Member Info for Love_You

WGR sometimes has moments of brilliance - such as when WGR sums up decades of experience in an easy to read post of only 12 lines or so. .

But one thing I can't get my head around is when the government has destroyed all equity value by allowing the City to rip anybody off who isn't a short-term merchant then what does the future of the economy/finance then look like?

I mean the only companies with equity value in 30 years time could be technology companies. However this is not a world that most people want .... most people feel forced to use technology more than they would like as otherwise they are worried about falling behind. I think the stock market is missing a trick by not allowing new natural resource companies to IPO - the world is a large place and although the UK is small there will be a global market for all different types of natural resources for decades to come. Eventually once the gas runs out people will go back to burning coal - it's just not possible to provide 100% of the world's electricity needs from gas and renewables - and nuclear is dangerous, dirty, and deadly for over 1,000 years after production ceases.

Also I think the market is missing a trick by not IPOing food production companies....sueprmarkets have to get their raw ingredients from somewhere .... I think it's time for a boom in global food production financed by the private sector and supported by the government-mandated redistribution of land - which is hereditary and not suited to modern times ...and not just. Just because a family has owned a massive estate for 1,000 years doesn't give them the moral right to leave the ground fallow/under-utilised if there are 10,000 people in a nearby town, half of whom would like to use that land for food production. When you discuss ethics it has to be on a human/individual level in my opinion - a human who is currently alive and wants to farm a piece of land currently lying idle has more moral claim to it than another person who prevents them on the basis that 1,000 years ago one of their family members squiggled on a parchment with some ink and somehow that gave them the right to the land forevermore - what nonsense if you ask me. We are all human and we need to cooperate ....people who think they own things just don't understand their lives are but a small blink in the history of humanity and nothing is owned by anyone...we merely look after it for a while to try and benefit both ourselves, our fellow citizens, and future generations.

As a final point, something has seriously gone wrong with the algorithms if you ask me. How did Petrobras manage to borrow $100 Billion to finance the Brazilian oil boom. And if Trump really wants oil at $50 then why don't a lot of oil companies just give up and declare themselves bankrupt because if Saudi and Brazil can borrow hundreds of billions at 0.5% interest then there is really no need for small independent oil companies, nor the higher-cost shale companies, to ex

Crowcast and others,

The reason people are angry is the economy has been hugely unfair for far too long. You can't have footballers being paid £10 million per year and yet an apprentice chef getting £6,500 per year.

A chef is not worth less than a footballer's finger nail.

Likewise how do you expect a rational economy when you have people like Bill Gates worth over $80 Billion. If he decides he would like to own a hamlet in the UK then house prices (if the sellers were rational) would sky-rocket overnight from say £300,000 to £3 million - as it would still be in Bill Gate's self-interest to buy if he really wanted to own an English hamlet as millions to him are like 1p to the average UK citizen.

The economy was f*cked a long time ago when Directors started setting their own salaries and their was no control over pay for a certain class of individuals - well maybe the masses will rebel against all of this injustice inflicted on us by the weak, lilly-livered Bank-of-England. You call it populism - I would call a popular revolt rational and logical given the crazy economic policies the UK has had to put up with for the past 20 years. And personally I blame the Bank of England for a lot of the shit-show that has unfolded - people in markets just doing what they want - a complete breakdown in rational pricing and excessive short-termism and greed.

Isn't even a Ferry from Newcastle to Bergen anymore - government is a con. Standard of living was better in 1990s than it is today.

You can fix Britain for the rich far quicker than you can fix it for the majority. Hence as the media mostly focus on those who are in the wealthiest 10% then they portray a very different picture of the UK to the one that one sees driving the streets of working class communities. Things may even be worse now in these communities than they were in the 1980s. I disagree with the poster who said people have it easy now just because it is generally not 10 kids to a textbook anymore. For tens of millions of people in the UK life is not easy at all as most of the respectable jobs such as shipbuilding, working for Manweb, coal mining etc have been lost. These were respectable jobs that paid far better than some zero hours job in JD Sports or for a 62 year old former engineer to be working on the minimum wage at some Hotel Chocolat monstrosity where they sell bars of chocolate for £6.50 each. Come on but these are rip off prices in the eyes of most people and it's such a boring job anyway as the really interesting part of chocolate production is managing the plantations of cocao trees and refining the cocao beans (a lot of this being done in Africa, South America and Indonesia).

