And as the nation sinks beneath the waves ...

True enough...and yet shareholders seem to expect (and in the most part
get) a rise in their dividends every year.

 

wrote:

And a rise in share price too. The cunts.

 

Hair Splitter ;o)

 

I beg to disagree. The nature of our stock markets this past three of
decades has been about share price inflation at the expence of long term
strategy and sustainable dividends.
Voda may be different, I do not know.

 

It all rather ignored that currently people are only *talking* about cuts,
in 12-36 months, when they actually happen, things will look a little
different. Which is I expect where Cameron was coming from.

It's "Internationalism" innit. Wages have to equalise across the 1st and 2nd
worlds.

 

I'm not a Tory fan either particularly but honestly I don't think it
mattered that much which lot got in. Mainly it needed a strong majority to
push in legislation to deal with the perfect storm approaching our shores.

 

Wessie hits the nail on childcare. It isn't a market people want to get into
and affordable childcare in local provision is a really hard nut to crack.
It needs house prices/rents to be low enough such that one parent can work
while another tends the babies. It was the insidious side effect of
unrealistic lending pushing up unattainable house prices (& rents). But hey
the majority sucked it up.

I'm a problem solver by nature but I can't actually perceive a solution.
Too many single parent households
House prices can't quickly fall by 2/3
Rents can't quickly fall by 1/2
Child protection legislation isn't going to move backwards
Companies don't have the margins to open Creches

The only people I know, who are not in our sort of income bracket, who do
make it work, are fortunate enough to have parents close by who are prepared
to do the caring.

 

Isn't that a bit cruel?

 

That's my pension fund you fuckers are talking about and it's seen
neither of those in the last 20 years . Or if it has then I suspect
those lovely banker types who are taking care of it for me may have
siphoned it off.

 

Depends on the stock really, many tread water .

 

Well mine's gone up. If you ignore equitable.

About fifteen years ago I started doing AVCs with the pru. I split my
contribution between a 'with profits' fund and a far-east technology
fund. The with profits fund has received the same investment but is now
worth (from memory) about 40% of the far-east technology fund. Wish I'd
put more with the technology fund and wish I'd not prevaricated about
switching funds years ago (and guess I should do something about it
really...)

 

wrote in

similarly, I wish I'd put more than the £7k ISA limit in Fidelity's SE
Asia fund. Went up to £30k pre-2008, now about 24k and rising again.
Same amount put into
a FTSE tracker fund a year later is bobbling along at £8.8k. Fucking
balanced portfolios suck.

 

Well it has worked in Germany but not so successful in Ireland or Italy.
Prace bets on which model we would follow...

 

Not quite fair: Ireland has two parties which are divided only by the
sides they took in the Civil War; Italy was governed by the Christian
Democrats in pseudo coalition for forty odd years. The German model
works though.

 

No I don't.

 

You know the answer.

 

I don't actually work for an OEM but the company I work for carries
out on-site machining operations for several of them plus a few of the
generating companies. By keeping independent we can do other work in
the winter when they're busy getting ready for the next years outages
and we're also not going to sink if one or more of them tightens the
purse strings.

About 45% of our income comes from power generation, 40% from naval
construction, 10% from oil & gas then 5% from hiring out equipment if
we don't want to do the work ourselves. Those figures vary year on
year and because of certain build programs naval construction will
rise next year then drop the following one.

I'm currently being paid to sit in a hotel in Scotland waiting to go
onto a nuclear power station tomorrow morning. I might stroll down the
road soon and be paid to drink beer.

 

My Janet'n'John analysis consisted of picking a FTSE 100 tracker on
the premise that top UK companies would be conglomerates investing
round the world. If they weren't doing well the UK would be fucked
anyway. Little did I know that my worst case scenario would come true
so soon.

 

An old guy told me many moons ago to ignore the short term market and
to buy shares in mining and engineering at the bottom of the regular
boom-bust cycle. I followed his advice and bought at around the bottom
of the last 3 recessions and sat on the few shares I could afford at
such times, his advice was good.

 

Like Stephen I once invested in an Eastern Technology fund. This was the
1980's. It was Japan based.
Only 2k but that was the last stock market investment I made.

Last year I received a "really hot tip" about Mouchel taking a major
government contract. It was insider trading, black and white. I used that as
my excuse not to get involved and didn't drop 100 big ones into the pot.
They got the contract. Gov expenditure shrivelled. Share price recently
dropped 27% more. It's a Sell option with most advisers so I probably saved
50 grand.

Considering what's coming for the Euro and international currency markets
and the true underlying nature of personal and bank debt across the EU and
USA I suggest you buy Gold Sovereigns (or Kruggerands). Dropping 5% of your
cash reserve now (transaction cost) might seem a steal in 36 months time. GS
are CGT exempt BTW.

What option are our governments going to have but to further Inflate
themselves (post 08 quantitative easing) out of the huge debt burdens??

Though one might wish one had been brave enough to buy a year ago at
$1000/troy oz (1366 last night)