Befits street

[Ermintrude]

Really is this the future?

Sorry no tabs no kids and no more booze. I just paid hmrc a lot of money for these lazy scroungers. I'm going on a social cleansing spree. Basically going to block flues and let co do the world a favour. These people cannot be allowed to have children and ruin there lives.

 

[Ray Stafford]

I personally thing that more then 50% of the houses in London are HA

Just looked it up. According to this site just under a quarter of london households rent either directly from the council, or from HAs.

 

[Nostrum]

I've no problem with profiting of your hard work etc.

my problem is the bak hand deals we seem to see happening, post office shares being the latest to hit the news, the Olympic stadium, the banks we bailed out.

Then there are the tax bills avoided by hugely profitable companies.

I've worked since I was 16. Other than the holiday and sickness we all have to take off, the only other time I haven't worked was when I was made redundant. This was due to the recession and government intervention, the company wound up to save going bankrupt. The recession was influenced by poor business tactics by banks which were bailed out with tax payers money. The government intervention was later deemed illegal (solar P.V feed in tariff change)

I had zero influence in either of these issues. I had bought a house, lived within my means. No huge credit to try and cover, cancelled all 'luxuries' when I found out I was losing my job, sky tele etc

i walked into the job centre expecting something to assist me through the bad time, nothing. In fact I was entitled to less because it was contribution based JSA rather than income based JSA. No help towards paying my mortgage even short term. The bank didn't want to know. The fact is they would have been perfectly happy to see me lose my house for them to repossess.

Yet the bloke stood next to me with no teeth who left his half drunk can of Stella on the step before walking in, greeted personally by the security guard by his first name on entry, has been living in his council house paid for by tax payers money for however long and is just popping in to pick up his weekly pocket money.

It's not a black and white issue, I don't know the answer as I'm not an economist (and even they get it wrong quite often) it's some shade of grey. All I know is I'm sick of paying about 30% of my wages that I spend 50% of my life earning, for a broken system that's not changing.

if you earn enough money to be comfortable it's all just a topic of conversation, but when your put in a situation where you are directly affected by said system you realise just how unfair it is, how morally wrong it is and how completely abused it has become.

 

[Nostrum]

And I can't even edit my typo's in here!

 

[zeebeedee]

But if it was law every firm would be in the same boat and therefore still competitive, whoever is making the profits it's still too much when we have food banks in the 21st century simple as!

Of course I make profit on what I do, but if I employed someone I wouldn't see them starve to make more!

I mean think about how absurd it really is. Tesco make massive profits whilst the single mum slaves away on the checkout, she finishes work walks past aisles and aisles of food she can't afford and goes home to empty cupboards and hungry children sticks on the telly and sees tesco announce there finding it hard this year as profits fell to 2.1 billion (just an example don't quote me on it). It's completely absurd. There is enough wealth in this country to lift people out of poverty and still enable the rich to have a nice lifestyle!

Just for the record I never read the papers and rarely watch the news it just angers me with the lies and corruption. I take my views from what I see.

 

[Ermintrude]

Well the upper ranks of government gonna be fed up. Tried ever possible fiddle to get the unemployed below7% so investors and savers ( main voters) are better off. But Bank of England not happy as statistics not reflect true employment just the numbers of those who have been unable to claim JSA

 

[Ermintrude]

So long term low base rate!!!!!

 

[IDCHAPPY]

I'm happy with a low base rate, means a cheaper mortgage for me

 

[Ray Stafford]

Tesco make massive profits

Yes, they do - because they are a massive company. But they also have a vast amount of shareholders money invested in their business.

If you bought Tescos shares in the last 12 months, you would have paid somewhere between £3.19 and £3.87, depending on when you bought it. You would have received £0.1496 in dividend, a rate of return of between 4.7% (if you bought cheap) and 3.7% if you bought at the height. Whilst this is a bit better than you might get in the high street building society, its hardly excessive, bearing in mind the risk - those people who did buy at £3.87 stand to lose 60p per share if they sell today.

If you look at the average number of employees (expressed as FTE - full time equivalents), and then divide out into sales per employee and operating margin, you can see that Tescos makes £6742 before tax for every employee that works there. Of that £6742, 23% will go in corporation tax, leaving £5191 profit per employee, out of which must come those 14.96 pence dividends to the shareholders and any future investments.

Again, thats a decent rate of return, but I don't think anyone would call it excessive. Would you go to the trouble of employing someone to make £100 a week from it?

Or look at it another way - if you ran a business employing 10 people that made 52 grand profit per year, would you think that was excessive? I wouldn't. The only difference with tesco is that the scale is different.

Not having a pop at you particularly Zeb, but I hate the way we treat success in this country.

 

[Ermintrude]

Jesus if we only made 100 off each lad wouldn't be worth it. On install after wages and materials look to have £500 per day left over, covers overheads and makes up for when out servicing as when servicing properly it's a break even event £48 to £85 depending on appliance. Both plus of course.

 

[Ray Stafford]

Jesus if we only made 100 off each lad wouldn't be worth it. On install after wages and materials look to have £500 per day left over, covers overheads and makes up for when out servicing as when servicing properly it's a break even event £48 to £85 depending on appliance. Both plus of course.

The £100 per employee per week is after overheads and tax are paid, but before dividend Guy. I still don't think its excessive though.

 

[Ray Stafford]

One last point before I give up politics for the weekend.

As far as I can tell, the biggest fat-cat shareholder in Tesco is American investor, Warren Buffett. His investment company Berkshire Hathaway owns just under 4% of Tesco, and he personally owns about 1/4 of Berkshire Hathaway, so effectively he owns 1% of Tesco. He started his investment career in 1950 with just under $10,000 of savings.

Now, is Warren Buffet your typical, cigar chomping, champagne swilling, caviar eating capitalist fat cat?

Well, in 2006 he gave $30.7 billion - yes BILLION - to charities, mostly the Gates foundation. Thats just the most impressive single act out of a long line of philanthropic actions, and approximately the equivalent of $500 for every man, woman and child in the UK.

What a b@stard.

 

[Nostrum]

Well I didn't get mine!..

 

[zeebeedee]

Which ever way the system works its not working if working people have to go to food banks to feed there kids! Simples !

Anyway its Saturday, I'm off the gym then pub in that order!

 

[Ray Stafford]

Anyway its Saturday, I'm off the gym then pub in that order!

Well, I can at least agree with half of that!

 

[cr0ft]

See thats the mentality we have in this country we are led to belive these firms have to recoup the cost elsewhere. Why do they? Why cant they just make less profits? Do they really need them extra 0's on that screen!

We both agree on that one. They don't but we both know that they would! All keeps the shareholders happy. You could argue that shareholders in PLCs are the parasites that cause the problem couldn't you..