Member Info for asimpleinvestor

@Birdsong quote "None of which changes the fact that only a few years ago, if someone said they were going to have another addition to their family, a fellow worker was very likely to say, 'you had better put in for a raise, or a bit more overtime'. Now many know they can do less hours, have the lost 'wage' made up via working tax credits, child tax credits, and all the 'means tested' gains that brings, such as free school meals, school uniforms, school transportation if living a certain distance from the school, along with free prescriptions for all the family as well as free dental care for the entire family.

Extra help with heating, often free gym membership, and of course heavily subsidised rent and council tax and free for some cases.

Also if you have a child with issues, then more is given, and mobility car, which of course many working people cannot afford to own IF paying their own way in life."

I will need to cover this over several posts as your information is grossly out of date with most of what you suggest no longer available or with such restrictions that only a small proportion are eligible. I will take them one at a time.

1. The Myth of the "16-Hour Rule" and Dropping Hours

The classic "16-hour cliff edge" belonged to the old legacy Working Tax Credit system, which has been phased out. Under Universal Credit (UC), the system tracks earnings rather than hours, using a strict 55% taper rate. For every £1 a claimant earns via employment, their UC payment is reduced by 55p. Because of this formula, a person is mathematically always financially better off working more hours or earning a higher wage than reducing their hours.

If a single person drops their hours to a minimum, they fall below the Administrative Earnings Threshold (AET), which stands at £881 per month (effective April 2026). Falling below this threshold automatically places the claimant into the "Intensive Work Search" regime. They are legally mandated to attend regular jobcentre meetings and prove they are actively seeking more hours or higher-paid work; failure to do so results in immediate financial sanctions.

2. Passported Benefits and the Income Cap: Your post suggests that cutting work hours unlocks a massive suite of luxury perks. In practice, these passported benefits are strictly ring-fenced:

Free School Meals (FSM): In England, rules expanding in September 2026 grant free school meals to all families on Universal Credit. However, the premium "linked entitlements" (such as school uniform clothing grants, free school transport, and trip subsidies) do not expand with it. To qualify for school clothing grants or statutory transport assistance, a household's net earned income must still sit below the ultra-low threshold of £7,400 a year (excluding benefits). It is completely out of reach for a typical worker trying to engineer a part-time lifestyle.

@Birdsong As you suggested AI may not have the complete answer, I’ll rely solely on AI to see what it does know compared to your own knowledge, especially since even a quick look at your post reveals immediate inaccuracies that basic research could uncover. With regards to mixing with the working class to know what is destroying the UK and why I come from a working class background and lived for 13 years on one of the roughest council estates in England during a period when unemployment was at the highest this country has been. This is what AI has to say:

Welfare Fraud: Official DWP data (May 2026) shows the overall benefit overpayment rate is just 3.2%, with actual fraud at 2.2%. Under the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Act 2025, the DWP has automated powers to cross-reference bank data, making hidden income or undeclared partners highly difficult to conceal.

Poverty Math: Relative poverty is calculated using 60% of the median (the exact middle income of the population), not the lowest. It is a measure of income inequality, meaning numbers do not automatically rise with population growth.

Demographics: OBR and Migration Advisory Committee data show working-age migrants are net fiscal contributors. Because the UK state incurs zero cost for their childhood, education, or early healthcare, their immediate tax contributions help support the UK's aging population.

Last sentence that was cut off reads 'The reality is 60% to 62% of all children living in workless households (where no adult is in paid work) live in relative poverty'.

@Gunsup

You asked how to square defence priorities with child benefit, but the reality is the two aren't an either-or calculation. We aren’t a global superpower with a massive empire to garrison anymore. While we spend around £60–£62 billion a year on defence, our forces are heavily diluted globally. If we faced an existential domestic attack today, military analysts suggest our home conventional defences would last 5–7 days before exhaustion. Full-scale industrial resilience, continuous "always-on" domestic munitions factories, and deep national infrastructure protection would cost us approximately an extra £60 billion a year essentially doubling our current budget which would stand us in good stead after a decade to last months of attrition rather than days. We gave Ukraine £4.5 billion in total military support in 2025 alone; that is taking away defence for the UK and giving it to a foreign power, making it more dangerous for the UK rather than less.

