adamUK

Now down to £995k I see. Looks a bit like a commercial development. No thanks.

I like it very similar to you but without the coffee.

Inflation is irrelevant. It's the wage deal you can negotiate that matters. Seriously is there anyone else out there in the private sector (bankers excluded) who's getting inflation-busting pay deals?

I just love the tudor-effect paintwork on the inside of the garage.

I don't spend enough time on HPC to know if this is a repost but I just wouldn't pay to be here... Someone really has a tudor era fetish. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-35743100.html

In Engineering you can earn good money doing: Oil & Gas sector - integrity management - keeping corroding oil rigs from going bang. Now that the regulator's closely watching following Macondo. Nuclear decommissioning - if you can stand the extremely slow pace of work. I am sure some of the ideas behind the safety cases that if they take 4,510 million years to get the thing signed off then the risk will have halved. Still, nice chance to coin it in all funded by HMRC. Chemical manufacturing - less cash than Oil & Gas but still pulling engineering talent from the same pool so rates are okay. There are a few projects going too but most of the things I see are involved with keeping old stuff going rather than putting in new stuff. Hope this helps Adam.

The situation is not as bad as you think. It's bad politics that'll be show stopper here not bad economics... So says the economist this week.

Nice idea apart from our clients have been squeezing our rates ever since the recession (most of them being manuafacturing companies). If I put my rates up by the amount I'd have to then my **** would not hit floor on the way out. This being the fundamental problem between public and private sector. I can only pay what the market will pay. If I try to buck the trend then I'll be out of business.

Interestingly I got a job application from an individidual who works in the Health and Safety Executive. The package that he was on was £10k more than we offer our engineers and that's before the final salary pension. Needless to say, the deal he was on was very good. The bureaucracy was doing this person's head in though.

I've been on the site for, oh, since 2004. It's been an up (then briefly down in 2005) then up, then down kinda existence. Hang in there mate.

I have an offset mortgage with the abbey and it's a very good deal. One thing is that it always makes you feel as though you are in debt as your bank account it always negative - this might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you deal with debt! The other thing is that you need self discipline as you can put in or remove as much cash as you like. The best thing is that any interest I 'earn' (i.e. offset) is effectively tax-free.

You can say that again. I run a small company with 22 employees and when we do work on a reimbursible basis sometimes people raise eyebrows at the rate. However with pensions to pay (5%+), employer's NI (12.8%), insurance (£20k p.a. including Prof. indemnity), all the guff to ensure we comply with the myriad and ever changing employment laws, business rates (£40k p.a.), plus an office, heating, PCs, software, electricity, waste disposal, maintenance of plant and equipment, UKAS surveillance audits (to maintain our quality accreditation), accountants fees, training and development (including mandatory Heath and Safety stuff), professional subscriptions then you can get someone's salary and double it before you start making a profit. And this is a company with no loans other than then business mortgage and just one 'support staff' who works 3 days a week. Cutting the burden for business should be a high priority of this government. But it won't ever happen. Ever.

Probably. Inflation is high but as we have seen it's external factors (imported goods prices increasing, increasing price of oil/gas) plus government increases in taxes which are keeping it high. There's so much slack in the economy at the moment this'll keep wages down and domestic prices down hence why the MPC aren't too worried about it at the mo. Though they might get worried about stagflation eventually (once the govt. debts have been inflated away first though). This will have an effect on people's house buying potential though, as the essentials become an increasing percentage of take home pay, this leaves less for mortgage payments and the like.

Brilliant!

In the grauniad: Hu Jintao's probabaly going to go around the US and size the place up to see what money he can get during the fire sale. "So Mr Obama, when are you going to pay that $2,000,000,000,000 you owe me?"

It sounds like the right approach - why alienate your long term tenants since they'll be providing you with the bulk of your income? In these times, even keeping prices steady would be a challenge. A good relationship with your customers can't be a bad thing can it? Adam.

