Loz

If I need the bank to extend my credit, opening negotiations by talking a dump in the manager's out-tray and calling him/her a fascist bastard probably will not elicit much sympathy towards my situation, however dire my predicament.

miga Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Loz Wrote: > ------------------------------------------------------- > > The question the Greeks may now ask is: how many > > billions will Varofakis' silly games cost them in > > the end? > > I think they're more likely to ask themselves what > the point of clearly voicing their opinion in that > referendum was, given that the conditions attached > to the latest tranche of debt are worse than > before, and that Greece won't be in charge of that > money anyway. Assuming Tsipras gets the deal > through parliament. I agree - as I said in my post (July 10, 03:02PM) > It's second rate thinking to pin the current crisis on one guy, who's been second in charge for > less than 6 months. That was a second rate reading attempt - it's not what I said at all. The crisis in itself wasn't Varofakis' fault (obviously), but all the posturing that led to capital controls and to Greece being offered an even worse deal can be laid directly at his doorstep. He basically used Greece to test a few (failed) game theories of his. And it has cost them billions more.

I don't think they've dropped back as such, just that when prices are rising, asking prices are usually well ahead of actuals. The market is now back to normal situation where the asking prices are back to sensible levels. Mind you, this is a bit of a surprise as number of houses actually on the market is very low. Wouldn't be surprised to see prices start to nudge up again soon if that continues. Especially as the Tories won the election - there was a bit of nervousness in the market about Labour and that has passed now.

rahrahrah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > There is no way Greece can meet the conditions > imposed upon them. They should leave the euro and > start rebuilding their society and economy. It's a rock and a hard place, isn't it? But leaving the Euro might actually be harder since they are a seriously net-importing country, so switching to a currency that will devalue rapidly would be extremely difficult for them. So I think what they have now is possibly the least-worst, mainly as Germany doesn't trust them now and so will be checking to see that all the structural things they should have started changing 5 years ago (improving tax collection, getting rid of cronyism, freeing up their labour market) may actually now get enacted. The question the Greeks may now ask is: how many billions will Varofakis' silly games cost them in the end?

Sturgeon has somewhat shot herself in the foot. She's just given Cameron more justification for pushing EVEL through.

Otta Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I suspect he didn't think the bull would go up the stairs. Moron. I figured that was his tactic as well. Takes a startling intellect to confuse bulls with daleks.

Sheep are by far the stupidest animals on the planet. Well, not counting Atomic Kitten.

I just googled "Angel of Southwark". Two hits - one this thread and one unrelated hit from Chicago. What is this? Why has no one heard of it? Why is this particular statue important?

Parkdrive Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Loz Wrote: > > So what do you think the minimum wage should be? > > Let me do what politicians are best at and answer > with a question, do you think ?9 an hour is a > decent hourly rate, and could you live on it? ?9 an hour is ?16,300 a year at 35 hours a week. Well, when I was 25 I was single with no kids living in a shared house in London, so if that were me today then that would be hard, no doubt, but possible. Outside of London, it would be a bit easier. I think that part the 'Living Wage' people got right - there should be differing minimum wages across the country. Or perhaps a London weighting. Is it a 'decent' hourly rate? Well, 'decent' is a subjective word. But, again, where do you take it to? Are you proposing ?10/hr? Well, by your previous reasoning that would probably class as "whoopie-doo" as well, so I suspect not. So ?15? ?20? So, I'll pass your question back to you - what do you think is an acceptable - nay 'decent' - minimum wage level?

Parkdrive Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ???? Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Still a Quid more than Ed Pledged....Osbourne you > > commie > > Still bollocks regardless of who is delivering > such a wonderful fillip for those earning peanuts. > Well done Osborne, a whole pound more than the > other lot promised. I bet that makes them feel SO > much better. So what do you think the minimum wage should be?

bobbsy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So that assumes the treasury estimates only 1 in 7 landlords pay tax higher than the basic rate? No, you also have to take into account those landlords which own the property outright (only about 50% of private landlords have a mortgage), plus those landlords which are businesses and would not have a mortgage as such, but a business loan or other form of funding.

Not only is Osbourne delivering a ?9 minimum wage, whereas Labour proposed ?8, quids, but is also delivering ?8bn more to the NHS, when Labour only promised ?2.5. It was a pretty radical budget. Hard to really put a red/blue tag on it - a bit of both, really. Made it hard for Labour to criticise as he nicked so many of their ideas. Maybe it's a longer term strategy for the next election - nick all their centre ground ideas and start pushing Labour left. Corbyn winning (and he's picking up some very valuable union support) would virtually guarantee the Tories the next election, IMHO.

