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.

shortie - on that basis, you'll be voting ukip ..... for myself, i'ld rather wait for a referendum - no chance of that from labour - following some serious attempts at renegotiating some very serious and fundamental issues
i feel i ought to vote for staying in, but i am certainly struggling to justify that

Shoryie
No party will take us out of Europe.
Labour and Libs don't want a referendum and WON'T have one.

UKIP are unlikely to get any MPs or maybe one or two at most so they CAN'T have one.

The Conservatives want new rules for the EU. They may well get better terms. They WILL have a referendum, but will recommend an IN vote with much publicity and the result will be us staying in.

No party is going to take us out of thevEU.

that doesn't mean you shouldn't vote for them if getting out of europe is your prime concern

So long as you realise that it won't happen. A vote for UKIP is pointless as they will have no power and are really a one policy party.

imo, no vote is wasted .... if enough people vote for the "no hoper" party, then suddenly it is very meaningful

I agree a bit with a normal party. Twenty percent plus could vote for UKIP and they would get no seats. UKIP is not really a political party. It is a pressure group. The history of parties started up as pressure group is littered with failure. As a party it has none of the attributes you would expect. There is no underlying philosophy to guide their views, actions and policies. Instead of policies they have a topic.

The Libs are a minority party and have suffered some of UKIP's problems. At least they have a philosophical background.

It's not the seats that UKIP will win, as you say, it's loaded against them.

The real poser is the seats they will deny to others.

so were the fascists in germany (a bit tongue in cheek!), and what Max says is also very true
the potential ukip voter now needs to work out whether he'll unintentionally let in the party he really did not want in westminster

At the end of the day it'll either be Labour or another Tory Lib Dem coalition in Westminister. So my options pretty much look like Pork or Pork right now, a vote for UKIP won't change the fact that on the next election I'll be stuck with "Pork" yet again anyway...

Good ol house prices.....



Budget 2014: Britain’s false recovery is a credit mirage, unlike real recovery in the US

The UK has a current account deficit running at more than 5pc of GDP, the worst in a quarter of a century and by far the worst of the G7



By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

5:05PM GMT 19 Mar 2014





No vindication can be sweeter for George Osborne than Britain’s new role as a global safe-haven, an astonishing reversal from early 2010 when hedge funds were itching to attack the pound.


The cost of default insurance on British debt – measured by credit default swaps – is now below that of the US, France and Japan, and briefly slipped below Germany last week.


Sterling has ratcheted higher to $1.66 against the dollar, a tad too strong for the Monetary Policy Committee. David Bloom, from HSBC, says sterling is all of a sudden the “least ugly” currency in a world where even the Japanese and the Swiss are holding down their exchange rates. “There is nowhere else to go,” he said.


Yet he also warns, like other City veterans, that this intoxicating moment is not going to last. “UK growth is surviving on fumes, driven by a consumer credit boom. Britain has an enormous trade deficit,” he said.


The Chancellor told the House that Britain is now the growth star of the industrial world, galloping up to 2.7pc this year. The pessimists have had to apologise. Even the lordly IMF is admitting through gritted teeth that it failed to see the mini-boom coming.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/10709115/Budget-2014-Britains-false-recovery-is-a-credit-mirage-unlike-real-recovery-in-the-US.html

Britain’s false recovery is a credit mirage, unlike real recovery in the US??????

US deficit is eye-watering and has been for years and years
also, as far as i can see, US recovery remains very heavily consumer driven
i don't deny that it would be even better to see uk manufacturing exports thriving, but i think that may well now be happening
i think "service industries" also have a strong element of "export" inbuilt, but that may be a misconception

It appears that the market doesn't think much of Osborne's budget, but the probable retracements are due to;

"G8 Suspended, EU Will Impose More Sanctions On Russia, Angela Merkel Says"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/g8-suspended-eu-sanctions-russia_n_4998547.html



Check Russian response.

======

Side issue.

Lost plane.

? hijack which went wrong, or deliberate flight change and ditching because of hijack?

Ummm

PS.

Manuel,

Not all postings are for done for your benefit!

The limelight is switched off you sometimes!

8-)

hard to know what the market thinks of the budget, as there is so much heavy extraneous noise coming from russia/ukraine
i'ld guess not a lot as, as has become common in recent years, many of the budget issues were flagged several weeks ago

further, the market has been looking to pull back (retrench) for several weeks no, but is not doing so with any conviction
dow is similarly stuck in a strange limbo

Who appointed Ma Merkel as dinner monitor?

because the germans have a severe problem if russia shuts off gas through the ukraine
i seem to remember that germany gets 40% of its gas from russia/ukraine

They could import gas from US and other sources. It is a reason for us to start cracking.

If they want to be part of Russia and Russia wants them, then hey, whats the problem...

Short Gold during FOMC week

it's based on the fact that ukraine is an independent entity to which crimea was attached by kruschev in 1954

the perception - probably correct - is that russia wanted ukraine as a puppet, and hence the previous president (or whatever he was), so took a very dim view when he was booted out, supposedly by popular pressure

russia would then seem to have forced through a referendum in crimea, though in honesty, i think the result was indeed what the local population wanted

you now move to ukraine proper, where the eastern part of the country is populated largely by russian speakers - i won't go into the history of why this is so - and again would quite possibly like to rejoin russia ...... russia will no doubt try to "facilitate" this

on the western side, where most of the native ukrainians seem to reside, not surprisingly, take a very dim view of their country being raped yet again as has happened regularly, certainly since the time of Catherine the Great

along those sort of lines anyway