Member Info for fleccy

Labour are every bit as incompetent as the Conservatives. Brown has to go down in history as the worst Chancellor ever, he should be ashamed for crippling private Defined Benefit schemes for many of today's retiree's. Because of Brown's attack on Defined Benefit schemes, my DB pension scheme was closed 6 years before I retired, after being degraded over the previous 10 years with changes such as salary sacrifice to maintain the 2/3 retirement ratio; If I'd got that final 6 years of contribution's in, and going of my final salary, my starting pension would likely have been around £10,000 a year higher; To add insult to injury my annual pension increases are capped at 4.235%, even when inflation runs at 10% plus.

Big pay rises for public sector workers, like the 22% rise over two years for Junior Doctors, feed through to inflation; Fortunately I don't rely entirely on my DB pensions, but if I did these big public sector pay rises potentially increase inflation and adversely impact people in the same position as me. It isn't like I can go on strike for more pension increases.

I'm nowhere near state retirement age, but the cut in winter fuel allowance for retiree's just over the pension credit threshold will hurt many, I'm sure the big pay rises for Junior Doctors will give cash strapped pensioners a warm glow over the coming winter's.

https://news.sky.com/story/winter-fuel-payment-changes-are-you-still-eligible-13187277

Labour don't understand the concept of unintended consequences, otherwise they would think before they acted with many of their policies, my impression is they only really care about the public sector overseen by their Union backers.

Both Labour and Conservative are rubbish in different ways, going off what I've seen so far Labour will receive a similar hammering at the next election to what the Tory's have seen at this one.

Speaking for myself I don't like any of them, including the LibDems, so I'll just vote for Reform from now on. I'd go as far as to say that I despise Labour.

Thought I'd gone into the Lloyds chat page for a moment, alas it turns out the BT forum is heading in the same direction. 😴

OFCOM 🙄

Not entirely unexpected, articles a while back were saying the Barclays court case was expected to delay the FCA's decision. I think it's more about the court case rather than awaiting more information; The Motor Finance information's either there, or it isn't, if it's there they've had plenty of time to find it. I believe Banks and Finance providers are only required to hold records for 6 years after the loan ends, so I would think any loans ending before 2016/17 would require proof from the car purchaser to process a claim.

If you're going to discuss politics. migration, or general topics, that's what the Lloyds forum has descended into. Lets try and keep this about BT and away from irrelevant politics.

NORTEL was a manufacturer, not a service provider. I actually liked NORTEL, they came out with a really good DWDM product branded as the NORTEL 6500 range. I think NORTEL was badly managed and they were the architect of their own demise, they also built telephone exchanges like the DMS-100/200. CIENA moved in and took over the DWDM side of the business and rebranded the 6500 range as CIENA as packet optical platform products.

BT as a service provider can't be compared with a manufacturer like NORTEL.

Not really Aus, it was always expected that BT would lose a good percentage of customers to the Altnets, and see a decline in revenue as legacy products are wound down; Taking those things into account, BT will still have national Fibre coverage and be a top three MNO, it isn't like they'll go bust. Even VMO2/Nexfibre are loaded up with debt due to to Fibre rollout and HFC/RFOG conversion to FTTP, so the whole of the industry faces similar CAPEX pressures.

If you check back through my BT posting history Aus, you'll see I've said the same as above for years. BT isn't a revenue growth play, it's a cost cutting play with growth expected in bottom line Net Profit.

"it’s a race between cost cutting and reducing revenue as to whether there will be anything left for dividends!!"

Revenue actually increased in FY24, as did EBITDA. As I've said on many occasions BT isn't a revenue growth play, it's a cost cutting play, but alongside the cost cuts there's also the CAPEX reductions as the FTTP and 5G rollouts wind down. The market's currently awaiting the Patourel class action judgement, which'll determine the direction of the share price in the short term. Should the class action go against BT we'll be looking at piling in with a lot more cash once the dust settles, since I've been holding off further top up's awaiting the result, and would view any significant downward pressure from here as a buying opportunity

As well as having a Heat Pump at my previous house, I also had solar panels fitted. The solar panels were more expensive than today's installation's, but I was receiving the maximum feed in tariff; The reductions in feed in tariff's coming later, for new entrants, ruined sentiment. There are a few fanboy types who are going the whole hog and getting heat pumps, rooftop solar, and Tesla Powerwall batteries, not sure I'd go that far myself. I have to say if you have a south facing roof Solar's great in the summer, my generation meter flashed like the clappers around April to September, but the winter generation was rubbish. In general, during the summer, a good solar system on a south facing roof will cover most of the daytime needs for a household, you could even power an immersion heater around mid day to heat your hot water while the sun is at its highest.

