madpenguin
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Posts posted by madpenguin
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It's not a happy country, is it?
Given the problems that prospective emigrants have identified you'd think that the TPTB would take action to address those problems but they don't.
For me, sunshine and weather is a very important aspect of quality of life. Get that right and I am a happy-bunny and it looks like a lot of others feel the same way.
Obviously, there's nothing TPTB can do about the weather but there are a great many things they can do to make the grass greener here so that people have less reason to leave - for instance redeveloping British High Streets with attractive state-of-the-art visions.
To be honest the British weather isn't all bad, I spent some time in Germany and it got very humid when it get's hot and the rain can be monsoon like, I found myself hankering for the nice fresh breezes in the UK and rain that doesn't hurt or soak you through to your underwear inside 30 seconds.
I hear people get fed up with the sun in Spain and Australia, certainly I spend most med holidays under an umbrella even though I don't burn easily, each to their own I guess.
From what I hear Sydney is very expensive, someone from work went their on business for a month or so and was saying fruit such as apples or oranges cost ridiculous prices.
That's not to say I don't agree with the sentiments in the survey, the UK has become seriously broken in so many ways, I certainly don't intend going back unless things change radically
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I quite like Chas and Dave as well. There, I've said it.
The Wurzels were giants among pygmies..
Please guys, never share your iTunes or Spotify playlists, you won't be helping anbody!
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That's the Neoclassical argument, but as usual it assumes a level of rationality in market participants that is not there. By similar logic house prices would not deviate from fundamentals. The shortage is real, yet engineering companies recruit more layers of middle management and departments that collect metrics and the engineering staff headcount diminishes.
On the ground it is my job to recruit engineering staff for my department, but the wages I can offer is fixed within a framework set by accountants. We tend to end up growing headcount in areas that are most like those that run the companies, but then having a cull once a decade..... None of this is the optimal rational behaviour assumed in Neoclassical models.
Most of the evils in the UK workplace I think you can trace back to accountants and the growth of a professional manager caste (i.e. management traineee straight from Uni).
My particulr favorite are the types who try to run the company by spreadsheet, i.e. never actually leave their office to find out about the process they are supposedly managing.
I did an IT job for a large computer company that had a desktop replacement contract with a very large multinational bank quite some time ago. The job was complex and it took even good guys 6 months to get the hang of it properly thanks to all the systems here, there and everywhere they wanted to connect to worldwide (this was about 10 years ago so the technology was a bit more primative then).
I had couple of managers turn up and say they needed to save 100 grand therefore they were going to let 6 contractors go, fair enough and as the customer was a Bank the guys being let go had to be paid off straight away as bank security regs considers someone on notice a security risk, almost without pausing they then said "in another month we are going to need 6 people back so you can hire them back out of the pool......" (seems they thought 6 experienced guys were just going into some kind of limbo for a month and would happily be hired back considering they were being let go with a full months money up front to honor their contracts and they would just happily wait around for us to call in what was at the time a very good job market).
The standard of many British managers is appalling when you compare them to managers in the rest of Europe and the US, they don't live in the real world, especially in large corporates, and they rarely seem to have practical experience of the job or task they are managing.
(Just did the maths and for 6 guys over a month they would have saved less than 50k, so even more ridiculous than I thought)
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You should watch the video that someone posted in offtopic.
Sorry you could offer me a billion pounds to climb that tower and I'd refuse, the guys doing this are certifiable
Excuse me, got to go for a lie down now to stop the room spinning
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This story, which keeps bobbing up and is quite alarming is based on this graph from the FSA second Mortgage Market Review consultation paper, which was published in December 2011.
More detail on this thread - http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=176420
2030 eh?, so just as we're likely recovering from the current crisis, boom!
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The problem is that the banking system already did this.
Either we balance the budgets, let those who failed actually fail and take the hard times now - or we go for all out public borrowing and currency debasement until the system spirals out of control into hyperinflation and collapse.
We had this choice almost four years ago, TPTB chose to keep spending beyond their means and printing money. Now we are still mired in the economic doldrums with things looking likely to get worse.
Had they chosen the path of capitalism we'd be likely looking at recovery now after some very hard years. As it is, those years are still in prospect with stagflation and hyperinflation as an alternative.
Quite right you can create all the money you want, it doesn't help if no one has any faith in the currency you are producing, history is littered with examples
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Personally I'd find it hard not to have anywhere to leave my stuff. Credit to him for dropping his attachment to physical goods, but I don't think I could do it.
Actually, not to get too morbid, but bear in mind most of the things you treasure will one day either belong to someone else or end up in landfill, I'm actually moving things like books, films and music increasingly over to digital (after I had some reasonable expensive books stolen on a train journey), plus the reduction in weight, space etc. is significant if you move around, and replacing a kindle or a hard drive is a hell of a lot easier if it get's stolen, just get your stuff back from back up's, also most insurance covers electronic devices but not things like books or DVD's
A couple of years ago when I first rented a flat in Holland for work and I was still on a non permanent contract, I went through Ikea and worked out the minimum requirements for furniture etc, rather than shipping stuff over, which included flooring for about 70SqM and 2 double beds and a sofa, I was amazed to find the cost for everything was only around €2,500 (kitchen white goods included under the rental)
Even if you lose everything it's not as bad as you think, I found the only things I really treasure which are truly irreplaceable are older family photographs, which have all been digitized, and some are now stored online.
