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.

He would fit in nicely with UKIP or the Neo-cons.

Mind it is a little like a con artist MP who claimed moat cleaning on his expenses has been handed a peerage!

It is a wonder that IDS isn't calling for a prison sentence for a social scrounger.

(I am forgetting he is an old tory.)

The smell of Downing Street is spreading.

Mind Max, Manuel and Jb might define it as "nice work if they could get it".

We really need to get this story about rivers and flooding straight

From: http://www.adamsmith.org/
Written by Tim Worstall
Tuesday, December 29th, 2015



That there’s terrible flooding in the North of England is true. But before we decide what we’re going to do about prevention in the future we do need to work out why there is terrible flooding. And here there’s two very different tales. One is that this is climate change and so we had all better stop driving anywhere and huddle in the gloaming of low wattage lamps as we proceed, full speed, to the middle ages. The other is that the bureaucrats have been deliberately designing the flow of rivers so that floods do occur.

We are not so cynical that we would insist that the second explanation must be true just because bureaucrats. We are sufficiently cynical to think that it could be the correct explanation.

Here is one such bureaucrat on the BBC:

Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Rooke said the UK was moving from a period of “known extremes” of weather to one of “unknown extremes” – something which a government review of flood defences would consider before reporting next summer.

Asked if the UK needed a new response to flooding, he said: “I think we will need to have that complete rethink and I think we will need to move from not just providing better defences – and we’ve got a £2.3bn programme to do that over the next six years – but also looking at increasing resilience.”

This would mean “when properties do flood, that they have solid floors, waterproof plaster, more electrics up the wall – so that people can get into their houses and businesses more quickly”.

Quite clearly, more flooding because climate change and we’d better just make waterproof houses and just live with it. There’s also someone called Gaia Vince (surely a spoof name, this is Mr. Cable in retirement, no?) in The Guardian telling us much the same thing. We’ve also a Dutch expert telling us that we should be changing what we do with rivers:

When more than 1,800 people died in the wake of the 1953 North Sea flood in the Netherlands, the national reaction was: never again. The resulting Delta programme to close off the south-western river delta from the sea was so bold that its name became synonymous with dealing with a crisis. If an issue needs a major response, you can be sure that a Dutch politician will call for a “Delta plan to tackle X”. It is time that the UK took some of that attitude and got a Delta plan to tackle flooding.

Sounds like a plan really. We’re on board with it. And then comes this, about the earlier Cumbria floods:

Amid all the devastation and recrimination over the floods in Cumbria hardly anybody mentions one factor that may not be the sole cause, but certainly hasn’t helped.

That is the almost complete cessation of dredging of our rivers since we were required to accept the European Water Framework Directive (EWF) into UK law in 2000.

Yet until then, for all of recorded history, it almost went without saying that a watercourse needed to be big enough to take any water that flowed into it, otherwise it would overflow and inundate the surrounding land and houses.

Every civilisation has known that, except apparently ours. It is just common sense. City authorities and, before them, manors and towns and villages, organised themselves to make sure their watercourses were cleansed, deepened and sometimes embanked to hold whatever water they had to carry away.

Christopher Booker and Owen Paterson have said much the same thing about the Somerset Levels floods of a couple of years back: given that that area is below sea level drainage and pumping is really rather important. So what’s changed?

But all this changed with the creation of the Environment Agency in 1997 and when we adopted the European Water Framework Directive in 2000. No longer were the authorities charged with a duty to prevent flooding. Instead, the emphasis shifted, in an astonishing reversal of policy, to a primary obligation to achieve ‘good ecological status’ for our national rivers. This is defined as being as close as possible to ‘undisturbed natural conditions’.

‘Heavily modified waters’, which include rivers dredged or embanked to prevent flooding, cannot, by definition, ever satisfy the terms of the directive.

So, in order to comply with the obligations imposed on us by the EU we had to stop dredging and embanking and allow rivers to ‘re-connect with their floodplains’, as the currently fashionable jargon has it.

More at the link above - together with lots of comments too!

The solution is easy.

Ask Manuel!








Ps, it is mainly water!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL ....

I am trying to get some information on ETFs

I want to know are there ftse 350 indices ETFS?

If so are they ISA allowed?

Is there a list of such and hopefully with indication of index they dublicate.

I know way back I had a gold one in an ISA.

But looking for Building, Household and construction related ones.

Fred

You might find the following of some interest:

From: http://europe.etf.com/europe/sections/features-a-news/9763-how-to-play-the-uk-housing-market.html?fullart=1&start=2

How To Play the UK Housing Market
By Rachael Revesz
30 April, 2014

The UK’s booming housing sector is attracting investors from far and wide, boosting the UK’s economic rally.

Phenomenal growth in London, fuelled by overseas buyers, has had a knock-on effect around the country and sent homebuilder stocks like Barratt Developments, Bellway and Taylor Wimpey soaring last year.

However, housing is a cyclical sector, meaning it only does well when the economy is looking healthy. And according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research report published today, the UK has reported robust GDP growth of 3.1 percent over the last four quarters.

But there is no guarantee how long this will last. The Bank of England is stress testing the UK’s largest lenders to make sure they can cope with a crash in house prices, reflecting fears that the market has become overheated. According to news reports, the Prudential Regulation Authority expects a 35 percent slump in prices to be triggered once interest rates rise from their current level at 0.5 percent.

