Are tiny urls ok?
It says in sticky "Welcome to The Backroom. Please Read. "
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?f=2&t=33...4
" Clarification of why links to The Times aren't allowed.
The Times is a competitor to The Telegraph, and The Telegraph is the foundation stone of this website. You may make reference to The Times/Sunday Times as in "there was this article mentioned in The Times", for example, but do not post the link - whether it's clickable or not, nor by using url shrink tools such as tinyurl or snipurl. "
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>>It says in sticky "Welcome to The Backroom. Please Read. "
All a bit silly though in my view - after all, would a link to a 'competitor' ( single quotes because I don't really understand in what sense or to what disadvantage) really lose a reader because they'd discovered there's another weekend broadsheet? No diss to the Mods of course, we all have our imperatives.
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>>It says in sticky "Welcome to The Backroom. Please Read. " All a bit silly though in my view - after all would a link to a 'competitor' ( single quotes because I don't really understand in what sense or to what disadvantage) really lose a reader because they'd discovered there's another weekend broadsheet? No diss to the Mods of course we all have our imperatives.
Frankly, I am shocked to learn that there are other newspapers other than the Telegraph just as I was horrified to learn that the BBC is not the only TV station and that there is more than just Radio 4 on the old squawk box.
Personally, I would have thought that pasting a tiny url link on this site to The Times, which in itself has no mention of The Times in the tiny url, would make more sense than actually mentioning The Times by writing 'The Times' in the body message of any posting? Surely, the sticky is back to front?
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No dissto the Mods of course we all have our imperatives.
---Luckily, being down there with it so to speak, I now know that diss is something other rather than a town near Peterborough.
Rob - Mod in a hurry (hence the rather hasty edit to the OP's link to "the other place")
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"Demand" Government help? They may get the answer "join the queue..."
If all the banks fail; the lights go out and around 95% of the population starve in the following 60 days of brutal madness.
If Ford files for Chapter 11...?
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Whatever... UK car prices, new and used, are set to fall a whole lot more. I expect to see several K off the already reduced prices between now and the New Year.
No doubt some manufacturers will try to convince themselves that their brand is somehow superior but the true depth of this credit crisis will mean that ALL brands will be forced into unprecedented price drops in the coming weeks and months.
The banks simply do not have the cash for car loans whether that is direct to individuals or by providing finance so that dealers can offer finance to buyers. Even if the banks had the cash, which they do not, they are not going to return to the madness of easy credit of the past 10 years... partly out of fear of almost going bust... and partly because of behind the scenes pressure and eventual new legislation from Governments to minimise lending.
Industries that rely heavily on easy credit - house and car sales - are going to see huge drops in the price of those assets because the credit will not be there so prices will be forced downwards.
I watched a video tonight of house reposessions in Southern California - street after street of houses being reposessed by the banks and one chap who bought a house for 399K USD which is now worth 180K USD. Such a price drop is now common across the US and coming here soon. You won't be able to give away houses soon let alone cars.
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You won't be able to give away houses soon let alone cars.
It won't stop there if the Banks cannot raise/borrow funds from somewhere. Pray that the East does not start to put more savings in to gold, and continues to fund our Banks.
If the cash stops flowing, then as Screwloose said the lights will go out in the EU and USA. That means anyone in the private sector where the business depends on day to day funding from the bank will suffer.
Safest jobs: Water/Food/Fuel suppliers; Whitehall Civil Servants; Army, Police, Fire and Ambulance; then your local council essential services such as waste collection.
Edited by jbif on 06/10/2008 at 00:48
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Safest jobs: Water/Food/Fuel suppliers; Whitehall Civil Servants; Army Police Fire and Ambulance; then your local council essential services such as waste collection.
And debt collection. That's gonna be a busy job in the times to come
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And debt collection. That's gonna be a busy job in the times to come
Except that the assets will be worthless. Report last week in the other paper that Barratts reduced 50% off the price of new flats oopnorth somewhere, but cannot find any buyers.
China is feeling the pain too. Values down 50% of many assets in 12 months, new homes in Shanghai and Beijing failing to find any buyers.
www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=qkquote&cb=1196443261&symb...c
Edited by Honestjohn on 06/10/2008 at 16:06
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Barratts were only offering a discount if you bought more than five.
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But dont worry our economy is the 4th biggest in the world.
We dont need any manufacturing business because the financial sector is making all the money GB needs!
All of the above was what I was replied with when I said we neded to support our manufacturing ability while we had it (not just cars!).
Without manufacturing anything we cant actually improve our economy! I was slated before; I am sure I will be slated again!
