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Penny starting to drop https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/tories-killed-off-aspiration-workshy-britain/ Why it’s not worth working hard in Tory Britain From cradle to grave, punishing tax traps discourage high-achievers from progressing

Not me! I’d like to live in a residential caravan or one of those garden cabin things or a decent one small bedroom place. My 30 year old son is still living at home. He pays decent dig money plus does maintenance stuff in our home. If he does move on from our modest semi detached 2 bed bungalow I will be moving to somewhere else that suits me better….smaller.

At night the streets belong to us. Politics and protests and house prices and debt are for the nice people. How many armed response units do the police in England have? Id be willing to wager there isn't enough firepower in government hands to control one medium sized town per county. The fact of the matter is that none of us give a shit about politics, we just do what we have to do to survive and thrive in the situation we've been dealt. Jimmy Barbeque.

You would need 'staff' and they need minimum terms 'n' conditions plus NI, Pension and other 'benefits'. Edit: Correction @Van Lady and @One percent would probably move in. Plus somebody would be 'the gardener'.

This is stunning. I may start playing the lottery. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/147342350#/?channel=RES_BUY

they'll have to interact with the system for doctors, hospital visits, taxes etc

JPY falling is worse for the USA than it`s for Japan ,the jury is out on that one for me ,the FED isn't cutting any time soon IMO It`s the same cycle over and over US`t yields start rising ,the jawboning about rate cuts start over and over for the last twelve months ,whats happened ?

Hmmmm….I’m not so sure about that. I’ve read over the years about the so called black market being huge and cash driven. I’d guess the folk involved in that area of the economy aren’t going to give up quietly.

Short answer: shit hits fan. If the BoE and ECB ‘decides’ to follow suit then we’ll see the £ and € follow in short fashion https://www.ft.com/content/0112fe8d-856f-43aa-9bbb-c2106b00b5d6 https://archive.ph/8HMB0

It`s a hard one to answer is that ,they still are a large manufacturing nation ,this will undoubtedly help in that regard but they also import most of the raw materials Then they have a huge national debt ,but it`s mostly held by the country itself ,much like China in that respect My guess is something is either about to break ,or Japan has given the USA the bird regarding the hypothesis made at the end of the film Princes of the Yen and the lose $-JPY peg Long and the short ,they either have a plan ,or the shit is about to hit the fan either way it`s not good for the USA

AIUI that doesn't help them. The problem is the ability to borrow in yen, convert to dollars, and buy USTs for the yield - the so called "carry trade". If you could borrow at Japanese rates of 0.1% and collect US yields of ~5% and potentially be holding an appreciating currrency while owing a depreciating one, wouldn't you? Dumping USTs and pushing up the US yield actually just makes things worse for Japan! The only releif will IMO come from the US providing swap lines, effectively exchanging USD for Yen without moving FX markets, so Japan can then sell those USD for Yen to strengthen their own currency. The alternative is to address the root cause by narrowing the yield spread via either lower US rates or higher Japanese ones, although the later would be like a nuclear bomb going off in their domestic economy.

putting access to everything online and linked to social credit score will stop any revolution

Vouz-da-jai?

We build 'safety critical infrastructure' (I shall call it that) and 'outsourced' projects are being cut, these used to be inhoused and cost half as much. We trained our own Engineers and Designers to work on 'unique plant' built in the 50s, 60s and 70s which are now run past their original design life, some by 50 years. If it cheaper to be seen to be doing something (thinking about it) rather than actually doing Capital Expenditure then that has been 'double plus good' since the Blair Era. The rest is mostly playing bullshit with 'the regulator' who is another waste of money.

I don't think degradation in living standards will take as long as some may think. Combined with DBs indicators I think there is a debt-fuelled denial that's kicked in to keep up the pretense. We have 2-3 generations of people who have a big enough cohort that believes that they can buy whatever they want, whenever they want it. No drama. A higher house price or lower rates with higher wages will pay it off. Or the government will do something. That game began changing 15-20 years ago. We're now seeing that 'new' set of conditions become rapidly more obvious and decisive. The big shift is that what people want (holidays, cars, TVs etc) will be replaced by the sheer cost of what people need without being able to put it on tick. In my opinion, we're about to live through the 'all at once' part of the famed bankruptcy quote.

You can see the Irish not taking it lying down, they’re akin to the French. They have a genetic inbred link to know when they’re being fucked over. Us on the other hand… I haven’t the faith you have. Too placated with BTL, house prices and ever lasting cheap debt. Only have to look at the differences between the farmers protests between us and everywhere else.

https://x.com/radarhits/status/1784217489636786674?s=46 https://x.com/fixthefed/status/1783914133420724247?s=46 Question is, when does Japan start offloading UST?

When i left Rotherham over 25 years ago, the damage done by immigration could already been seen. 20 years in Essex and i still barely see immigration and that i do see, is almost all EU. The most common none English language i hear is Italian. Crime is still for the most part is local smack heads and pikies. Good for me, i get it, not everywhere is here, and if i travelled a few miles south to basildon, it'd be a different story. But that's sort of the point, the affluent and middle class still aren't seeing any real negatives. There are still plenty of pockets of wealth that don't have to deal with any of it.. A guy i worked with around 8 months ago, said he was happy to pay more tax for nurses to get a better wage. He couldn't tell me how much a nurse earned, of course. But he was/is on the same wage as me and his wife 1 grade higher. Combined income ~£180K, around 30, no kids. Fixed mortgage. The working poor are being sacrificed. But aren't they always. But if Labours school fees goes through and middle class kids get bounced into state schools, even decent ones. We may see the start of a rebellion.

Im trying to look more at this,its pretty obvious the retired and bennies are doing fantastic from inflation linking,but its really making a growing gap between private sector workers and pensions etc.I used the example back in the thread where just two years increases in a retired coppers pension (not counting the state pensions),was well over a third of lifetime pension savings for an ordinary worker,just the increase.That is insane.Worse,there is no escape valve,no limits to it,no cap.We will be in the situation soon where Labour try to steal pensions from people with £100k to give to people with pensions in the real world worth £1 million.Its reached the stage where they are pushing one household into poverty who work long hours just to give to the person next door with three cars and a huge pension. I track lots of data and although im not putting the effort in i used to iv never ever seen so many indictors flash extremes.I think over 25 years of doing this iv seen 3 or 4 things flash red ie expect something to collapse,mostly just before 2007.Today 16 indicators are vertical.

It's always surprising to see these larger transactions appear in the LR data. Just shows how few such transactions there are over about £700k. Once upon a time, i.e. around 10 years ago, nobody paid SDLT if the sold price was over ~£700k as most preferred to take a risk on one of the avoidance schemes that were around at the time.

It's an interesting topic for discussion. What are the best jobs if you want an easy life? I'll start a thread.

Colour me surprised. That is a big drop on the price Omaze paid.

OK. I won't tell you.

Don’t tell me, stacking shelves at Tesco. Good luck with that.

Two thoughts from this. 1. I suspect the true inflation figure is reflected in what NMW now is compared to what it should be in theory. I.e. The Government KNOW the stats are bullshit. But they aren't paying for NMW so they use the real figures for the increase. 2. And that's the big problem. I have a friend on £26k. In a job that causes him some stress for dealing with morons in management. And it's a 'responsible' job. He's twigged minimum wage "switch brain off and don't do any work at home" job is £24k full time. He's voting with his feet.