Member Info for Richard365054

It's curious how so many references to Brexiteers also label them as far right supporters and rampant nationalists.

I've always taken pride in where I come from and in most cases, how our history has played out. We've played a part in many countries' developments and also instilled a sense of fair play and curious humour as we've gone about our affairs. The latter has sometimes been seen as a weakness and even today, we've seen other countries adopt an arrogance in their negotiations with us.

I have no wish to see a United States of Europe with member countries' identities disappearing under beaurocracy and dictats. It saddens me to see, as yesterday, a large EU flag draped along a small village wall with no sign of an English or Union flag. I wonder why we are not proud of our own country and it's traditions.

I consider myself pretty moderate in my views but am proud of my heritage. But far right I am not. Nor do I support the methods EU masters have tried to use to subjugate the many members of the EU, benefitting primarily Germany. It is also a measure of how incompetent current politicians on all sides are that we have the mess that is Brexit. A remainer in charge of leaving was never a recipe that would work. It's also a case that fronting upto a de Gaulist would need someone to place our demands first rather than roll over and accept what was placed upon us.

The real failure after three years has been the inadequacies of politicians charged to do the negotiating. Barnier the de Gaulist, doesn't negotiate, he demands. May the remainer, agrees the principles of the divorce without the counter argument of the trade. If you've already agreed the price why would the other person allow you to alter the spec.

I also use Hargreaves Lansdown as my brokers and from memory the dividends for Lloyds are not immediately reinvested - the time taken can be two or three weeks as they only reinvest on particular dates or date in a month. Best worth an email or phone call.

With regards to National debt this has been increasing dramatically since the last couple of years of the last Labour administration. There are two big contributors to this - PFI and public sector pensions.
The actual cost of PFI never showed up initially and was why it was so attractive to Labour. They could open the spending flood gates and still claim no more boom and bust. The actual cost started to come in some years down the line when the projects had been completed and capital and interest payments were due. By then another Government would have to take responsibility. In many cases the true cost of PFI was upto six times what it would have been if centrally funded.

The major portion of public sector pensions are not funded and it should be remembered that during the Labour years 1997 to 2010 the Public Sector increased in size by around 20% and yet the private sector increased by only around 4%. You have to have a growing private sector to fund a growing public sector but Blair/Brown were not overly concerned with this point. Upto 75% of the cost of public sector pensions are not funded by the future recipients and therefore when the Public Sector headcount grows then so does the size of the debt. It's basically the private tax payer and private companies who will be liable for these debts.

That's a high compliment, MrsNewchurch. Sometimes I may not be quite that man. Today has been a gorgeous day in Cumbria and tomorrow is a fund raising day for a cat and dog shelter in Kendal set up by the renowned Fell walker and illustrator, Alfred Wainwright.
If I can get a water leak fixed, Sunday is a show day at Westmorland County Showground and one of the rare times I take a car to display. Usually I prefer just to drive and enjoy them. But it keeps me out of mischief and I dread to think how many hours I've spent tinkering and rebuilding old parts. There is satisfaction however, in making things work again and the smiles on people's faces is a big reward.

MrsNewchurch, good afternoon and welcome.

I was watching the Hairy Bikers yesterday as they were travelling through Holland and Belgium. Each time they came to a border, instead of the national flag of the country they were about to enter there was the EU flag with the name of the country superimposed on it. I wonder why people are so controlled and weak willed as to allow a centrist and undemocratic institution to remove their country's own flag from their border.

A little later I was watching Guy Verhofstadt during his visit to the UK. He stated that the Lib Dems and the EU were standing up to the populists and nationalists who had created the Brexit mess. The biggest problem the EU has had for years and this has never changed, is their inability to recognise that people object to their centrist ambitions and intention to further strengthen their superstate dream. Let us not forget that the appointed commissioners make policy proposals to their parliament to vote upon. These are chums of chums and only diehard Europhiles may apply.
This is democracy??

