Member Info for fleccy

No, I wasn't a rigger so I didn't climb masts either.

"It is difficult to understand how BT can loses circa 55,000 people with these terms over next decade?"

Many of the people made redundant wont have 12 years service, a good percentage will be natural retirement, the redundancies are spread out over 6 years and I believe a good percentage of the 55,000 going will come from the 30,000 third party contractors.

Seems like you got an industry standard maximum one year payout including 3 month notice period. £30k is the standard UK tax free allowance for redundancy payouts. The £18k tax free into your pension scheme is something I'm not aware of, is your pension Defined Benefit or Defined Contribution?

There isn't a problem with a board member being from E&, or from anywhere else. Companies can ringfence sensitive contracts, and even parts of the business, to ensure information is restricted to Board Members with the appropriate vetting. If the Government are complaining it'll be in respect of Vodafone's internal processes, not an E& Board Member. I used to work for Cable & Wireless, and then Vodafone after we were taken over, in my experience Vodafone did ringfence sensitive parts of the business to appropriately vetted personnel at whatever level.

I'm clearly a genius 😉😏

"So why haven't they?"

That's my thought too Bob.

"OK. That sounds slightly different and more credible but you have just removed the rigs from the experiment and destroyed the experiment."

Admittedly it would require QBT to be upfront on how they process the data, and being honest, but it's just post processing already available data; The network mining rigs and QBT's server will have already done the work, the idea would be to calculate statistics based on QBT's software versus standard network brute force processing. Because QBT would know how long the network has taken to process each winning block, the winning nonce and the relevant statistics pertaining to their own calculated nonce range, they should be able to publish statistics as they come in.

Personally I have serious doubts that QBT can achieve what they're saying, I'm just suggesting one possible way they could provide proof with actually mining Bitcoin, in response to Hexam.

Bob, the animations they run were on lab data at lower difficulties and hashrates; What I was talking about is producing hour by hour rolling statistics, based on QBT'S calculated ranges and comparing winning hashes as the data becomes available. I would expect a good proportion of winning nonces should land within QBT's calculated ranges, if the software works as advertised.

I don't think it'd be that difficult to do. If QBT can process their nonce ranges on remote servers, in the case of SaaS, they should easily be able to produce nonce ranges as live data comes in. Once they have the QBT nonce range and the associated winning nonce, they just need to confirm the winning nonce sits within their calculated range and produce statistics based on the Blockchain available data. If I'm thinking it through correctly, it should be easy for them to prove their software works.

Hexam it may be possible for QBT to prove their software works without mining BTC. One way might be to process the live data as it comes in, produce their narrowed nonce range's and await the winning nonce; They could then crunch the numbers, like time taken to process QBT's narrowed range, where the winning nonce sits within QBT's narrowed range and the ratio of QBT's narrowed range compared to the standard brute force range used by the miners. Since approximately 144 blocks are processed per day, QBT should be able to compare the efficiency of their software against standard practice, and possibly chart the differences in a continuously updating chart on their website. The raw data would probably be too large to store, but they could possibly produce a continually updating table to show statistics, like the number of winning hashes that sit within the relevant calculated QBT range, how long it takes to produce QBT's range's and other statistics prospective customers could use to make a decision. I would think it would be easy to compare post winning hashes against post QBT calculated nonce ranges and continuously provide updates as statistics are calculated. I realise that there can be more than one winning hash, but as the difficulty increases the number of winning hashes decrease, so the higher the difficulty and the better the test of QBT's software.

Pas, I think you'll find that most of the people who are interested in Crypto have already dabbled. Bitcoin was known about well before the 2021 peaks and I'd argue that anyone who was interested would have bought into it then. The US Spot ETF mainstream narrative is just another manufactured hype case, based on a speculative view that the ETF's will pull in cash from managed funds. Any interested US fund manager, could have just bought stocks like MicroStrategy, or Coinbase, if they wanted exposure to Bitcoin/Crypto.

The reason I believe Bitcoin could be nearing the end of the hype road, is because each Halving places added operational expenses onto the on-grid big Bitcoin miners. The upcoming Halving might not kill Bitcoin, but it could destroy sentiment without significant increases in the Bitcoin price; Bitcoin's price is driven by sentiment alone, if sentiment dies Bitcoin will follow.

Pas, I believe we may be witnessing the beginning of the end for Bitcoin. When the halving arrives and the Bitcoin reward reduces to 3.125 per winning Block, miners will have to sell their tokens to keep the lights on in the absence of significant price increases. Because the majority of Bitcoin use cases have come to nothing, with store of value being the only remaining hyped use case, the miners could potentially pull the price down if the HODL's sit on their tokens and don't soak up any new mined supply. Bitcoin has no fundamental value and no real world use to soak up spare capacity; Unlike real commodities that get consumed and used, Bitcoin's only use is to sell or hold with demand driven by nothing but sentiment. If I was an institutional investor I wouldn't touch Bitcoin, since it's uses and value are just illusory.

