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.

Channel 4, tonight 8pm

£5 billion a year spent by the NHS on fat people.

My guess is that so called poor working/ non working class are more fat then middle/upper class.

Help to Buy is nothing but an election ploy

Britain will solve its housing crisis only if it builds more homes and lets in fewer people



The government launched the second phase of Help to Buy scheme in October Photo: Bloomberg


Jeff Randall

By Jeff Randall

8:10PM GMT 24 Nov 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/10471564/Help-to-Buy-is-nothing-but-an-election-ploy.html



When the best business story of the week involves a Methodist preacher, a holier-than-thou bank and Labour Party funding, laced with allegations of narcotics abuse, rent boys and dubious expenses claims, it is, I accept, no easy task diverting readers’ attention to less exotic matters. This, however, is my goal today. For, while the Rev Paul Flowers has been busy incinerating the Co-operative movement’s reputation, Britain’s property market has caught fire and the blaze is running out of control.


Strange though it may seem, these events have a common theme: inappropriate adult material. In the case of Flowers, it was racy images left on his computer at Bradford council. For the rest of us, the offending content, known to some as “property porn”, can be ogled on the government’s Help to Buy (HTB) website. The HTB scheme is designed, it seems, almost entirely to please those with a prurient interest in house-price bubbles: builders, estate agents and local solicitors. It is nothing more than populist, short-term electioneering posing as a cure for Britain’s chronic, long-term housing headache.


If affordability is the problem, a policy that makes houses even more expensive cannot be the solution — but that is what’s happening. Buyers are able to tap state-funded assistance up to a value of £600,000. This is emergency aid for the huddled masses of Kensington and Chelsea. When property prices are rising and real wages (inflation-adjusted) are falling, as they are, only the suspension of disbelief will bridge an ever-widening gap. HTB may well help to buy votes, but it will end in tears.


The housing challenge facing government is not complicated: too many people, too few homes. When you have more buyers than sellers, guess what? The price goes up and up until the elastic snaps. The trouble is, few ministers will address part one of the problem – population growth – because it necessitates being honest about immigration and the impact it is having not just on numbers in the country today but on tomorrow’s birth rates.


Nothing terrifies Westminster MPs more than the suggestion of being “racist”. This is craven, head-in the-sand politics. Only last week, the European Union issued a report showing that the United Kingdom has the EU’s fastest-growing population. According to Eurostat, official numbers living in the UK (not including illegals) grew by 392,000 in 2012, 38 per cent of which was accounted for by net migration. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) puts the figures slightly higher at 420,000 and 39 per cent respectively. For context, Nottingham’s population is about 300,000.


Part two of the problem is the rate at which we are constructing homes. A government-backed report in 2004 concluded that Britain needed 250,000 new houses a year to meet growing demand. Even before the credit crunch, completions fell way short of that and, despite a recent surge in new buyers with cash to burn, only 28,500 private houses were started in the three months to September. In other words, the situation is deteriorating, as the number of people who want homes in the UK far outstrips supply.

The upshot is that the average house now costs £173,678 (Nationwide figures), yet the average weekly wage, including bonuses, is £474, or £24,648 a year (ONS). Even allowing for the fact that newcomers to the housing market tend to join the ladder at the cheaper end, the ratio of first-time buyer house prices to average incomes is still 4.6:1.

HTB is encouraging people to overstretch their finances at the bottom of the interest-rate cycle – the very worst time to do so. With money priced at a 320-year low, the only way is up. When that happens, monthly outgoings will rise, house prices will fall and those on the edge of solvency will go bankrupt. After the credit crunch, household debt in Britain fell from 170 per cent of annual income to 140 per cent. That trend is now reversing, as government “initiatives” lure punters into a debt trap. The Bank of England’s financial stability report points out that 20 per cent of home loans have been made to households that are left with less than £50 a week after housing costs and essential spending. Even a 1 per cent rate rise could create a new cohort of distressed borrowers.

The Bank, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the ONS have all been behind the curve in assessing the rapid recovery in the British economy.

