casper

walk to dulwich village and get a P4 to brixton then tube. no problems.

I must confess I find Huguenot's attachment very compelling. Can anyone from the pro firefighter viewpoint argue against this using facts rather than the arguement that we are all going to burn in our homes at night which this document suggests would not be the case? What is wrong in trying to be more efficient and productive? Sometimes the old ways are not always the best. To make the link between 12/12 shift patterns and closing fire stations and redundancies does not seem to stack up through any evidence.

going back to the original question it is unfortunately a consequence of higher medium term costs of financing for banks due to credit quality concerns along with the fact that banks do have on their books significant assets priced at base rate which at present is unhedgable, therefore they need to make up the difference. the spread between where banks can offer mortgages and where they can hedge their exposure (the interest rate swap market) has widened considerably over the last couple of years from 0.10% (pre crisis) to north of 2% depending on the credit quality of the bank. Clearly the increase in the spread in the mortgage market along with the increase in the spread between deposit rates and lending rates is an outrage. You have to remember though that the government and the bank of england are happy to turn a blind eye to this as it is necessary for the banks to rebuild their balance sheets (profits) in order to not have to rely upon another state bailout. It is essentially an unspoken extra tax on the population to bail out the banks. I am myself a banker and even i think that in particular the uk clearing banks are getting an enormous free ride and that when their balance sheets are deemed to have been rebuilt these spreads should be forced lower through regulation or specific taxation.

thks for informing me. just looked up the website and agree that it is inspiring and set up a direct debit!

The majority of the above sound great and are great if you can afford it. Anyone can spend money and make people feel better. Creating an economy that is sustainable and can maintain these type of benefits is another matter and something that Brown never understood. With a frankly enormous and scary structual budget deficit let alone the rest of the cyclical deficit the above list will mainly turn to ashes over the next 5 years. That will not be politics it will be basic economics and basic maths.

I suppose I am a sceptic in that I have a natural predisposition to worry when any concensus appears and the word 'denier' starts getting thrown about. The argument has been made in that the 'majority' of scientists support the Climate Change hypothesis but it is by no means 100% and there are undeniably some very persuasive counter arguments. My position is that I don't necessarily believe it but that it in issue that by it's very nature we cannot ignore in case it is true. We won't be able to turn back the clock. 'The Economist' takes what I think is a very good line on this. It sees it very much as taking out an insurance policy and that we can spend 1% of global output over the next 20 years to mitigate the effect of Co2 increases. My fear is that if this in my view more sensible analysis is highjacked the eventual cost of mitigation may be far higher and cost us all more. And we must remember that the cost or effects of global warming will inevitably be bourne by the worlds poorest.

Sandperson just sounds rather unkind..

Rates will start to rise the middle of next year and go relatively quickly to the 3.5-4% range. With banks still charging wide spreads on their mortgage product rates at this level will still put fixed and variable rate mortgages at 6%+. Past that its a complete guess. We either stabilise and with the enivitable fiscal drag inflation will stay under control and rates will stay under 5%. Very small risk of out of control inflationary bubble when rates could go to the moon, but v v unlikely.

Mark Oaten's alleged coprophilia has to make him the dirtiest politician surely??

the tax take from the higher rate of tax is infinitesimal when placed alongside the budget deficit. all it does is destroy incentive. no government should have the right to take more than 50% of a persons earnings. the government was happy to take tax receipts from city bonuses and bank earnings during the good times, its politically motivated attack on this sector now will only slow recovery and force jobs/investments abroad. its all very well saying good riddance if higher paid people leave for lower tax juristictions but the economy as a whole will suffer for it and make everybody poorer. the lack of spending restraint in the budget is stupid and dangerous. the assumption being made is that we will have a budget defecit in 2011 of ?140bn assuming completely unrealistic growth forecasts of 3.5%. this deficit will end up being far larger than the governments figures and will throw into doubt the governments current AAA rating on its sovereign debt, increasing the cost of borrowing and making it almost inevitable that we will have to go to the IMF for funding and they will not be so generous on the spending restictions that they will lay down for the loan!

the comment that i have just read from the Spectator website neatly sums up the budget: This government needed to show some contrition, admit the public finances were in crisis and produce a realistic, year-by-year plan to bring them back under control, based on dramatic cuts in spending. Instead, it tried to spin itself out of trouble yet again, concocting over-optimistic growth and revenue forecasts, launching a spiteful, economically destructive yet fiscally irrelevant attack on wealth creators while entirely failing to tackle the over-bloated public sector and embarking on the greatest pre-election spending binge in 18 years. It was truly a shameful budget from a shameless government.

I do find the attitude of some on this post very strange. It almost seems that some people wish to defend the indefensible for the sake of it. I admit that I am a father of an 8 month old daughter, but how could you possibly think that a man on his own trying to secretly film children at waist level is ok? All I will say is that he was lucky that it was children with their mothers who were there, I am not so sure if at a weekend with my own child I would have been as charitable.