any state intervention. Anyone would think the liberal agenda from the outset was to make everyone dependent on the state

I'm sorry but I really have no idea what point you are trying to make.

Do you drive?

I know that's tongue in cheek, but there's plenty of time for that when the nippers are grown up. My dad always seems to be on holiday.

What a load of old over-intellectualised nonsense. Simple fact: Children are expensive. Always have been, always will be. People without kids have both more money and time to spend on themselves, the downside is that they don't get the joy of kids. People who have kids AND who worry too much about money to really enjoy their kids are the poorest of the lot.

Kids ARE expensive. We spend 5k a year on childcare and lose half a fulltime income from my wife (a teacher) = £16k That's without taking into account clothes, food, toys etc. which IMO are fairly minor costs. The big hits come from the two mentioned above. My wage is £27k, so with my wife's income that gives us £38k a year, or a very modest house (in fact we still live in the 3 bed flat we bought 3 years ago) without a child we'd have £50k a year and an extra £5k of disposable income = a nicer house and more comfortable lifestyle. Having said that putting a monetary value on kids is both crass and useless because my son is PRICELESS. I'm sure anyone who's got kids would agree.

I'll tell you why there's so much congestion, people like this: This is from another forum. I know this woman, she lives in London and drives a Lexus 4x4 (which she proudly displays as her avatar at said forum), her children are both teenagers. Well duuuh. The answer to the problem is to let your teenage kids get off their arses and take the hour (god forbid) trip to school. The school run doubles the time my trip to work on the bus. get the mums off the road at rush hour and congestion WILL ease immensely.

I thought the FTSE would rally today, IMVHO (I'm just going on gut instinct here) we'll follow the DOW. If the DOW finishes down today the FTSE will plummet next week.

I like Milton, prefer Shelley though, very relevant today. Call to freedom is even more powerful, it makes my chest swell when ever I read it: Make no wonder they don't teach this stuff in schools.

I've got a feeling this could be big.

It was a rhetorical question I understand vaguely the mechanics of how they make it so, the ingenious part is that very few do, or even question how everything related to the cost of living can rise above the rate of inflation. It's a total oxymoron. On an everyday level it is the price increases that define inflation, not the other way round.

Doublethink so subtle its ingenious. Gas - above inflation increase Electric - above inflation increase Travel - above inflation increase Water - above inflation increase Housing - above inflation increae Food - above inflation increase Tax - above inflation increase How can this be? You've got to hand it to this government, they are bloody good at pulling the wool over the eyes of joe public.

lol. Whatever makes you happy pal. I can't be ar5ed going through this any more but you did claim specifically that your friend had income tax avoidance scheme to avoid paying tax on winnings, not simply a business where he could claim vat back on hardware etc. How can that be a mistake? You were caught out and your story became ever more elaborate since then.

You specifically, 100% categorically originally said INCOME tax.

Because Ladbrokes are running a business, a private gambler is not. Your mate really needs to ring the IR or get himself a new accountant (you're not his accountant are you), according to them being good enough to win at gambling does not constitute it being a profession. This implies that there is no such thing as a professional gambler,which is wrong IMO but that's their call and apparently a decision based on legal precedent. So why run his gambling operation as a business? If your mate is as clever as you say and making as much money, he could automate the entire process, buy a few PCs and just sit about watching DVDs and making tax-free millions. In an earlier post you say that your friend has regular technical meetings with the betfair people - then you say he doesn't take a hands on role. Which is it? Duke's story SEEMED plausible to me. I had no reason to disbelieve that he has a friend who made serious amounts of money from Betfair, as I have now stated many times on the thread I believe that there are undoubtedly people raking in vast sums from Betfair in one way or another. However alarm bells started ringing when Duke claimed his friend had set up a tax avoidance scheme to avoid paying tax on his winnings - anyone with a serious interest knows that gambling winnings are tax exempt. From this point Duke's story about his friend becomes ever more elaborate, i.e. no longer does he have betfair trading software that goes 'kerching' he has instant messaging software that goes 'kerching' etc. etc. Increasing elaboration is in my experience the surest sign of pork pies. I don't envy anyone who makes a good living for themselves, I'll say it again - I'm sure people are making sums of this size from betfair, I don't begrudge them it one bit.