Gringo

Oh dear that is desperate. Like selling your furniture to pay your credit card bill. Except you have to rent it back and so your debt grows long term instead of shrinking.

I'm sure the eu mandarins would be very upset. But there isn't vat-rate harmony across the eu at the moment, so not impossible to implement. Anyway why should VAT be 17.5% - it was 8% before maggie decided to tax the poor to shore up the govt finances.

The CBI calling for tax cuts - well there's a shocker. If the economy was the biggest booming economy in the world they'd be calling for tax cuts. But as you say, any marginal cut in VAT rates will be stolen by the companies - not the banks. New problems need new solutions - keynesian solutions were not implemented in the 30s and won't work here. Overhaul of the system of state finance needs to be implemented. Remove sales tax (ie VAT) and charge people on what they earn, not what they spend.

From www.whitehouse.gov What they don't attribute on this site is this quote: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." And now we are reaping the rewards. The USA money supply grew more in the last 3 months by more than existed 7 years ago. So now they owe 'the man' even more.

If you've got 30% deposit you can get 5% deals. If you've got 25% and a sparkling clean credit history, you are playing the 5.5%+. Less than 25% deposit you are struggling - there are offers out there, but lenders have tightened up their credit scoring to an extent that they can refuse most of the business whilst still pretending to honour their pledge to the govt to make the same amount of funding available.

I'm not so sure that is what happened in the 30's. There was no real expansionist spending on the levels being talked about now.nd govt debt wasn't twice the size of GDP. So pushing ahead with non-radical solutions instead then. More of the same only more of it and bigger.

As posted elsewhere - we haven't even fully scoped the problems yet, so solutionising at this stage is always going to be problematic. What we can be sure of is that the current system does not work and is not robust. So now is the time to push some radical solutions through Number One - abolish VAT and add 4p onto income tax

Grew up on baltis - but now they don't seem to do the trick Used to love tikka but similarly tend to find some of these fancy restaurants messing with the basic requirements. Nowadays probably switch between jalfrezi, dopiaz, bhuna. Never been a real madras, vindallo or phall fan - although herself will often avail herself of one of those options and I will annoy her by scooping out the sauce out of her dish with my nan. So for the purposes of the poll I go for bhuna as that's the last one I had.

Housing market 'far worse' than figures suggest Short and shallow?

They have, though I'm not quite sure I believe them. I believe once in power then party will find it desirable to hold onto them for certain positions (such as airport staff) or to tackle certain issues close to every tory heart (immigration, benefit cheats) and then slowly expanded to students, pensioners, people with brown skins etc etc.

Paralympians. Ellie Simmonds won something like 3 gold medals at a stupidly young age, 14 maybe?Cheers. For me paralympians are to some extent not at the same level as non-disabled athletes, not in their commitment or efforts, but in the the way that success in the sport seems to be decided as much by those who quantify and classify disability as thos who take part.In the same way that rebecca adlington shouldn't be considered cos if she was any good she'd be competing against blokes.

double bagger

Of course there has to be, that's an economic fact (though many newspapers have for years been run at a loss as their proprietors had other reasons for maintaining their presence in the newsagent). But that does not equate to . Electoral turnout has been declining year on year - does that equate to democracy is dying (well it does actually, but that's a different argument). Readership will reach a different level, and pricing and advertising models supplemented with new media will adapt to suit. Newspapers are not dying, though hopefully some newspapers will die.

The volume of readers may change - but the papers aren't dying - just silliness on sticks. Papers will still be here and read by a very sizable chunk of the populous 10 years, 20 years and 30 years hence. Where do you think the advertising revenue goes from all the papers' websites? into journalism that makes papers that people read. What profitable (widely read) news web sites are there out there that are not linked another form of media, either tv, radio or print?

Let's face it - they're not. When was the last time a national newspaper closed - TODAY in 1995 - when t'internet was in it's infancy. Yes papers are suffering a downturn in advertising revenue - but so is TV - is t'internet also the end of TV?