Patching a £3 billion domestic budget line isn't what is holding the UK back from being a military hegemon; that era passed decades ago.

As for that Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) headline claiming a working family needs a £71,000 salary to match benefits it’s worth looking at how they actually cooked those numbers.

To hit that £46,000 net benefit figure, the CSJ stacked an absolute worst-case scenario. They didn’t just look at standard unemployment; they included maximum rent subsidies in high-cost areas, alongside top-tier disability benefits (PIP). Disability payments are designed to cover the high cost of physical care and specialized mobility equipment, not standard household disposable income (the full calculation is available if you want it, as I looked it up).

Look at the actual Universal Credit rates for a standard out of work couple with three children:

Standard Allowance: £666.97 a month

Three Child Elements: £911.82 a month (£303.94 per child)

Total Core Cash: £1,578.79 a month which is £18,945 a year.

Even if you add average housing costs, a standard workless family is getting around 70% of rental costs per month with the other 30% having to be found by the tenant. To match that take-home pay, a regular working person doesn't need £71,000; they need a gross salary of about £21,000 excluding help with housing costs if appropriate.

If out of work families were routinely receiving the equivalent of £71,000 per annum, then poverty wouldn't exist in this country. In reality, under Child Benefit rules, the first child brings in £27.05 per week, and each additional child produces just an extra £17.90 per week and that money is available to working parents too. By the CSJ's twisted logic, a childless family on standard benefits would still have to be receiving an average of £60,000 a year to make their maths work, and they simply don't, do they? The reality is 60% to 62% of all children living in workless households (where no adult is in paid work) live in relati

@midgemagoo the geological record shows that earth's climate has cycled for billions of years. however, the critical factor for **** sapiens who have existed for roughly 300,000 years is atmospheric stability.

a clear historical example of this occurred during the 17th century, at the peak of the little ice age. a natural dip in solar activity (the maunder minimum) combined with volcanic eruptions caused global temperatures to drop by just 1 to 2 °c. because societies failed to adapt their agricultural methods and infrastructure quickly enough to this natural cycle, it triggered widespread crop failures, famines, and socioeconomic collapse. in places like scotland and parts of europe, 10% to 15% of the population perished, while in china, the climate stress directly contributed to the collapse of the ming dynasty.

whether a climate shift is triggered by natural orbital variances or accelerated by industrial activity, the physical consequence remains identical. human infrastructure, agriculture, and population centres are built around specific climate baselines. if those baselines shift rapidly, the species must actively adapt to the new parameters or face significant population decline. the issue is not whether the planet will survive, but what capacity it retains to support human life.

"When you talking the Net borrowing you has to include tax receipts... Which have been soaring and help disguise the true spending figures."

@Gunsup

You've got the maths backwards. Net borrowing is exactly like a household account; it is the amount you have to put on the credit card after your monthly salary has landed and been completely spent.

Saying soaring tax receipts 'disguise' borrowing makes no sense. Total spending figures are published transparently every month. If a household's income goes up but their credit card accumulation slows down, the pay rise hasn't hidden anything, it is the literal reason they don't need to borrow as much as they used to.

"Receipts as a proportion of GDP over the last 20 years have grown from 28.7% in 2006 to 2007, to 30.7% in 2025 to 2026"

Bringing this back to the household analogy, pointing out that tax receipts have gone up from 28.7% to 30.7% of GDP is like a worker noting their salary has increased. But if their baseline bills, energy costs, and mortgage payments have gone up by an even larger percentage over that exact same period, they still face an end of month shortfall. That gap is why net borrowing remains necessary, and why looking at revenue in isolation does not explain the true fiscal position.