Worries about bubbles in the market – tech stocks, bonds, house prices – are nothing new, but rising prices and a consequent slump are always a possibility. The question is, how do you get sector-specific exposure while the going is good but still maintain liquidity?

Don’t confuse commercial and residential property

Unlike the U.S., Europe has a distinct lack of ETFs that track residential property or European homebuilders. Rather, European ETFs track companies like Land Securities Group and British Land that build offices and commercial centres, often in London.

Investors should not get confused by the different sectors with the four property-related ETFs on the London Stock Exchange: three from iShares which cover UK, European and developed market property, and a European real estate fund from Amundi.

The iShares UK Property UCITS ETF physically tracks the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT index of 30 listed real estate companies and real estate investment trusts. It might not be a play on UK housing, but prices for offices and shopping centres in London are rising too and this ETF has returned 22 percent over the past 12 months.

For ETFs that invest in global property, State Street, iShares, HSBC and db X-trackers all offer a vehicle.

Why are there no UK homebuilders ETFs?

But when it comes to tracking UK house builders, no ETFs have been launched yet for European investors. There are fewer listed property companies in the UK, compared to the U.S, and ETFs are required to be diversified.

The proportion of home owners is also quite high in the UK, explained Gordon Rose, fund analyst at Morningstar, and he questioned whether homeowners would then want to invest in a homebuilders ETF.

“It’s a small sector compared to other European markets,” he said. “Products like that are difficult to market. But as European ETFs develop and become less fragmented and more liquid, I can imagine maybe one day they will launch a homebuilder ETF.”

The FTSE ICB Home Construction Index contains various UK-listed homebuilder names, but has few assets tracking it and no ETFs.

Investors that wish to take a view on UK housing through house builder names can still do so, using this index, according to Brandon Mitchell, who works in ETF sales and research at advisory and broker firm Peel Hunt. The list of stock in this index are quite manageable, allowing investors to create a tradable basket with a modest amount of money, he said.

Sector specific exposure

Taking a punt on a main UK equity index could be a way to get more sector specific exposure. There are a small handful of homebuilders in the FTSE 250, and the iShares FTSE 250 UCITS ETF has returned 16 percent over the last year and 0.19 percent year to date. Similarly, there are a modest nine homebuilders in the FTSE All Share, and the SPDR FTSE UK All Share UCITS ETF has delivered 12 percent over the past year.

“You could invest in one of these indices as when the economy goes up, the housing market goes up – but the problem is by investing in something like the FTSE 100, a lot of the revenue is derived from multinational companies who might not be a play on UK house prices,” said Rose. “If you really want to have pure UK investment you would have to look at small and mid-cap UK equities.”

Buyer beware - homebuilders have a nationwide focus, but it is prices in London that are rising the fastest. In fact, prices in prime central London have risen around 60 percent since pre-credit crisis, according to asset manager London Central Portfolio limited, compared to the rest of the country’s house price growth of about 7 percent over the same timeframe.

Non-ETF options

For investors wanting to consider open-ended mutual funds in property, London Central Portfolio argues that a package of government-backed tax incentives and residential property funds in central London tick “all investment boxes”. Investing in the buy-to-let domain is for the smart saver.

But open-ended funds could suspend redemptions when investors are flooding out of the fund in a downward market – as happened with New Star’s UK Property Trust – creating the so-called liquidity trap.

Not many people can afford to pay for bricks and mortar, but that doesn't mean the property market is out of bounds. Just be sure you fully understand the fund you are buying into.

Here's something to make you all a lot of money when the markets re-open after the break:

A new chapter has been written in the annals of technological advancement. At long last, an idea, a creation, an innovation has come along that is changing everything, it is called, Ultimate4Trading

This incredible trading tool is the winning product in STARTUP365’s ‘Innovation of the Year’ 2015 award, and is heralding the dawn of a new age of trading.

The creators’ claim that they have now given the trading rookie the same ability to trade as an experienced trader. After extensive tests and trials, the results are always the same, profits are made on three out of every four trades they make.

But first, remember the Golden Rule, "If it looks too good to be true - then it generally is."

And then do check out the 'Scam Review on Ultimate4Trading' at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BZ3I-H9pAA

Exec,

Thank you.

I will have a look am..

Just recovering from a mastermind showing me how to use a new mobile phone.


His old one!
8-(

flooding
i have a feeling that the c+p post a page or so back forgot to mention such things as housing permissions granted for flood plain, sewers being overloaded by all the extra housing effluent being routed through existing systems, all the additional housing developments with their impermeable infrastructure elements removing valuable soak-away ...... and i'm sure there's much more of a similar vein

Hopefully, a happy new year to all.

But I hope the flies don't get in the ointment!

i confess i do not look forward to 2016 with much confidence at all

That is a change!


8-)


Try hope!

I have been looking in to Ultimate4trading following Execs post and have found mixed reviews .

http://forexbonus100.com/news/ultimate4Trading-review/

The Vipurkives Lever Axe in action:

fred - i'm afraid i see little other than gloom for 2016 on all fronts to a greater or lesser extent ..... events may prove otherwise, not least because there are always loads of unknowns

Good advert for that axe EL, until he hits a few knots in the wood.

and i wonder how easy or hard it is to split hardwood logs - eg beech or hawthorn and the like, let alone sweet chestnut that does not have straight grain

Concentrate on the knowns and you may have a chance.


Read Paul Mason's:

Postcapitalism

A Guide to Our Future


It may make you wonder!