Physical possessions can be stolen, go up in a fire or any number of other disasters, when that happens you just have to carry on, they aren't as important as you think.
I also happen to think it's a matter of how much money you have, I remember an interview with the lottery millionaire who had convictions for car theft, he said that having money took the fun out of shopping because you could just buy something, whereas before you had to spend ages looking at it in shops and saving (or stealing
) to get whatever it was you desired, and you value that thing less when you have money purely because there was no effort to aquire it.At the 1.5Bn point possessions must truly become pretty meaningless, so long as you have your bank cards on you.
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A balanced budget means that tax income = outgoings.
this would include repayments of interest, a sum for future loan capital repayments.
carrying on as we are leads to Greece, regardless...proof being that Greece, through deficit spending, became...Greece....
Apparently the Bankers have their claws into Brazil now...the fastest growing economy, bigger than the UKs...China is soon to be dumped....forget Greece when they can frack the WORLD.
Agreed it's not anyone country's stupidity entirely, it's the banking system we have evolved (or rather the bankers have created)
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Its been four years of decline and there is still no end in sight.Spain, Portugal will default and when we look back at the decade it will be the Great Depression 2, talked about for the next 100 years.
So it is a Financial Armageddon, just as you would expect, a slow lumbering monster.
Actually all the countries printing are defaulting, it's just that in some cases it's more obvious than others, the amount of times I've read "Of course Britain has never defaulted" when we have at least 6 times in the nations history (1932 being the last one), and probably would have again in 1945 without the loans from the US.
Both the UK and the USA are defaulting right now what with all the QE
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But Europe will go on, as will Spain. Ambrose from the Telegraph pointed out last year that Spain is one of the great and historic sovereigns of the world. The idea that it shoud totally wreck itself to pay some creditors is just stupid.
People love a good disaster, so long as it's not happening to them, this is why we are continually getting predictions of doom for various countries economies and then eventually some rather boring men meet and have some rather boring conversations and deals are made and life goes on, maybe with some riots and cuts but no financial armageddon.
I'm pretty sure market manipultion by some of the stronger funds is responsible for the chaos in the weaker Eurozone countries, notice they never go into crisis together?, apparently bond speculators got a bloody nose when they tried it on with Italy as many locals bought domestic debt (Cosa Nostra?
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"12. To introduce new cults and continue to boost those already functioning which includes rock "music" gangsters such as the filthy, degenerate Mick Jagger's "Rolling Stones" (a gangster group much favoured by European Black Nobility) and all of the Tavistock created "rock" groups which began with "The Beatles." To continue to build up the cult of Christian fundamentalism begun by the British East India Company's servant, Darby, which will be misused to strengthen the Zionist state of Israel through identifying with the Jews through the myth of "God's Chosen People" and by donating very substantial amounts of money to what they mistakenly believe is a religious cause in the furtherance of Christianity."
Shame I quite like the Stones, shocked to hear they are merely diciples of the Illuminati
(p.s. I am not now, nor ever have been, a member of the European Black Nobility whatever that is)
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We need a special sort of immigrant who doesn't drink or eat, or occupy housing or take up school places or space on the roads, nor do they sign on with GPs or dentists nor use hospitals, nor commit crime, nor carry diseases like AIDS, typhoid or hepatitis. They must pay taxes but not have jobs, and of course not have children.
I'm thinking some sort of homeless but healthy gay Russian billionaire.
I'm sure if there are alternative dimensions there may also be some beings that fit the bill, bit unnerving when they walk straight through you though...................
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Based on what I see in central London, it's because Brits just don't apply.
According to a BBC intervew this morning new recruits have to be voted for by the other staff in the shop, 3 Latvians working in a shop and they have to vote on a Brit, a Latvian and a South African.....hmmm who will they likely vote for to be the new team member?
The Pret guy being interviewed admitted this happened and said it was good because they had fewer communication problems in the team
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1. Gross Obesity.
2. Mobile Phones.
3. Tattoos.
Especially when it's all 3 on the same person
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I grew up in that area, I lived in Salford. Moss Side and Hulme.
I won a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School which was my ticket out. Salford wasn't great, but it certainly wasn't Beiruit.
Funnily enough one of my workmates came from the Lebanon, and grew up in Beiruit during the troubles (he knows a distubing amount about Russian made weapons), even Beiruit is pretty safe and tame these days apparently.
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Okay okay, this is the city where someone was recently shot in the head for daring to walk the streets on Boxing Day morning but listen, it's only 4 times earnings for the average house.
Someone I work with came from Manchester, he said growing up there you have to either be a very good fighter or a very good runner
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I've have a much worse opinion of Halifax. I've been with santandire for 3 years now and only experienced mild incompetence.