So I'm not convinced the UK is doing anywhere near as well as the spivs in the media are paid by the government/tech sector to make out. We have been living through a period of austerity for ten years for most people - whilst maybe the top 15% have benefitted enormously (especially the wealthiest 1%) and there has also been an explosion in financial fraud and a lot of the share-trading has been done at prices which have only really suited "special interests" whilst wiping out 90% of the capital of the run-of-the-mill investor who looks at fundamentals (not a bad method for the past 100 years previously) to determine likely value.

So - I would be very surprised in the government does well at any upcoming elections. They have created things, yes - but many things they created were not what the citizens wanted - high employment, yes - but not the types of jobs the citizens wanted by-and-large. Hence although the stats may look good to those in government I think the feeling on the streets is that life is hard and getting harder and much of it can be blamed on the government for destroying the shipbuilding industry, destroying the steel industry, and placing too much faith in technology - which doesn't directly produce food, cars, cruiseships, or the kinds of stuff people actually wanted to spend their lives doing by-and-large.

Perhaps the people who voted leave were thinking of 10-20 years ahead. Steel probably doesn't have a long-term future and I disagree the Steel jobs being lost had anything to do with whether Brexit eventually happens or not. But after some land reform and a rejuvenation of lending to entrepreneurs then the UK economy is probably in for some great times from 2030-2040. Admittedly broken systems can't be fixed overnight and perhaps it will take 10 years to begin to put Britain on a good path again where the majority of the people are able to see improving quality regarding food, experiences, road conditions, train services, accommodation, etc.

The minimum wage is £8.21 - so whatever a person's past they would of been paid at this rate.

To prepare for Brexit, Banks have transferred billions of pounds in client assets to new European Union legal entities and shifted around 2,000 roles away from London to new hubs in cities including Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.

But now the hard graft is complete, the industry biggest players say they would not reverse those changes even if Brexit was scrapped.

Spreading top talent across several European cities has enhanced the banks' appeal to some EU clients and reduced costs linked to doing business in London, one of the world's most expensive cities.

"The horse has bolted," a source at one of the banks which responded to the survey said.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britons-keep-copper-coins-082742359.html

To prepare for Brexit, Banks have transferred billions of pounds in client
assets to new European Union legal entities and shifted around 2,000 roles away from London to new hubs in cities including Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.

But now the hard graft is complete, the industry biggest players say they would not reverse those changes even if Brexit was scrapped.

Spreading top talent across several European cities has enhanced the banks' appeal to some EU clients and reduced costs linked to doing business in London, one of the world's most expensive cities.

"The horse has bolted," a source at one of the banks which responded to the survey said.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britons-keep-copper-coins-082742359.html

To prepare for Brexit, Banks have transferred billions of pounds in client assets to new European Union legal entities and shifted around 2,000 roles away from London to new hubs in cities including Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.

But now the hard graft is complete, the industry biggest players say they would not reverse those changes even if Brexit was scrapped.

Spreading top talent across several European cities has enhanced the banks' appeal to some EU clients and reduced costs linked to doing business in London, one of the world's most expensive cities.

"The horse has bolted," a source at one of the banks which responded to the survey said.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britons-keep-copper-coins-082742359.html

To prepare for Brexit, Banks have transferred billions of pounds in client
assets to new European Union legal entities and shifted around 2,000 roles away from London to new hubs in cities including Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.

But now the hard graft is complete, the industry biggest players say they would not reverse those changes even if Brexit was scrapped.

Spreading top talent across several European cities has enhanced the banks' appeal to some EU clients and reduced costs linked to doing business in London, one of the world's most expensive cities.

"The horse has bolted," a source at one of the banks which responded to the survey said.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britons-keep-copper-coins-082742359.html

To prepare for Brexit, Banks have transferred billions of pounds in client assets to new European Union legal entities and shifted around 2,000 roles away from London to new hubs in cities including Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.

But now the hard graft is complete, the industry biggest players say they would not reverse those changes even if Brexit was scrapped.

Spreading top talent across several European cities has enhanced the banks' appeal to some EU clients and reduced costs linked to doing business in London, one of the world's most expensive cities.

"The horse has bolted," a source at one of the banks which responded to the survey said.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britons-keep-copper-coins-082742359.html

Saddest part of the Conservative government's rule is how the pound has been destroyed in value against both Dollar and Euro.

It trades at just 1.27 now against the Dollar.

This really tells a lot about whether Labour or Conservatives were economically more competent …. both were flippin' incompetent but in opposite ways .

Labour kept a better control on the national debt but did so in a way which led to an unravelling in our international relationships and alliances. Conservatives have done a better job at maintaining our international alliances but have done so at the expense of more than doubling the UK's national debt in just 9 years!!

Cons have added more to the national debt in just the last 9 years than the sum total of what every previous UK government spent over the past 170 years!

Anyway, what saddens me the most is the fall in value of the pound Sterling .... it will be almost impossible for the next government to attract an foreign investment because the current government have destroyed the value of previous foreign investment into the UK by weakening the currency by 30% - meaning that any profits are worth 30% less than the previous investors were expecting when they are translated back into their home currencies. To lose 30% just on the poor management of the value of the pound will not exactly be a plus in the eyes of global capital who may have been considering investing in the UK - but why would you invest if the BoE are just going to devalue the pound and act as though they don't care a flying monkeys about the people whom it affects.

I've been saying this since 2008 Wids - trying to grow themselves out of a solvency crisis by dressing it up as a liquidity
issue was an interesting solution to say the least.

I'd say it cause ten years of unnecessary hardship for UK citizens because it was a solution that was never going to work - you can't grow out of a solvency crisis where the debts were simply caused by people lending money who were irresponsible/incompetent/simply didn't care about the medium-to-long-term future.

I'm not sure you will find much support for tearing down the existing system - but massive changes do need to occur and one of these is land redistribution. If people want to actually set up business producing food products then they will need land and currently most land in UK just lies idle - either because the people that own it print money, devalue the pound Sterling, and import what they need from Kenya/Spain/Morocco etc - or because gentlemen farmers have become lazy idle sods who ride the EU gravy train and rake in enormous subsidies for not farming their land!

Hence if you want capitalism to be able to function again in the UK it will come from a sensible way of redistributing land from those who refuse to farm it to those who aspire to base their lives around farming it.

Once you have a sensible land distribution as a foundation you can get to a functioning banking system, as assets must always be backed by a means of production (even Karl Marx understood this), and then Capitalism can function once again!

But to think that we are trying to run a banking system where half the debtors don't even have a means-of-production to back up their borrowings is ridiculous and a serious error/serious mismanagement within a philosophically capitalist system.

I've been saying this since 2008 Wids - trying to grow themselves out of a solvency crisis by dressing it up as a liquidity issue was an interesting solution to say the least.

I'd say it cause ten years of unnecessary hardship for UK citizens because it was a solution that was never going to work - you can't grow out of a solvency crisis where the debts were simply caused by people lending money who were irresponsible/incompetent/simply didn't care about the medium-to-long-term future.

I'm not sure you will find much support for tearing down the existing system - but massive changes do need to occur and one of these is land redistribution. If people want to actually set up business producing food products then they will need land and currently most land in UK just lies idle - either because the people that own it print money, devalue the pound Sterling, and import what they need from Kenya/Spain/Morocco etc - or because gentlemen farmers have become lazy idle sods who ride the EU gravy train and rake in enormous subsidies for not farming their land!

Hence if you want capitalism to be able to function again in the UK it will come from a sensible way of redistributing land from those who refuse to farm it to those who aspire to base their lives around farming it.

Once you have a sensible land distribution as a foundation you can get get to a functioning banking system, as assets must always be backed by a means of production (even Karl Marx understood this), and then Capitalism can function once again!

The difference is Solan contained 50 million barrels, Catcher contains 120 million barrels, and the greater SeaLion complex contains 800 million barrels.

So you can see why SeaLion should have gone ahead in 2012 instead of Solan.

However, even if SeaLion was run as incompetently as the Solan project, and even if costs got way out of control as with Solan, SeaLion would still be a financial success simply because it contains 16 times as much Oil as solan and 7 times as much oil as Catcher.

You really need to think about win-wins here. Rockhopper have provided this value accretive resource at an incredibly low cost of discovery and their shareholders have been decimated. The least that should happen is some kind of a deal which is a win-win for both companies and where Rockhopper's shareholders see at least 160p per share in equity value - even this (which a few may consider too high, and no doubt a few far too low also) would also be massively value accretive to equity holders in PMO over the medium term.

The key is to look for a win-win that gets the oil out as the price is unlikely to fall before the next investment cycle brings a wave of new fields online which won't be until 2026 at the earliest - by which point many other fields will be in serious decline and Ghewar might only have two/three years of production left in it.

Hence I'll repeat, the key is to secure a win-win which gets this field developed asap - beginning to move rigs and heavy equipment to the Falklands in early 2020 at the very latest - and production by late 2021 hopefully!

