Member Info for Love_You

Oh yes, the main point being is that when companies price contracts at paper-thin margins (Capital, Serco, Interserve, Kier, etc.) then when there are inevitable cost overruns (always happens in construction and services) then these contracts inevitably become loss-making.

I have seen Kier doing some work locally. Due to the type of work they are doing I am worried that they will find it difficult to make any profit. Too many companies these days are willing to price work at paper thin margins to help out local councils or mates at other companies/on other projects -- shareholders seem the last concern of Directors these days. Very sad times we are living through where everyone is seen as deserving of a profit and good benefits except for shareholders (what have shareholders done wrong?)

Oh yes, the main point being is that when companies price contracts at paper-thin margins (Capital, Serco, Interserve, Kier, etc.) then when there are inevitable cost overruns (always happens in construction and services) then these contracts inevitably become loss-making.

So what was the cost Cereus of ploughing the field, planting those seed potatoes, fertilising them, waiting for them to grow, suffering some losses due to pests/weather, harvesting them, washing them, packaging them, and hiring lorries to transport them to your local supermarket, and paying the Tesco staff also to ensure nobody stole them before Cereus could buy those Jersey Royal potatoes - also if you're in the North of England think how much more the transport costs would be for those potatoes if they came all the way from the South of England (where I believe fruit and veg grow the best).

So, Cereus, how much did it cost to produce that bag of potatoes and to store it until the customer bough it?

So what was the cost Cereus of ploughing the field, planting those seed potatoes, fertilising them, waiting for them to grow, suffering some losses due to pests/weather, harvesting them, washing them, packaging them, and hiring lorries to transport them to your local supermarket, and paying the Tesco staff also to ensure nobody stole them before Cereus could buy those Jersey Royal potatoes - also if you're in the North of England think how much more the transport costs would be for those potatoes if they came all the way from the South of England (where I believe fruit and veg grow the best).

So, Cereus, how much did it cost to produce that bag of potatoes and to store it until the customer bough it?

Pok Wong, also known as Fiona, said claims made in the university
's prospectus were untrue.

She told the BBC in 2018: "They think we're international students [and] we come here to pay our money for a piece of paper, for the degree. "But actually...They exaggerated the prospects of a career studying with them, and also they exaggerate how connected they are."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48490572

I've also invested a lot in my education in the UK - and despite gaining a First class disagree and a Masters with distinction it hasn't helped my career prospects.

No doubt some people will say my family should have just invested in bricks and mortar and we would of made out like bandits. Sadly our family (and me included was happy to choose this direction) invested in education and knowledge -- the financial returns from which have been extremely negative and very painful.

I am sure some of you will think myself and my family stupid ... and you are entitled to your opinions. However I also think UK education was miss-sold - and the huge boom in UK house prices from 1996-2006 was rather unfair to everyone else in society apart from the people who were making this boom happen - which was no doubt a significant percentage of UK investors but certainly it distorted the economy and was a hugely unfair boom in many ways as whilst Tony Blair was telling people the future was education and knowledge he was telling his cronies that the banks were closing down UK brick factories and given Labour policies of no more building on the green-belt, plus the minimum wage and unofficially unrestricted/lax immigration, that house prices were going to go through the roof.

Some people who profitted from this may think they were smart and the people who did not profit were stupid. But there are other ways to look at this situation - and one is that it was a great economic injustice in that splitting houses into flats and renting them out to immigrants doesn't really make a country richer (it's not really overall positive to the economy) as the extra pressure it creates on services/roads/schools is borne by the public, yet the extra wealth it generates to property speculators is private profit and goes into a fairly small number of "well-connected" hands.

Also Labour privatised profits in many other sectors and left the liabilities for the taxpayer to pick up. And the Conservatives have not done anything to reverse this except in less than a decade in office they have doubled the national debt and have not really proven that even with such financial largesse they could create widespread sustainable economic growth.

Hence I think why the party in office has been doing badly in all the elections (of any type) for the past ten years. The ordinary middle-class rump of Britain has been sold out by the politicians - undercut by too much immigration and hurt by overpriced rents/house prices.

Pok Wong, also known as Fiona, said claims made in the university's prospectus were untrue.