I have had lots of problems with Santander, as has my wife who has recently received 2 gift baskets from them for serious errors on her bank account.
I was talking to a Spanish colleague at work the other day who says they have just as bad a reputation in Spain.
Their UK operation has got a bit better but not much, they are the only UK bank I know who can have their ATM network down for several days in a row and not treat this as a serious problem
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"You know nothing Jon Snow!"
Sorry just couldn't resist a "Game of Thrones" quote
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I assume you are being sarcastic, but some extremists could take this seriously.
However in the past it doesn't work out in the long run. Now it wouldn't work as we are a consumerist society more than we ever have been in the past, slave aren't consumers.
Extremists wouldn't need a one line throwaway sarcastic remark on an internet forum to come up with the same idea or worse.
Of course it wouldn't work, and the ghost of Marie Antoinette could tell you how this is going to end up for the people who tried to impose this
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again, true enough, but debt is always a killer when it is imposed for no good reason....these bailouts are just a waste of effort...they aint gonna work....and if they continue, the tax burden will finish the strongest of economies.
I pray it all stops.
I agree, but it's a problem for all the major Western economies at present, the US has huge amounts of debt, the UK the same, especially if you include all those PFI agreements and it's hard to see how they will manage the interest (QE presumably has limits), and the Eastern "Tiger economies" are very dependent on Western demand.
These are interesting times economically but not in a good way.
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Perhaps, but they do have industry. If you cancelled all UK debt today we'd be in debt again tomorrow and would never get out. I don't think this is true of Germany as they can export to countries further afield than the PIGS.
I don't buy all this "they rely on exports too much" crap. As if it's easier to rely too much on imports so the UK is in a stronger position.
Here in a nutshell is the UK's problem we don't have a viable model for our economy, if we were an economic powerhouse we probably wouldn't even have had this thread started in the first place
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things will change soon...these "firewalls" and "bailouts" cost money that isnt coming back.
Thing is it's a question of basic capability, if you have the capability to earn lots or income both within and outside your borders debt is serious but not fatal.
Go to a German store and much of what you can buy was made in Germany in the case of things like kitchen appliances etc.
The UK isn't a total basket case and we do have other industries other than finance such as pharmaceuticals, we just don't make enough of them, and we make business too expensive at all levels which is why UK business is outsource crazy when it comes to manufacturing
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He's only just started this year - so yes it could end up a disaster! I think he's just selling it, not making it.
My point is more that as well as taking a risk to improve your lot by moving abroad, you can do the same and remain within the UK.
In my immediate family, i'm the only one with a "true" office job. There are alternatives. I agree that they don't always pay as well.
I don't think the UK is a basket case. I think the current situation of all the world's manufacturing being done in China is totally untenable, and within 10-20 years we'll see it dramatically reverse.
However, I can totally understand why some of you would want to work abroad in the meantime - I just caution those still in the UK and thinking of it that emigration only works if you have the right mindset and do your research. It isn't an answer for everyone.
Big problem in the UK is just basic costs, one of my relatives makes home made biscuits for her dogs, while in Germany I saw a woman opening a shop selling just that, home made dog biscuits, and it was certainly still open 7 months later when I left, can you see anyone even going a month with that idea here?, business rates alone would kill it, this is the problem, the UK needs to drastically reduce costs for small business in order that anyone can make money from simple ideas, you should be able to turn any hobby into a business, the diversity and specialisation of German shops in particular is astounding, one long time shop there sold cash registers for stores...just that nothing else!
Our Government is obsessed with the big guys, but with lots of small businesses you get creativity, specialisation and new businesses which eventually flow through the system, Germany's export prowess comes as much from lots of small engineering firms as it does from the bigger businesses
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The point you don't address is the one I made- if we agree that unemployed people are to be denied the legal protections enjoyed by everyone else we are in effect creating a class of people who are designated as inferior before the law- breaching a basic principle of justice.
If this same tactic were applied to another group- say black people- there would be outrage. So long as the minimum wage remains in place forcing unemployed people to work for less than that amount is to create a class of people for whom the protection of the law is weakened- this has bad historical resonances for me which is why I would and do oppose it.
Not a problem the people behind this kind of crap will just increase the taunting and floggings until morale improves :angry:
Currant Bun - 48% Of Britons Want To Emigrate
in House prices and the economy
Posted · Edited by madpenguin
The problem with UK is that our govenrments of all colours are totally beholden to big business and the banking industry, ok it's true thats the case in many countries but in the UK we have an exterme form, most countries seem to at least make an effort to make life reasonable for ordinary people but in the UK there's not even the pretence.
High immigration as we have discussed on here numerous times depresses wages and keeps people more worried about keeping their jobs than trying to improve their conditions and high property costs and loans makes us literal slaves, I have spoken to a number of people who emmigrated to the UK some time ago (20-30 odd years ago) and even they despair at the high immigration and it's effect on jobs/services, it's fair to say it's out of control
In the UK letters from government agencies especially the Inland Revenue have a tone which reminds you of the Sheriff of Nottingham talking to downtrodden serfs. :angry: