Gringo

Can you point out these hard decisions and sacrifices - seem to have passed me by. Indeed it is.

Nice little dig at me there Gringo. :winkold: Here is why I personally don't need a Union. I am a very talented and hard worker and I got my promotion and pay increases and all because I'm a valued employee. If I was under paid I would find another job. I will leave my current job at some time in the future I'm sure when a better opportunity arises. Also my bonuses are not imaginary, they are contractual and cannnot be taken away any easier than my pay. I've detailed the exceptional circumstances a few pages back about why they were postponed indefinitly. CV - it wasn't a dig. It was a realistic interpretation of your situation. People who have little power band together to form unions. You have forgone that option and would rather fight the world yourself. That is your option. But it gives you no right to condemn those that do band together. They are only strong in comparison to your collective weakness. I guess you probably earn more than a teacher does, but you denounce their "extortionate" wages. Why are you more valuable to the economy than them?

Skule was grate for all the rong reasons. You remember all the times you wagged it and didn't get caught. Going into a pub at 13 and being carried out on the shoulder of a 6ft+ burly biker telling you they didn't sell curlywurlys, and going back a couple of months later getting served, waggin skule to play squash (strange but true), driving a cricket ball directly into the teachers guts who was standing umpire, smoking around the bikesheds, or in the fields, or sometimes in the toilets, cheating in exams, getting everyone to write random rubbish in their RE exams ( and getting the whole class in detention for it - oh boy I was popular), smiling your way through it, getting caught smoking for the first time when you are legally old enough to smoke and still getting a detention (not served - as per tony's excuse - if you're needed in the team - you are too busy to write lines), bumping into teachers in the pub at lunch time, turning up for the team photo covered in blood after an lunchtime drinking session went wrong, winning the intra year six-a-side footie with the weakest team around, sat in the back of a car, with 6 other people, crashing on the way back from a lunchtime pub visit (driver was sober though distraught). I was probably a disruptive influence and should have been removed, but apart from the lessons tended to enjoy myself.

yep, it is a scare tactic a lot of companies will use Was he in a union?It doesn't matter, if he was permanent staff it was illegal to fire someone for not making it to work because of the weather. Of course it doesn't matter - legally. But if you are in a union, it's a hell of lot easier to get a lawyer, hell of a lot easier to make your case and a hell of a lot more unlikely the employer would risk such an action. If the private sectors unions were as powerful - or even maybe - perish the thought - aligned themselves with with the public sector unions maybe they would have a voice. But when none of the private sector workers can be arse paying a couple of quid / euros a week to get the union benefits, why would the public sector unions bother with them. You only have yourself to blame unfortunately. If you joined unions and worked with them to restore the employer / employee balance you might be able to negotiate contracts that gave you all your money in real contracts instead of imaginary discressionary bonuses that can be taken away when your only other option is to go walk the streets and look for another bank hiring quants (ps RBS and HSBC are hiring in london).

is that not good news to get inter bank lending started again ? Repeat after me - it's not the price, it's the availability. :winkold: Well to ignore the price would be foolish. How much are HBOS paying for their funding - 12%, RBS - 12%, Barclays - 14%. So why would they lend that back out at 2% or 4%. The recapitalisation of the banks was never going to release funding for lending. It stopped the banks collapsing yes, but let's not mistake what has happened so far. The BoE rate is utterly irrelevant to banks who are having to pay massive dividends out to those who saved them. An alternative plan to bring cheaper cash into banks is needed. ISAs don't bring money into banks as most of them are equity based and not cash based.

You been drinking again? Reading between the lines - no you don't have to be in a union - but if you are, you have someone to phone when your boss talks shite like that. Otherwise you're by yourself - and it's cold lonely world out there in the snowdrifts.

Last week LIBOR overnight rates dropped from 2% to 1.5% - the interest rate cut was already priced in. The rate cut had no impact on currency markets. After all - how could movements in the ECB rate impact the strength of the pound against the dollar. What did was the lack of any announcement towards printing of money. The plan to use existing capital to purchase some tarnished assets was expected - what was feared was as snowy opined - the printing of money to fund those purchases. Once they realise they don't have the existing captial to really carry out this plan, and then have to start printing money, sterling will fall against both euro and $. I think the answer to that one is a resounding yes...I think the answer to that one is a resounding dunno - but it's a race to the bottom, and dependent upon many political machinations. If the greeks and the irish can't fund their debt, will they have to leave (or be kicked out of) the euro, thus strengthening the mainline currency in the absence of the basketcases?

yep, it is a scare tactic a lot of companies will use Was he in a union?

Green Shoots? Light at the end of the tunnel? Or Dead Cat?

Oh come on - you can't believe that. Shami Chakrabarti probably bunged them a few hundred grand to say that.

Yes you are - and people have already been charged with offences against the ministry of truth by conspiring to distribute non-govt approved material with the direct purpose of distressing people (at how woeful their govt are) and alarming people (at how little there is they can do about it). Blair laid bare: the article that may get you arrested

How often are these words being attached to contentious laws nowadays. Just as with the current 'coroners' bill - put together a mishmash of rubbish and throw in a few whoppers, drop one headline piece of legislation to buy of the rebel sheep and slip in the real nasty stuff sandwiched in between. I'm sure if this had been challenged then we would have been reassured that the correct checks and balances were being put in place to make sure people arrested for staring at buildings were doing so in a malevolent manner and not in a friendly way.You really can't trust the bunch of crooks can you. BIAD.

