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.

relative to the rest of europe, uk is booming, even on the m'facturing side and is doing about as well as usa
however, china has slowed down markedly, and therein lies the key

i'm not sure how important russia is, but as well publicised, it is now a complete basket case
if i have read correctly, about 40% of the russian economy is reliant on oil
russian oil costs ~$50 to get out of the ground and closer to $75 in the arctic ..... now add the royalties, and the price goes to $70/80

Cyners from personal experience how well do chemical companys do with low oil prices. ??

this looking to break up..........

don't know ... i'm too young to remember that far back :-)

in honesty, all countries are currently at sixes and sevens not only from low oil prices but also because the chinese economy has slowed down considerably
the result of this is bad all round
though a low oil price should (must) make petro-chemicals cheaper, if there isn't a demand, then it's not a great help

i'm afraid i don't know much about synthomer either, though of course "we" are only interested in the direction of sp

Hmmmmm thanks for that, yep last trading statement wasnt brilliant but charts going in a bullish fashion.

Will have a think.

as you will have noticed, i'm almost bearish about the markets in general

I would call that being prudent.

i'll let you know if i make any money :-)

Good luck if you are dabling the latest version of the great game

i'm not that brave!
however, i've been making a bit of splosh on ftse and dow shorts

Private firm wins NHS contract despite charging £7m MORE than NHS 03/01/2014

The government has awarded an £80 million NHS contract to a private firm despite the company charging taxpayers £7 million more than an NHS consortium bidding against it:

Stoke NHS hospital scanning contract won by private firm

More proof – if any more were needed – that the Lib Dem/Tory government’s mad dash to privatise eveything in its sights is a purely political aganda and nothing to do with saving taxpayers money.

The government – of course – have not said why the private firm won the contract despite its bid being more expensive.

That’s because the bidding process was – of course – secret:

“This whole process has been shrouded in secrecy. We don’t even know who – expert adviser or public representative – were on the panel.“

.

That sounds a bit fishy gf.

Do you have any more info, like what your source is?

BTW, they cant hide the figs forever, also what is the gov doing awarding contracts?

That's for the trusts concerned.

Price is not always the determining factor. When choosing suppliers, I often chose one that was more expensive. It could well be that there are reasons to believe that the chosen supplier would provide a better service than the NHS one.

The wording implies tech stuff, how would a nhs consortium be able to compete?

This is old news from 8 December. The lefty blogs have just started to moan about it.

The NHS bid involved staff trained by the company who won the bid and also currently run the service. The company have run the service since November 2013 and will continue to use the NHS staff. It is clear that the bid winners have far more expertise than the NHS bidders. It looks like a lot of fuss about nothing.

So why the secrecy?

I wonder to whom those hands belong to?

I don't think there is any secrecy. It is a fiction dreamed up by activists.

A trust spokesman said: “The procurement process is still active and until completed we are unable to provide any information.”

And an Alliance spokesman added: “Until any standstill period is over we will be unable to provide any further information.”