No6
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Posts posted by No6
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I always thought that Housing Minister Grant Shapps was a bit of an idiot, today he tries his best to prove it with his "Mates Mortgages" (must appeal to the plebs with the type of language they understand). There again, he is only doing what is expected to be done to prop things up.
Group mortgages to help first-time buyersThe housing minister will call on banks to offer mortgages to groups of friends when he hosts a second first-time buyer summit today.
Grant Shapps wants lenders to introduce ‘mates mortgages’ that would allow individuals to club together to access the necessary finance to get on the housing ladder.
The summit is the latest attempt by the government to find ways to make it easier for young people to buy their first home.
At the first event, which was held in February, the minister urged lenders and house builders to find innovative ways to support first-time buyers.
The following month the chancellor George Osborne announced the £180 million firstbuy scheme, in his Budget. This helps first-time buyers to acquire new properties by offering them a 20 per cent equity loan. The buyer has to find a 5 per cent deposit, and secure a mortgage for the remaining 75 per cent.
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/finance/group-mortgages-to-help-first-time-buyers/6516486.article
Banks should offer 'mates mortgages' so friends can buy together, says housing minister
* Mortgage experts question practicality of MP's proposal
Banks should offer ‘mates mortgages’ to help groups of friends buy a home together, a Government minister will say today.
Grant Shapps will urge lending giants to send a lifeline to the record numbers of first-time buyers struggling to get on the property ladder.
The housing minister said that without urgent help from banks a generation of young people would be locked out of the market.
The answer, he suggested, was a radical and new type of lending that he called ‘mates mortgages’.
In most parts of the country it is almost impossible for a young person with a full-time job to buy a home on their own.
The average salary of workers in their 20s is £21,000 whereas the cost of the average home is around £160,000.
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David Hollingworth, of the independent adviser London & Country, said the proposal was ‘absolutely full of risks’.
'Full of risks': Critics of the scheme suggest that friends have enough problems sharing flats and it will only get worse if they have a mortgage to worry about
He added: ‘People get into enough strife when they rent a flat together over basic things like: “Who finished off the milk?” and “Who is going to do the washing up?” It will be even worse if they have a mortgage to fight over.’
Mel Bien, of the mortgage broker Private Finance, said: ‘It is one thing to rent with friends, which is traumatic enough, let alone to get a mortgage with them.’
The vast majority of mortgage deals are restricted to couples or two sisters or two brothers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2011237/Grant-Shapps-Banks-offer-mates-mortgages.html
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Land Reg
Prices up 0.8% MOM, down 1.3% YOY
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/House-prices-show-first-rise-reuters_molt-675670402.html?x=0
They never mention number of sales, which I'm guessing are low. Lower sales levels can easily distort prices as there is no real lower entry level to the market right now what with FTB'e almost totally priced out. I suspect total sales are still running at about 30% of the peak in 2007 when light touch regulation, 125%, make up your income to whatever level you want mortgages were all the rage.
I'm beginning to think this crash will never happen
but then again I'm beginning to doubt I'll ever return to the UK anyway
EA prices kept artificially high while repos are snapped up cheap by
the elite for their btl portfolio to screw the peasants with high rents
Anyone been to the Azores ? looks like my kinda place
isolated ,good climate ,reasonable house prices, agrarian society,low crime
Property must be a lot cheaper in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, etc and as the UK is part of the EU it must be an option for Brits to go and live there, provided they have job skills that can be transferred or a skill to make money wherever they live. Mind you, if the UK ever does pull out of the EU, it is just possible all those Brits living the British way of life in someone else's country and refusing to assimilate, might just be asked to leave. Parts of Southern Spain, or Britannia El Spania, would be deserted.
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Well I can’t speak for the whole public sector, but I can confirm the following in the University sector where I now work.
There are several increments per grade (and then another 3 or 4 discretionary). At the top of the grade you need a promotion to go to the next (another several increments then until the need for the next promotion). These are not just the low paid, having just checked, these include rates up to £57k (not including 16% pension contribution - another £9k!)
While promotion used to be quite difficult, a few years ago they changed the criteria from having to meet all the requirements laid out in the promotion process, to just having to meet the majority of them (i.e. just over half). Since then I have not (personally) known of a single case where someone has not been promoted when they reached the top of their grade.
As for the tail end pay deals, ours and many of these type ended a few years ago at the end of a 3 year deal that was to pay the higher of RPI or 2.5% as the last instalment. RPI hit 5% that month, so that's what was given.
That was in 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5188664.stm
Our latest deal was 0.5%
There might be a lot of fiction about, but there is also a lot of fact.
0.5%? Time to become a public sector banker then.
