I think the wait is over

[Bluestone59]

19 hours ago, prozac said:

What would be the point of brexit if they let in millions of people, i do not think that the UK population will accept this.

Just like they haven't been accepting it since 1950.

[simvastatin]

10 minutes ago, Bluestone59 said:

Just like they haven't been accepting it since 1950.

80% have been fine with immigration, it just some parts of the 20% that have problems with it

[2rocketman]

1 hour ago, Wayward said:

Leytonstone..? Danger is some of these areas will become no go areas in the not too distant future. Why folk would buy in at such price prices in areas with so fragile societal cohesion is a total mystery to me...it is a huge risk.

Its going to be the family home apparently. They’re selling the 2 bed flat in Hackney they currently live in. Made just shy of 300k in 6 years.

[simvastatin]

8 minutes ago, 2rocketman said:

Its going to be the family home apparently. They’re selling the 2 bed flat in Hackney they currently live in. Made just shy of 300k in 6 years.

Have they sold yet?

[2rocketman]

Nope. In the final stages. However it’s not a profit until you’ve sold, but I guess it’s irrelevant if your going to plough it all back into a 750k home in Leyton. Totally exposed to capital loss either way in those areas. 

 

 

[bear.getting.old]

On 08/02/2019 at 19:40, Flopsy said:

No idea sorry. Maybe a false snobbery and feeling that he was escaping from a manual job into an office one.

I'll ask next time. He's not the first taxi driver to mention this. 

I was thinking about being a taxi driver. You are driving all day I don't mind that and chatting to people etc and driving around places rather than being stuck in an office. Perhaps it is one of those jobs that is fine for a while but after a year you hate it

[bear.getting.old]

18 hours ago, zugzwang said:

The point of Brexit is to asset strip the UK and sell off the NHS to US healthcare providers.

FOM is a misdirection. A populist campaign behind which the ERG can shelter its true intentions.

Don't be so ridiculous. None of this is true.

[bear.getting.old]

10 hours ago, zilly said:

Nothing whatsoever to do with 'socialism' - it's private corporations taking advantage of prevailing conditions to pay low salaries to increase profits, and the state having to step in to make up the shortfall to enable people to live.

Your idea that this behaviour by employers is enabled by the state is ridiculous - they will do it anyway. Your ideological bias has blinded you to the real  cause of the problem - corporate greed.

 

Its corporate greed yes but assisted by  and made possible by Labour in the 90s, and the Tories dare not change the government top ups for the poorly paid for fear of a massive voter backlash.

[bear.getting.old]

6 hours ago, Bluestone59 said:

Just like they haven't been accepting it since 1950.

They haven't accepted it but the governments have done nothing to stop it and the people have all moaned in private.

5 hours ago, prozac said:

80% have been fine with immigration, it just some parts of the 20% that have problems with it

I would say more like 30% have been fine ,70% have problems with it.

6 hours ago, prozac said:

Makes you wonder how it can go up to £750k when a 3 bed in Grimsby can be had for under £50k

 

Last time I looked in Grimsby you will struggle to find anything for 100k

[simvastatin]

1 hour ago, bear.getting.old said:

They haven't accepted it but the governments have done nothing to stop it and the people have all moaned in private.

I would say more like 30% have been fine ,70% have problems with it.

Last time I looked in Grimsby you will struggle to find anything for 100k

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E578&maxBedrooms=3&minBedrooms=3&radius=1.0&sortType=1&includeSSTC=false 

[godnose]

3 hours ago, bear.getting.old said:

Its corporate greed yes but assisted by  and made possible by Labour in the 90s, and the Tories dare not change the government top ups for the poorly paid for fear of a massive voter backlash. 

As we all know her on HPC forum, demand (i.e. for housing ) is set by how much money can be delivered to people for them to pay with. Demand in the whole economy (consumer goods, food etc.) is the same, and that's what keeps the super rich afloat. The model may have been to be generous with benefits, but the benefit is to the top 1% ultimately. They have been permitted to screw people with such badly paid jobs, employment prospects, and feeling of worthlessness that people are so poor or won't work, and that ultimately is gonna see the 1% shoot themselves in the foot. If the population stops spending at Asda, Primark etc. watch the whole thing tumble.  The top 1% are the people that extract the lion share of wealth from the economy, so the government gives benefits to aid this suicidal model of economics (the parasite 1% effectively killing the host - the populace). Yes, it helps the poor, but we are in trickle up economics. Labour's model was to forefront that they were helping the poor, but they were channeling major wealth to the top with this model. It was a great marriage of Thatcher and Labour policy, the Thatcherite winning out typically. And yes, as the other guy said, this is all down to coorporate greed. I support benefits, I don't support benefits being better than working, but that's the fault of employers, not benefits. Wages have stagnated and made been left behind by benefits, which is pretty shocking. If the CEO of Primark (insert name of any consumer goods company here) is gonna take £7.5 million a year out, then, wages of those shop workers are gonna needed to be squeezed.. Don't even get me started on the horror down the supply chain. Anyway, it's no coincidence wages have flat-lined...

