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.

long term - bricks and mortar but location is everything

shares - depends what you're looking for; there's still value and if you have a high risk-tolerance, then there's plenty of garbage to excite that just may come right

interest rates - raising interest rates too early would (have) kipper(ed) any economic revival

Ed Miliband calls politicians out of touch in TV interview - then has no idea how much he spends on his own weekly shop



Tory secret weapon




Good Morning Britain presenter Susannah Reid says Miliband himself appeared 'out of touch with reality'




Adam Withnall Author Biography




Tuesday 20 May 2014



The Labour leader Ed Miliband has been accused of being “out of touch with reality” after he appeared not to know what he – or indeed the average British family – pays for their weekly shop.


Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Mr Miliband described how disconnected the country’s leadership is from ordinary people who, he said, feel Britain is run “for a few people at the top and not for them”.

He said that Labour would make it a priority to tackle the cost-of-living crisis – yet appeared to struggle when pressed on how much he personally knows about “the actual cost of living for people”.

Asked if he knew what the average household grocery bill per week was for a family in the UK, Mr Miliband said: “Well, it depends how much you’re spending.”



More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ed-miliband-calls-politicians-out-of-touch-in-tv-interview--then-has-no-idea-how-much-he-spends-on-his-own-weekly-shop-9402068.html

There is a new Populus online poll out today which shows the Conservatives taking a 1% lead over Labour:

Conservative 35% (up 3%)

Labour 34% (down 2%)

Lib Dem 8% (down 2%)

UKIP 14% (up 1%)

i wonder if lib/dems will end up with less mps than would fit in a phone box

Even with a low percentage of the vote in the GE, the Libs will get a lot of MPs. It doesn't matter what their support is across the country, just in the constituencies where they have MPs. Their machinery in those areas works very well to get the voters out on the day,

dangerous to bet on ukip getting none then, though i know where your counter will go

Hays this property you bought in 1989, tell me .......did you buy it off a freind!!!!!!!

Latest EP poll, Labour now opening up a lead......

electionista @electionista ·
UK - YouGov/Sun #EP2014 poll:

LAB 28%
UKIP 24%
CON 21%
GRN 12%
LDEM 10%

Hays thats the same Rouge poll that had them neck and neck last week.

Just 2 polls have Tories in front by 1. (tory seats by and large polls)

8 polls have labour in lead between 4 and 6 points.

I know who id have my money ontoday if I was a betting man.

By the way the Independant wasnt the only newspaper to worn about mortgages and interest rates, the express have a very similar item.

Just think Hays an interest rate increase 6 weeks before the general Election.

Thats one of the reasons I think Carney will go earlier in the hope he doesnt offend his pall Osbourne right before the next GE.

1) i don't think a rise of 0.25% will affect the stock market, except perhaps for one day

2) a rise of 0.25% in bank rate does not necessarily mean that mortgage rates will rise immediately afterwards

3) even if mortgage rates do rise by 0.25%, will that actually have a material effect on monthly repayments and people's voting intentions?

Tories returning to Tory party dont want to be branded racist as UKippers.

This senario only happening in Tory polls area.

Shows why Tories now have lead in two polls and labour lead in 8 polls.

Tories still very much up against it before GE especially with an interest rate rise coming before the GE........the worst case senario........you couldnt make it up better. he he.

I still think interest rates won't rise until after the election. Carney doesn't make the decision. It is taken by the BoE Monetary Policy Committee.

The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is made up of nine members – the Governor, the three Deputy Governors, the Bank's Chief Economist, the Executive Director for Markets and four external members appointed directly by the Chancellor. The appointment of external members is designed to ensure that the MPC benefits from thinking and expertise in addition to that gained inside the Bank of England.

A representative from the Treasury also sits with the Committee at its meetings. The Treasury representative can discuss policy issues but is not allowed to vote. The purpose is to ensure that the MPC is fully briefed on fiscal policy developments and other aspects of the Government's economic policies, and that the Chancellor is kept fully informed about monetary policy.

The MPC meets every month to set the interest rate. Throughout the month, the MPC receives extensive briefing on the economy from Bank of England staff. This includes a half-day meeting – known as the pre-MPC meeting – which usually takes place on the Friday before the MPC's interest rate setting meeting. The nine members of the Committee are made aware of all the latest data on the economy and hear explanations of recent trends and analysis of relevant issues. The Committee is also told about business conditions around the UK from the Bank's Agents. The Agents' role is to talk directly to business to gain intelligence and insight into current and future economic developments and prospects.

The monthly MPC meeting itself is a two-day affair. On the first day, the meeting starts with an update on the most recent economic data. A series of issues is then identified for discussion. On the following day, a summary of the previous day's discussion is provided and the MPC members individually explain their views on what policy should be. The Governor then puts to the meeting the policy which he believes will command a majority and members of the MPC vote. Any member in a minority is asked to say what level of interest rates he or she would have preferred, and this is recorded in the minutes of the meeting. The interest rate decision is announced at 12 noon on the second day.

carney actually reckoned late March, but equally he said he would implement other measures to curb house inflation -and indeed he has already done that

there is certainly a good argument for NOT raising interest rates before the election, even if that would benefit pensioners, not least that it could be seen as a political move if it is very close to GE

anyway, silly sticky has been blathering within the last couple of months about rates rising at least twice before the election, and indeed he reckoned he had absolute inside knowledge of same ..... rather like he did (hahaha!) about some court case or enquiry result

I think we'll see stamp duty increase before interest rates.

he he, we shall see.

i still fail to see why stamp duty isn't staggered like income tax
the present system is iniquitous and deemed so to be by a great many, but there's no will to change it
why on earth not?