She told the BBC in 2018: "They think we're international students [and] we come here to pay our money for a piece of paper, for the degree. "But actually...They exaggerated the prospects of a career studying with them, and also they exaggerate how connected they are."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48490572

I've also invested a lot in my education in the UK - and despite gaining a First class disagree and a Masters with distinction it hasn't helped my career prospects.

No doubt some people will say my family should have just invested in bricks and mortar and we would of made out like bandits. Sadly our family (and me included was happy to choose this direction) invested in education and knowledge -- the financial returns from which have been extremely negative and very painful.

I am sure some of you will think myself and my family stupid ... and you are entitled to your opinions. However I also think UK education was miss-sold - and the huge boom in UK house prices from 1996-2006 was rather unfair to everyone else in society apart from the people who were making this boom happen - which was no doubt a significant percentage of UK investors but certainly it distorted the economy and was a hugely unfair boom in many ways as whilst Tony Blair was telling people the future was education and knowledge he was telling his cronies that the banks were closing down UK brick factories and given Labour policies of no more building on the green-belt, plus the minimum wage and unofficially unrestricted/lax immigration, that house prices were going to go through the roof.

Some people who profitted from this may think they were smart and the people who did not profit were stupid. But there are other ways to look at this situation - and one is that it was a great economic injustice in that splitting houses into flats and renting them out to immigrants doesn't really make a country richer (it's not really overall positive to the economy) as the extra pressure it creates on services/roads/schools is borne by the public, yet the extra wealth it generates to property speculators is private profit and goes into a fairly small number of "well-connected" hands.

Also Labour privatised profits in many other sectors and left the liabilities for the taxpayer to pick up. And the Conservatives have not done anything to reverse this except in less than a decade in office they have doubled the national debt and have not really proven that even with such financial largesse they could create widespread sustainable economic growth.

Hence I think why the party in office has been doing badly in all the elections (of any type) for the past ten years. The ordinary middle-class rump of Britain has been sold out by the politicians - undercut by too much immigration and forced to pay overpriced rents to enrich a class of property speculators.

Pok Wong, also known as Fiona, said claims
made in the university's prospectus were untrue.

She told the BBC in 2018: "They think we're international students [and] we come here to pay our money for a piece of paper, for the degree.

"But actually we care about the quality, we care about how much we could learn.

"They exaggerated the prospects of a career studying with them, and also they exaggerate how connected they are."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48490572

I've also invested a lot in my education in the UK - and despite gaining a First class disagree and a Masters with distinction it hasn't helped my career prospects.

No doubt some people will say my family should have just invested in bricks and mortar and we would of made out like bandits. Sadly our family (and me included was happy to choose this direction) invested in education and knowledge -- the financial returns from which have been extremely negative and very painful.

I am sure some of you will think myself and my family stupid ... and you are entitled to your opinions. However I also think UK education was miss-sold - and the huge boom in UK house prices from 1996-2006 was rather unfair to everyone else in society apart from the people who were making this boom happen - which was no doubt a significant percentage of UK investors but certainly it distorted the economy and was a hugely unfair boom in many ways as whilst Tony Blair was telling people the future was education and knowledge he was telling his cronies that the banks were closing down UK brick factories and given Labour policies of no more building on the green-belt, plus the minimum wage and unofficially unrestricted/lax immigration, that house prices were going to go through the roof.

Some people who profitted from this may think they were smart and the people who did not profit were stupid. But there are other ways to look at this situation - and one is that it was a great economic injustice in that splitting houses into flats and renting them out to immigrants doesn't really make a country richer (it's not really overall positive to the economy) as the extra pressure it creates on services/roads/schools is borne by the public, yet the extra wealth it generates to property speculators is private profit and goes into a fairly small number of "well-connected" hands.

Also Labour privatised profits in many other sectors and left the liabilities for the taxpayer to pick up. And the Conservatives have not done anything to reverse this except in less than a decade in office they have doubled the national debt and have not really proven that even with such financial largesse they could create widespread sustainable economic growth.

Hence I think why the party in office has been doing badly in all the elections (of any type) for the past ten years. The ordinary middle-class rump of Britain has been sold out by the politicians - undercut by too much immigration and forced to pay for the specu

Pok Wong, also known as Fiona, said claims made in the university's prospectus were untrue.

She told the BBC in 2018: "They think we're international students [and] we come here to pay our money for a piece of paper, for the degree.

"But actually we care about the quality, we care about how much we could learn.