[MarkG]

1 hour ago, godnose said:

If the CEO of Primark (insert name of any consumer goods company here) is gonna take £7.5 million a year out, then, wages of those shop workers are gonna needed to be squeezed..

Primark apparently has over 75,000 employees. So if the CEO was to take no salary at all, that would be 100 pounds a year extra to each employee, or about eight quid a month.

Better than a kick in the ass, but barely significant in the big picture.

You're right about government existing to funnel money from the poor and middle class to the fat-cats, but even 7.5 million a year barely makes you a fat-cat these days.

Edited February 10, 2019 by MarkG

[btl_hater]

10 hours ago, bear.getting.old said:

Don't be so ridiculous. None of this is true.

Well if you say so!

The opposite appears to be the logical conclusion, but still.

[winkie]

6 hours ago, godnose said:

As we all know her on HPC forum, demand (i.e. for housing ) is set by how much money can be delivered to people for them to pay with. Demand in the whole economy (consumer goods, food etc.) is the same, and that's what keeps the super rich afloat. The model may have been to be generous with benefits, but the benefit is to the top 1% ultimately. They have been permitted to screw people with such badly paid jobs, employment prospects, and feeling of worthlessness that people are so poor or won't work, and that ultimately is gonna see the 1% shoot themselves in the foot. If the population stops spending at Asda, Primark etc. watch the whole thing tumble.  The top 1% are the people that extract the lion share of wealth from the economy, so the government gives benefits to aid this suicidal model of economics (the parasite 1% effectively killing the host - the populace). Yes, it helps the poor, but we are in trickle up economics. Labour's model was to forefront that they were helping the poor, but they were channeling major wealth to the top with this model. It was a great marriage of Thatcher and Labour policy, the Thatcherite winning out typically. And yes, as the other guy said, this is all down to coorporate greed. I support benefits, I don't support benefits being better than working, but that's the fault of employers, not benefits. Wages have stagnated and made been left behind by benefits, which is pretty shocking. If the CEO of Primark (insert name of any consumer goods company here) is gonna take £7.5 million a year out, then, wages of those shop workers are gonna needed to be squeezed.. Don't even get me started on the horror down the supply chain. Anyway, it's no coincidence wages have flat-lined...

Some very good points......all parties are culpable........the biggest benefits are channelled to the top, much of it stays there, even the benefits given to the bottom to spend eventually finds its way to the top.?

[godnose]

6 hours ago, MarkG said:

Primark apparently has over 75,000 employees. So if the CEO was to take no salary at all, that would be 100 pounds a year extra to each employee, or about eight quid a month.

Better than a kick in the ass, but barely significant in the big picture.

You're right about government existing to funnel money from the poor and middle class to the fat-cats, but even 7.5 million a year barely makes you a fat-cat these days.

I'm trying to keep it simple here mate! There'll be a gaggle of people creaming off Primark's greatest profits, other head honchos, mostly share holders, I imagine. The point is, that greed at the top is funded effectively through wage squeezes right through the business, i.e. the bottom (much of the middle, whatever you want to call it). Average salary for a sales worker is sub 9k; appalling basically.

The government is subsidising big businesses, shareholder value and 1 per-center salaries, by allowing them to pay crap wages. The benefits system though, is benefiting the rich though on net, not the poor, that is basically my point. Stop the greed at the top and see wages rise, fewer need for benefits. As Zilly said above.

[“Nasty Piece of work”]

1 hour ago, godnose said:

 The benefits system though, is benefiting the rich, not the poor.

Agreed 100%.

 

[Bluestone59]

14 hours ago, bear.getting.old said:

Don't be so ridiculous. None of this is true.

