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

Cyners ........Idleitus.................

Soaring UK personal debt wreaking havoc with mental health, report warns
Centre for Social Justice says poorer people 'bearing brunt of storm' as debt hits £1.4tn – almost as high as economic output

The Guardian, Wednesday 20 November 2013

Credit card debt has trebled to £55.6bn since 1998 while overall personal debt including mortgages has reached £1.4tn. Photograph: Alan Schein Photography
Personal debt in Britain has reached £1.4tn – almost the same amount as Britain's national economic output – according to a report that warns debt is wreaking havoc on people's mental health and wellbeing.

Poorer people are "bearing the brunt of a storm" during which average household debt has risen to £54,000 – nearly double what it was a decade ago, the report by the Centre for Social Justice thinktank warns.

The report, entitled Maxed Out, found that almost half of households in the lowest income decile spent more than a quarter of their income on debt repayments in 2011. More than 5,000 people are being made homeless every year as a result of mortgage or rent debts.

Christian Guy, director of the thinktank established in opposition by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, said: "Problem debt can have a corrosive impact on people and families. Our report shows how it can wreak havoc on mental health, relationships and wellbeing. Across the UK people are up until the early hours worrying about their finances and bills."



The report, written by the former Labour work and pensions minister Chris Pond, found that:

• Personal debt in the UK, including mortgage lending, stands at £1.4tn – an average of £54,000 per household compared with £29,000 a decade ago.

• Consumer debt had trebled since 1993 and now stands at £158bn;

• More than 8m households have no savings, including half of low-income households;

• Outstanding debt on credit cards has almost trebled since 1998 to reach £55.6bn;

• There were 300,000 arrears on mortgage in 2012 – with 34,000 homes repossessed. This is a reduction of 30% from the peak of the recession but a 60% overall increase since 2006.

Pond said: "With falling real incomes and increasing costs of basic essentials, many – especially the most vulnerable – are sliding further into problem debt. The costs to those affected, in stress and mental disorders, relationship breakdown and hardship is immense. But so too is the cost to the nation, measured in lost employment and productivity and in an increased burden on public services."

The report found that the decision of mainstream banks to refuse credit to the less well off has led to a dramatic increase in the demand for short-term credit – from payday lenders, pawnbrokers and doorstop lenders – which is now worth £4.8bn a year. More than 1.4 million people have no access to a bank account and "are effectively excluded from the entire financial sector". This contributes to the "poverty premium", a £1,280 annual surcharge on everyday goods and services faced by low-income households.

Payday lenders have increased their business from £900m in 2008-09 to more than £2bn – accounting for around 8m loans – in 2011-12. The number of people resorting to loan sharks has increased to 310,000 people.

The report says: "For the most financially excluded, there is often no option but to turn to illegal moneylenders. It is estimated that over 310,000 people borrow money from these criminals each year. Illegal moneylenders extort money from their victims, often arbitrarily raising interest rates, demanding payments or charging penalties. Their use of violence and intimidation terrorises people and communities, enforcing a 'veil of silence' that allows them to escape detection. This is an inexcusable crime in modern Britain.

Many of the side effects of problem debt can also work to drive people further into debt, creating a vicious cycle. While it is often hard to prove causation, there is a clear relationship between the following and problem debt: unemployment, family breakdown, addiction, and poor mental health. Similarly, many of these factors are interrelated, meaning problem debt can have diverse causes, requiring multidimensional support in order to fully resolve the underlying problems."