Member Info for skier1

The Tories won the ScotRef referendum and strengthened the Union.

Labour has just given away territory bigger than the entire nation of Switzerland.

Labour is quietly breaking up the United Kingdom and Commonwealth.

There's more to come.

Anyone who voted Labour or Reform (proxy-Labour) caused this.

The latest UK election poll this month puts the Tories just 4 points behind Labour! Looks likely the Tories will overtake Labour in the Oct or Nov polls before Xmas. A lot of voter regret out there.

The Labour dream has become a nightmare. Starmer's Trotskyist management style and policies are not going down well with MPs, journalists, voters, or international statesmen. The people are losing confidence. Think it's time for a fresh general election. Let the people decide.

67Sam,

You need to set up a spreadsheet, and quantify precisely the exact sums you're working with. Until you map all the possible 10+ scenarios, by numbers, and compare them side-by-side, it is virtually impossible to say what your best option is.

As a broad rule of thumb, a SIPP is just about the most tax-efficient vehicle in the UK (apart from a work-donated pension), so it should never be touched (IMO) until the absolute last minute necessary.

For me, whether or not to take the 25% taxfree lumpsum right now (in Sep) would depend on the size of my maximum withdrawal. If it's £250k, then yes. If it's £25k, then no. Labour looks rumoured to reduce the taxfree threshold to £100k.

As always, dyor. The above is not financial advice. Just some general thoughts and personal opinion. Predicting at this stage what the current bunch of overexcited Marxist overgrown polytechnic students will do in the next Oct budget is largely guesswork. This is one of the most uncertain financial times (for tax) the country has ever faced, in centuries.

If you'd "invested" £10,000 in CGNR stock at the start of the century in 2000, you'd now be left with around £10 today in 2024...

If you'd invested £10,000 in gold at the start of the century in 2000, you'd now be left with around £100,000 today in 2024...

A CGNR "investor" who instead bought gold would be around +1,000,000% richer 👍

..."Israel leadership looking to massively escalate the conflict... Why? who knows . Make no sense"...

Hezbo has been raining down hundreds of rockets on Northern Israel for weeks. Think they've had enough.

The ISA allowance has remained static at £20k per year for some time, and fiscal drag is reducing its tax benefit by stealth. What's more, Oct 30th budget rumours swirl that the £20k allowance could be cut further, while the maximum ISA pot may be capped at just £100k per lifetime. This is discouraging (not encouraging) savings and investment.

Dorfan,

A leopard never changes its spots... As Jeremy Clarkson recently wrote, the UK under the Labour regime has entered full-on communism. That always means the same thing -- snatch and spend, until other people's money runs out. The oilies are first in line for state re-education. The banks appear to be next...

London has lost its status as the world's no.1 location for millionaires and successful people. The UK is forecast to lose more millionaires in 2024 than all those lost in the previous half-decade combined. They are fleeing overseas. A Tory trickle has become a Labour flood.

To make it worse, the major UK bank bosses are being summoned to No.10 this coming Thursday. Robber Reeves wants a word. Some speculate there will be a crippling 35% windfall tax added to UK banks' profits. The state is looking to punish oil and gas employers, and now they are turning to the banks...

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-13824501/Bank-bosses-brace-Downing-Street-meeting-tax.html

Yup, it's yet another tax hike.

A modest 5% dividend in no way compensates for the -40% BDEV share price plunge in the past 18 years, the -10% decline YTD, the worsening dividend tax environment, the worsening CGT tax environment, the worsening ISA tax environment, the worsening pension tax environment, and the Labour push to make housebuilders effectively construct small houses at a big loss.

Barratt is clashing with the Labour regime about their 50% "affordable" house "plan". Vice-Chairman Rayner effectively wants new houses capped at ~80% of their true market value -- and they want shareholders and other capitalist exploiters of the West to pay for it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/29/baffling-affordable-housing-rules-wreck-rayners-building/

How much, in total, did you buy? How much, in total, will you sell? If you bought (say) £10,000, and sold for the lot for £13,000, there is no CGT tax to pay (for now).

"...Patient capital in the form of pension fund assets is needed ASAP to deter & offset parasite short selling outfits like the two who are currently short Rightmove (Kitbury Capital & Hawk Ridge). Why are they short RMV at 21x when an Australian rival trades at 3x their valuation?"...

To be fair, Rightmove management have been (and are) rubbish. Rightmove has a commanding 85-90% share of the UK home-listings market, and a 65-70% operating margin. They should have used that dominance in the 2010s to raise cash or stock and expand abroad at a lightning pace in the 2020s. The UK market has been fully harvested for years. Growth was abroad. Instead, they've sat around, tapping their pencils, waiting for overseas rivals to come in and eat their lunch or take them over. Very lazy "management". And yet another loss for UK Plc. Any future profits, cashflow, software IP, patents, top management jobs or top salaries will inevitably flee the country for Australia or elsewhere. Rightmove has become Wrongmove.

Lloyds app and website down, this morning.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13804193/Lloyds-Bank-app-Hundreds-customers-reporting-issues-online-banking.html?ito=pull-notification&ci=iIPqAR-Wk6&xi=6a085cb7-4530-40ba-ad02-8a411d84a1c1&ai=13804193

The Institute of Directors (IoD) today is reporting a collapse in UK business confidence, due to Labour. The mendacious gloom about the economy, the reckless unions, the surge in political prisoners, it's finally starting to take a toll on the nation's economy.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13802761/Labour-scaring-big-firms-UK-bosses-warn-business-confidence-collapsing-Sir-Keir-Starmers-government-tax-rises-workplace-reform-loom.html

The Nordics forced employees into pseudo-unions by law after Sweden panicked during an attempted Marxist revolution in the 1930s. They have a "light" union model, and bears little resemblance to the "heavy" militant model seen in the UK since the 1960s.

What's more, Scandinavia is just a miniscule 0.3% of the global population. It has not really been replicated successfully anywhere else on the other 99.7% of planet Earth.

Just drive up the motorway to Birmingham or Swansea or Hull or Glasgow and see with your own eyes the utter devastation in these union-scarred landscapes.

At a local, national and international level, there is little to no evidence that unions work for the masses.

If you look at all the heavily unionized industries in the UK, at a microeconomic level, they are all an unmitigated disaster... coal, ships, trains, planes, cars, NHS... the list goes on and on... every single one of the unionized industries has collapsed into oblivion, or they relentlessly generate astonishing financial losses, or they simply don't work.

What's more, the macroeconomic trend clearly shows, the lower the union-membership rate, the richer the country. For example, Switzerland and the US are 50-500% wealthier than the UK, but have 40-60% lower union membership. Cuba has 90% union membership, nearly every worker is in a union, but it is one of the poorest nations on Earth.

Unions sound great, on paper -- help the worker. But, in the real world -- they mostly help the boss.

As somebody once said about Scargill and coal -- he started with a big union and small house... he ended with a small union and big house.

Jeremy Clarkson is writing in The Sun today that Kier Starmer is a "full-on communist". We are moving into scary times.

Regarding Oasis -- they are a pub band that got lucky. Never cracked America. But fair play to Liam and Noel. They have a great line in banter. And if I could make 50 mill in a month for slow-strumming a GCSE Music guitar and wailing into a microphone the same way for every single song, I'd be on it like a rat up a drainpipe 🎸