I do hope you are right because I am having absolutely no trouble at all believing it.l

[Captain Kirk]

2 hours ago, godnose said:

I'm trying to keep it simple here mate! There'll be a gaggle of people creaming off Primark's greatest profits, other head honchos, mostly share holders, I imagine. The point is, that greed at the top is funded effectively through wage squeezes right through the business, i.e. the bottom (much of the middle, whatever you want to call it). Average salary for a sales worker is sub 9k; appalling basically.

The government is subsidising big businesses, shareholder value and 1 per-center salaries, by allowing them to pay crap wages. The benefits system though, is benefiting the rich though on net, not the poor, that is basically my point. Stop the greed at the top and see wages rise, fewer need for benefits. As Zilly said above.

And on top of these subsidies benefiting the rentier class, helping the poor, wherever in the world, usually entails giving them debt. The money goes to the rentier class or big corporations (usually the same thing) again; the poor get the debt for some overpriced house, good or service.

[bear.getting.old]

10 hours ago, godnose said:

The government is subsidising big businesses, shareholder value and 1 per-center salaries, by allowing them to pay crap wages. The benefits system though, is benefiting the rich though on net, not the poor, that is basically my point. Stop the greed at the top and see wages rise, fewer need for benefits. As Zilly said above.

So how would you do this. The fat cats always say their wages are justified due to the immense risk they take on from being at the top and also to stop them leaving for another CEO wage elsewhere

[godnose]

2 hours ago, bear.getting.old said:

So how would you do this. The fat cats always say their wages are justified due to the immense risk they take on from being at the top and also to stop them leaving for another CEO wage elsewhere

Raise the top rate of tax. Disincentivise vast greed, this will see top salaries come down. For example if everything over £1 million is taxed 90%, the difference in net income from £1 million to £1.5 million is only 50k; far less worth the effort to extract all that extra money from your workers' labours, and far less incentive to seek another higher wage elsewhere. With less capital extraction there is more to go around, more to invest, more to pay workers who are on lower tax bands. Tax was not always about just raising revenues, it's a way of stemming the greed of capitalists and making incomes more equitable. This is precisely why wages have stagnated in the West for the vast majority of workers while wages and wealth for the top 1 percent have boomed, and no one seems to realise this: you pay one person a vast sum, everyone else has to take a hit to enable that (Jeff Bezos / Amazon warehouse workers?). When we see this incentivised greed in house builders, who pay their CEOs tens of millions per year, we see the mechanisms that make this possible, low wages to the workers, labourers etc. very poor quality of building and housing materials; in other less geographically bound industries it leads to outsourcing (ie paying as little as is possible in the global market: exploitative labour, low quality goods). Yes, the tax contribution from the rich will be less this way, but the money saved on the 1 percenter salaries would be realised throughout the economy elsewhere. Greed at the top has been Furnished this way. It's a Tory policy, it was Tory when Blair allowed it. It's blue through and through.

[nothernsoul]

I would expect the CEO of a ftse 100 to have a lot better salary than me, drive a better car, live in a better house etc. This has always been the case. However, it is only since the 90s that this groups salaries have skyrocketed from something like 20 times the median wage to several hundred times. They have sat on each others renumeration panels and pushed their own salaries up and up. Although they are employees like everyone else in the company, getting paid entrepreneurial salaries just encourages an overinflated sense of self worth that leads to reckless behaviour. 

[Pop321]

7 hours ago, nothernsoul said:

I would expect the CEO of a ftse 100 to have a lot better salary than me, drive a better car, live in a better house etc. This has always been the case. However, it is only since the 90s that this groups salaries have skyrocketed from something like 20 times the median wage to several hundred times. They have sat on each others renumeration panels and pushed their own salaries up and up. Although they are employees like everyone else in the company, getting paid entrepreneurial salaries just encourages an overinflated sense of self worth that leads to reckless behaviour. 

Absolutely spot on. I have seen this from when I started work in 1986. Starting salary was £4K and the chief execs was genuinely a massive £110k.....something to aspire to. 

In 2018 the starting salary is £16k and the chief exec will be £5/£10m....yep that seems fair. 

Not only that but on the radio when ‘directors’ pay is challenged they get someone to interview who started a firm 30 years ago.....took the risk....employs 100 people and is  ranting on that he can pay himself whatever he wants. Completely misses the point, yes HE can because it’s HIS company (even if he now has shareholders) it’s HIS creation and if HE decides to destroy it by being ‘greedy’ and pulling all the money out....fair enough, well not fair enough but it’s HIS company to kill.