Five senior RBS executives share pay and bonuses worth £21m
It's a bit of a struggle to find evidence of current pay deals for the public sector, which may suggest there aren't any - pay freeze. A search reveals little but there are a number of longer term deals that ended in April 2011. Local Government already has a pay freeze in place and I suppose it is now possible that this will be extended to the NHS, police, etc. Along with education, these are the biggest public sector employers.
I doubt the rest of the public sector is as generous with increments as the education sector seems to be, but it is possible that these are now being used to replace the lack of a pay increase? I suppose it depends on where the money comes from to fund it. Are increments paid out of the annual wage settlement or from another budget? I would have thought the latter, after all, a zero pay increase means no settlement, but some would still get increments in accordance with the terms of the contract of employment they started on. I can imagine that increments will be targeted soon.
Public sector pay confirmed by governmentKat Baker25 March 2009 09:49
Millions of public sector workers will still receive annual pay rises of more than 2% until 2011, the government has confirmed.
NHS staff and police officers have been told their pay awards will be met in full, despite concerns yesterday that the fall in the Retail Prices Index – used to set public sector pay – to zero for the first time in 49 years, could leave many facing pay freezes.
Under the agreement, nurses will continue receiving pay rises under "long-term deals", which will lead to a 2.4% increase in 2009-10, with a further 2.25% boost the following year. It is expected that teachers will get an additional 2.3% both this year and next, while police officers' pay will increase by 2.6% in 2009-10, with another 2.55% rise in 2010-11.
The pay deals were agreed before the recession set in, but the government now faces mounting calls from the private sector – where many have been forced to introduce pay freezes – for the awards to be re-evaluated.
Who knows what to believe?
Latest on pay deals: modest private sector pay recovery continuesPay award statistics from XpertHR published today (subscription required) show settlements at a median 2.1% in the three months to the end of October 2010, up slightly from 2% the previous rolling quarter.
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However this recovery is coming from the private, not the public sector. Over the 12 months to October 2010, public sector deals have fallen to a median of nil for the first time in the 25 years that we have been recording pay deals electronically. This compares with 1.5% for private sector deals over the same time period.
Of course, seen in the context of the 4.5% Retail Prices Index inflation figure for October released on Tuesday (on the ONS website), a pay award of 2.1% is a significant real terms pay cut and is hardly cause for concern about pay pressures in the economy.
When we surveyed employers in October, they predicted pay rises around 2% for 2011, and it is likely that we will see many more pay awards around that level once we start seeing the first deals of the January 2011 bargaining round.
http://www.xperthr.co.uk/blogs/pay-intelligence/2010/11/inflation.html
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Also, people forget that in the public sector, in addition to yearly pay increases, most people also get an annual increment (going up the pay scale), usually worth ~2 to 3%. So even in a year with a 2% pay rise, these people are keeping up with inflation.
Not entirely the case. There is a lot of fiction in the media right now about public sector pay which serves an important political purpose of distraction and divide and rule. Many of the pay rises that the public sector are getting right now are the tail end of 2-3 year deals, some of which were linked to the rate of inflation or x %, whichever is the greater in the final year of the deal. For example, I knew someone working in education who got a 4-5% (approx) pay rise a few years back because at the time the final year of the deal was linked to RPI. I suspect with the new Tory Government such linked to inflation deals will totally end. In fact, other than those in the lowest pay bracket, the Tories set a 2 year pay freeze, but existing deals would be honoured. I also read somewhere that the current best paid public servants are the bankers who were nationalised. Amazingly, their pay increases and bonuses are included as part of the public service now, but the media and those with a political agenda to attack public sector workers hardly report this at all.
As for increments, public servants don't get these every year indefinately. They are usually part of the pay package when someone starts a job on a salary range within a job. Again, I know someone who works in public sector IT and their annual increment is linked to their career progression. They move up an increment the more skilled they become although again there is a maximum number of increments that can be attained, usually between 4-8. Many however, will get their increment regardless of achievement, but this often tends to be in the much lower paid jobs where career progression doesn't exist.
Pay frozen for senior public sector staffAn ice age for public-sector pay – at least for more senior staff – began on Wednesday with the government announcing a freeze from April for almost 120,000 high-ranking employees.
Top civil servants, NHS managers, judges, hospital consultants and family doctors, along with the most senior military officers, will be hit.
The government has already announced a cap of 1 per cent on rises for all staff for the two years from April 2011.
George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, has said that an incoming Conservative government would freeze pay for about two-thirds of all public-sector workers from April next year, with no increase for anyone earning more than £18,000.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4437e73e-2c33-11df-9187-00144feabdc0.html
Budget 2010: two year pay freeze for public sector
Teachers, nurses, police officers and other public servants will see their take home pay fall in real terms after a two-year salary freeze was imposed.
