BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[PanBiker]

We also looked a Ezra Laycocks old house at the bottom of Pasture Drive on Coates Lane. That was 25K as well. Oh and the last one on Park Road on the right before Park Avenue. Another at the same price and that one came with the plot of land next door which now has a bungalow on it. My dad could have built that if we had bitten. The terraced house on its own has recently sold for around £260K.

[Stanley]

Ken, you spoke about 25 year mortgages. I heard that some mortgages are being contracted for an 80 year term. Before you doubt me it was the boss of a mortgage provider that said so. The last two houses I bought were in King Street and they cost £4,000 for No. 12 and £2,000 for the back to back opposite which was for my mother..... Hey Farm with a barn and seven acres cost £4,400. I paid that off with a bank loan at £15 a month which, when we moved in, was half my monthly wage. People can't believe prices like that today.....
The thing I could never understand was that the payment to the bank didn't go up as the value of the house and my wage rose. I was still paying £15 a month at Hey Farm when my wage was over £80 a week as engineer at Bancroft......

[plaques]

The floggings will continue until morale improves!


The bank rate continues its upward climb. The intent is to take money out of peoples pockets even if they are already under the cosh with their existing mortgages. Bank rates indirectly affect everything that has a loan element built into it. Rents and any commercial or industrial investments are the more obvious ones. Invariably these costs need to be passed on ie: more inflation. The worn excuse is that other countries are raising theirs and inflation is coming down. But in all this huffing and puffing they don't mention Brexit where we have imposed sanctions on ourselves making it far more difficult to grow the economy and to pay the debt off from quantitative easing. Liz (lettuce) Truss and get Brexit done Johnson all quietly forgotten because its those with no money spending too much of what they haven't got.

[Stanley]

And what do we do about it Ken? Surely we have some political mechanism to counteract total stupidity!
Or have the upper classes got us stitched up even more firmly than we thought?
At the root of this problem, one of the factors is the Tory focus on house ownership rather than renting as they believe this is more likely to encourage support of the Conservatives. Cameron and Osborne followed this route as did Thatcher with selling council houses off at a discount to tenants. At the same time a decision had been made that the remaining council estates were to be used to house 'problem' families. Eventually this led to the 'sink estates' and further neglect of the public housing stock.
The 'Council Housing' movement, like the NHS instituted at the same time, was a brilliant social experiment that was totally successful and just needed good management and support. The Tory governments and their ideas have torpedoed both and we have just stood back and let them do it.
They say an electorate gets the government it deserves. If that is true there is no hope for us.....

[Tripps]

Got an email from a Bank tonight. Didn't care for the tone of it. Changes of T & C's

I didn't like any of it - but especially this -

"You can share your security details with an authorised individual (e.g. Customer Care Team) where required."

Knee jerk reaction - Goodbye - within ten minutes I had only 23 pence at risk. . .

[Stanley]

I thought the whole idea with 'security details' was that you didn't 'share' them with anyone......
(What the hell does share mean anyway, surely they mean 'disclose' and if so why not say so?)

[Tripps]

I thought the whole idea with 'security details' was that you didn't 'share' them with anyone......

Precisely - that's the reason for the knee jerk reaction.

"Share" is a very popular word now in modern culture. An Americanism of course. I think it broadly qualifies as 'woke' since it implies a gentle generous and welcome transfer of information to someone, rather than the more brutal disclose, or even simply tell.

I'd say it has much in common with the phrase "you need to . . . . do something . " rather than 'you should' .
It implies that it will be beneficial to you rather than being a command.

[Stanley]

[Tripps]

They sneaked this in I'd say, and it will end in tears for sure.

The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, a reform bill in the United Kingdom, has been granted Royal Assent from King Charles on Thursday, officially making it a law, according to a Thursday press release by the UK government.
Under this new law, cryptocurrency trading is recognized as a regulated financial activity. The amended Financial Services and Markets Act defines crypto assets as "cryptographically secured digital representation of value or contractual rights," considering them as regulated financial instruments, products, or investments.

What is a "cryptographically secured digital representation of value " - sounds a lot like we're in non fungible land.

Do we need it at all - I hear no public clamour? Include me out - bigly.

[Stanley]

I tend to agree with you David but then I thing of all those spivs in the City looking for a way to make money out of thin air and realise that we may need to have some law to help regulate them. Then again I look at the mess that has been generated in the economy even though we have a plethora of laws and regulations.
Perhaps we had best not get involved....

[plaques]

Noises are already being made that should Thames Water sink under its effluent then some of the pension funds will take a big hit. Pension Fund.

Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) serves 500,000 members and has £82bn of investments.

Now owning 19.7% shares of Thames Water. it was only in 2021 that they thought it was a good investment.

Given that the water companies are holding secret talks on how to avoid re-nationalisation they will probably be asking for government hand outs to protect the pension funds. Debt.
Those debts have reached more than £14 billion, leading to fears the government – or UK taxpayers to be precise – may have to bail the company out.
Is it time to let these companies go to the wall and let the share holders take a hit? They have enjoyed the good times from profit built on debt why not make an example of companies who take part in these Ponzi schemes and make it clear that they are not too big to fail.

[PanBiker]

s it time to let these companies go to the wall and let the share holders take a hit? They have enjoyed the good times from profit built on debt why not make an example of companies who take part in these Ponzi schemes and make it clear that they are not too big to fail.

