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Unless you are suggesting nationalising mult-national oil companies and energy producers then it's doomed to failure (and it didn't work in Venezuela to boot). Consumer-lead growth, as mush as trickle down economics, is a busted flush. We have to totally re-think our economy and our international relationships. We have to put a nail into the coffin of globalisation. The Tories are wedded to free trade at a time when free trade is a disaster in the making; it will only succeed in denuding our remaining manufacturing base even further and make us even more reliant on the likes of China, India, OPEC, Russia etc. We can't continue to keep turning a blind eye simply for the sake of trade. I'm not suggesting that the UK is, in any way, better or superior to these countries/organisations, but we have to accept that our political and social objectives are simply not aligned with them and that it's barking to use what limited resources we remaining to continue to line their pockets at our expense. An economic cold war is preferable to the current status quo IMHO.

Is it just me or are they all just a bunch of morons soley interested in saving their own skins? Are they really suggesting that they can buy bonds today, that it will all come up roses tomorrow and that they will be able to re-sell these bonds back into the market plus an additional £100bn (to cover the additional cost of their energy market intervention measures) the day after tomorrow? They are clutching at straws. Meanwhile Putin must be laughing all the way to the bank. Just when we need leadership we've ended up with a bunch of clueless imbeciles!

There is no bottom to this. Truss and Kwarteng have managed to lose any credibility they did have in a matter of weeks; they've managed to single-handedly turn a disaster into a crisis. BofE intervention didn't work during the ERM crisis and there's no reason to think that BofE intervention will work now. On Black Wednesday they raised interest rates 5% in one morning and sterling still plunged!

Of course this isn't the end but a lot of unneccessary damage has been caused and there will be a bottom but I'm not sure what will placate the markets. It seems to me that, at a minimum, Kwasi will have to resign (he can't talk his way out of this; he's lost the confidence of the markets). We can't afford another Conservative leadership election (or any other election for that matter at this juncture) so Truss will have to remain (unbelievably she's even more walking dead than Boris was). We need action. I think Truss will have to turn to Rushi to help stabilise the markets (and sterling) and the mini-budget will have to be rolled back with immediate effect. We need properly costed, targeted tax cuts for small businesses and all individuals at this juncture. In the meantime, Rushi needs to come up with a plan to repay all of this additional debt in the future; Truss and Kwarteng are not wrong to suggest that growth is preferable to tax rises but growth is ephemeral (everybody is chasing the same goal by the same means - consumerism - and the law of equilibrium suggests that it's a forlorn hope). Perhaps it's time to roll out a New Deal based on investment (I'm not saying that's the answer but it strikes me that consumerism is like a the hamster on the wheel - inevitably you end up working harder to just stand still).

Porsche says "Should get another chance to buy these around 360 as U.K. circles u bend for the last time ...".

Given his pessimism about the UK (and with Truss/Kwarteng now pulling the strings who can blame him), why oh why does he think 360p will be the bottom? If, as he suggests, we are in the process of being flushed down the pipe, and on the brink of full meltdown, then sub-250p is as good a guess as any. Me thinks that Porsche isn't quite as pessimistic as he likes to make out and simply hopes to buy on the cheap. Either that or he isn't listening to his own logic ;-)

John, How did you receive your yesterday? HL (and the NWG website) says the dividend is definitely payable on 16/9! What broker credits your account three days in advance?

The dividends are payable on Friday. So, if there is any slump, I think it's more likley to be Tuesday/Wednesday next week; Mr Market wouldn't want to afford PIs the opportunity to buy at a lower price on Friday/Monday (where's the profit in that).

Mike, I think your theory is off the mark. The 52-week high was cum-dividends, so there is no logic in suggesting that £2.83 represents a corresponding post-consolidation high but I'm sure the market has spotted the opportunity to encourage PIs into that line of thinking and to reinvest their dividends on Friday (before they drop the share price next week).

Assuming there had been no consolidation, I'd have expected a total dividend for the current financial year of c12.25p (a 17% increase on prior year) and adjusting for the consolidation that would would equate to c13.20p, currently putting NWG on a dividend yield of c4.9%. In my view, based on the current share prices of other high yielding shares such as the insurers and pension providers, that dividend yield in the present market would suggest that the market is pricing in the expectation that NWG will be able to significantly grow its dividend again in FY23 (probably by a corresponding amount, or more, than the current year) and a dividend of c15.45p would, for example, put NWG on a forward dividend yield of c5.7%. Personally, I think that NWG has probably reached the top of its price range for the time being without any further dividend guidance for this year and next. I'm in for the long term and won't be selling but I wouldn't be too surprised to see some price correction in the next few weeks. I appreciate that brokers now have targets north of 300p but shares rarely, if ever, move up (or down) in a straight line and those targets could begin to tumble if the expected recession begins to bite.