As far as the lifespan of solar panels, they'll easily perform for 20 to 30 years, it's the invertor that'll likely have to be replaced a couple of times during that period. You need a south facing roof and enough space to accommodate the panels.

I must admit NG's performance is a bit baffling since the rights issue; There are either a lot of believers, like you, or the institutions are pumping the price to inflate the value of their own holdings following the rights issue. I've still not seen where this future extra mythical demand is coming from, the narrative around Datacenters, EV's and Heat pumps don't cover it, I suspect they're ignoring any future drops in demand from elsewhere. It wouldn't surprise me if overall demand remains around current levels for the next 10 years, with any sectoral increases offset by reductions elsewhere.

Never, the CMA however may have something to say around September/October time, and OFCOM will likely have input too with reference to Spectrum allocation should the CMA allow the merger.

"why are you being such a numbskull? - I think most people would know why there will be more consumption of electricity in the future"

Lol I can tell you're a believer and taking the Field of Dreams narrative, used by NG as gospel to hold on to investors, if you build it they will come. I previously showed you charts showing that historical generation more or less matches demand, as you'd expect, and demand has steadily dropped over the last 20 years. If I was a generator building a new renewables farm, I would look at demand before committing to supplying to the Grid, maybe look at a guaranteed customer base through tariff offerings, like Octopus are doing, or selling to the corporate sector to supply their electricity. It's clear that customers signing up to a renewables tariff will take away from oil/gas powered generation, so demand will move to renewables but wont necessarily increase.

LTI you're responses are shallow and unconvincing, you resort to insults when you don't have any valid arguments supporting your opinion against other people's opinions; Nothing you've said suggests demand will increase over the next 10 to 20 years. The links to vested interest articles, talking about this mythical demand increase without explaining where it's coming from, are also unconvincing.

Like I said previously, in my opinion it isn't about increased overall supply and demand, my read is it's about more infrastructure required to connect the many new solar and wind farms that'll be geographically isolated, and also about increasing backbone capacity to more easily distribute the new green energy where it's needed. Basically we're moving from large capacity power stations to lower capacity renewables, so production will be spread out over a much larger geographic area with all the new farms needing Grid connection. The more production is spread out, the more infrastructure required to connect it and more ongoing maintenance required. I can see where the extra cost is required to build new infrastructure, I just don't see where any increased demand will come from.

Indeed.

"So you know better than ALL the commentators including National Grid and all investors?"

Did the "boss of National Grid" mention how demand will decrease as Telecom Networks and other businesses invest in more energy efficient operations? He's hardly going to say we're building all this new infrastructure for Green Energy, at shareholder expense, but demand will remain broadly flat over the next 10 years, due to increased demand in the tech sector being more than offset by reduced demand in the Telecom sector.

In my opinion if NG's profits increase over the coming years, it wont be due to increased demand, but would have to come from increases in bills due to increased consumer Kwh unit cost's. I'll only believe the increased demand narrative when I see proof it's happening, but I believe the current narrative is dismissive of reduced demand from elsewhere and only focuses on where more demand might come from.

The amount of Power and Water used to mine Bitcoin doesn't add true value, because Bitcoin doesn't store anything that can be added back into the system, you have to use more power each time Bitcoin is transacted; Bitcoin is parasitic, it takes and gives nothing back.

I'd counter the argument implying that Bitcoin's value is somehow justified by the Energy used to produce it, by comparing it to a gravity battery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery

A gravity battery uses spare energy to lift a mass to a height, where it's stored as potential energy, which can then be released as and when required to feed back into the system; Bitcoin doesn't store the energy used to produce it, it's just given an imaginary value by the market that requires even more energy to realise. Bitcoin just keeps taking and although individuals may see gains or losses dependent on when they buy and sell, Bitcoin in itself contributes nothing and just keeps taking.