What does Brexit actually affect? You will still only need a passport to travel to Europe - same as it ever was.

Why would Brexit stop people wanting to go and seek some sunshine in Europe?

Also TCG sell holidays to North Africa, Turkey, Central America etc. .....in fact Europe is expensive and not really a great destination when compared to the beaches in Mexico, Belize, Panama, Morocco, Egypt, Zanzibar, etc.

The UK is global and if Brexit is about seeking better value elsewhere (as the French are on strike constantly and only want to work a 35-hour week maximum, and with Euro strength the wages in Europe are ridiculous - French airline pilots earn the most in the whole of Europe and more than UK pilots - why? Because striking pays in France whereas in the UK it's not seen as a stand against unfettered capitalism but rather as something that was so yesterday - in essence went out of fashion in the 1980s).

I think it's Europe who may have the problem - so why do people expect TCG to lose out from a no-deal Brexit?

I'm genuinely interested to hear your reasons? If Europe is overpriced and TCG can offer better alternative holiday destinations outside of Europe then why wouldn't a no-deal Brexit be good for TCG?

I must be missing something - would really like someone to explain why a no-deal Brexit would be bad for TCG?

Is it really mathematically impossible to cook from base ingredients Wids?

I'm all for cutting down on waste and encouraging people to be healthy.

Certainly packaging for cigarattes is a waste - people should be encourage to collect their tobacco and cigarettes using a reusable box made of oak, mahogany, steel etc - maple and mahogany but steel lined and hermetically sealed would be the best option. Now get along and manufacture 10 million of these for the UK's smokers! Obviously the financial incentives need to be aligned - hence if such a box costs £40 it would need to pay back within say one year. Hence would need cigarettes and tobacco to be made cheaper by £50 per year, based on the average per capita spend.

Regarding ready meals and marujana, I think you are teasing me. There is not enough evidence about the health effects of marujana - there are far more effective pain relieving substances available. And the risk of psychosis from marujana is higher compared to other substances which may have a "relaxing effect".

Also I agree with the other comments on here about inflation. For Lloyds shares to have kept pace with the initial capital invested in 2010 at 63p - and the actual inflation as evidenced by the increase in the UK's national debt (and not the phony inflation calculated based on the costs of headphones) - then Lloyds shared would need to trade at around 120p per share currently. I would be very annoyed if I had invested in Lloyds in 2010 unless I had sold out at 75p in 2015. Even then an 18% profit over 5 years is rubbish considering the higher risk of investing in equity.

Then again maybe in an alternative scenario the government could have not bailed out the bankers in 2009 and just let the pieces fall where they were going to fall. Could Lloyd's equity have been wiped out completely in that scenario - who knows what their true losses were if the bailout + project fear had never happened.

TW have net debt - pretty much every listed company does - and I'm very confident that TW does - if banks and bondholders recalled all loans to TW then TW would be bust just like most other listed companies.

Perhaps the government could look into some kind of food-based national agriculture policy/planning.

Perhaps to the extent that it may become necessary to pass laws temporarily removing land from the people who refuse to farm it - for a period of ten or twenty years.

This land could then be used by private companies to lower the food prices for UK consumers. It absolutely has to be cheaper to grow food once enough land can be put together to make the necessary economies of scale.

Any landowners not willing to support the national interest should give up the rights to let their land lie fallow.

This would enable all the major UK supermarkets to create private agriculture companies with the necessary economies of scale within the UK itself and UK citizens would get far fresher, cheaper, larger, and better quality, fresh fruit and veg.

5 o'clock rock.

i agree with you. Area I live is is mainly fertile arable land - much of it left fallow - not many fields with crops growing, and none with soft fruit being grown. UK suffers from poor quality soft fruit and it's expensive also to buy - absolutely criminal that farmers are not growing what the UK citizens require to lead healthy lives.

I would say the government needs to look into some kind of food-based national agriculture policy/planning. To the extent that it may become necessary to pass laws temporarily removing land from the people who refuse to farm it - for a period of ten or twenty years - and instead pass this land on to private companies who will use it to lower the food prices for UK consumers. It absolutely has to be cheaper to grow our own food once there are areas of the country where enough land can be put together to make the necessary economies of scale. Any landowners not willing to support the national interest should give up the rights to allow their land to lie without being worked/used - this would then enable to major UK supermarkets to create private agriculture companies with the necessary economies of scale (all arable land in certain areas can be used for came crop creating an economy of scale) to make increased food production economic again in the UK.