Nothing? Are private sector banned from joining unions? No. Well looks like that's where your problem is. If the workers don't get organised they get fkd over. And the ones that get fkd over point at the ones that get organised and howl 'not fair'. Same argument over state pensions has been going in the UK for the past 3 years, all because the private sector workers meekly gave up their pension rights whilst the public sector decided not to be pussies and fought to keep the rights they had been promised. Private Sector have unions but ... So tell me, which union are you in CV?

I do think a tax exemption for savings income may help a bit, make it more attractive to savers, increase the banks coffers, improve lqiuidity, loosen the lending policies.

The rate cut will have no effect. A large majority of mortgage customers are on fixed rates and plenty of trackers are hitting their cuffs now. As it will have little or no effect on the supply of credit available at this point it would have been better holding this 'weapon' back.

Strange how they were contributing nowt, but now that they aren't pushing these bits of money around any more the global economy has seized up. Maybe they were doing something important after all? Just because you don't understand something, it doesn't make it worthless.

Strange how they were contributing nowt, but now that they aren't pushing these bits of money around any more the global economy has seized up. Maybe they were doing something important after all?

So you haven't actually had a 20% pay cut, you've just had your bonus stopped.

Nothing? Are private sector banned from joining unions? No. Well looks like that's where your problem is. If the workers don't get organised they get fkd over. And the ones that get fkd over point at the ones that get organised and howl 'not fair'. Same argument over state pensions has been going in the UK for the past 3 years, all because the private sector workers meekly gave up their pension rights whilst the public sector decided not to be pussies and fought to keep the rights they had been promised.

The horror of the ID card system My correspondent makes the following points. The agency had already recorded the passport details and scanned it. His wife has paid for a 'premium' service (£595) appointment at UK Border Agency where she was fingerprinted, photographed and filled in forms so that she would not have to send her passport by post. When she phoned UKBA twice to report that "American Samoan" was a mistake, she spoke to two people, who told her to send the incorrect ID card only and did not mention sending a passport. She explained that she would need the ID card back soon in case she had to travel abroad. He says that the letter received from UKBA instructed - "Please send your passport to the Freepost address as above". There was no Freepost address shown anywhere on the letter, or on the envelope. He continues: Another long phone queue ensued and he spoke to what he describes as an unpleasant man at the UKBA immigration enquiry bureau (0870 606 7766) regarding a possible refund: He was very irritable, dismissive and patronising, but then he admitted it was not his decision to make and gave him an address for UK Border Agency complaints at Lunar House in Croydon. When I heard the name Croydon I said to him: 'Oh, we heard about the Croydon office when we were waiting at the UK Border Agency Offices for hours during your system crash in early January, we heard the Border Agency staff talking about it.' The man conceded that there was systems crash and hurriedly hung up. As of writing this, my wife is still without an ID card and now doesn't have her passport either. I reproduce this story at length because it captures the anger and helplessness experienced when you become ensnared in a system that is flawed, contemptuous of individual needs and entirely pointless. At the time of the vote, many people were rather ambivalent in what choice the govt made as we all knew they'd never manage to implement an IT system to run this fiasco, and lo and behold they can't - but that won't stop them enforcing these wrong laws.

Labour did not HAVE to go to the right. Michael Foot would have got in in 1997. Labour went to the right cos it was led by a charlatan.

I have given multiple examples, over various thread of policies that I would have put in place, though you seem to ignore them. I mentioned a true socialist party would have nationalised the banks and sought to to engineer some form of business lending, but you ignore that. I have said that I would support some form of housing reclamation. That's three polcies that I have SPECIFCALLY supported on this thread whilst you claim I have offered none. Whilst I claim that you have failed to criticise brown or the brownite factions in any form and you have SPECIFCALLY failed to admit their culpability. Much like they have.

Some analysts say the world has lost 40% of asset value in the world in the past 12 months - which would mean that the floor is far below what we currently have (that would hint at a further 25% fall to come). Me don't believe that all that much. The average house (ie the one you are living in) still has a rental yield of +6%. The problem lies in all the unsold shoeboxes built around town/city centres. If the govt takes them off the books and into social housing the price will settle in 2010/2011. For this year, lack of mortgage funding will keep driving house prices lower by 10-15% (real terms) this year. That is of course if the NWO maintain control. If the riots spread then asset value becomes a nonsense.

My parents didn't speak to each other for nearly ten years and now love each other like kittens. And (hopefully) will see out their final years in each others arms (if I have anything to do with it (a lttle needle on their 60th anniversary maybe)). Marriage and the catholic church can be a wonderful thing.

Surely I am and have by my evidence, only been repeating what the papers and commentators have said. Brown won't admit any fault, neither will the neo-thatch-blair-brownite followers. And the opinion polls have followed the peoples confidence in their 'elected' leader downhill.