LTI I worked in Telecoms since the 80's, recently retired; Up to 2009 I regularly visited Datacenters on jobs; Post 2009 my job involved programming connections as a Network Operations Engineer, dealing with international circuits interconnecting Datacenters. Datacenters have been common since the late 90's and are nothing new, but If I was going to build a datacenter now I'd go rural/coastal and fill the roof with solar, as well as surrounding it with Wind Turbines; Apparently the average onshore wind turbine can generate around 2.5 to 3 megawatts, so if i had £2.5 Billion to spend on Datacenter's I'd ensure they're as energy self sufficient as possible, with access to onsite off grid power.

As I pointed out in a previous thread, BT consumes around 2.5 terawatt hours of electricity a year; With the PSTN/legacy switch off, 3500 building's closing, Convergence and the move to Passive Optical Networks, they'd have to build a lot of On-Grid Datacenters to replace demand lost due to the switch off of thousands of BT Exchanges, associated Network and Air-Con systems. Any extra demand due to new datacenters wont make up for lost demand due to more efficient Telecom Networks.

I don't disagree that Bitcoin vested interest cheerleaders have done well to create new narratives, to pump the token and crypto in general, but ecosystems only survive if they work and are self sustaining.

Every time the reward halves it puts pressure on the miners, and as long as all the miners stay in business and difficulty remains high it damages all the miner's margins. Margin pressure due to high difficulty and lower Bitcoin Reward has to lead to higher transaction charges, otherwise the miners wont be able to meet their operating costs; It also means that miners can't afford to store their Bitcoin rewards, as they need to pay their bills.

Just because Bitcoin has lasted this long it doesn't mean it'll last another 15 years. I've spent a fair bit of time looking into Bitcoin and concluded there's no value in the token, it reminds me of a religion rather than a means of transacting; The Church of Bitcoin.

TOTHEMOON, I'll deal with your points individually.

"remember when you were trying to convince everyone Bitcoin was bad for the environment"

How can people say it isn't bad for the environment?

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

Single Bitcoin Transaction Footprints:

Carbon Footprint 386.34 kgCO2 Equivalent to the carbon footprint of 856,255 VISA transactions or 64,389 hours of watching Youtube

Electrical Energy 692.66 kWh Equivalent to the power consumption of an average U.S. household over 23.74 days

Electronic Waste 44.30 grams Equivalent to the weight of 0.27 iPhones 12 or 0.09 iPads

Fresh Water Consumption 10,916 liters Equivalent to the amount of water in a backyard swimming pool.

How can you suggest that's not bad for the environment? Especially when you consider that each block only holds around 1mb of transaction data, and the Bitcoin network only processes one block every 10 minutes.

"maybe tell that to the tens of millions of folks that use crypto ( predominantly BTC ) for remittances on a monthly basis to facilitate seamless cross border transfers at a fraction of the cost of Tradfi !"

There are plenty of ways to transfer money using Phone apps, M-PESA is a good example of one that revolutionised money transfers in countries like Kenya. Ok there are charges associated with money transfers using Tradfi phone apps, but you have conversion costs associated with transfers using Crypto too. If you mean some millionaire, Billionaire, or drug cartel can transfer a vast amount of cash under the radar of the financial and regulatory authorities, then you may be correct, although the authorities are getting up to date and wise to such things now. If Bitcoin does eventually gain full recognition, regulation will probably eventually kill it as it's so inefficient at processing transaction data.

Even the cheerleaders have given up touting it as an alternative to Tradfi, they've now settled on store of value as the last remaining use case. Bitcoin will eventually disappear, because it serves no purpose.

"AI will also require vast amounts of electricity"

Maybe, but the main datacenters will likely be sited in countries with lower energy costs and any latency critical processing pushed out to the Edge; Also what's stopping a datacenter provider building their own off grid solar and wind facilities as part of their initial build? I the UK the main users of electricity were heavy industry, but they've all but disappeared as evidenced by the annual declines in energy demand over past years, there's no reason to believe demand will go up in coming years.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/322874/electricity-consumption-from-all-electricity-suppliers-in-the-united-kingdom/