All in all, I'd have much preferred to have the opportunity to invest my dividends in the 240s than the 280s.

lucky, Not everybody had the cash to take advantage of the opportunity. I sold at c261p cum-dividends and bought back in the high 240s (should have waited another day). By my reckoning I'm probably about £300 better off on a like for like basis and now have slighly more shares than I originally started with, so I'm happy. However, I still think the consolidation was unnecessary and just added to the normal ex-dividend turmoil (in fact the ex-dividend turmoil in August was abnormal with many shares sinking significantly below their expected ex-dividend price before starting to recover earlier this month).

Lucky, The share consolidation was needless. At the end of the day, whether you've own 1,300 shares at c269p or 1,400 shares at c250p its all the same. Some people are too hung up on price rather than overall value. In the meantime, traders were very quite happy to take advantage of the disruption caused by the consolidation and pick up the shares in the low 240s and are now quids in.

kassam, To what are you referring exactly? There was a 14:13 share consolidation. So, if you owned 1,400 old shares before the consolidation you'd own 1,300 new shares after the consolidation (assuming you haven't bought or sold since). The historic share price on sites, such as Yahoo, has been adjusted to reflect the consolidation. At the close on 26 August the old shares were priced at c251p (from recollection) and the theoretical ex-special dividend price of the new shares on 30 August should have been c252p. The price of the new shares did temporarily drop into the low 240s during the next few days but has since recovered and are currently trading at c266.5p.

Bottom line, if you held the shares throughout you are today better off than you were at the close of business on 30 August when you add together the current value of your new shares plus the dividends (don't forget that you are still to receive the ordinary and special dividends; they are due for payment on 16 September).

Hope that helps.

eccles, I suggest that you read the packaging. The Covid vaccines were never expected to prevent people from catching Covid because to do that you'd need circa 95%+ of the population to be vaccinated and, without making the vaccines mandatory, it was therefore expected from the outset that the large ant-vaxxer movement would prevent the vaccines from stopping the spread. The vaccines were expected, instead, to reduce the risk of catching Covid and/or lessen the effects thereof. Based on the initial death toll and expected deaths, the vaccines appear to have achieved their stated aim.

It is indeed farcical that the very people who make these claims about the efficacy of the vaccines are the ones who have actually prevented the vaccines from stopping Covid! Stupid ;-)

Beyond the initial £4m drawdown on the new mezzanine loan facility to fund medium/long term objectives there is no evidence that there have been any subsequent drawdowns (the need to issue warrants would warrant disclosure) and I believe that DVRG is funding its day to day business from existing funds.

However, the lack of timely financial information updates (Twitter doesn't cut it) and the paucity of information on KPIs is absolutely murdering this share price. Pull your finger out GB! Get off Twitter and concentrate on updating the markets in a more timely manner through official channels!

I think it's myopic to think that this is a short term issue. Politically we have to wean ourselves off supplies from Russia and Middle East. There's potential to increase supplies from North Africa but there's a lack of infrastructure to increase capacity. North Sea expansion is a possibility but will take years to reach fruition. Onshore fracking is still likely to meet resistance. We need to secure long term LNG supplies from US and Australia and I personally think that the UK should look to set up a new national LNG company with a view to investing in new LNG plants in the USA and shipping (we have break the producer stanglehold that means that, until LNG transports dock at their destination, LNG transports can still be diverted in transit to the highest bidder). We need to secure our long term energy security and need to avoid reverting back to coal as long term fix.

Also, although we have capacity to significantly increase offshore wind production, we don't have enough divers and boats to maintain additional offshore wind farms (the answer is remote submersibles but the technology is still in its infancy) or sufficient off peak storage (lithium batteries aren't a medium to long term solution; new technology is required).

New nuclear power stations could take 10-20 to years to come on-line if recent experiences are any guide. There have been long delays to new plants in France and Scandanavia due to commissioning issues e.g. faulty workmanship.

Against which you've got to factor the possibility of increased bad debts. Actually, as it stands, the downside risks appear to be a lot higher at present than many would merit (including the NWG CEO). Without any major government intervention it's quite likely that a number of small businesses could go to the wall (there is no price cap on enrgy prices for businesses) and individuals, likewise, could start to default on their loans.