"They exaggerated the prospects of a career studying with them, and also they exaggerate how connected they are."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48490572

I've also invested a lot in my education in the UK - and despite gaining a First class disagree and a Masters with distinction it hasn't helped my career prospects.

No doubt some people will say my family should have just invested in bricks and mortar and we would of made out like bandits. Sadly our family (and me included was happy to choose this direction) invested in education and knowledge -- the financial returns from which have been extremely negative and very painful.

I am sure some of you will think myself and my family stupid ... and you are entitled to your opinions. However I also think UK education was miss-sold - and the huge boom in UK house prices from 1996-2006 was rather unfair to everyone else in society apart from the people who were making this boom happen - which was no doubt a significant percentage of UK investors but certainly it distorted the economy and was a hugely unfair boom in many ways as whilst Tony Blair was telling people the future was education and knowledge he was telling his cronies that the banks were closing down UK brick factories and given Labour policies of no more building on the green-belt, plus the minimum wage and unofficially unrestricted/lax immigration, that house prices were going to go through the roof.

Some people who profitted from this may think they were smart and the people who did not profit were stupid. But there are other ways to look at this situation - and one is that it was a great economic injustice in that splitting houses into flats and renting them out to immigrants doesn't really make a country richer (it's not really overall positive to the economy) as the extra pressure it creates on services/roads/schools is borne by the public, yet the extra wealth it generates to property speculators is private profit and goes into a fairly small number of "well-connected" hands.

Also Labour privatised profits in many other sectors and left the liabilities for the taxpayer to pick up. And the Conservatives have not done anything to reverse this except in less than a decade in office they have doubled the national debt and have not really proven that even with such financial largesse they could create widespread sustainable economic growth.

Hence I think why the party in office has been doing badly in all the elections (of any type) for the past ten years. The ordinary middle-class rump of Britain has been sold out by the politicians - undercut by too much immigration and forced to pay for the extra

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-01/trump-s-tariff-pain-set-to-ricochet-from-china-to-global-economy?srnd=premium-europe

“There will be significant trade destruction and trade disruption for most countries,” said Chua Hak Bin, a senior economist at Maybank Kim Eng Research Pte. in Singapore. “Many countries, especially more open export-oriented economies including Singapore, will risk slipping into a recession.”

“There will be significant trade destruction and trade disruption for most countries,” said Chua Hak Bin, a senior economist at Maybank Kim Eng Research Pte. in Singapore. “Many countries, especially more open export-oriented economies including Singapore, will risk slipping into a recession.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-01/trump-s-tariff-pain-set-to-ricochet-from-china-to-global-economy?srnd=premium-europe

Pillarts, I'd love to know how real people behave in a random sample. I have spent 10 years studying human behaviour and I am still pretty much none the wiser as to what to expect if I gave a random sample of UK citizens £35,000 each.

Would a third of them really invest it to try and make more? And would a third of them use that money as collatoral to borrow even more to try and make an even larger absolute return?

It's an interesting question and I wish I had real data on this issue. It would be really interesting if the Bank or England did select 1,000 people at random in the UK and gave them £35,000 each and then followed them up for the next five years - this would be highly valuable research in my opinion and would give us a far better understanding of behaviour than we seem to presently possess.

Of course I would have to agree with you that people try and survive - if not it would be hard to explain how I am in existence at this present moment and typing away on the net. I assume I am alive because previous generations did not purposefully jeopardise their own survival if they could help it.

Yes temptation is strong - I think people appear to be tempted by different things - but ultimately whether money, food, drugs, sex, rock 'n roll, watching football, typing on the net - it is all one form or another of temptation. Perhaps monks can not resist the temptation to give up their lives trying to resist all other temptations apart from a simple life in a quiet place.

Seeing you think giving a haircut on personal wealth is disgusting will your arrange for me to be reimbursed for my many investments that have wiped out 100% of my amounts invested (for example I lost more than I could afford on Afren and this was a very difficult thing to deal with in my life - they had made the 3rd largest oil discovery in the world in 2013 and yet in late 2015 they went bankrupt - I personally think this amounted to fraud by the financial markets as clearly Afren had fulfilled their part of the bargain to discover massive amounts of oil - hence the investment case was strong but sadly many people involved with their financing must have been part of a group aiming to defraud equity investors as Afren's debt levels/ratios were not any worse than Premier Oil's or Enquests and those two companies are still trading and still have equity value left in them - and neither had discovered as much oil as Afren, nor in shallow water and easy to extract!)