Job creation has been much stronger than official figures suggest. The Bank’s 7 per cent unemployment “target”, the point at which it expects to start increasing rates, could be here sooner than Mark Carney, the Governor, envisages. When that happens, those who have gambled on the housing market remaining a one-way bet on cheap money and rising property prices will be stuck in a difficult place: under water but with no liquid assets.

HTB is fiscal chicanery that prompts irrational behaviour by making the unaffordable appear within reach. In the short run, it rewards the Treasury with a bonanza of stamp duty payments. But how much of those receipts will be lost when the taxpayer is called upon to bail out delinquent mortgages?

Tackling Britain’s housing problem requires two bold moves: much tighter restrictions on the number of people arriving in the UK and an ambitious building programme to provide decent accommodation for existing citizens.

Handing out funny money to bid up prices is simply weasel economics

Alders, Fat Dave will be watching then I guess.

MK - totally disagree ...... any help offered to first-time buyers has to be beneficial both for them and the housebuilders and everyone else down the chain.

no need to attempt any political slant ...... for sure the mortgage market has been starved of funds and even applicants for several years, and even now, mortgage applications are well below the 20 year average

a freeing of money for mortgages will de facto lead to the building of more houses (homes), many of which will be targeted at the lower end, not least because that is where there is demand and also because local authorities insist on it as part and parcel of the project approval

Ist time buyers up to £600k ?

Come on, it's a ramp, pure and simple.

Paul Kavanagh ‏@KavanaghKillik 15m
October UK Banking loans for house purchases 42,808, less than the 45,000 expected

Build "yet more" houses? Oh please not that old mantra. The facts are that we have more then enough houses in this Country, the main problem is that the jobs and people are in other areas.

Further more instead of building yet "more little boxes", Spend money on doing the older "bigger roomed" properties up to a better standard of insulation (therefore saving fuel costs at the same time)... and before anyone suggest subsidies for Employers to move to the places with plenty of houses, and when the subsidies run out employers then buzz off to another area! Who then thinks it's a good idea to waste public money subsidising outfits that can really afford the move themselves.

MK,

Agreed.

It is feeding a small group of already "affluent" and stoking the inflationary effect of the housing market.

If the "money" was "allowed" to flow or give "insurance" to "social housing" then it would stimulate local economies in general.

The above is short hand, but "social housing" "equity" would remain in the the hands of "local councils" and derive an income or less of a financial cost to those "councils".

Rambling, but look at the cycles in the chain.

aldwickk View aldwickk's profile - 25 Nov 2013 08:57 - 33247 of 33254

Channel 4, tonight 8pm

£5 billion a year spent by the NHS on fat people.

My guess is that so called poor working/ non working class are more fat then middle/upper class
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Poor people getting fat cant be a bad thing , at least their eating plenty!!

And dying quicker.

But unfortunately an increasing cost to the Tax payer in providing long term medical treatment for diabetes and other related problems.

Obesity problem amongst men? look no further http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18380173

Are you insinuating anything.

I have been eating lettuce for weeks.

Evidently all the slugs in lettuce feast on the fat in a human body! :-)

DB

You must be a vegetable.

Slugs are vegetarians.


Have you ever eaten slugs is sweet chilli sauce?

lol - no, but I've eaten raw squid and I cannot imagine anything much worse. I couldn't get out of the bathroom for 24 hours!

Labour Party's property firm cashed in on cheap loans from Co-op

Opposition’s property portfolio benefited from low rates of interest offered by the bank

By Matthew Holehouse, Political Correspondent

10:00PM GMT 24 Nov 2013

Labour's property portfolio, including Ed Balls’s constituency buildings, have benefited from cheap loans from the Co-operative Bank, the Telegraph can disclose.


Labour Party Properties Ltd (LPPL), a property firm wholly owned by the Labour Party, has used its £6.3 million portfolio to secure £3.8 million of cheap finance from the Co-op Bank. The properties used as collateral in the deal include Morley Labour Rooms in the shadow chancellor’s West Yorkshire constituency.


