Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Why not build our own nuc power stations?

Yep why not.

All this Chinese investment seems at face value to be a very good thing, but a warning............ they could hold us to ransom if we say for example demand that they pay their tax etc etc. you get the jist.

OK they will say we will move somewhere else......... next thing you know is UK companys then jump on that and say same thing.

We have to be very carefull imo.

you could use that rather tenuous argument with any outside investment, whether inbound or outbound

Manuel.

In view of Britain's treatment of the colonies, and problems pointed out by the Euro-phobics with Europe, I wouldn't like to be a colony of China with the power to switch from one state to another on a whim.

Looking at the treatment of countries, who already have overseas Chinese investments, and the treatment they received, it doesn't seem an envious position.

But as the hairy one might say, "lovely dosh".

so you'ld like to be a real Little Englander and have no inbound investment of any kind then?
what about outbound?

and which country with chinese investment would you like to hold up for examination?
mongolia perhaps?

Nothing to do with Chinese investment, more to do with controlling strategic assets.

And surely, if you can print money to feed banks, you can do the same for the odd power station. (potentially far more important)

i'm not really sure of the link, but i certainly have no problem with nuclear power
in any case, surely you are not so naive as to think that these very large international projects are just simple and straightforward?
there's always some kind of mutually beneficially trade-off

Why does it need to be international?

The electricity is for UK consumption, why export the profits?

you missed the point .... i was talking about all and any major international investment
if country x gives country y a contract to build a dam, the price for that won't be anything like the deciding factor; it'll be the reciprocal trade-offs

We complain about our energy prices being so high. Here is a chart showing that we are average.

H it would be useful to have a chart showing average earnings as well.
2517

and then you have to ask about income and social tax rates too, and no doubt a few other things too, so the numbers can be made to look whatever you fancy!

If you look at the chart you will see that we are not that much different to the ten countries above us. So we are by no means a high energy price country.

disposable income of households per capita

Short Description: Real adjusted gross disposable income of households per capita in PPS is calculated as the adjusted gross disposable income of households and Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISH) divided by the purchasing power parities (PPP) of the actual individual consumption of households and by the total resident population

You can see we have a relatively high disposable income and at least 10% higher than the EU average.

How is it compared to Norway, Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland?

The rest of this article can be found on the Telegraph website. I was under the misguided view that the young have it easier now than they have ever had it!

"Alan Milburn, the former health secretary and a Coalition adviser on social mobility, said older people have been spared the impact of austerity measures and said benefits for the elderly need to be reviewed in order to make life easier for the young."

No good showing disposable income levels if inflation isnt shown at the same time. And its going forward that counts on disposable income ie, just how much in disposable income have we lost to comparable countries..........

Overview of CPI inflation rates published most recently

current inflation / country inflation period monthly basis yearly basis modified
Inflation Austria september 2013 0.74 % 1.69 % 10-17-2013
Inflation France september 2013 -0.23 % 0.89 % 10-17-2013
Inflation Great Britain september 2013 0.32 % 2.67 % 10-17-2013
Inflation Poland september 2013 0.08 % 1.22 % 10-17-2013
Inflation Slovakia september 2013 -0.06 % 0.98 % 10-17-2013
Inflation China september 2013 0.80 % 3.02 % 10-15-2013
Inflation Czech Republic september 2013 -0.41 % 0.99 % 10-15-2013
Inflation Finland september 2013 0.35 % 1.20 % 10-15-2013
Inflation Germany september 2013 0.00 % 1.43 % 10-15-2013
Inflation Hungary september 2013 0.44 % 1.34 % 10-14-2013

Britain second highest and it cant be cost push as wages have either fallen or stayed still, so demand led?........probably, as lower manufacturing output as meant too much money (QE, low interest rates) chasing far less goods produced.

We could go into this far more deeply with a look at money supply, but most should get the general jist.

Hays, your table hasnt opened out up above on disposable income.

Sometimes it shows and sometimes not. Here is a link to it

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/graph.do?tab=graph&plugin=0&language=en&pcode=tec00113&toolbox=type

Hays, cheers got it now but it says year 2011.

Got anything for last year or is that the latest up to date?.