So bring on the cheap chinese cars (of any quality; safety included) its all we are going to be able to aford to run soon!
Without credit our economy is bust ! There is nothing else left! Its only a mater of time before we accept it and become the 2nd world country we are going to be ! Forget supporting the foreign british car industry; we wont need cars because there will be no jobs. The cmajority of cars are work related directly or indirectly. Most people own a car to get to and from work. they just happen to use them after work too is all!
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We dont need any manufacturing business because the financial sector is making all the money GB needs!
GB = Gordon Brown?
Well he did think while he was Chancellor, the era of boom would never end. And, he was proved right.
It only ended after GB handed over control to Alistair Darling! :-)
Seriously though, most of us in Britain were busily engaged on a spend, spend, spend spree without thinking where all the money we were borrowing was coming from. Now that the financial sector has stopped lending it to anyone [including amongst themselves], businesses are finding there is no capital flowing to survive.
Incidentally, British owned international banks HSBC, Barclays and Lloyds TSB are strong and have shown their strength by buying out some of the distressed Banks' assets around the world.
If Britain had retained its uneconomic manufacturing base, we would be in deeper doodah than we are in now.
p.s. USA, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain - they are not immune from the crunch either.
Edited by jbif on 06/10/2008 at 17:52
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British owned? HSBC is a Bermudan bank - although currently well regarded by the City. [Where do you think I've got my LIBOR account?]
Lloyds couldn't roll-over it's credit lines on Friday morning and was the catalyst that finally forced Mervyn [got-a-lot-of-new-motors] to capitulate and agree to take trash as collateral for Treasury bills. GB couldn't risk the certain demise of the HBOS farce if the - otherwise sound - Lloyds fell.
After RBS has gone [Nat?] west; Barclays will be the next casualty. See:-
newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/fds/hi/business/market...m
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HSBC is a Bermudan bank -
Shock news! Really? Since when?
I would like to know coz I am a shareholder, and it seems they have forgotten to tell me. :-(
Until the truthfulness of your claim can be ascertained, it is best to hold fire on commenting on the rest of your claims.
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Watch those Bermudan banks, they're right in the middle of the Bermuda banking triangle!
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Quote:...""If Britain had retained its uneconomic manufacturing base""
When our indigenous motor industry was collapsing, it was often said that it was no longer economic to build cars in Britain. Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, BMW, Tata and VW(Bentley) doidn't seem to think so, although Peugeot came around to that way of thinking.
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SS
Oddly enough; Bermuda isn't in the Bermuda Triangle - it marks one corner of what is essentially a quadrilateral.
[Before the pedants strike; I know it's impossible to have a true quadrilateral on the surface of a sphere.]
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HSBC bought Bank of Bermuda abt 4 years ago, and that Bank is part of the enormous HSBC Group, Screwloose. I'm not an expert, but HSBC Holdings' HQ is in London, and it is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world.
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"If Britain had retained its uneconomic manufacturing base, we would be in deeper doodah than we are in now."
Imagine if even a fraction of the government money that is now being thrown at the financial sector had been invested into our manufacturing industry. New factories, new machine tools, and so on. We would now have a viable manufacturing base to fall back on.
Unfortunately Blair and Brown continued the Tory love-in with the city and didn't ask enough questions, believed everything they were told.
Endlessly recirculating money, bundling up debts into ever more complex packages is not 'wealth creation'. Now the lie is exposed.
Fascinating times when the US president adopts a form of socialism (if only for the rich) and his economy is seriously in debt to a communist government.
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I take it you are a shareholder of HSBC Bank Plc - a division of HSBC Holdings Plc which is indeed based at 10, Lower Thames St. London.
As to where the company that controls that London arm of a worldwide bank is based....? I've heard it referred to as Bermuda on quite a few occasions.
As it would take quite a paper-trail to discover the reality of that assertion; you can believe it - or not.
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time to get back to Motoring - wonder how many company cars HSBC leases worldwide!
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In reply to Screwloose:I take it you are a shareholder of HSBC Bank Plc - a division of HSBC Holdings Plc which is indeed based at 10, Lower Thames St. London. As to where the company that controls that London arm of a worldwide bank is based
?
No need for me to comment any further, except to say that I am sure you are capable enough to research to get at the truth.
In reply to qxman:Imagine if even a fraction of the government money that is now being thrown at the financial sector had been invested into our manufacturing industry. New factories, new machine tools, and so on. We would now have a viable manufacturing base to fall back on.