The most amazing thing seem to be that they seem to have got away with interpreting the referendum result as "No. We don't like that deal. Please find us a worse one." On the brighter side for Greece (though a little bit grasping at straws, I admit), Tsipras does seemed to have moved debt relief up the agenda a bit. It will be interesting to see in the longer term how history judges Varoufakis. Not well, I suspect.

david_carnell Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'm still none the wiser how Mr Bens flat has gone > from a nice little earner to a loss making enterprise? I think I've worked this out. No sure though, so this could be wrong. Assuming MrB is on 40% tax rate and he had a place that he rented out for ?1000 and paid ?800 a month on mortgage interest. The old way would be he could knock all 800 off the 1000, leaving ?200 taxable "profit", which is due ?80 tax. So leaving ?120 in his pocket. The new way, he would still be paying ?800 in mortgage interest, but he could effectively only knock half off the income before tax is calculated, meaning he now pays tax on effective 'profit' of ?600 - so a tax bill of ?240, even though his real profit was only ?200. So he's now paying more in tax than he actually makes in profit and so comes out with an effective loss of ?40.

I'd like to complain about the lack of quality of this complaint thread. I've seen much better complaint threads and I think this one is really letting the site down.

Damn, I was just going suggest that. It had probably just worked loose. Monitors switch to standby if they don't detect a signal, and usually this is just detected on one of the pins (e.g. pin 19 on HDMI) so even though other pins were still connected and carrying the signal the monitor would think the computer had switched off. See, IT helpdesking is more than turning it off and back on again. Sometimes you have to unplug it and plug it back in as well!

Henry, Imagine you have a household income of, say 2x?30k=?60k and a house in ED which you bought at ?250k but is now worth ?500k. You want to sell and buy a similar house in North-west London, as you have a new and better jobs there. So you sell for ?500k, profit ?250k. But you now have to hand over ?50k (at 20%) of that in CGT, so now you only have ?450k and can't afford that house on the other side of London and you have to stay where you are. Goodbye mobility, goodbye better job. The other issue you will have is around the hypothecation you proposed. I suspect the real reason behind your taxing idea is to calm property prices, so if you are successful, you actually won't have any CGT money to do all the wonderful things you earmarked the money for. If you aren't successful, you get the mobility issues. So either way, the policy fails.

Henry_17 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The far greater discrepancy with regard to housing taxation though is capital gains, due to the > ludicrous and inequitable private residence relief. Everyone accepts that capital gains should > be due on sale of a second property yet for some reason nothing is due on gains on sale of the > first. All gains should be taxed, particularly given that the bulk of them arise due to property > market inflation not value add, and at least part of the revenue earmarked to effect better housing > policy, and probably for the education budget as well. Well done, Henry - in one fell swoop you will have made it impossible for 90% of home owners to move house (never mind buying somewhere bigger to raise a family), instantly hampering the mobility of the UK workforce. File that idea under "How to make the housing problem worse". (PS Am loving the standard left-wing add-on of trying to make it more palatable by earmarking revenue to 'acceptable' spending causes. The UK rarely, if ever, ring-fences revenue in this way. I always laughed at the way the proponents of the 'Robin Hood' tax earmarked the proceeds to their favourite 'good causes'. Their website was a hoot.)

miga Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Yeah, I don't get that either, how can tax on > profits make you lose money if it's less than 100%? It's not a tax on profit, though. At the moment, if you charge ?1000 a month rent and have interest on your mortgage of ?800, then you can deduct that mortgage interest (plus any other expenses like insurance, repairs, etc). Basically, like any business. Rent - costs = profit. Profit is then taxed at the going rate. So I can't work out how this is going to work. I'm not sure where your tax rate comes into it - can anyone explain? Anyway, if you are renting in London, expect your rent to rise over the coming years. If this forces BTL investors out of the market, taking supply out of an already badly supplied market will only have one outcome.

You can find out in about three months when it comes up on the sold prices search.

Colt Seavers? Except... that's, um... a name.

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Was reading a report by a respected economist today, he thinks the whole mess is largely > Germany's fault... buying all the bad Greek debt from the German financials, and then making > unrealistic demands from Greece. Attempting to force austerity on the Greek people for the sake > of protecting German businesses. A lot of that is true, though I would say that moving all the debt also has made the Euro economy less likely to collapse should Greece default. As truly colossal a mess this is, had Greece gone under 5 years ago it would have been a real disaster, possibly a repeat of 2008.

But rabbiting on about democracy and then putting pretty much the same proposal forward is downright hypocrisy. Having a vote is not a bad thing in itself, but what exactly were the Greeks voting against? How are they going to sell it to the Greek people and - more importantly - to the Greek parliament? "It's not the same document at all - this one has a different date on it and we've also changed the font." And the Varoufakis 'resignation' speech was spin as well. He was elbowed out of the negotiation team for a least a fortnight ago. Even Tsipras saw him as the loose cannon he was, sidelined him and then dumped him as soon as the referendum was over. He was a useful idiot who had ceased to be useful.

So the Greeks have voted No and so, armed with this democratic mandate, Greece is now preparing to put on the table pretty much what was proposed last week, which was based on the document the Greeks just voted No to. It's like a parallel universe.

A lot of mortgage brokers do, but only as they would benefit from you taking out a new mortgage with them. AFAIK there is no legal obligation for them to do so.