If the FOS are ruling in favour of the Bank, it's highly unlikely a court will rule differently. I think the clincher is the requirement for an independent solicitor acting on behalf of, and advising, the home owner.

Continued:

"The proportion of the increase in the

property’s value that the lender would

receive had been agreed at the outset,

and could not be changed. And the

extent to which the lender would benefi t

from the eventual sale of the property

depended on the movement of the

housing market, rather than on any

factor within the lender’s control.

It was clear that Miss G had not

anticipated that the value of her house

would increase to the extent that it

did. It was also evident that she had

been shocked by the effect this had on

the amount she had to pay the lender.

However, the lender had done nothing

wrong in providing her with the shared

appreciation mortgage. We did not

uphold the complaint."

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/files/2907/72.pdf

"72/9

elderly homeowner complains about

mis-sale of shared appreciation mortgage

Some years after she had retired,

Miss G took a ‘shared appreciation’

mortgage from her lender. She needed

to raise some capital to invest, in order

to increase her income. Mortgages of this

type are usually structured to require no

monthly repayments from the borrower,

when no interest will be charged on the

debt. Instead, at whatever point the

borrower decides to repay the mortgage

(or on their death) the lender is entitled to

a pre-agreed specifi ed percentage of any

increase in the property’s value since the

start of the mortgage.

In this particular case, Miss G took a loan

of £36,250, representing 25% of the

then value of her house. The mortgage

agreement set out that the lender would

receive 75% of any increase in the value

of Miss G’s property.

About eight years later, Miss G decided

to sell up and move nearer to some of her

family. Her house had increased very substantially in value since she had taken

the mortgage, and she was dismayed

to find she would have to pay the lender

a significant proportion of the proceeds

when she sold the house.

Miss G complained to the lender,

saying it had advised her badly when

it recommended the shared appreciation

mortgage. She said the lender should

have discussed alternatives with her.

She also said she had been hurried

into taking the mortgage and had not

had time to give the matter proper

consideration. Unable to reach agreement

with the lender, Miss G brought her

complaint to us.

complaint not upheld

Our investigations revealed that the

lender had been broadly positive in its

discussions with Miss G about the shared

appreciation mortgage. However, we

found nothing to convince us that the

lender had advised Miss G, or given her

the impression that it was doing so.

Instead, we saw clear evidence that her

decision had been based on advice she

received from her solicitor. In a letter

written shortly before she asked the

lender to arrange the mortgage,

her solicitor had said that a shared

appreciation mortgage ‘seemed to make

very good sense’ for her. The solicitor

suggested ways in which the money

raised by means of the mortgage could

increase her income. He also told her that

the mortgage could, when repaid, provide

the lender with a ‘hefty benefit’.

We were satisfied that the lender had

not provided any misleading information

about the features of the mortgage,

or about how it would work in practice.

And we noted that the agreement set out

clearly and prominently the way in which

the lender’s share would be calculated.

The lender’s offer did include a time limit

for acceptance (which is not an unusual

feature of mortgage offers). However,

we saw nothing to substantiate Miss G’s

view that the lender had rushed her into

signing the agreement."

If house prices had stagnated or dropped since 1997, would they still be complaining? His parents took a chance and bet that house prices wouldn't rise significantly, it isn't the bank's fault it went the other way.

I'll be amazed if they win this case, at the end of the article it says, "They added: “We recommended borrowers took financial advice to ensure they understood the product and that it was suitable for their needs, and all borrowers were advised by their own solicitor. We are unable to provide comment [on individual cases] due to ongoing litigation, but we do everything we reasonably can to help any customer facing financial hardship.”

The bank has previously said in relation to Cooper’s case: “A solicitor was instructed by the borrowers, and the offer was witnessed by an IFA [independent financial adviser].”"

So what are you saying Chid, do you think we should buy a stock like Rolls Royce that's currently sitting at a forward P/E of around 27, with its stock price up 770% since its low in Feb 2020?

Hi Eureka, it's an interesting article representing the opinion of the author. My guess is the FCA will have to consider the court cases already won and determine if they set a precedent before reaching a decision. This is obviously happening to prevent the courts being overwhelmed, since every man and his dog will submit claims with the publicity surrounding this. My opinion is that the people were happy to accept the debt at the time and if some of the cost was commission to the broker, it shouldn't matter. Clearly this is going to cost the banks something, it just isn't clear how much; For Lloyds the consensus figure is probably no more than £1 Billion.

Although I believe consumer protection in the UK is important, I don't see any problem in this case since the car buyer was aware of the debt and interest, if part of that interest was commission for the dealer/broker shouldn't matter. The car dealerships will likely find their margin elsewhere and car purchasers will be no better off. Also the courts and FOS seem quick to believe the buyer over the bank/broker even with little proof supporting the buyers case. At worst this will be a one of hit and wont matter in the scheme of things.

The three Doug Taylor Class actions don't appear to be doing much and I suspect any action by the FCA would have to be taken into account anyway. As far as this goes, I don't see anything else happening until the FCA provide a future update.