The news that pay restraint would last until well into 2012, twice as long as had been expected, led to fury among trade unions, who pointed out that state employees would find themselves worse off as a result of inflation.
George Osborne sweetened the unexpectedly bitter pill by introducing a flat £250 pay annual increase for the 1.7 million public servants earning less than £21,000 – more than a quarter of the total workforce.
In opposition, the Conservatives had said that they would impose the pay freeze for a single year, but that exemptions would apply only for those on less than £18,000.
PUBLIC SECTOR PAY CONTINUES TO GROW – WHEN BANKER’S BONUSES ARE INCLUDED
Despite pay freezes, recruitment bans and efficiency savings, public sector pay kept rising until December 2010. This is the conclusion of Policy Exchange, the think tank for new politics, following a scrutiny of statistics from the Office for National Statistics. The figures give cause to revise the proverb: there are lies, damned lies and statistics from ONS.
The ONS data reveal that the gap between public sector and private sector pay is still rising. Despite private sector workers losing out during the recession, public sector workers have seen their advantage grow. The new analysis shows that despite the coalition’s attempt at pay restraint, public sector salaries continued to rise as late as December 2010. That was despite pay for many workers in the private sector actually falling even before inflation is included – meaning that many private sector workers will have seen drastic cuts in their standard of living.
This conflict with reality arises because the ONS is required to use the public sector definition as any organisation wholly owned by the taxpayer. This brings in the payrolls, including bonus payments, of bailed-out banks such as RBS, Lloyds Banking Group and Northern Rock. It also includes Bradford and Bingley plc. While London Underground is within the public sector, universities are in the private sector. These numbers from ONS are clearly useful for some purposes, but not for measuring public sector pay nor for comparing it with pay in the private sector
More reliable data from Local Government Employers Pay and Workforce Survey and referring to local government only, shows a real term fall in the total gross pay bill in the 2 years since 2008/9.
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1960's Taiwanese all girl garage band. Morrissey should do an English version of the first song.
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Now here's a story.
The Shaggs were an American all-female rock group formed in Fremont, New Hampshire in 1968. The band was composed of sisters Dorothy "Dot" Wiggin (vocals/lead guitar), Betty Wiggin (vocals/rhythm guitar), Helen Wiggin (drums), and later Rachel Wiggin (bass).
The Shaggs were formed by Dot, Betty, and Helen in 1968 on the insistence of their father, Austin Wiggin, who believed that his mother foresaw the band's rise to stardom. The band's only studio album, Philosophy of the World, was released in 1969. The album failed to garner attention, though the band continued to exist as a locally popular live act. The Shaggs disbanded in 1975 after the death of Austin.
The band was described in one Rolling Stone article as "...sounding like lobotomized Trapp Family singers." [1] As the obscure LP achieved recognition among collectors, the band was praised for their raw, intuitive composition style and lyrical honesty. Philosophy of the World was lauded as a work of art brut, and was later reissued, followed by a compilation album, Shaggs' Own Thing, in 1982. The Shaggs are now seen as a groundbreaking outsider music group, receiving praise from mainstream artists such as Kurt Cobain and also from Frank Zappa after he called the Shaggs "better than the Beatles".[2]
The conceptual beginning of The Shaggs came from Austin Wiggin, Jr.'s mother. During Austin's youth she had predicted during a palmreading that he would marry a strawberry blonde woman, that he would have two sons after she had died, and that his daughters would form a popular music group. The first two predictions came true, so Austin set about making the third come true.[3] Austin withdrew his daughters from school, bought them instruments, and arranged for them to receive music and vocal lessons. The Wiggin sisters themselves never planned to become a music group, but as Dot later said, "[Austin] was something of a disciplinarian. He was stubborn and he could be temperamental. He directed. We obeyed. Or did our best."[4] Austin named The Shaggs after the then-popular shag hairstyle and as a reference to shaggy dogs.[4] In 1968, Austin arranged for the girls to play a regular Saturday night gig at the Fremont, New Hampshire Town Hall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shaggs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxPsXPCR5MU
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This was from yesterday's Motley Fool email.
Twelve millionaire private investors reveal their secrets.Books that focus on UK investors are relatively rare, so Guy Thomas's Free Capital should be well received.
Indeed, he has comfortably exceeded his goal of writing a 'journalistic profile of the working lives of a few full-time investors' by including regular, well researched and presented sections to explain some of the more esoteric terms and techniques used by the twelve private investors profiled in the book.
