mrphil

A large proportion of the working public are on 2007 wages in 2020, so not sure I see the issue?

On an individual level you are correct, but it is Government policy that has failed younger generations. Majority of wealth sits in a generation which, let's be honest, did nothing special apart from living an ordinary life. The lack of balance across generations is enormous, combined with policies which would penalise those who want to trade down, albeit temporarily suspended in the form of SDLT. Some kind of incentive which incentivises downsizing would do wonders for social mobility, so the point is such a scheme may not be as crazy as it first appears.

That's pretty good forecasting, they should pay themselves bonuses for being so accurate. ?

This actually wouldn't be all that bad as an initiative. So much housing stock is tied up by pensioners rattling around in large family homes. I live in a decent sized detached 4 bed with 3 kids. Lady next door in same size house is retired, on her own, a misery (if the kids dare breathe in the garden she complains), and just needs to be moved to a retirement village size appropriate. Why the hell do we accept individuals living in family homes while families struggle in rented shoeboxes?

Unlikely to be anywhere near as bad as this. The way the scheme is setup means that it currently makes more sense for employers to keep employees furloughed than bring back and have only 50% or less of normal business while people are still wary of Covid-19. There is no incentive today to be opening and pulling off furlough. Dont be surprised in October when the majority return to their normal employment. Sure there will be redundancies, but there is nowhere near a 1:1 furlough to redundancy ratio.

How do we know anyone is buying? Land Registry records for July won't be available for 3 months, I'd be amazed if things look anywhere near as rosy in hindsight as Rightmove STC labels would suggest.

Unlikely to be the reason they are in there. Older LCD TVs that had florescent backlights almost always fail with invertor that drives the backlight burning out a component, usually 20p in parts to fix. Newer LED backlit LCDs tend to fail with double/ghosted images or weird colours. Again pennies in parts to fix. The real issue is the throwaway society which says if it fails, you bin it and buy new instead of having it repaired, which then leads to nobody in business who can carry out the repairs because they would have no customers.

Three months notice. The Coronavirus Act 2020 protects most tenants and secure licensees in the private and social rented sectors by putting measures in place that say where landlords do need to issue notices seeking possession, the notice period must be for three months. Landlords can choose to give a longer notice period. From 27th March, any claims in the system or about to go into the system will be affected by a 90 day suspension of possession hearings and orders (see Section 2).

Not sure if these media reports about record sales etc etc are just media ramping, but in West Quay (Southampton) today it was at lot less busy than a typical Saturday. Mostly teenagers wandering about in shoe shops, very little actual shopping going on, and the "bargains" were crap as well. 20% off? Oooh, what a discount!! All I can say is, record breaking my ass! The only interesting points seemed to be that who was open/not open seems to be an indicator of who is/isn't worried about their imminent future. So, I would say based on indications today: M&S, John Lewis, Next, all closed so

Just had my Halifax (Amazon) card increased from £4.5k to £9k, because "of the way I manage the account". Didn't ask for it, letter just arrived saying Good News or something like that. Seperately, have just been knocked back for a HSBC card with 13 months 0% on balance transfers because "they did not feel it appropriate to lend to me at this time" - they didn't even ask my income before coming to this conclusion!

The one thing that really sticks out in my mind over the last 5 years as a clear indicator the country was in big trouble was hearing through a friend about a milkman in their street that still lived at home with parents and had just bought a Porche Boxter on credit. What do milkmen earn, £18k? Madness.

Whats interesting is those things bought in the boom, like 4x4s, are starting to look a bit shoddy now. How many Pajero's do you see on a daily basis, the roads are awash with these things but they are now looking dated, they have lost their shine, and their appeal. But the price will be paid probably longer than these things stay on the road. If there is any good in all this, then maybe these symbols of the boom will long serve as a reminder of the mistakes that were made, that MEWing your house to buy a constantly depreciating asset is a bad decision. I fully expect that in 10 years time wh

Interest rate is meaningless. Banks don't want to lend, so houses won't be bought. A 1% drop will do nothing to change this.

One of the large banks will be making huge numbers of redundancies in the next 18 months. To date, around 250 jobs have been lost and the local media have run stories on how terrible that is but at least 1500 remain in employment locally with this bank. What those still working for the bank don't yet know is the plan is already in place for them to go also, with set timescales, and building ready to be sold. Obviously Im being sketchy with details, but based on direct experience Id be very surprised if there are not huge numbers of staff in other banks that think they have survived that actu

Is it possible that Brown is some sort of genius and we have it all wrong? I mean, during the boom developers went out and built all these flats that now lay unsold. Brown has already talked about buying these up for social housing - wait till the bottom and buy them all up, solve social housing crisis, in 10 years time housing becomes fashionable and tenants use their right to buy to buy ther crappy flats at inflated prices. Government make a profit and get rid of crap in the process. Bank shares are all but worthless, the government own what 60% of RBS? One day banks will be in vogue aga