Over the last few years I have become used to the Independent as my staple source of stuff - from sports to news to global politics - along with a reasonably wide range of views. This was the stable in the storm, whilst the times turned into a gossip mag and the grauniad went all metropolitan on itself, only the indie and the tory graph seemed to remain as proper newspapers. Last year the torygraphy hit the menopause and started publishing all wonders of rubbish and so only the indie remained. However a couple of months ago the indie got itself a new editor, that esteemed chap roger alton from the observer - he had been booted out for being a bit too neocon. So obviously some change was due. I expected to see a few favourite names dropped and a few observer chums brought in but that has not yet happened. Instead, he's gone the daily mail / express route of trying to sell the content of the newspaper with salacious headlines across the front page - referring to the sex lives of various mammals. All of this tripe doesn' touch the real part of the paper but tend to appear in the midsection. So I could cope with that, Then he re-designs the layout, structure of the paper, adding colour which is nice, but seemingly trying to fix what isn't broke. Now an old fuddy I am, and of course all change is bad. For now the indie is still the best paper around (IMO) - still the best reporters and the best commentary, but it seems like the start of a slippery slope.

For some people it causes nausea and chucking. It also reduces (to varying degrees) the effectiveness of the drug itself. Always drank when I'm on antibiotics - but look how I turned out.

You may not have noticed, but the crash in the property market has led to the biggest economic crisis since the 30's. What's the panic indeed.

But hey, it's not all bad news out there Not quite the full story - the are talking in actual terms. In real terms (discounting for the effect of inflation), house prices won't be back at 2007 levels til 2015.

Yes the property thing was apparent before the smoking ban - but you use it as a reason for pubs closing down, even though pubs are closing 10 times faster now than they were before - how do YOU square that circle. Either your argument is redundant or false. No property firms are now buying pubs in order to turn them into flats. None. Nada. Zilch. Yet pubs are still closing and still you use it to support your argument. Incredulous. These "non food places" as you label them, probably what I would call "traditional" pubs were still in business 18 months ago and now are going to the wall. As I said on another thread a while back, phone fleurets or one of the other pub estate agents and see what is happening to the industry. Anything outside the city centre is now off limits for any type of funding or financial support. Smoking Ban killed the pubs as many said it would do. Now the naysayers are simply making excuses.

Of course. Yet you are still spouting tosh about property companies in the middle of the biggest property slump in nearly 20 years and your other "factor" is the fact that supermarkets are selling cheap beer which they have been doing for years. Next you'll be telling us it's all the fault of the sub prime market in the USA even though pub closures are up 1000% on last year, even though the UK has only just now entered recession. Were all these pub giants guessing that there income would be slashed or did they know it already had been. Smoking ban kills pubs, In Ireland, in the UK in France, wherever.

No he won't cos he doesn't think that arguing with fools will enhance the debate. On other threads people who said they only wanted to drink in lemon fresh pub environments now call smokers sad rocket polishers. Where's the truth in there orignial argument? None - they were lying then and are sad rocket polishers now? Other people who said they would go to the pub more often once smoke was vanquished then said they spent 18 quid a week going out. Others who said the pubs were closing down to property speculators in the middle of a property crash now blame the supermarkets, People buy from supermarkets cos they can't smoke in the pub. The facts remain the same, the excuses vary. In a few years no real pubs left and you'll all be drinking your spritzers in all bar one. Well done.

BTL RIP There are virtually zero 85% LTV mortgages out there now for BTL'ers. This means many who bought in 2006 with a 2/3 year fix expiring in the next 6 months will either have to pay his bank's standard variable rate or accept repossession. Worked Example If they bought a 100k flat with a 85% mortgage / 15% deposit - the property is now worth 95k, and so a 75% LTV mortgage will only release 71k, meaning the landlord having to find the additional 14k to get a new mortgage. Alternatvely switching to the banks SVR will add 100-150 quid a month to their costs making the property unprofitable and up for repo. So lots of cheap properties will be appearing between now and easter, further deflating the overall property market.

It takes a long time to turn sentiment around. The confidence of the market has evaporated. Last time it took five years of positive GDP before house prices started moving ahead again. With recession to be confirmed, job security at a low and the outlook not exactly perky, people will be biding their time. Plus the input of funds into the market isn't quite what it seems. I spoke to a mortgage product manager back in May who said they had as many funds available as they had 12 months earlier, but now you need 10% (or 25% for BTL) deposit to get access to them. If this doesn't change, then the FTB'ers still have a couple of years saving before they get on the housing treadmill.

With the "new deal" the drought of mortgage funding should abate. However, people aren't going to be buying in a falling market. So still another 12 months of price falls to come.