I think this needs updating... here "Are we in a bubble? Just look at this graph, then answer the question. Here you can clearly see the last two house price crashes and the enormous boom that we have recently experienced. Who knows what the future will actually look like for this graph but we are well off the long run trend line which is worrying in itself. " Any suggestions? Go on, have some fun since we now appear at trend. My suggestion would be something (since I have been a member since 2004) along the lines of - See: I told you so.

What a sh*tter. I own and run my own company, grown from 2 to 15 in 4 yrs. Having provided HM Govt's economy with jobs and thousands in tax and had to work 7 day weeks, occasioanlly with no take home, pump all my own cash in it (that I was going to use to buy a house with), nearly gone bust and lost everything and now doing quite okay thank you very much, the only benefit of this sweat has been whipped off by my darling Darling in one swipe at the city boys. Cheers mate. Good job inspiring entreprenuerialism in the UK by taxing the buggers to the hilt. Oh... and the increase in Corporation tax for small compaines too annonced by flash Gordon on his last budget... I feel mighty depressed.

Actually, everyone benefits from cheaper housing that aren't banks and estate agents as follows: (1) FTBs benefit from getting on the ladder. (2) Second time buyers benefit as the next rung is closer. (3) The broader economy benefits as more money is injected into the economy rather than servicing high debts. (4) Even downsizing wrinklies that bought years ago will benefit but maybe not make spectacular profit that they might have done but still enjoyed steady (4-5% yoy) returns. (5) Those in negative equity might moan but if you paid £100k on a house that becomes £50k, at least the next rung up will come down from £200k to £100k so you only have to find £50k to get on the next rung, not £100k. (6) STRs benefit (obvioulsy). (7) BTLs benefit from the learning experience of having started a company and gone bankrupt. So there you go... everyones a winner in one way or another. ;-) Adam.

If you are on a 1 month rolling scheme then your landlord will have to have the deposit in a tenancy deposit scheme. Failure to do this will result in them being fined. So ask them which scheme provider they are with and if they are not then tell them they could be fined (I think it's a grand or so) so if he gives you 100% of your deposit back you will conveniently forget to tell the council about it...

Yes... you are right. The thing that keeps rightmove up is that they are well funded and can advertise everywhere. But, put this in perspective: Tesco's could quite afford to spend a billion on this and not even blink. Why don't they set up their own billboards in store as you suggest, then visiting the agents would be just poping into tescos. Tescos should allow people to list their houses on their site for free for private sellers only (say, if you are a clubcard member) for the first year. There would be a scramble to get your properties on there. Once they had the content then they would simply crush out the opposition. EAs offer very little value these days once all the properites have been put on the web. They simply don't offer good value for money. I reckon £199 a shot would be great!!!

No difference at all but they do all talk to each other and, for example, research published by members of the shadow MPC will find its way into the MPC's domain. As the shadow MPC meet before the MPC and that they should be looking at the same data, it also gives hints as to the way the MPC might vote. But as you rightly point out, they won't be able to change the interest rates on their own bank account... let alone the BoE's

Bold and decisive action would be to put them up 0.5%. 0.25% is already priced in and will have no effect whatsoever. Edited to add: I met Tim Congdon just after I met Merv. Of all the people I talked to he was by far the most passionate about it and got quite expressive during the interview. His quote in the minutes is great: Go Roger Bootle on the 0.5%. You would think he's renting wouldn't you?

I think the telegraph has hit the nail on the head... It would be hard to justify though unless Mervyn had 'ill health' or needed to 'spend more time with his children' (aka is pushed) since he has not really put a toe wrong since he got the job. No one can pin the August 2005 decision on him since he was outvoted so he's got a clean sheet. Perhaps it's good maneuvering by the telegraph, by spelling out that the treasury might want to see the back of King simply as they hate him then it might become harder for the treasury to oust him. Veeery Eeeenteresting mr bond.

It astonished me that someone can loan a lap dancer $2.4million. Something fishy there methinks.