Frank Hovis

I'm totally happy with this, I think they're underpaid for a very hard job. It's the expenses allowances and employing of family members that I object to.

Well that sounds mostly good CD Though I don't understand that bit about not drinking in the winter I always drink more (or less in the summer, depends how you spin it) because I'm spending most evenings indoors owing to the cold and dark outside. I think there would be a lot of takers for your group, I think Winkie's already in it.

Nice summary Dangermaus. I'm out of bitcoin purely because I don't fully understand it. I'm not, however, claiming it will implode for the exact same reason that I don't have any.

No homebrew factory up and running yet CD? I bake bread but haven't for a couple of months so tomorrow's the day. Hope things have improved for you :-)

It didn't have as sensationalist a headline as mine to be fair It's moral hazard anyway. If they want to boost the economy in a direct way give everybody £10k. Don't start selecting who gets it based on some flawed concept of deserving it.

This is the major reason in my experience too. Purely changing address seems to put the benefit system into meltdown and you can end up with no money for a month. This is the main story in my opinion - the administration of the benefits system is so bad in this country that people who are perfectly entitled to receive benefits find they suddenly stop and in the weeks it takes to sort them out again they have to go the foodbank or starve.

"Its own people" being restricted to those with a mortage.

I think I have just solved one of the great mysteries of our age! Has Bristol hum mystery been solved?

And to re-personalise it what happened to your long-term prediction surveys sbn? Some of those results will be interesting.

I'm still waiting for my ostrich farm to pay back, apparently there was some kind of great tax relief reason but I didn't really understand it.

Sometimes you need to. It looks likely that I will have to in 3 - 4 years, though as I think houses will fall off a cliff* after the next election I'm not too unhappy about that. * And I don't mean like this:

Forget any notion of personal responsibility if you're Icelandic, borrow big, live for today, and the government will take money from anybody who has saved and give it to you. Or theft as it used to be known. I genuinely never thought I would see a story like this. http://www.thejournal.ie/iceland-goes-against-international-concern-writes-off-debt-1203320-Dec2013/ Mods - merge if already up, the story is from Tuesday but I haven't seen it before.

I have a rule about never investing in something that I don't understand just because everybody else is saying it's great. I missed out on some thumping losses when people were diving into cross-securitised dollar loans back in 1993; I went through it with people who were already in, sketching it out on paper and still couldn't see how it would work. Turns out that it didn't. Anyway, "Bitcoin in freefall": http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2519754/Bitcoin-freefall-Value-virtual-currency-dropping-China-questions-legal-status.html

Indeed, well done Frugal Git!

Keep borrowing, making minimum repayment, borrow to pay. It works for a while.

I always keep my current account balance under £10k for this precise reason, let it get any higher and you get the sales pitch eveyr time you pay a cheque in.

People aren't necessarily spending it. I noticed I had £20k in my deposit account earlier in the year so took £10k out straight away as it's losing money in real terms sat there, it's gone into other investments and I would expect most people with cash deposits to think the same way. And of course nobody will be currently choosing to "invest" their money in deposit accounts so the slide in banks' cash reserves will continue until they finally realise that the only way to stop it is to put up their savings rates substantially.

The other thing to flag up is that annuity rates are on the floor at the moment. When interest rates pick up so will annuity rates. The lesson from the current low interest-rate period is to retire (or rather to start drawing your pension) when interest rates and annuity rates are high and then you'll get a decent pension from your pot. I will be giving up work before I retire and then formally retire when I think annuity rates are near their peak.

People buying ever-increasing volumes of tat that they don't need: it's the only real measure of economic success.

The massive advantage of a pension as far as I'm concerned is the higher-rate tax relief, for this reason I have got a SIPP as well as wrokplace schemes. If any government drops this relief then I will stick with my work one but won't put any more into a SIPP, as other invetsments woudl be preferable; such as teh 30% tax relief on VCTs.

I'd probably have lent her some money for the deposit (depends whether I'm likely to see it back) but would want a repayment schedule on it over the next few years, none of this profit-share rubbish.

RBS taking their money back at short notice meaning cos. can't pay tax bills so go under. I've seen some very sharp business practice in my time so can well believe that they know exactly what they're doing. In some cases, this pushed otherwise solvent companies into administration. Oh no, not us say RBS: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2516607/Bank-took-cash-meant-taxman-RBS-accused-using-hit-squad-funnel-payments-small-firms-coffers.html

There are good landlords who get bad tenants. Then there are bad landlords who get good tenants, and then try to rob them. Nice that one got his comeuppance here Only a minute for those of you who (like me) are not keen on clicking on lengthy Youtube videos. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2516183/Raging-tenant-armed-sledgehammer-destroys-apartment-landlord-refused-2-500-security-deposit.html

Get a job......???

Indeed, tempted me to look at the twitter feed but when I saw that hadn't been updated either, and the fubra website was down, I realised it wasn't going to be a ten minute thing.