On the BBC this morning one stallholder at Leeds indoor market reckoned his energy costs were set to rise from £3,000 to £17,000 per MONTH! Several of the stallholders were banding around the term "extinction event". The Conservatives have been asleep at the wheel for the last couple of months. Forget about tax cuts. They need to act on energy prices now and the likes of Liz Truss are only now, at the 11th hour, waking up to pending disaster. My real concern is that they have been ignoring the elephant in the room during their beauty pageant and that any proposals they now introduce will not have been properly thought through and will only prove to be a small, relatively meaningless Band Aid. This government has consisitently stuck its head in the sand when evaluating the impact of Russian sanctions and failed to mitigate the problem. Nuclear power and increased exploration in the North Sea (I think both are now inevitable if we want to secure our energy independence) will take years, if not decades, to come to fruition. In the short term, more should have been done to look at LNG production and transportation infrastructure and what could be done to alleviate future problems. For years we've been held hostage to producer countries and oil companies; they have no incentive to invest to increase capacity - they are quite happy for prices to continue to rise. We should now be considering creating a new national LNG company with a view to securing our (and Europe's) future supplies. At present, LNG shipments can be diverted in transit to the highest bidder! There is a woeful lack of LNG production facilities in the US and there's an opportunity to build both new facilties and a fleet of LNG transports to guarantee delivery.

People have to start to be able to discern the wheat from the chaff. As we speak the general market is tanking (and has been for weeks) and NWG's shares are trading at a mid-price of c248.5p. That's only about 3.5p down on the "breakeven" price; the price of the old shares at the close on 26 August and the theoretical price of the new shares (after accounting for the old shares going ex-special dividend) at the open on 30 August if there were no other external factors affecting the share price in between. NWG is not an island and it's not immune to the current economic situation and the general market concerns.

Yes, consolidations often do destabilise shares price temporarily (people have selective memories and choose to ignore the fact that share prices often get a temporary, artificial boost immeditaley after the announcement of a distribution or a major reorganisation that the market approves) but generally it's other external factors that will determine where the share price settles afterwards. You can't expect NWG's share price to fly when all of its peers are down on general market concerns.

Despite recent falls, AV is actually still trading above its theoretical breakeven price after consolidation.

From my own perspective, I was better off selling before the consolidation and buying back in afterwards but, if I'm honest, for all the wrong reasons; I think the decline in share price between selling, buying and subsequently has had more to do with the general economic outlook and the market reaction thereto than any destabilisation caused by the consolidation.

It's Maggie's legacy; it's all about statistics and manipulating data rather than dealing with the nitty gritty.

I've often suggested that my local NHS Chief Executive should be forced to hand out coffees and teas all night, very night, until the queues of ambulances waiting outside A&E are dealt with. The solution isn't more ambulances (where would you park them) but actually fully manning A&E throughout the night so that queues (which miraculously start to disappear when the day shift comes on, or at least used to) aren't allowed to build up and don't get me started on the scandalous, and indefensible, exponential rise in the cost of many generic drugs (which the government has steadfastly resisted legislating against) or the myriad lost opportunities for economies of scale (you even have the farcical situation of NHS boards actually competing against each other to bid up the price of goods and services).

I'm sure this wasn't what Maggie intended (in her simplistic thinking everybody would always to the right thing for Queen and country, and not line their own pockets). She was a fool to think that greed and avarice wouldn't come to the fore.

It's all a conspiracy and ignores the fact that there would have been an inevitable (time lagged) increase in claims because of the number of people who actually died from Covid 19 in the US (and not just because they took the vaccine as Ratbags seems to be implying). Lies, damn lies and statistics. The reality is that, if you are blinkered enough, statistics can be used to prove almost anything you want if you are selective.

Inflationbuster, unlike AV that gave an advance commitment I'm not aware that NWG has given any such undertaking and it isn't mandatory. However, NWG has indicated that it expects to be able to distribute a certain amount of funds over the next 12 months+, whether by way of dividend or on-market share purchases for cancellation. Clearly, with a view to wanting to keep the government's NWG stake below 50%, there is a limit to the amount of on-market share purchases that NWG could undertake and so hopefully there will be a re-basing of the previously expected dividend so that NWG's overall dividend distributions are at least the same as they would have been if there hadn't been a 14:13 share consolidation but there is no guarantee or undertaking that I am aware.

This is not due to the consolidation. Without the consolidation you'd have been looking at c234p per old share. The whole market is trending down. You can't expect NWG to buck the trend (it's current expectations are just as good as many other shares that are presently heading south; many of them with even better dividend yields). The window dressing may have given the MMs an opportunity to scrape a few pennies but most of the current fall is due to external factors that have absolutely nothing to do with the special dividend and/or the consolidation.

I was wondering what triggered yesterday's share price drop and now today I read that oil prices fell on fears that inflation will weaken demand. It would seem that (as referenced in the video) DEC's share price continues to be pegged to the oil price rather than the gas price. Doh!