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.

This

Landing a man on Mars.

Perhaps, what they want is to escape from the London orientated politics!

yes and no would seem to be the answer to that ..... they can have their labour buddies instead :-)


for sure an awful lot of games being played behind the scenes, but quite amusing nevertheless

It's in the Guardian, so it must be true!




UK unemployment rate falls to 6.0%, lowest since Lehman Brothers collapsed - live




LIVE updated 3m ago


Graeme Wearden

Wednesday 15 October 2014 09.39 BST




http://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2014/oct/15/uk-unemployment-wages-china-inflation-shire-business-live

Q. Remember the date '1066'?
A. Yes. Everyone knows the answer. It was the year of the Battle of Hastings.

The link below is to a very fascinating and carefully revised take on it by a guy called Dr Dominic Selwood, who writes the history blog for the Telegraph.

Selwood is a former criminal barrister, novelist and historian with a passion for the less visited corners of the archives. He is the author of the crypto-thriller, The Sword of Moses (2013), and the textbook on the Knights Templar, Knights of the Cloister (1999). He tweets as @DominicSelwood :

"We like to think that Anglo-Saxon England was brutally cut down in 1066 — unexpectedly — in a battle lasting just one day. To reinforce our assumptions, we still revel in Victorian and Hollywood melodrama stereotypes of dastardly Normans persecuting flaxen Saxons in box-sets of Ivanhoe or Tolkein’s thinly disguised versions set in Middle Earth.

The reality, of course, is far more complex."

The-true-story-of-the-battle-of-hastings-today-in-1066/

The SNP want another referendum within the next few years as they think they will win the next time. Their argument that the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems colluded at the last minute to help the no vote -and are now trying to wriggle out of their promises- is going to help their cause. Cameron is obviously trying to stir things with Labour as he has little left to lose in Scotland.

Fishfinger,

I didn't just dismiss deflation yesterday. I simply pointed out that there is a difference between falling inflation and deflation (albeit I didn't explicitly say that), and there is absolutely no imminent threat of there being deflation within the UK (as opposed to Spain, where I think prices have actually fallen y/y).

The fact is that falling inflation is a good thing right now. It helps narrow the gap between inflation and earnings increases (you've been going on about falling living standards on this thread for, errrr, yonks). Another consequence is that it means the MPC are less likely to raise interest rates, which, in turn, prompts a sterling sell off and helps UK exporters.

In addition, and given that the UK has been a net importer of energy since 2013 as part of continuing trend of declining UK fossil fuel extraction, and that oil, like all other commodities, is priced in USD, then the chances of there ever being deflation within the UK are probably next to zero.

The current policies seem to be working well. One consequence is that unemployment figures today are the lowest since 2008.

Nicola Sturgeon has been conformed as the new DNP leader due being the only candidate.

SNP is now romping ahead of Labour in the GE polls. Labour are likely to be wiped out in Scotland. This may have very serious implications for Miliband. He may be ahead in the polls, but a possible majority would disappear without Scotland.

it has been telegraphed for quite a while that wages will continue to lag for a good many more months and while inflation is almost too low for comfort (so we are told), this will still not make the average joe any cheerier .... he needs more splosh in his pocket, but how

Membership of SNP has trebled since the referendum.

