87 replies to this topic

[Monty_Jon]

I run a small engineering/retail business, I used to employ 3 people its now just me

It did start to recover slightly end of last year, but the last 2-3 Months have been the worst yet!

Has anyone else found this or is it just me?

[Johnnyboxer]

Agreed.................I run my own business and Sept/Oct were dire....Nov picked up and has been better, nothing on the horizon for Dec yet

[Greg]

We have a groundworks business, supplying plant and labour g/works on new housing sites.This time 2008 i was unemployed with 2 14 ton volvo excavators which were in neg. equity,dec 09 working me and 1 employee, Dec 2010 Me & 2 men severely snowed off, Dec 2011 me & 2men very busy& in demand, but working on prices lower than in 2005.so could be worse.
I enquired two weeks ago into an 8 ton kubota exc. £52500 plus vat!!!!! ,and in jan 2012 they are going up 7%.They got the same reply as when i was told a 2012 gassser was £5k .Along the lines of, maybe i wont bother.

[Andy M]

Lot in construction working for rates that were around 5 to 10yrs ago, everything else seems to go up except the wages. We will be in this position for years to come. No one has the answer, money is very tight.

[The Addict]

A quick answer,

The money supply keeps falling, the BoE keeps giving the Banks more money to cure the falling money supply, its causing inflation which is devaluing Sterling. (not rising prices) Inflation can't be cured in the normal way by raising interest rates though, Merv predicts inflation at 2% or below next year, which means creating inflation is not working and he's giving up on printing money. 2012 will be much ****ter than we have seen for many years.
We have been falling into a depression since 2008, we saw it actually happen just after the crash, nothing they do is curing it, double dip by the end of March.

Edited by The Addict, 07 December 2011 - 09:08 PM.

[Monty_Jon]

I think one of the biggest problems is all the Chinese imports, our money is haemorrhaging into their economy, and they are just building up vast reserves of foreign currency

Most of there products are sub-standard and we are losing manufacturing at an alarming rate! (of what little we had in the first place)

[The Addict]

They've always held vast currency reserves, always will, they are very clever people to be honest, at the rate they are expanding, they will be the worlds largest economy in less than a decade (2nd earlier this year).
As above, the money supply is shrinking in the UK, that is a sign of a depression, less money in the economy, the BoE is trying to keep the supply high via quantitative easing which is causing inflation, a cycle that has no good outcomes for many of us.

Edited by The Addict, 07 December 2011 - 09:53 PM.

[Nigel Dabster]

Monty_Jon, on 07 December 2011 - 09:38 PM, said:

I think one of the biggest problems is all the Chinese imports, our money is haemorrhaging into their economy, and they are just building up vast reserves of foreign currency

Most of there products are sub-standard and we are losing manufacturing at an alarming rate! (of what little we had in the first place)

The biggest problem is that their products are not that bad.

[The Addict]

Nigel, I'd have to agree with that, they have found a vast market for cheap (not bad products) I have a Chinese genny that has been going faultlessly for three years now and many hours on the clock, bought new for 140 quid. If I want quality I buy quality, if I want something that's cheap and does the job it will more than likely be Chinese.

[Samy]

Interest rate cut this week for us down under... still have a long way to go to get down to your low interest rates

cheers

[bilc0]

The recession isnt as bad as all that, ok if business isnt prepared to change the way they work then there go down, i guess the last 12 years has made business lazy as money has pretty much landed in there laps, even during the last 12 years businessses have gone bust, so no big change there.
The same applies to joe public.
Theres certainly plenty of jobs out there it all depends how lazy and unwilling one is prepared to adjust to something new.
The UK is actually on very solid ground for the future.

[airwave]

Things are just balancing out.
The UK really doesn't make very much any more, our workforce is pretty average, on a world scale.
The days of us leading the world at anything are over.

Merv is furiously devaluing the pound to make what we do produce competitive in the rest of the world.
It's a bit rich claiming that the Chinese make low quality product and all they are good for is cheap . .
Remember British Leyland ?
and the flip side of the coin is that plants like Foxconn (who make iPhones amongs the long long list of super hi tech, high quality product they produce) are . . . Chinese.
and are waay waaaay waaaaaaay better than we are used to seeing.

People who won't pay for European product are the root cause of this re-balancing.
If all people will pay for is "Cheap" all the money goes to where the cheap product comes from.

Remember back in Maggies day when she went all out to break the unions to get the UK to be competitive?
and it didn't really work, as we have seen recently, there is still a significant union impact on the country.
Well, the "Lying one eyed scottish git" did Maggies work for her.
He gave Merv the ability to cut everyones wages without asking them, which is exactly what he is doing right now.

Every day the pound gets devalued (and it's even sneakier than just watching the value relative to another "First world" currency like the Greenback as it's being devalued too)
You have to go look at a proper thriving economy to see how much in real terms Merv has managed to cut yer wages.
Our antipodean pal is a great example, how much was the southern hemisphere peso (Ozzie Dollar) worth 3-5 years ago compared to the pound . . . what's it worth now?