Through the window
It's natural for any active private investor to be curious about the lives and techniques of those that have succeeded in a big way, and on that count, this book doesn't disappoint. It describes itself as a window into the world of twelve highly successful private investors who have accumulated £1m or more from investing -- in most cases, considerably more with typical compounded returns of around 30% a year.
They remain anonymous apart from the well-known Peter Gyllenhammar who often has notifiable interests in smaller companies, and John Lee, the Liberal Democrat peer, who is known for his investment writings in the Financial Times, and his former activities as a Tory MP and minister. However, a few of the twelve post on our discussion boards, so some of our regulars may well be able to guess their identities.
All twelve have made their investment fortunes in their own unique way. Indeed, there are multiple methods, lifestyles, education levels and personalities featured in the book, which is organised into separate chapters for each investor. At the end of each chapter, a useful summary box that features the insights and advice that can be gleaned from each investor's story is included.
http://www.fool.co.uk/news/investing/2011/05/04/how-to-make-a-million.aspx?source=ufwflwlnk0000001
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Poly Styrene's last interview from just a few weeks ago found here (might not be available for long).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011890d/A_Tribute_to_Poly_Styrene_of_XRay_Spex/
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Lee Trevino hit a magical iron shot, one that appeared to curve around a tree trunk, duck under branches, soar over a bunker and bite a few feet from the pin. “Signor Trevino,” called a Roman from the gallery, “are you always that lucky?” “Signor,” replied the U.S. Open champion, “the more I practice, the luckier I get.”
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Probably worth interviewing for Frisby's Bulls and Bears surely?
Interesting that 6 of the contributions made their million using ISA's. That takes some doing when you consider that the option of shorting within an ISA is almost impossible, for the most part you have to be long. Secondly, you have to use the cash in your ISA's to actually buy shares, you cannot use options, CFD's or spread betting to multiply your capital in play. This does show however that if you manage your ISA's well, you can build up a large tax free sum over a relatively short period of time, assuming you also have a good trading/investing system in place.
Also worth noting the contributions from this book go to charity.
My motives for writing Free Capital were confused (that’s another, longer post), but making money was never one of them. So I decided at an early stage to undermine the above critique by a sort of reductio ad absurdum: I would give all royalties to charity.My chosen charity is the United Nations Stop Tuberculosis Partnership. I’ll publish their letters of acknowledgement on this site in due course.
I chose this cause and this organisation because they have a top rating for effectiveness from both Givewell and Giving What We Can.
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From:
From:
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another sound-alike (though coldplay asked for permission apparently)
From:
Covered here, about 50 mins in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ym...he_Man_Machine/
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From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kShTUmYRyCw
From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duZprh4eojw
From:
I wanna be a boss
I wanna be a big boss
I wanna boss the world around
I wanna be the biggest boss
that ever bossed the world around
I wanna do it right
I wanna do it right away
I wanna do it right now
I wanna do it right away
I wanna do it now
Don't wanna be a dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet
Don't want to work for Daddy
In Daddy's shop, 0.K.
I get confused, so confused
I get a pain, I get a pain up here
In the Shirley Temples
What you gonna do
How you gonna do it
What you gonna do
How you gonna do it
Little by little, ooh ooh
Little by little, bit by bit
Sssh! Not too loud, don't tell everybody
Don't give away the game
Oooh, oooh,
I aint quite ready to reveal my campaign
This is not the time
My hero's are alive and well in a cave
I'm keeping them on ice in suspended animation
Till the very right occasion comes along
To our rally come along
Come along to our rally
Come along to our rally come along
To our rally come along
Come along to our rally
Come along to our rally come along
A Brave new world will rise from the ashes
And there upon a rock titanic, I'll cast a giant
Shadow on the face of the deep
And never again will they dare to call me
A freckled, spotty, specky, four eyed
Weedy little creep!
No more tremblin' and quakin' in the gym
No more come on fellas, let's get him
What you gonna do
How you gonna do it
What you gonna do
How you gonna do it
Little by little, ooh, ooh
Little by little, bit by bit
Little by little, ooh, ooh
Little by little, bit by bit
bit by bit
bit by bit
Everyone's going to be free
But they'll have to agree to be free
They'll have to agree to be less free than me
'Cos I rule the world you see
So wait for the army of kiddy-winkies
And terrible tiny tots
In armoured school buses
Firing poison pea-shooters
And sinking their milk teeth into your thighs
Delapsus resurgam! when I fall I shall rise!
Wanna be a boss
I wanna be a big boss
I wanna boss the world around
I wanna be the biggest boss
that ever bossed the world around
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How about some soundalikes?
From:
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The Best of Youtube - Music
in Gold, FX, Stocks / Diaries & Blogs
Posted
Which one's Guy Garvey?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpvZoyo4TOk