So will you arrange for my losses on Afren to be reimbursed - and all the other companies that have seen their equity completely wiped out (e.g., Debenhams, HMV, Cobalt Energy etc. A lot of these companies did not seem to have malign intentions - they were trying to produce/sell a product and the investment case for Cobalt Energy in particular seemed very attractive until one could vaguely see that some kind of gov. scam was going on in Angola which also involved US Banks/Big Oil/Goldman Sachs.

Pillarts, interesting to read your comments.

I'd love to know how real people behave in a random sample. I have spent 10 years studying human behaviour and I am still pretty much none the wiser as to what to expect if I have a random sample of UK citizens £35,000 each.

Would a third of them really invest it to try and make more? And would a third of them use that money as collatoral to borrow even more to try and make an even larger absolute return?

It's an interesting question and I wish I had real data on this issue. It would be really interesting if the Bank or England did select 1,000 people at random in the UK and gave them £35,000 each and then followed them up for the next five years - this would be highly valuable research in my opinion and would give us a far better understanding of behaviour than we seem to presently possess.

Of course I would have to agree with you that people try and survive - if not it would be hard to explain how I am in existence at this present moment and typing away on the net. I assume I am alive because previous generations did not purposefully jeopardise their own survival if they could help it.

Yes temptation is strong - I think people appear to be tempted by different things - but ultimately whether money, food, drugs, sex, rock 'n roll, watching football, typing on the net - it is all one form or another of temptation. Perhaps monks can not resist the temptation to give up their lives trying to resist all other temptations apart from a simple life in a quiet place.

Seeing you think giving a haircut on personal wealth is disgusting will your arrange for me to be reimbursed for my many investments that have wiped out 100% of my amounts invested (for example I lost more than I could afford on Afren and this was a very difficult thing to deal with in my life - they had made the 3rd largest oil discovery in the world in 2013 and yet in late 2015 they went bankrupt - I personally think this amounted to fraud by the financial markets as clearly Afren had fulfilled their part of the bargain to discover massive amounts of oil - hence the investment case was strong but sadly many people involved with their financing must have been part of a group aiming to defraud equity investors as Afren's debt levels/ratios were not any worse than Premier Oil's or Enquests and those two companies are still trading and still have equity value left in them - and neither had discovered as much oil as Afren, nor in shallow water and easy to extract!)

So will you arrange for my losses on Afren to be reimbursed - and all the other companies that have seen their equity completely wiped out also (meaning an 100% loss of my invested capital) such as Debenhams, HMV, Cobalt Energy etc. A lot of these companies did not seem to have malign intentions - they were trying to sell a product and the investment case for Cobalt Energy in particular seemed very attractive until one could see that some kind of gov. scam was g

Winner of Wimbledon gets £1.6 million for 2 weeks work.

Prime Minister of UK gets £145,000 for 52 weeks work.

Countrywide need to find a way to extract money from those worth millions ... I doubt the average UK citizen has anything left but debt after 10 years of austerity, national insurance increases, council tax increases, and legally mandated pension contributions (much of which may not generate the hoped for returns in future as markets are looking way overpriced on a long-term 30-years basis and perhaps the DOW Jones will be no higher in 2029 than it is now - just a thought about what the value of people's future pensions will be if there is a 10-year bear market in stocks and bonds, which is a possibility when one considers there has been a 10 year bull market and perhaps this was a very narrow bull market which concentrated wealth in only a few sectors/companies - and hence perhaps hasn't put the economy on a sustainable footing for the next decade - and the market likes big cycles anyway as you can see from history looking at the charts back to the 1950s).

Many people believe houses are an asset - but in fact mortgages or borrowings are a liability - hence whether a house is an asset or not depends on what someone else (or the wider market) is prepared to pay for it. I would suggest it is very possible that trends could change and people with expensive houses could well decide it is time to sell them and buy cheaper plots out in the countryside on which they can build a larger (nicer) house for less than half the cost of the "silly" London prices. Ergo house prices in London may need to half to prevent a mass exodus out of London to nicer parts of the UK where there is more space and potentially more land for doing actual business (setting up factories, processing food, and generally engaging in physical businesses rather than the nonsense of sitting in an office at a computer all day wasting the best of one's life - how much longer will graduates consider coding or developing VR to be a good use of their lives? when they could be buidling tractors, growing crops, and producing real physical products and/or real experiences out in the natural environment.

