f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

LOL, we're not even out of January yet

Snow causing economic woes

Eee by 'eck, it makes you wonder how Germany and Scandinavia can even put bread on't table

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

its obvious that was going to be an excuse, when they tried to blame the Queens whatever day off the country had for causing weaker growth.

tubbytommy

iTrader: (20)

theres no shops left to go bust now anyway.

ChrisB

I went shopping on Saturday morning and it was ace. There was hardly anyone about

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

I would blame those fools who were in charge before the Tories and left us £1trillion in debt At least the last time they could sell off the Utilities to pay off the sh1tstorm

FlightMan

Yeah. Selling the utilities went well didn't it?

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

No but it paid off some of the last national debt.

Scooby Soon!

imagine the price of electric and gas if it had been run under new labour!

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

A bit less than it is now as it wouldn't have to service shareholders?

Scooby Soon!

no shareholders but 10,000's of labour jobs moving paper around in the seeboard and british gas offices, you live in a dreamworld if you think electric would be cheaper!

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Not would, but could. It didn't need privatising to make it run efficiently.

Thatcher just sold you that line so you'd not object too much when she sold it off for less than half of what it was worth... that and you could make a bit of pocket money if you signed up to her new free market ideology by buying the nice guaranteed to increase in value shares..... well they would be.. she deliberately undervalued the company.

I suspect you like many others have fallen for it. Never mind, too late now.

Chip

British Gas whom I worked for at the time of privatisation became a lot more efficient as did the other utilities as they became accountable to not only their shareholders (like me :: )
but to the newly formed regulators who although get a bad press do have and use their enormous power.

People whinge and moan about the power utilities all of the time but like it or not they are run quite efficiently compared to before being privatised. After all, when was the last time your gas went off? I bet it hasn't ,ever.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

With reference to privatisation our leccy, gas and telephone infractructure has required £billions spending on it. I doubt any government assigned contractors would be cheaper...they aren't for our roads and rail.

Anyhoo, back to the economy. It'll be shyte, and will stay shyte until we magically stumble upon a sucessful exporting industry which brings more money back into the UK instead of out. We can't export houses, so FFS stop building them, all it serves is to keep idle hands busy in vain hope someone will afford to buy them (they won't unless we go nack to dishing out massive mortgages again ). Domestic retail is the end of the chain and will continue its demise as big global online companies suck up trade from a shrinking amount of consumer spending. And consumer spending won't change until more money comes back into this country and trickles down the everyday joe public; Preferably not in the form of massive mortgages and loans which caused us to fall into this current mess.

What does the UK have that it can sell to other countries? JCB is a good one. Jag/LR would be ok if it wasn't owned by TATA. Apparantly one of our biggest exports is parts of neclear reactors? Funny that considering we can't build our own

r32

Selling off things like JCB, and why would you when it exports probably over 80% of its production, bringing in much need foreign currency, can only be done once.

Selling off the untilities or other major assets can only be done once. Once the likes of Jaguar, Land Rover get sold the profits go overseas, they provide jobs but the bulk of the money stays abroad.

We need more manufacturing in the UK, the Government seem unable to help.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I am not saying they aren't run better now, just that they didn't have to be privatised to get them to run better. The regulatiors could still have been put in place under a slightly different remit of course and the industry could have been streamlined.

Anyway I think even you would have to admit that the utilities were not privatised primarily to improve their efficiency

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Meanwhile on the economy government borrowing was higher than expected in December and is still rising year on year.... George... it ain't working mate

Matteeboy

It's too fundamentally broken to fix. Depression imminent; within the next three years. We genuinely ain't seen nothing yet.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Yeah everyone was saying that in 2008, yet we are still here!

Matteeboy

Just wait; I'm surprised you aren't better informed oh Oracle of all things financial...

SkullFudge

We are involved with EDF as we carry out much work for BT and the money that is wasted is shameful. Same with the rail network.
You can charge £400 per man per shift and put 6 men on a job. 50% of the time nothing can be achieved due to poor preparation or certain people not attending.
They pay in full at all times. Never question anything.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Is this like when we waited 10 years for the housing crash and when it eventually came Petem95 or whatever he was called took the credit for predicting it even though he had been doing so for 10 years LOL!

I know we're in the ****, but a full scale depression???? Give me hard evidence and I'll take a look, but at the moment it's all conjecture as we have no nidea what the rest of the world is going to be doing in the next few years anyway.

Matteeboy

Sign up to the Money Week newsletters for a very comprehensive background to why we are in such deep mire.

Will try and dig it out if its possible to send a link. Not just them though; others have a similar view.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

You misread me...I meant JCB is one of only few UK OWNED manufacturers that are both based and build in the UK and export overseas (although will their new Brazil plant damage UK JCB production? ). I meant we need more companies like them.

If the company isn't UK owned like JLR not all the money comes back to the UK...some of it will go off to TATA.

jonc

Are you refering to this alarmist advertisement? Do you have your free wealth preservation report? Apparently you can avert your personal doomsday financial meltdown if you take up their subscription.

http://www.moneyweek.com/endofbritain

Matteeboy

Just read it and make your own mind up.

No I haven't signed up.

Leslie

Its just another scrape at the bottom of the barrel!

Les

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

I just read thru most of that and its more like a huge marketing scam for the magazine. They mostly go on about the countries debt being £1.4trillion as they predict it will be at that figure in 2years time.

Most of the world is in this situation so there is no way all these governments will let that collapse happen

Matteeboy

But do all these countries have such an unsustainable welfare state? Yes it's trying to sell stuff; anyone with half a brain knows that- bit there are some interesting nuggets of info in there and some of the writers are genuinely regarded as very well informed.

I'm hearing similar, although less dramatically put, from other sources too. It's just hard to swallow if it makes things look precarious. I'll be putting some money into non UK banks and might well grab some Swiss gold to make sure.

jonc

Forget gold and forget putting cash in non UK banks, what use is cash when the **** hits the fan. Sell everything, learn some survival skills and use your cash while you still can to buy an island somewhere, fortify it, get some guns and lots of ammo and become self sustaining.

JTaylor

Were you reading this in Jan' 2009?

https://www.scoobynet.com/non-scooby...ying-gold.html

#3

Oh, and #24. Welcome back.