Yes, why should they be treated any different to any other company? How can it be possible to continue running any company that is in permanent deficit? It's just wrong.

[Tripps]

The whole country is in "permanent deficit" to the tune of about two and a half trillion pounds. and rising.

Let it "go to the wall" or is it "too big to fail" ?

There will be a reckoning eventually.

[Stanley]

There was an interesting number crunching fact box in Private Eye yesterday commenting on Osborne's claim that when he underfunded the NHS in 2010 onwards he was growing the economy to withstand Covid. :
£1tn; government debt when Osborne became chancellor in 2010. £1.5tn; debt when he left office in 2016. £1.7tn; debt when we went into the pandemic thanks to Osborne's 'repair' of the economy.

[plaques]

There was an interesting number crunching fact box in Private Eye yesterday commenting on Osborne's claim that when he underfunded the NHS in 2010 onwards he was growing the economy to withstand Covid. :

Osborne should have a booth on the fairground next to mystic Meg demonstrating his crystal ball Nostradamus abilities. Covid wasn't identified until December 2019. Forget all the bull about growing the economy all he was interested in was austerity and like Liz Truss et al handing tax cuts to the already rich.

[Stanley]

Exactly Ken!

[Tizer]

Although they ascribe this to `The growth of environmental, social and ­governance policies' it's also because the banks, like so many of our organisations, have fallen under the spell of Stonewall and their money-making expensive wokeness courses ...
`Woke banks are 'a risk to national security' as they are not backing Britain's defence' Express
`Banks' refusal to do business with Britain's defence industry has raised concerns about national security and the potential collapse of vital military firms. The Ministry of Defence has launched a probe after dozens of military companies “large and small” complained they were denied banking services because of the nature of their work. Experts warn the trend could see vital defence companies collapse, leaving the country reliant on foreign firms and “dramatically reducing national security”. The growth of environmental, social and ­governance policies, which encourage firms to invest “ethically”, has been blamed.'

[Stanley]

I don't understand it......

[plaques]

From Bill Bryson's book on 'Troublesome Words' here's one that has fallen into disuse. 'Disflation' ie prices still rising but at a slow rate than before.
I think this is easier to understand than the comparative inflation rate that is quoted now.

I wonder why it's gone out of use?

[Tripps]

I think perhaps you mean 'disinflation'?

I guess the fact that inflation has been so low for a number of years has removed the need for the use of the word.

I did some shopping this afternoon at Morrisons. Inflation is alive and well. Several examples of 50 % rises in some food products. I note bananas which had been 76p/kilo for as long as I can remember are now 99p/kilo. That's a modest 31.5% increase.

[plaques]

I think perhaps you mean 'disinflation'?

I stand corrected. Disinflation it is.

Anything above 20% is rampant inflation. but don't mention that

[Stanley]

All I am sure of is that my weekly food bill, (Greengrocer, Grocer and butcher,) used to be roughly £40. It is now over £60 and rising.
The big puzzle is where is the increased income from food going? The farmers aren't seeing it, the supermarkets swear they aren't making excess profits and the Hunt and Sunak crisis meetings with the food processors and agricultural interests haven't provided any answers. One theory is that it is the multitude of middle men and processors all putting their prices up to cope with their inflationary pressures that are adding up to the record and disastrous inflation that we see. Sunak claims to understand money and numbers but he refuses to initiate a food policy, he leaves it to the Market and what a mess they are making of it. We rely far too much on imports and we won't see any improvement until the government moves towards the sort of controls and subsidies that we saw in WW2 which saved us from starvation when imports were being cut by the U boat campaign and not by global warming and global inflation. DEFRA didn't even mention food production in their agricultural policy paper.....
(And as these pressures drive ordinary people to despair, Sunak holds a hog roast at Downing Street for his membership.)

[plaques]

Good news for everybody. Break out the Champagne. Good times are here again.

The rate of price rises has dropped to 7.9% in the year up to June, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The consumer price index (CPI) measure of inflation shows prices are still rising, just at a slower pace than before, as the rate fell from 8.7% in the year to May.

There we have it a good example of disinflation. Prices are still rising but not as fast as before. Just keep thinking how lucky you are that goods bought last month for £10 will only cost £10.80 this month. Always look on the bright side of life.

[Tizer]

`Buy now, pay later regulation still urgently needed warns Martin Lewis – as report suggests vital new laws could be shelved' MSE
Plans to give buy now, pay later users much-needed new rights and protections should not be scrapped, MoneySavingExpert.com founder Martin Lewis has urged. It comes as a report has emerged that the Government plans to delay the introduction of vital new laws....

[Stanley]

Ken, the thing that always strikes me about a 'disinflation' like yesterday's is that the elements whose prices have fallen like road fuel and house prices and hence brought the combined figure down, are not areas that will have any effect on the poor. We need a measure of inflation which covers only the elements that directly affect the poorest, like food, domestic energy and utilities, public transport etc.
Another aspect that will not be trumpeted by the Treasury is the fact that our inflation seems to be more endemic than other global economies. Could this possibly have anything to do with the effects of Brexit?
Peter, Martin Lewis is of course correct but governments in trouble seem to gravitate towards what they can get away with and at the moment future legislation is not at the forefront of peoples minds. IT'S THE ECONOMY!