Competition in the supermarket sector is indeed good for consumers - I just wish i hadn't bought any Sainsbury's shares and Tesco shares. Oh well - at least I din't buy at the high prices - losses are not too big on those shares currently (however I am worried that in such a competitive sector, perhaps overly competitive, that my capital will continue to be eroded and perhaps these companies will end up with little-to-nothing left in terms of equity value by the end of the next decade).

Also whether QE was used to subsidise mortgages (subsidies for private borrowing such as on property were not a good idea in a supposedly free-market capitalist economy), or whether it was used to partly pay the national debt, it still amounts to printing money in addition to regular government borrowing to spend. Hence in effect QE amounts to a faster than usual erosion of the value of money in the economy - personally I think this was rather unjustified as the people who had previously earned their money did not deserve to have it eroded faster than normal by QE. My Grandad for one, who had worked all his life until 75, was negatively impacted by QE - as it devalued his life savings faster than reasonably could have been expected in the period leading up to 2008.

I agree it's a beautiful feeling to know one is very small and only a tiny part in the great system of whatever life actually is. We all seem to have beliefs - knowing our beliefs are just hypotheses and may be false, or may be true now but outdated in the future, mean that we retain humility and grace as we play our part in life's journey - something which is beyond any individual control but which we can be consciously aware of (which in itself is a beautiful thing). But I can't say too much...and I know anyway that reality will continue pretty much just the same as until people reach a certain level of consciousness for themselves then other people's words will not make sense, in the way they are intended to, to them. Hope you understand ... and some no doubt are way beyond me in their understanding of life ...and so hopefully I can continue to learn from these sages who know even more about the deepest principles behind human behaviour than I have yet figured out for myself.

I agree it's a beautiful feeling to know one is very small and only a tiny part in the great system of whatever life actually is. We all seem to have beliefs - knowing our beliefs are just hypotheses and may be false, or may be true now but outdated in the future, mean that we retain humility and grace as we play out part in life's journey - something which is beyond any individual control but which we can be consciously aware of (which in itself is a beautiful thing).

Except if people with money would prefer to be treated by a British doctor. And if they would prefer to eat at Le Manoir rather than some average curry house.

You see ...immigrants only have financial value if the end user is willing to pay for the services they provide. If the end demand changes then just buying more houses to rent out to more immigrants will only cause a faster and bigger financial collapse - because ultimately if the immigrants find it harder (or impossible) to make money then they can't pay the rents!

You need to think things through and not believe in simple narratives! Bricks and mortar is worth whatever bricks and mortar cost to produce .... I can probably produce enough bricks and mortar to build a house for less than £5,000 in the UK. The rest of the "value" is purely attributable to the beliefs of other people - in short it's just a gamble on whether a trend will continue (like anything else in life).

Winner of Wimbledon gets £1.6 million
Prime Minister of UK gets £145,000.

And you still believe when you go to the shop with £5 you can reasonably expect a pie and chips? Good job most people don't think too much I guess or otherwise there is no way when you emerge from your city office for a snack that anyone would sell you a pie of chips for less than £500 (seeing most of your work involves inflating asset prices and devaluing the hard-earned money that was previously earned and which ought to have been enough to have bought houses for their grandkids etc if it wasn't for City spivs printing money like confetti and make-believing that this wasn't hurting other people -- devaluing other people's money is pretty much equivalent to stealing - so all those who benefitted from QE I don't think to you have anything to be proud of as printing money is one of the easiest things to do in the world - no wonder when you turn up at social functions you often lie about your true source of money).

Winner of Wimbledon gets £1.6 million
Prime Minister of UK gets £145,000.

Winner of Wimbledon gets £1.6 million
Prime Minister of UK gets £145,000.

So the economic system says that hitting a tennis ball (albeit with great skill) back and forth over a net is worth over ten times as much as the value added by the Prime Minister of the UK. Seems that the PM is hardly an important job after all. Therefore the message to business is just ignore politicians and do whatever you want - ergo fixing social problems/inequality/poverty is not within the realm of what is possible for the UK government. At least everyone knows where they stand now.