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.

Stan - You probably will remember Dunlop 65's :O) Persimmon woods etc, loved the whooosh sound the ball made through the air. Titleist Pro V1 golf balls - softer feel, more distance and longer lasting. Revolution of modern clubs, titanium faced drivers and shafts make golf unrecognisable from those days.

Cyners Im really glad that we have growth .........at last.

But please dont get confused between growth and the standard of living.

Working people can pull the purse strings in tightly in bad times but expect in good times rewards for their part in the economic turn around.

Please do tell what the tories are doing to help this???????????????????????????

ps, dont say apprenticeships, they are mickey mouse apprenticeships this government are offering, usually on the tills or 6 weeks customer care prog.

ps, Cyners not cross at all, been up all night listening to the test match. Had the odd beer LOL.

England well on top.

code name.................. broadsword.

That card should have on Tories and Hedge funds.

sticky - you can't improve a country's standard of living without growth in the first place ..... nevertheless, an improving feelgood factor leads to a slackening of pursestrings and thus more spending and so on, with all the obvious knock-on effects further down the line

WRONG. I posted yesterday the debt postion the mass find themselves in. Check it.

Early yesterday post.

And when interest rates rise.

Gosh I wonder if the main partys have thought this through.

Why get elected in 2015 with all the sh-t further down the line to come. !!!!!!!

Might be an idea to let Raving Nigel rule the country for 5 years LOL.

Amsterdam employs alcoholics as street cleaners and pays them in beer






Charity working in the city – renowned for its ‘pragmatic’ approach to substance abuse – says scheme keeps the alcoholics occupied and out of trouble



Adam Withnall

Wednesday 20 November 2013



Amsterdam has launched a government-funded scheme which uses chronic alcoholics as street cleaners – and pays them in beer.



The project, organised by the Rainbow Foundation charity and paid for by Dutch state subsidies and donations, rounds up alcoholics who have been “causing a nuisance” in parks and puts them to work.

They clean three days a week, from 9am to around 3.30pm, and are paid €10 (around £8), five cans of beer and half a packet of loose tobacco per shift.

The alcoholics are split up into groups of 10, and their beer consumption is carefully monitored.

“The aim is to keep them occupied, to get them doing something so they no longer cause trouble at the park,” the charity’s chief executive Gerrie Holterman told the AFP news agency.


More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amsterdam-employs-alcoholics-as-street-cleaners-and-pays-them-in-beer-8951403.html

Hey thats a good idea Max, wonder if Hays will be taking up the offer.

lol :-)

sticky - i refuse to get dragged into the usual soapbox nonsense that pervades this thread like japanese knotweed, but your comment in response to mine is nonsense ..... peeps debts almost certainly are heavier now that they were say 5 years ago, or even 2 years ago, but as the economy picks up, so in time will living standards .... de facto, indebtedness will reduce over all ..... a better indicator would be the volume and trend of mortgage defaulters and similar

Watch out the Oracle has spoken!

Cyners........TIT.........the item includes the trend of mortgage defaulters and similar including credit cards.

sticky old bean, there'll be such a swamp of other tripe since your thingy of yesterday, you'll need to re-post it here

You mean in code......." I cant be arsed to find it"

the following is the best i could find so far, though i acknowledge the info is from november last year ....

The number of homes being repossessed has fallen to a five-year low, according to mortgage lenders.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said there were 8,200 repossessions in the third quarter of 2012, the lowest quarterly number since 2007.
The number of borrowers in arrears was stable, at 159,100.
Repossessions have fallen steadily in recent years, due to low interest rates and lenders showing restraint with borrowers in difficulty.
The figure for the three months from July to September was down from 8,500 in the second quarter of this year, and lower than the 9,600 repossessions recorded in the same period a year ago.

DONT TELL TANKER............

DRAGHI SAYS DON'T TRY TO INFER NEGATIVE DEPOSIT RATES

UK borrowing falls as housing revival boosts public finances in October

Stamp duty revenues jump by almost 50pc, helping UK borrowing to fall slightly ahead of Chancellor George Osborne's Autumn Statement





By Szu Ping Chan

10:22AM GMT 21 Nov 2013





Britain's housing market revival boosted public finances in October, as a near 50pc rise in stamp duty revenues helped borrowing to edge down ahead of Chancellor George Osborne's Autumn Statement.


Public sector net borrowing (PSNB), excluding distortions such as bank bail-outs, fell to £8.08bn in October, from £10.3bn in September and £8.24bn in October 2012, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Thursday. Economists predicted borrowing would decline to £7.3bn.


The slight year-on-year fall was helped by a 46pc jump in stamp duty revenues, which increased by £400m compared with the same period last year, while VAT receipts rose 6.4pc to £600m.


Economists said that while October's figures were slightly disappointing, Britain was still on track to borrow £15bn less than the £120bn forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in March.


"With upward revisions to the OBR’s forecasts for growth in GDP and tax receipts in future years also likely, the Chancellor certainly has some scope to fund a net giveaway during his Autumn Statement," said Samuel Tombs, an economist at Capital Economics.



More good news here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10464761/UK-borrowing-falls-as-housing-revival-boosts-public-finances-in-October.html