Slowly, we'll come to accept where we are in the pecking order, but we are not where we once were.
Slowly, we'll spend what we can afford and not keep lashing money into things we don't need (like "Diversity officers" for a start)
and "Overseas aid" is not a good thing to cut, where do you think countries like Pakistan get the money to buy military equipment from the UK from . . ?
We give them money, they buy equipment they neither need, want or are capable of operating . . less a healthy percentage which the government officials keep
Obviously not UK government officials, they are far to "upright" for that . .

In the short term.
There would appear to be a high liklehood of Greece defaulting . . . . . . . (cue sound of disinterest . . . )
except.

Greece defaulting means it's not going to pay off some of some of its debt.
which means that the banks who lent that money, are going to have lost the money they lent.
They lend, . . your money.
You will loose money.
during the initial default (which is actually, sort of, happening right now)
Greece has not as yet technically defaulted as it is discussing the matter with it's bankers (Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Lloyds, PNB, insert _huge list of high street banks here, but leave HSBC off the list as it's been quite clever, apparently?)
but Greece is lining up to stiff the banks, quite possibly, your bank.
in a spectacular manner.
If your bank can take the spanking it is about to get (and we are talking hundreds of Billions of Euros here, truly astronomical amounts of money)
If your bank can take the spanking, all is well.
If it can't and goes belly up (which there are plans in place for)
you will have lost every penny you had in the bank . . . .

of your money

gone

except, "Call me Dave" will guarantee 83,000 of you finest pounds. total.
although, to be honest, if more than one or two banks go to the wall, "Call me Dave" won't have enough money to go round . . . . but Merv has thought of this and has the presses running, QE Quantative easing is making it easier for "Call me Dave" to cough up in the event that banks start going to the wall.

Remember the panic by the politicians and bankers in 2008 when there was a bit of a run on Northern Rock?

That’s ‘cos banks will lend way waay waaaay more money than they actually have.
They borrow it from other banks, to lend to . . well, Greece amongst others.
All a bank is “Advised” to have is currently 5 to 7% of what it has lent.
When people start taking money out of banks and reducing the money in the bank, the bank is supposed to reduce its loans.

except, the banks have stopped lending to each other . . .

If there is a run on the banks . . . . .
When the Euro starts to disintegrate
because banks are going bust
because Greece has defaulted . . . . .

There won’t actually be enough money to give out to people.
And things will get really really messy.

The banks only defence right now is to try to stop people “Running” their bank.
moderate market chaos and a few (well, quite a few) banks going bust and a few (well, lots, actually) of people loosing money, all of their money.
Is better than the complete collapse of the banking system.

The defence you have, is to have your money in cash, at home, right now.
The defence the banks have, is to stop you doing that.

bet you have recently had a change in T’s and C’s from your bank, bet most of you launched it as it was all small print and obviously rubbish.
It wasn’t, buried in there was a significant reduction in your daily transfer limit and your withdrawal limits have been reduced too.


We live, as the Chinese say, “in interesting times”

Oddly enough, once that chaos is out of the way, think Bilko is right, Merv is putting the UK in a good place.

[Nigel Dabster]

bilc0, on 08 December 2011 - 08:32 AM, said:

The recession isnt as bad as all that, ok if business isnt prepared to change the way they work then there go down, i guess the last 12 years has made business lazy as money has pretty much landed in there laps, even during the last 12 years businessses have gone bust, so no big change there.
The same applies to joe public.
Theres certainly plenty of jobs out there it all depends how lazy and unwilling one is prepared to adjust to something new.
The UK is actually on very solid ground for the future.

Solid ground. Define please?

[B40RT]

airwave, on 08 December 2011 - 08:58 AM, said:

People who won't pay for European product are the root cause of this re-balancing.
If all people will pay for is "Cheap" all the money goes to where the cheap product comes from.

Broadly agree with your thoughts, with the exception of the above.

Its now acknowledged that the gap between rich & poor is at its widest in decades.

Simple question.

How do you support the EU when your budget is being ever squeezed ?

Maybe you should rephrase it as people who can't support the EU etc.

[airwave]

B40RT, on 08 December 2011 - 09:33 AM, said:

Broadly agree with your thoughts, with the exception of the above.

Its now acknowledged that the gap between rich & poor is at its widest in decades.

Simple question.

How do you support the EU when your budget is being ever squeezed ?

Maybe you should rephrase it as people who can't support the EU etc.

I'll stick with that bit, there are a significant number who have a choice, and still go cheap.
Therein lies the problem.

I play with toy airyplanes and that demonstrates clearly why we are our own worst enemy;
People in clubs moan about there being no local hobbyshop dealing with toy airyplane bits n bobs.
There _used_ to be a local shop, but, the internet came along and people could save 50p off a widget by buying it mail order rather than going to the shop and bying it.
Net result? shop went out of business.
People maon about the prices of things and moan that there are no local shops, there is a connection.

and you do (usually) have a choice.

The gap between rich and poor has nothing to do with the general economy or the european situation. levelling incomes leads to everyone being poor.
I've lived in two properly communist countries, they are a disaster.
levelling reward leads to levelling of effort; and it always levells downward.
no-one tries harder for less money.
Moscow, back when it was a communist entity had priority traffic lanes for the rich and for politicians.
London, now has priority lanes for public transport.