But the CEO of a FTSE company is NOT a director who set up a company 30 years ago, risked their family home, built something or created livelihoods. They are an employee who started with the firm maybe 5 years ago....for a company maybe started 150 years ago, built over a century, achieving greatness, building pensions, an institution....and yet this one employee takes £10m from it. A very valuable employee who works incredibly hard and should be paid very very well but not £10m.

The house builders are examples of this....disgraceful. It hit me in 2008/9 the the housebuilders were close to collapse yet they had built houses for a hundred years. Where had all their money gone? Of course...I realised the company was a shell, a name and valued at potential earning not its assets....all the money had left that company to pay shareholders, directors and sustain employee and other costs. There was no reserve to protect employees....just because I save my money to protect my future why would the company do that? Just go bankrupt...easy. 

And we let them do it...it’s capitalism, a free market....buts it’s not really is it. It’s a self serving network. 

I realised this in my 20’s and the fact those low and high paid employees around me all felt this system was right and fair....and endorsed it, saying I was naive and everyone should look after themselves, it’s all about the individual, anyone on benefits is probably a lazy cheat......then they moan about their own plight and not having enough spending money at Christmas made me realise this was the ‘economic architecture’ and the mindset of the masses. 

Every shareholder voting slip I vote against director pay, I challenge at shareholder meeting (to be fair only by email or post) and in my work I would advocate fairness and not to be driven by cost or profit but by making a lifetime impact for customers and employees. No one will remember if we improve profits 2% but they will if was build something like Joseph Rowntree did, let’s wow the world and make something massive.......”er, nice point but can we move on comrade “

So I became a hypocrite. Whilst I vote against it....and vocally advocated for a fairer system....with those around me (including lowly paid clerks hoping to get on the greasy pole) endorsing this system I decided to use my ability to take from it what I could. Worked hard, earned hard, saved hard...spotted opportunities, abused house price increases, stole property from struggling with debt, divorce or death, people farmed, dug in and progressed in the company and built wealth outside of it. 

Retiring young I am sorted financially......and still bewilders why those around me still advocate this ‘great system’ yet it seems to fail them. Financially its a great system for me because I think fast and can work hard because I am capable....and even in retirement I create more wealth for myself. But not everyone is as able....and done are daft enough to want jobs that help others. 

So I will always advocate that nurses, firemen, social care, hospitals, schools should be THE priority and be resources and rewarded and valued appropriately.  The paramedics who helped me after a sporting injury worth their weight in gold...but paid relatively a low wage because we don’t value them. Is £35/£40k unreasonable for someone who resuscitates and saves life’s...no? Ok let’s stick with £23/£28k... saves a few quid I guess. 

We should vote to proudly pay tax and infact I would possibly have a very simple and unavoidable tax..with an initial allowance but maybe a flat (and what feels fair) rate but absolutely unavoidable. Only reason most of my salary went into my pension is because I pay HRT....hypocrite you see. I am everything I despise in this system....yet everyone else keeps endorsing it and advocating it and to those I am grateful because if I were in charge of this country I would still be working. 

This forum lets me see some great viewpoints from people who share the same thoughts, different thoughts and gives me better perspective particularly from the much younger and much older groups. 

 

What I am not sure about is how to change things. I do vocally advocate change, make a noise when I get the chance...but it seems to fall on deaf ears....so I do support directly those in need and make a difference to a small population but it’s not nearly enough. 

Maybe it’s true and “The public gets what the public wants”....Weller?

That was therapeutic. Thanks doctor....I will send the next patient in?

[Locke]

20 minutes ago, Pop321 said:

We should vote to proudly pay tax

When some scumbag breaks into your house and takes your TV, are you paying him? 

Taxes are extracted, not paid.

[Locke]

9 hours ago, godnose said:

Raise the top rate of tax. Disincentivise vast greed, this will see top salaries come down. For example if everything over £1 million is taxed 90%, the difference in net income from £1 million to £1.5 million is only 50k

I'm seeing a lot of new accounts with stupid opinions today.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-31/why-its-not-super-rich-will-pay-lefts-radical-tax-plans

 

[Pop321]

12 minutes ago, Locke said:

When some scumbag breaks into your house and takes your TV, are you paying him? 

Taxes are extracted, not paid.

I don’t understand. No I am not paying the man to take my tv. 

Yes, I would rather like to proudly pay tax rather than it be extracted. Thats the old mindset and system everyone is endorsing and I manipulate...needs to change.