"Receipts fell to £584.2 billion in 2020 to 2021, due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic ."

You are completely right about the reduction to £584.2 billion in receipts, but that reduction and the subsequent borrowing spike were entirely self-inflicted. The government made a policy choice to shut down the economy and borrow the difference to fund furlough and business support.

With hindsight, many economists now agree that this massive, policy driven borrowing injected too much liquidity into the system, which directly triggered the inflation and interest rate crisis that followed.

But that actually reinforces the core point the £600 billion pandemic spike, followed by the £350 billion inflation/energy crisis spike under the Tories, were the results of massive structural shocks and policy decisions from that era. The current administration didn't create that debt pile, nor did it create the ongoing index linked interest payments required to service it. Comparing current day to day borrowing running at under £100 billion a year to those previous peaks puts the actual trajectory into proper perspective.

The current government is now enacting policy decisions to counter those past mistakes, and neither the electorate nor business likes the reality of it. The hand that 'giveth' prior to Labour has gone, and the hand that 'taketh away' to balance the books is now in charge. People welcomed the intervention when free cash was being distributed universally, but they like it far less now that fiscal tightening is underway and targeted support is restricted to a small proportion of the population through means testing and dire need.

The draft figures are calculated using cumulative Net Borrowing (the annual deficit, the actual difference between what the government spends and what it receives in taxes).

When people debate political responsibility, they generally look at borrowing because that represents the active policy choices of the administration in power. However, the headline ONS Net Debt metric (PSND) does not just track accumulated borrowing; it fluctuates independently due to two major nonpolicy factors:

1) The Bank of England’s Term Funding Schemes. The ONS includes the Bank of England inside the boundary of "Public Sector Net Debt". When the Bank of England winds down its emergency liquid loans to commercial banks (which it has been doing rapidly over the last two years), headline "debt" appears to drop or flatten by tens of billions of pounds, even though the government itself is still borrowing heavily to cover its deficit.

&

2) Gilt Valuation and Revisions. The ONS routinely revises historical debt data based on liquid asset changes and the market value adjustments of index-linked gilts.

The Pandemic (£600 billion) this is the total cash borrowing required to fund pandemic era measures between Q2 2020 and Q1 2022. The headline cash debt rose from £1.8 trillion to £2.4 trillion in that window.

The pre-election two Years (£350 billion) calculated from the ONS headline Public Sector Net Debt (excluding public sector banks) from July 2022 (£2.39 trillion) to July 2024 (£2.74 trillion). This specific block matches the exact headline cash debt shift on the ONS balance sheet, heavily driven by the £40+ billion energy price subsidies and record-high interest on index-linked gilts following the 2022 inflation spike.

The Labour period (~£170 billion) this is derived from cumulative net borrowing from July 2024 through the end of the 2025/26 financial year. The ONS initially reported full-year borrowing for the financial year ending March 2025 at approximately £151 billion (split across both administrations), followed by the provisional full-year borrowing figure for the financial year ending March 2026 at £132.0 billion. Factoring in the pro-rata breakdown for the 23 months since the July 2024 election yields the structural borrowing total of roughly £170 billion.

@Gray1 The figures used originate directly from the monthly ONS Public Sector Finances Bulletins and official OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) Economic and Fiscal Outlooks.

£60,000, oh dear lol it might be a while before you see a £200k payday after dilution. Funny how your investment has grown since your alter ego got banned, especially considering we aren’t trading, and unless the company owes you shares, buying more under suspension is impossible.

Sorry wrong share

If we were on AIM, we’d likely be trading by now since the rules are more relaxed. Being on the main market has a certain prestige (snob value), but it also brings complications, especially given Pennpetro’s current situation, which is why we’ve been suspended for long.

Understanding how trades execute on each platform is key.