Good morning Oxo42, the trouble with Bercow is he's a very, very long lived mayfly.
The more time passes and the HoC becomes more like the Marie Celeste, the greater the numbers of people see what an irrelevance the current crop of politicians are, and the same applies to the old boys club in the HoL.
Both houses are definitely in need of a mass cull.

I remember the pumped up speaker Bercow pronouncing some weeks ago that MPs standing would be clear if they voted during the Brexit discussions in the HoC according to their consciences. They had no need to fear any repercussions. Thus they were given the green light to ignore and over rule their constituencies consciences and judgements in the 2016 referendum. Or in other words, their view takes precedent over any constituency views. Not much point in democracy then, they may as well carry on acting as dictators.
But at the very least we can take great pleasure at voting them out and depositing them on their backsides. With the exception of Bercow, who rules as long as he chooses completely uncontested.

Hi Gino73, yes, statistics can't lie, can they!!

Thankyou for that. I'd never heard of this before.

There is no way May will continue. She has lost the support of most Tory voters and the few Tory MPs I have respect for know that the longer she remains the longer the Conservative Party will take to recover. Fortunately, Labour change their policies on a daily basis as it seems they have several leaders making policy pronouncements.

It's always interesting how Governments focus on GDP as a measure of how an economy is faring. To a great extent this must also mean an ever increasing population making their contribution to the growth figures. However, with the accepted impact on the world of uncontrolled population growth and decimation of natural habitat and species, should we not have a measure that takes into account the quality of the lives that we lead.
I've read the comments today on record population in work and obviously this has a link to economic growth, but I wondered how many people would measure their own lives and life balance as it almost certainly would not include any measure of GDP. Governments may use this figure as a comparison with other countries, but I wonder with the choices increasing numbers make these days whether there might be a more relevant measure or factor which would relate more closely to how people individually may feel about the lives they lead.
We are fortunate to live at this present time compared to how our ancestors existed. But is there a work/life balance that could be measured and give relevance to how we should be measuring ourselves. GDP alone makes us purely a commodity of Government and statistics.

I haven't looked at the figures for a long time but I seem to recall about 60% of labour constituencies voted for Brexit - i think about 70 Labour MPs had constituencies voting greater than 55% for Brexit. So do they ignore their voters - generally speaking, with a few exceptions, yes.

I can't argue your point about fundamentals - if there was relevance the share price would be much higher than it is. I do remember after the 2016 referendum the price dropped about 23% overnight and it still hasn't recovered half of this fall. Irrespective of fundamentals, this stock just isn't moving and it is directly linked to Brexit uncertainty.
Back in 2008 the Prudential share dropped like a stone to around 200p. I haven't looked for a little while but they were around 1600p recently. A nice little winner, unlike Lloyd's which is focused on the UK market.

At it's low point, Lloyd's was facing an ominous PPI bill that was ever growing. There wasn't much good news around banks in general. The CEO then began to make some interesting statements, just when the company was turning round, albeit still haemorrhaging money for PPI claims. Perhaps what he said was linked to his future share options attaining a particular price, but Osorio made a statement saying up to two thirds of future profits would be returned to shareholders and lo and behold, the Lloyd's share price exceeded 91p and this met his own trigger point. Cunning, clever and effective.
Until the UK moves over the Brexit mess the Lloyd's price will go around and around.

I also voted UKIP at the last European elections and have just posted my vote for the Brexit party. It will be an interesting end of next week to listen to all the excuses the other parties give for losing voters' trust.
One thing has changed more than anything and that is so many MPs have refused to follow their electorates' demand to leave the EU. Their arrogance has been amazing and the ERG, purporting to support Brexit, have actually pretty well stopped it dead in the water.
My contempt for virtually all politicians has never been so high and the waste of money by our so called leaders has been a disgrace. There are so many areas crying out for funding and yet here we are compensating ferry companies, building lorry parks and holding EU elections. Hundreds of millions of pounds just thrown away
But beware the politicians who have played this game and stopped the electorate's wishes. At the next GE, millions of voters will remember these MPs, from well known to insignificant, and remove them from office. I predict the voters are yet to have the last laugh.

