Brown's spend, spend, spend during his Chancellor's days has brought us into the current economy we are facing today. His appeal at a Downing Street meeting for the lenders to pass on cuts appeared to fall on deaf ears with HBOS, which owns the Halifax, increasing its rate on some mortgages from 6.09 to 6.59 per cent. Borrowers taking out this type of deal will now pay 46 more a month. On a two-year tracker, the rate will increase from 1.49 points above base rate to 1.99 points, giving a current rate of 6.99 per cent.

Other lenders are expected to follow Halifaxs lead.

If the Government wants the banks to lower mortgage rates to home owners - why not just offer them through Northern Rock? Everyone would rush to the Rock to get the loans forcing banks to match the rates or lose the business? Or maybe the government would then run into bigger credit crunch?

Haystack,

Thank you, but you needn't have bothered.

I am sure even amongst that bunch there could be a few decent individuals amongst them.

It is amazing what can be accomplished with money and a few good hidings.

Were you and Lord Lucan at Eton?

Just notice, Hogg of the Moat was there. Now that is a fair advertisement!

halifax......u go on about others in scotland voting on english matters..........england is made up of muslims, blacks, poles, other east euros, in fact every nationality including me!
scotland as far as i know is only 60% scots with 20% english so maybe its the english in scotland voting on the foreigners in england!! lol

marni you have missed the point ,where you live is where you should vote on matters concerning the respective country. This has nothing to do with race or in your case racism.

Quite a list on the Eton OB's, but their most enduring achievement was to wave money and taunt at redundant and penniless marchers, marching for jobs during the early 80's.

The only upside to that disgraceful showing of true colours was it was the inspiration for paul Weller to write "Eton Rifles".

Anyway, the list may look good but are they achieving well in the league tables for literacy and numeracy (or english and maths as we called them).

i wasnt being racist....in case you dont realise my ancestry aint british!...that logic is nonsense if you say go to wales you live and then vote in relation to welsh assembly where one would know nothing about it but you are still allowed to vote cos you live there.

you appear to have a huge chip on your shoulder.

That was pretty amusing. I remember them dropping photocopied 50 notes onto demonstartors out of the windows of the high rises in the City.

I'm afraid it wasn't redundant and peniless marchers. It was anti-capitalist, anarchist and class-war groups. A bit like the G7 and G20 protest groups.

Last year's A level Maths at Eton was 110 A grade, 21 B grade and 4 grade C

http://www.etoncollege.com/UserFiles/File/S2008%20Results%20Statistics%20A2c.pdf

One mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist.


Or one mans fish is another mans poisson

At least Maggie crushed Scargill at the right time.

Or did she...................

Thereby hangs another tale.......................

Certainly less union trouble since then.

I wonder if David Cameron is too nice and not tough enough to act Like Maggie. It will certainly need some very unpleasant medicine and government belt tightening to get the country back on a steady course--even bruiser Brown says a lot--does very little except continue to chuck our money at everything----the grandchildren will pay!! good to read your comments again Alan--I hope you're well.

RMT STOPS LONDON, THATS A UNION.

The RMT is once more bahaving badly. They have held London to ransom over two drivers who were sacked.

One driver was sacked over opening the doors on the wrong side of a Victoria Line train & then lying about carrying out safety checks and the other was sacked for theft.

The RMT said they would strike unless the drivers were reinstated.

There are many kids doing GCSEs this week and having terrible journeys to school as the buses are completely full and the bus queues huge. The roads are jam packed as well. The estimate is 100 million cost to London due to the strike.

Just to stir things up a bit............

I think we are all agreed that the current problems are the result of greed and stupidity. Stupidity is not the reserve of any political party, they are all blessed with more than their fair share.

Greed on the other hand became powerful as a political and business sentiment in the golden days of Gordon Gecko. When we were all offered shares and council houses for the price of a pint, and encouraged to look simply at the bottom line.

And who was in power then? The Magatron.

If you see Sid - tell him.

not greed aspirations!! Council houses with smashed windows and rubbish dump gardens suddenly got double glazing, nice gardens and a coat of paint. gimme gimme turned into pride of ownership. The big mistake was not to build more council housing and not to stop people who bought for a snip selling at a massive profit. Maggie got people off their backsides earning and making money---after the first dose of union smashing and nasty medicine!! Here we go again--full circle London held to ransom.

Told you I can stir things up a bit.

Aspirations????

In a time when property was already very cheap, these people had happily rented for 30 years. Not much aspiration there. Or perhaps they could not save for a deposit.......so they were uncreditworthy, as we have now found out with deposit free mortgages.

The double glazing / coat of paint / nice garden thing is a utopian dream. What people actually bought was new cars and Spanish holidays. And what made them suddenly capable of spending money, even if it was on paint and gardens? Equity gifted from the government and banks greedy to lend and make money.

The Magatron actually put more people on their backsides by closing whole industries and commiting 3 million to the dole.

We never really made money. To make money, someone has to lose money. Either that or you must buy and then sell at a profit, or manufacture something. What we actually did was to convince each other that what we had was worth more. We did not make anything - The Magatron saw to that. No-one lost because our property, gifted to us by a benevolent leader was going up in value. We didn't buy and sell at a profit. All we did was export the mirage, and charge people for the priviledge of it.

We will never see eye to eye, but frankly, London being held to ransom for 2 days is not important to me, especially when compared to an entire area of the country being held hostage to misplaced political ideals for over a decade..............

What we did was increase exports by huge amounts and create new jobs. Large number of new businesses started up. The council house purchase is still a success now for many.

And a disaster for many more.

What we did was close down the industries that any country relies on, and create new jobs that really were created, if by created you mean they were unnecessary and there to reduce unemployment.

Just when we need it we have no fuel industry worth talking of, our car industry is reliant on the goodwill of other countries, our utilities are owned by anybody but us, we have to import much of our gas and electricity, almost all raw materials come from elsewhere and to solve the housing problem we are having to replace that which we sold at a discount over the last 30 years.

All we have left to export now is beaurocracy in spadefuls, call centre administration and a few retail chains. The success story was financial services which we now realise, at the wholesale end, was the emperors new clothes.

If the country is to generate wealth it must sell abroad and bring in the bucks. Please tell me what we can now export.

Does "aspiration" amount to how many "wordly goods" one can acquire. I wonder.

Perhaps all trade union members should be put up against the wall and shot. I am sure that will solve all problems.

The Thatcher morality has cause decades of problems for society and is partially responsible for the social problems we have now. Grab everything for yourself and and to hell with your neighbour.