The revelation raises fresh questions about Labour’s close relationship with the Co-operative Bank, whose former chairman and Labour councillor, Rev Paul Flowers, has been arrested and bailed on suspicion of drug offences. It follows the revelation the Co-op donated £50,000 to Mr Balls’s office.


LPPL paid 2.88 per cent interest on the loan, according to the company's 2012 accounts – a far cheaper rate than would typically be offered to property firms on the open market, one expert said.


If the bank had charged a commercial rate of interest, LPPL’s tenants could face significantly higher rents, he added. Tenants include the constituency offices of Mary Creagh, the shadow transport secretary, and Tom Watson, the former elections co-ordinator.


A Labour spokesman disputed that assessment, and insisted the party paid a commercial rate of interest. It is a “smear” to call them soft loans, a spokesman said.

The loans are channelled through the Labour Party accounts into LPPL, a subsidiary company. It owns 20 buildings across Britain, including the Morley property, which is valued at £80,000 and carries a 2007 Co-op charge.

A commercial mortgage broker who inspected the accounts said: “This is a ratbag collection of second and third-rate properties, and any of my clients would not get money at that rate of interest out of any bank on the face of the planet.

“They are paying half the rate of interest that the rest of us would pay. This is not a genuine arm’s-length transaction – it’s far too cosy. Poor little Co-op bondholders who are taking a haircut should be asking why they are doing it.”

Mark Garnier, a Conservative MP who sits on the Treasury Select Committee, said the mortgage-backed loans should be examined by the independent inquiry into the Co-op, announced by Chancellor George Osborne.

“Many hardworking depositors with the Co-op Bank will want to know why the Labour Party has been receiving loans at preferential rates – despite the party being in a precarious financial position and despite the massive black hole in the bank’s balance sheet,” Mr Garnier said.

Mr Balls does not use the Morley Labour Rooms as his constituency office, but it is regularly used for party meetings and election campaigns. A party spokesman said the local party does not pay any rent to LPPL for the rooms and as such does not benefit financially from the cheap loans.

The Co-op Bank on Sunday declined to comment on reports it is poised to axe its donations to the Labour Party, citing client confidentiality rules, as it is taken over in a rescue deal prepared by US-based hedge funds.

At least a third of the company’s £850,000 annual donation to Labour MPs could be cut, it emerged on Sunday. The bank provides campaign funding to 32 MPs who are members of both the Labour and Co-operative Parties. There are also fears the bank could ask Labour to repay its loans early. That could trigger a cash crisis ahead of the next election, forcing the sale of the property portfolio.

The Telegraph has previously revealed how LPPL has paid no tax since 2003 despite collecting millions of pounds in revenues, after declaring successive losses. Labour denies doing anything to intentionally lower its tax bill.

Should have picked a smaller squid to bite.

Try raw marinated tripe.

------

Chilli slugs.

Ask Manuel for the recipes.













I have never eaten or seen them, but read recipes for sea slugs, which again I will leave for the braver.

Can you lot stop talking about eating slugs, it's putting me off me lunch -):

DB4

This is more interesting from one of the right wing rags.


By Peter Dominiczak
Former Conservative Party donors have given almost £750,000 to the UK Independence Party, figures have disclosed.
Seventeen Tory supporters who between them gave over £5 million in donations now appear to have switched their allegiance to Nigel Farage’s Ukip, giving almost £750,000 to the Eurosceptic party.
The revelation came as Paul Sykes, a self-made tycoon, promised to do “whatever it takes” financially to help Ukip in May’s European elections.
Mr Sykes supported the Tories under Margaret Thatcher and Michael Howard, but has backed Ukip in the past, giving the party £1.5 million in 2004. His latest investment in the party is expected to run into millions and will come as a significant blow to the Tories, who are fighting to stop grassroots supporters defecting to Ukip over their position on the European Union and policies such as legalising gay marriage.
The most recent donation figures available from the Electoral Commission show that two more donors who had between them donated nearly £60,000 to the Tory party since the last election have started giving money to Ukip.