LONDON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Sterling stayed near an 11-month low against the dollar on Wednesday, giving up early gains as weak jobs data did little to shake a growing conviction that UK interest rates will not rise until well into 2015. Jobs growth in Britain was at its slowest in more than a year in the three months to August, official data showed, even as the unemployment rate fell more than expected. Workers' earnings inched up, lagging far behind inflation. ID:nL9N0MN00B The Bank of England has said that any rise in interest rates from their historic lows will be dependent on economic data, especially wage growth. In the wake of Tuesday data showing inflation slowing sharply as food and motor fuel prices fell, sterling fell as low as $1.5878 GBP=D4 in Asian trade - its weakest since November 2013. After Wednesday's employment data, sterling hit a high of $1.5940 GBP=D4 but quickly slipped back and was last trading at $1.5915, flat on the day. "The key still remains this relentless downward pressure in imported inflation," said Simon Derrick, head of currency research at Bank of New York Mellon. "If you have no imported inflation, if there is no desperate need to raise rates, why should sterling be the place to park your money at the moment?" Against the euro, sterling strengthened to 79.50 pence per euro EURGBP= , up 0.1 percent on the day. Expectations that the BoE would be the first major central bank to raise rates drove sterling to a six-year peak against the dollar in July. But increased signs of economic weakness - partly the result of a spillover from the euro zone - and the sharp fall in inflation have poured cold water on those expectations, and sterling has fallen 7.5 percent since July. BoE Governor Mark Carney struck a somewhat dovish tone on Monday, saying the bank's rate-setting committee would have to take into account "a more modest global recovery, particularly if that's the case in Europe". ID:nL6N0S8220 "The lack of wage growth remains a thorn in the side of an otherwise fairly robust recovery," said Ben Brettell, a senior economist at financial firm Hargreaves Lansdown. "The absence of inflationary pressure - both in prices and wages - makes holding interest rates at 0.5 percent a straightforward decision, and as such this week's data may have come as something of a relief for Mark Carney and his colleagues."

Of course you could always question the official unemployment figure and how it's fallen more than expected..

To get higher wages, there needs to be a slackening of the interest reigns and money supply. A bit of an increase in inflation will trigger higher prices and higher wages. The current interest rates are unsustainable for much longer. The basis of capitalism is that you can earn money by the use of capital. Part of that connection is the investment of capital in enterprises, but another part is also interest. When the balance is right money will flow into the UK and investment will increase. There are credible stories of substantial capital on hold waiting for the right conditions for investment.

The English Question should be simple to fix

Labour’s opposition to fair treatment for England is risking Britain’s integrity - Gordon Brown, its former leader, has missed the point





By Telegraph View

6:20AM BST 15 Oct 2014



Sometimes, Parliament rises to the occasion – and it did so yesterday with an all-day debate on the constitution, in the wake of the Scottish independence referendum.


It was apparent that the passions inflamed by the two-year campaign had not subsided in some quarters. Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, fulminated like an Old Testament prophet against what he perceived as Conservative perfidy. He considered David Cameron’s decision to raise the English Question in the aftermath of the referendum to have been partisan and dangerous, railing against any suggestion that there should be English votes for English laws and calling it a recipe for constitutional crisis. It would, said Mr Brown, create two classes of MP, be unbalanced because of the disproportionate size of England, and hasten the break-up of the Union that its proponents claim they want to preserve.


Not for the first time, Mr Brown missed the point. The devolutionary settlement of 1998 left an injustice at the heart of our democratic system that the last government did nothing to address. It created not so much two classes of MP as, in the words of Sir George Young, the former Commons leader, two classes of voter, with those in England possessing less leverage over events in the UK than their Scottish counterparts.


If Mr Brown had a point, it was in warning of the consequences of devolving full income tax powers to Scotland – a proposal put forward by a Conservative committee chaired by Lord Strathclyde, which went further than anything suggested by Labour. This is an important argument that will need to be resolved by the all-party committee established to consider the way forward. But that would require a full contribution from Labour, one it appears reluctant to make. Its leaders complain they are being bounced into something politically advantageous to the Tories, and want to refer the whole issue to a constitutional convention after the 2015 general election. In other words, they want to kick this matter yet again into the long grass.


More:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11162204/The-English-Question-should-be-simple-to-fix.html

another 6 months or more of current uk interest rates, or have you forgotten already?

Cynic, the average Joe always seems to have enough money to spend on booze! An article in the Telegraph this morning details what a strain this is putting on the NHS.

DB4,

Are you TT?

No Fred, I'm a wine drinker - in moderation!

As a reminder of this governments supervised recovery