Stamp Duty.........cant see it not under the coalition.

Certainly under the new government elect labour.

Let's see what Boris has to say:

telegraph.co.uk

You kip if you want to - but only one party can offer real change
The Tories will give people the vote they are crying out for, and lead reform of the EU
by Boris Johnson May 18, 2014

There is an awful lot of resentful talk these days about the baby-boomer generation – people who became adults in the Sixties and Seventies – and how jammy their lives are compared with those of the younger generation.

They could afford to buy their own homes in parts of London that are now completely out of reach. They were able to go to university without paying a penny. They were allowed to pay towards luscious final salary pension schemes. They took part in the summer of love; they tuned in, turned on, dropped out in a way that was somehow not possible for those of us who came of age in the Eighties or later.

And yet of all the cool, groovy and psychedelic things they got up to, there is only one that could be easily re-enacted today. They were able to vote on whether or not Britain should remain a member of what was then called the Common Market – and speaking on behalf of all those aged 57 or under, I think it outrageous that we have not yet been given the chance to do the same. By the time we get a referendum on Europe, it will be more than 40 years since the British people were asked their view. Most of those who took part in the last poll will no longer be with us, and the Common Market has become unrecognisable since the electorate was last consulted.

The Tories will give people the vote they are crying out for, and lead reform of the EU

There are 28 countries now, not nine, and the customs union has evolved into a gigantic dysfunctional superstate with its own currency, its own directly elected parliament and its own (mysterious and mainly useless) foreign policy. The institutions of the European Union regulate everything from the hours we can work to the price of our food to the width of our condoms; not forgetting whether or not we can expunge our misdemeanours from the databanks of Google (we can, says the European Court, in what may be the prelude – who knows – to a wholesale removal of all the embarrassing bits from 20th-century European history).

The so-called acquis communautaire now bulks up to 150,000 pages of law. The EU institutions have vastly increased in power since we joined in the mid-Seventies, with more and more votes taken by a majority, and with Britain now accounting for only 8 per cent of the weighted voting system.

Ours is a country that prides itself on being the home of democracy and the mother of parliaments. It is incredible that our leaders have never once had the guts to put these changes to the people – despite the many opportunities to do so. We have had the treaties of Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam, Lisbon – and while plenty of other European countries have invited their electorates to ratify these pacts, the British people have been deemed to be somehow too rude and undisciplined to have a say.

So I find it utterly amazing that we are now approaching the climax of this so-called Euro-election campaign, yet there has been hardly a mention of this central question: the democratic question, the only question worth asking. After almost four decades as members of this club, do you want to stay in? Do you want reform? Or do you want to come out?

There is only one party that is seriously offering you any options at all. The Labour party makes no mention of a referendum in its leaflets, because it would only allow the British people to speak if there were to be “further transfers” of sovereignty – as if there had not been enough already. That means there will be no referendum under Labour.

The Lib Dems are total federalists, and think that everything emanating from Brussels is basically terrific. There will be no referendum if the Lib Dems have anything to do with it. I am not sure of the Green position, but I think it is roughly the same and is in any case irrelevant. Then there is Ukip, and their general demand that we leave the EU yesterday – a stipulation that they have absolutely no hope of turning into reality.

There is only one party with any hope of both forming the government of this country and giving the people the debate and the vote we are crying out for – and that is David Cameron’s Conservative Party. There is a chance now for the British Government to lead the reform of the EU, and to capture the support of millions of people around the entire continent.

Why is it that we are seeing this upsurge of anti-European parties across the EU? Because the euro has been a disaster, of course; but the problem is not only a function of the euro. Growth and employment in Europe is now consistently lower than in the US and in Asia; and indeed, growth in the heart of the EU is consistently lower than in Britain. Over the years 1980 to 2012, the six original signatories of the Treaty of Rome grew at a mere 1.6 per cent, while even the UK grew at 2 per cent.

We should go into those renegotiations with a clear agenda: to root out the nonsense of the social chapter – the working time directive and the atypical work directive and other job-destroying regulations. We should kill the remainder of the Common Agricultural Policy and the external tariffs. We should insist on a proper free market in services of the kind in which this country excels, not just in our own interests, but in the interests of the whole EU. If we fail to get what we want, then we should recognise that the cost of leaving – political and economic – is much lower now than it was 40 years ago.

It is only the Conservatives who are offering this real prospect of change; and so I say to all those toying with another self-styled Euro-sceptic party, whose MEPs notoriously slumber and snore through Strasbourg debates: You kip if you want to – the Tories are giving us the first chance to vote on Europe in my adult lifetime. That matters a great deal, and it would be an utter disaster if we were to miss this chance by inadvertently ushering Miliband into power.

Say no to no say!