You are right, tomjones2 about Government manipulation of the populace when it suits them. The US have hit VW heavily over Dieselgate but elsewhere they've got off lightly. We were sold the benefits of diesel powered cars years ago and now they are demonised. How many of the cars we drive are worth less because of what happened and how politicians have changed their minds. Interestingly the technology for very clean diesels exists but no one is listening as the argument has totally turned against fossil fuels.

We are all being sold the perfect solution of electric cars and zero pollution. Ignore where the higher levels of CO2 are being discharged during the mining, extraction and manufacturing of the components for these vehicles. As long as we can't see them or smell them then our consciences are clear. The fact that far more CO2 is emitted just to put the car in the showroom compared to an ICE car seems not to matter. I have no issues with electric vehicles in towns and cities because people are so crammed together. It's an ideal solution. But let us not pretend that everything electric is perfect. Travel the underground and you'll experience dangerously high levels of particulates. Similarly, the extraordinary weights of many electric vehicles mean higher levels of particulates from tyres and brakes, every bit as dangerous as NO2.

I listen to "experts" claiming we can get all our energy needs from renewables and that that the wind always blows somewhere. How we need to reduce our red meat consumption and reforest major parts of the country. I also look at how the human population has grown by a factor of 8 in the last two hundred years and wonder why this is never a topic on the agenda of saving our planet. We are the most dangerous species to have ever lived and continue to destroy rare breeds through our insatiable appetite to populate the planet. We think the solution to our problems is to go green but we continue to decimate the environment where thousands of other species are threatened. I think there's an imbalance to our reasoning and no one has,the guts to question our ever growing dominance as a species.

If you'd bought Lloyd's nine years ago you'd be sitting on a 10% loss.

The idea that voting Labour would have any beneficial effect on the share price depends on your personal politics. I prefer a Government that attempts to get our debt down rather than leave it as someone else's problem. If Labour managed to get into power I think increasing dividends would become a thing of the past.

Lloyd's have woefully underestimated the PPI redress situation. For months they have been saying they have sufficient set aside to meet total claims for the industry of £300 million per month, working on their personal estimate of 40% of all claims being Lloyds' redress responsibility. The problem is for about the last fourteen months average compensation has been running at around £340 million per month, hence the need for another top up!

£100 million may seem small beer, but if this amount had been returned as a dividend I would be sitting with many hundreds of pounds in my bank account. Another sobering thought to ponder is that the total amount Lloyds has set aside/paid out since early 2011 approaches half the current share price. Would anyone care to imagine a clearer way of showing the size of this scandal and how badly underestimated the Banks response to the fraud was eight years ago.

Amazingly, no Board member of any Bank has been held to account. A lot of smug ....ards are still freely spending the rewards of their corrupt and fraudulent initiatives. I have written twice to the SFO over the years regarding the scale of this corruption and asking why there has been no investigation. I don't even receive the courtesy of a reply. I think Government policy, unofficially, has been to maximise the redress payments in order to bolster the economy during the last decade.

That is surely the point about bogus claims - why does the cost impact fall on Lloyd's and it's shareholders. Last month I had two unsolicited letters containing forms to tick and send back if I had held loans, debit/credit cards or mortgages with any UK lenders. The small print revealed the companies, in the event of a successful claim, would deduct 43%, including VAT, from any settlement. Very lucrative. Almost like having a printing press. Wonderful for the Government as money continues to bolster the economy courtesy of bank shareholders.

I have a family member in Lloyd's IT and the comments he hears are a majority of claims submitted are now bogus. Yet Lloyd's add a further £100 million to the compensation pot. I do wonder if anyone will ever tell us how many bogus claims have been submitted and what the total cost has been to the company and, of course, the shareholders. Quite odd that there is no financial penalty for bogus claims.