Member Info for skier1

HS2 is costing £400,000,000.00 per mile... You will only see the sky for 7mins of the entire London-to-Brum trip (the whole line runs thru dark tunnels)... Around 100 million trees and 1 billion insects have been lost during construction... To make even a tiny profit, HS2 will need to charge £200pp for a one-way, 1hr, ticket, inflation-linked, for the next 20 years, and make losses constantly every year until at least 2050 or 2055...

To say HS2 is a "grotesque white elephant" is an understatement.

Regarding "Scots and Northerners getting to the South quicker"... this is a joke, we know... But that is precisely what happened when they opened a highspeed railway from Lyon to Paris! It caused an instant brain-drain, as skilled French workers fled to Paris for higher-paid jobs... The net benefits to (poorer) Lyon were / are basically zero. Smart folks from Birmingham are just going to flee to richer London.

Nothing wrong with 35-year mortgages. Keep the starting payments low, and overpay to the max (penalty-free) as fast as you possibly can, when good times, promotions and payrises allow. An average couple or person with strict financial management should easily be able to payoff their 35-year mortgage in 15-25 years. Longer lives mean longer mortgages, it's inevitable.

What's more, as said many times, the average mortgage payment today, as a % of wages, is roughly around the same level it has been for half a century or more, bouncing around the 20-50% range. The perception that young or mid people have it "tougher now" is a complete myth. Buying a house has never been easy.

See comments below. The battery mess, soft metal prices and financial challenges continue to weigh on JMAT. It's looking ripe for a takeover and delisting.

Shame that PDG is rolling over and selling up. It's twice the size of Hedin. Another blow for the London stockmarket. PDG should be buying and growing. Not selling and shrinking.

UK is the fastest-growing economy in the whole G7 worldwide during 2021 and 2022, this year has seen significant upgrades in GDP by the ONS, inflation is tumbling, and UK is on track to massively outgrow Germany in 2023.

America recently voted the UK the world's no.1 best country.

And, yesterday, the UK signed a trade seal with Washington State, northwest US, the 6th US state to do a trade deal with the UK, representing $2T of GDP, about the same size as Italy.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-signs-sixth-us-state-deal-with-washington-state

With HS2 being scaled back (rightly so), and the SNP all but defeated, and pensioners getting a decent +8% pension rise, and Rishi soaring +8 points in the polls, and most bookie-bets now being placed on the Tories, the outlook for 2024 is getting brighter by the day 👍

Rishi today has gained 8% in the latest UK election polls, in just 10 days, a huge leap.

Betting volume has also swung away from Starmer this week. Most bets now going on Rishi.

The 2024 race is going to go right to the wire.

Not so fast...

Rishi is shaping up for a May 2024 UK national election.

Don't think there will be time for Boris to come back.

Rishi is already making his moves.

Reverse-ferret on Net Zero, ending the grotesque waste and destruction of HS2, cutting inheritance tax, giving pensions a +8% pension rise next spring.

The election bribes have begun...

Maggie Thatcher.

She never messed about. She did what she said. She was not a product of the entitled, over-promoted Eton bubble. Just a high achiever from a village shop.

Leeds is one of the poorest cities in the industrialised world. Its GDP per head is about the same as Poland, and only a whisker above Romania. Truss was right to label Leeds a poor area.

Can't see the London stockmarket coming back to prominence any time soon. The UK is trapped in a culture of doom and misery that it simply cannot shake. Analysts and media get a weird kick out of tearing things down. The ARM float was a classic example, where the FT newspaper tried desperately to talk the float down, pushing hard for a flotation price roughly half the level where it's at today in New York. If ARM had floated in London, it would have been a flop.

Read the highly respected MSE (for free)... and then call state-run Pension Wise (for free).

You *urgently* need to get that cash working and growing for you. If you'd invested £62k in the US Nasdaq 3 years ago, you'd already be another +30% up, to around £80k. In other words (sadly), you've already lost nearly £20,000 by "doing nothing"...

You also need to make your pension figures and chronology much clearer, simpler, and logical. Right now, they are clear as mud... Pension Wise (run by the govt) will only be able to help you in a 1hr free telephone call if your past, present, and future numbers are in order and under control.

All the above is info-sharing, NOT financial advice.

Good luck.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/discount-pensions/#need-14

Great win for England, at 3-1. Bellingham in good form.

UK this week voted the best country in the world.

Looks like yet another Brexit boost.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12509323/UK-best-country-Americans-poll.html

Looks like the UK state pension will jump 5-10% in Apr 2024. But it will be a double-edged sword, prompting calls for the end of triple-lock, and means-testing for successful OAPs who have worked hard and saved hard all their life. A wild guess says that anyone under 60yo today with more than £500k in savings will never get the full 100% state pension. They're probably going to end up with 25-75% of it at best.

Blair wrecked the UK stockmarket in the first place. His vicious pension tax raid in 1997 took the steam out of London. It has never recovered.

No matter how bad your LLOY losses may (or may not) be, they will never compare to this UK bloke who lost £164,000,000.00 of Bitcoin via a hard-drive in a rubbish tip in 2013...

Enjoy this final hot weekend, people. After this, no more UK sunshine until March...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/bitcoin-investor-who-lost-164m-in-landfill-to-sue-his-local/

Good grief. How much more of this nonsense do we have to read.

Britain has delivered the world's strongest major economy for 2 years in a row. GDP is now being upgraded even higher. Everyone in the UK who wants one has a job. Wages are ultra-strong, at +8% growth, the biggest payrises for UK workers this century. Exports to the EU and to the world sit at a record high.

As for the Bank of England (BoE), nobody takes them seriously anymore. Its reputation is in the gutter. From Brexit to recession "predictions" to inflation, they get it wildly wrong, time after time, year after year. If they raise rates again this month, while inflation is falling, their rep will sink even deeper into the swamp.

It's a fact, son.

UK is world's fastest-growing G7 economy in 2021 and 2022. Two years in a row. Outgrowing Germany (by a lot) in 2023. Big GDP upgrade recently for the UK, and more upgrades expected before the end of the financial year.

Drip by drip, Brexit is bedding in and winning the economic battle. Despite a tsunami of bitter Remainer hysteria, every day for a decade, everyone in the UK who wants one has a job, wage growth is at its highest rate this century, exports sit at an all-time high, and UK GDP is top in G7 for 2 years straight.

Brexit doomers are on the wrong side of history. The numbers are clear (and getting clearer). This is a Brexit sunrise.

It is time to stop these relentless posts of UK economic misery and doom. They are on the wrong side of history.

The Brexit doomers have been consistently wrong now for almost a decade. It is time to stop.

Brexit is on the upswing. The numbers are clear. Exports sit at an all-time high. UK has been the world's fastest-growing G7 economy for 2 years in a row. Recent GDP revisions (with more to come) point increasingly to one of the planet's strongest major economies.

It is time to stop the self-loathing here. Brexit won and is winning... Get with the programme.

Let's be honest, nobody wants to go back to the office. Mate just sent me a pic of his bbq and drinks in the sunny back garden while punching out a work email on his phone. Another one has (quietly) gone paragliding for the afternoon. They're never going to (willingly) return to a dreary corporate box miles from their house.

The concrete panic looks overblown. Yet another whirlwind of confected political hysteria. Affecting less than 5% of schools and hospitals, and less than 1% of all buildings and rooms. Somebody somewhere is trying to make a nice little earner, by making it sound worse than it really is.