Yes you would then be manufacturing loads of expensive unsaleable goods. Who would buy your expensive goods? Your solution might work in a closed economy such as Cuba.
Fascinating times when the US president adopts a form of socialism (if only for the rich) and his economy is seriously in debt to a communist government.
The main difference in those two market economies is that one is controlled by politicians in a single party system as opposed to the other which has a two-party system. Fascinating that the debt-ridden USA and UK send aid to China, which has built up a huge trade surplus on the back of those two countries.
I still much prefer to live my life under the the politics and markets of UK or the USA rather than China or Russia.
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"Who would buy your expensive goods?"
Probably the people who have been buying those nice shiny toyotas, nissans etc etc? that we like to call our manufacturers ?
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shiny toyotas, nissans etc etc? that we like to call our manufacturers ?
And MINIs. By definition, those cars are not expensive, but cheap enough to be made here to compete in their market. As soon as they become too expensive to make here compared to clones made abroad, then the plants will face closure. [recent well known example wass Dyson, another not so well known example is the maker of "Oxford" brand school geometry sets]. No one shuts down competitive plants to spite their own face.
The location of any new manufacturing plant is based on certain economic and political criteria, including:
availability and cost of: capital, materials, and skilled labour [capable of quality workmanship].
Politics comes in to it in the form of labour laws, planning and environmental laws, grants/bribes/aid for regional development, plus incentives/disincentives to sell the product [ved, vat, emissions regs, etc.]
If the net result is a product of sufficient quality at a price that can match competition abroad, then the product is viable to be manufactured here.
I have "close links" with a company that manufactures a product here in the UK which requires technical skill and expertise which as yet has not been copied in China or Russia. It is exported to approved countries [client list regulated/monitored closely by the security agencies, both of the UK and USA]. It would be possible to transfer the technology and manufacture the product in China at a fraction of the cost here but political reasons mean that the permission is not being granted, especially meeting strong objections from the US as they have the rights to a few essential components in the product. However, some small numbers of this product have been sold to the Russians and Chinese and it will not surprise me if they reverse-engineer the stuff to start their own production in 5 years or so. Then the UK factory will face closure as it won't be able to compete on price or quality for long, but may survive a short time just based on past reputation.
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I'd have thought that anyone with a viable business plan wouldn't have had much trouble funding factories and machine tools - at recklessly-low interest rates - over the past few years.
What this country now needs is a big increase in the base rate and for the population to find out what "fractional reserve banking" really means - not to mention the difference between "money" and "currency."
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I'd have thought that anyone with a viable business plan wouldn't have had much trouble funding factories
As you and injection-doc pointed out in this thread:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=67844&...e
one problem is that of planning/environmental blocks which make businesses unviable.
The company I referred to above includes amongst its products that use the word "nuclear" to denote size of structures being dealt with, rather than anything to do with radiation. However, because some of the EA numpties cannot understand the difference, it causes unnecessary hassle for the factory. Some freight companies refuse to handle the products because of the that word.
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The motor industry can take a long walk over a very short bridge as far as I'm concerned. I want my taxes to go on worthwhile things such as the NHS, schools etc. not propping up industries that certainly didn't complain during the good years whilst fools were readily MEWing their car purchases. Let the fittest survive - isn't that what capitalism is all about?
And as for the banks - well it's an absolute disgrace as again we didn't hear any complaints in the good years when the top dogs had their snouts well and truly in the trough first.
Edited by The Melting Snowman on 06/10/2008 at 22:26
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The company I referred to above includes amongst its products that use the word "nuclear" to denote size of structures
That's nothing; I was once asked by one insurer to accurately state the MOD/AFS designation of my 6x6 tow-truck.
I gave them the exact wording from the build order; "Nuclear Warhead Convoy Escort Tender."
They rang me back and enquired how many nuclear warheads did I carry and how often..... [They didn't ask about relative yeilds or polonium initiators though...]
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Speaks volumes for the Insurance industry - I'd want to know that for a start. I'll be posting a question in Tech slowly about a misfiring tactical warhead - must have been misfuelled I suppose.
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PU
I'm afraid that I'm only experienced with the Chevaline variants - and their launchers had to be misfuelled within 45 minutes.....
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They rang me back and enquired how many nuclear warheads did I carry and how often..... >>
LOL....classic, you couldn't make it up...
Edited by gordonbennet on 06/10/2008 at 23:03
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Great attitudes jbif and snowman. I agree with some of it.
The only problem is that we are now in a position where we cannot build anything to trade our way out of trouble.
Like manufacturing or not, the countries that are supporting it properly are doing better than we are !
But its way too late now!
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