If you want an instant trade with a guaranteed price, a traditional broker like Hargreaves Lansdown gives you a live, fixed-price quote. You have a few seconds to accept or reject it. If you accept, the trade completes immediately at that exact price and the shares enter your account. Downside with a traditional broker like HL are the fees which can accumulate fast if you're a regular trader.

Trading 212 works differently. They send your order directly to the wider stock market exchange or match it internally with another user. The trade executes as soon as a matching buyer or seller is found at the current market price. For highly popular stocks, this is instant. For less liquid shares, it can create a delay depending on market availability on the day.

If absolute price certainty on entry is vital, the fixed quotes from a broker like HL eliminate the risk of price shifts during execution, though the standard dealing fees and foreign exchange costs must be factored in. If time and instant liquidity are less critical, a platform like Trading 212 offers a lower-cost route, as it charges no commission or platform fees, leaving only government taxes and a low 0.15% currency conversion fee on cross border trades

I hold accounts with both and prefer T212 for long term investments.

@Nappers Nothing to stop a multi-billionaire from sitting on a beach whilst posting fud online, both Musk and Trump do it on a regular basis.

Try reaching out to T212, as there’s no one here who can answer that question, as its an account query. Quick question, when you say “bought,” do you mean you placed an order, or that it moved from your order screen to your portfolio log as a confirmed purchase? If it was confirmed, clicking on your pie (the circle with segments) should display it in your portfolio list.

"The narrative around 'runaway borrowing' lacks baseline context. The current administration has added roughly £170 billion to the national debt over 23 months an annualized rate of under £90 billion. Contrast that with the preceding two years, where annual borrowing averaged £175 billion (totalling £350 billion), or the pandemic period which added £600 billion to the pile.

The trajectory of accumulation has clearly slowed. Additionally, independent fiscal analysis of Reform UK's proposals noted that their tax cutting objectives would require significantly higher borrowing to cover the structural deficit they would create. If you want to critique the current size of the national debt, the data shows that the overwhelming majority of the liability was inherited, not generated by current policy

@Birdsew iits not whoever but whatever. The spaceX IPO is pushing down all shares in this sector as well as materials, tech and AI. It won't change until the IPO is completed and II's funds have been released unless we get a stonking rns in the meantime that attracts the attention of some well off retail investors who didn't spend their dosh in the IPO.

What was discussed sounds brilliant now we just need to solve the equation that’s blocking everything.

A → B → C → A

A. They need asset values to fix the audit & issue the Replacement Shares

B. They need those fixes completed before they can restore trading

C. They need restoration before they can complete an RTO

A. And they need the RTO to generate the asset values in the first place

It’s a closed loop with no stated mechanism to break it. Neither the RNS nor the meeting offered a timeline, a workaround, FCA engagement, or any sequencing plan to unwind the circular dependency.

RMD’s debt funding keeps the projects alive before the RTO completes, but it doesn’t resolve the audit disclaimers or the Replacement Shares. It’s a bridge, not a solution. Until the loop is broken, restoration remains open‑ended.

"Perhaps you would like to talk to the victim and see what they say, I am sure they will have a different perspective on this."

Unfortunately, troublesome is right. I can’t see his post and can only go by your take, but I assume it’s about the stabbing in Northern Ireland. If we were to riot every time someone was stabbed, the country would be in constant chaos, as stabbings happen daily across the nation. I highly doubt the victim would approve of a riot in his name. There were 49,000 violent stabbings in England and Wales alone up to December 2025 how many riots have we seen in response? This riot seems racially motivated, with the victim as an afterthought. If the Sudanese man had been a white Englishman, the incident likely wouldn’t have sparked the same reaction. Isn’t it strange that according to the Belfast police the instigators of the riot were part of a a far right group who travelled from England to Belfast to start the riot? If it were truly a spontaneous outpouring from locals, why would organised right wing mobs called to arms through online networks need to cross on the ferry from England to be there?

@Malcstiptop Breaking news would be you answering my question.