Conservative Majority

[flecc]

I wouldn't move out Tony - looks like you could be soon living in the next newly developed Banking/ Insurance zone:

http://www.egi.co.uk/news/croydon-hq-for-metro-bank/

Local house prices should soar away

One swallow doth not a summer make though, this won't be the start of a banking and insurance sector here since the opposite has be happening, starting with us losing Lombard Finance long ago and the insurance companies since. For those sectors the draw of the City of London is irresistable and if Metro succeeds in getting big, they'll end up there. As yet they are very small. We are fighting for more new office companies though and hopefully will succeed as we've always done before.

The house price problem has already begun here in Croydon though, in the centre we've already had the first Chinese investment purchases.
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[shemozzle999]

What about these two mentioned:

"AIG and an as yet unnamed government department have also begun searching for a large tranche of office space in the area"

I believe they are already well established entities

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter where the wealth comes from, only that it's made.

 

[D C]

So much disagreement without anyone being disagreeable, brilliant and congrats to all posters.
Dave.

 

[flecc]

What about these two mentioned:

"AIG and an as yet unnamed government department have also begun searching for a large tranche of office space in the area"

I believe they are already well established entities

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter where the wealth comes from, only that it's made.

But like Metro, none of them are finalised and are only at early stages. We've been fed these optimistic messages for years with no outcomes so are very wary now. For example we have a large development area by East Croydon station that's had so many promises over the decades we've lost count of them, but it's still not come to fruition.

However, we've always succeeded eventually in overcoming all the past hits, so hopefully will again, but the scale and mix of employment we once had is sadly lacking now. Most have to commute into the centre on the every few minutes trains to Victoria or London Bridge from the two Croydon stations and others close by.

The one type of development that usually quickly succeeds here is like elsewhere, retail, giving low grade employment and no income from elsewhere.
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[flecc]

I do know though that we gave them £850,000,000,000 when they lost all the money.

That was two Scottish banks, RBS and HBOS, both with HQs in Scotland.

London's Barclays and HSBC didn't need a penny of help and were blameless in this repect.
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[Croxden]

Stoke-on-Trent used have hundreds of pottery manufacturers, Sheffield had lots of steel works. Where did they go?

 

[flecc]

Stoke-on-Trent used have hundreds of pottery manufacturers, Sheffield had lots of steel works. Where did they go?

In effect they went overseas, or at least their business did. Many were taken over by foreign companies who then either shut them down as unwelcome competition or moved them or their production abroad.

Foreign takeovers are the story of so much of our decline, from Cadbury's chocolate to Jaguar cars.
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[D8ve]

Mines, ship yards, cars, rail, industry we used to manufacture items.
I even worked in waddon (next to Croydon)on water pumps. All long gone.
Three men and a dog would be a major new installation if they were making anything now.

 

[SteveRuss]

They still make around £56 billions a year for Britain though, so not entirely stupid!

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But more importantly they asked for £850,000,000,000 from the public when they lost control of their own greed and are still not required to pay any of it back (which would take them 15 years of all of that £56 billion profit you mentioned, not including interest). The situation they created that took us there does not scream intelligence to me. It screams unbelievable levels of avarice and a planet sized sense of selfishness beyond what any intelligent human being should have.

Sadly manufacturing was moving out of London when I was a kid. There was a small factory just down the road from where I lived that made ceramic fuse wire holders. We used to play in it's abandoned carcass. They probably employed a number of people that had only a short walk to work who then had to travel to office jobs in the newly build offices that were popping up everywhere. I don't think England could compete with the cheaper work houses abroad and that is truer now than ever before.

I don't know what the design behind moving businesses out of London was about but I do know that a lot of companies just need to be close to a motorway to operate and the cheaper the local taxation, property costs and staff are, the better for them. That and the fact that abroad often has looser employment laws meaning cheapy cheap labour.

Everyone is obsessed with property prices these days. We have that Thatcherite greed factor in us that seems to be multiplying slowly like a virus. The sense of simply living our lives for the common good is becoming something from the past. The most intelligent people to me are the ones that think of and consider others like they would their own family. That see everyone as equals. I'm starting to miss those people more and more as all we seem to think about is, who has the nicest car, the most expensive looking sunglasses and the house that's increased in value the most. These things shouldn't matter so much to us.

 

[SteveRuss]

That was two Scottish banks, RBS and HBOS, both with HQs in Scotland.

London's Barclays and HSBC didn't need a penny of help and were blameless in this repect.
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Barclays got bailed by the Qataris so they did need a lot of help. I think it was around 30% of their business.

 

[flecc]

Everyone is obsessed with property prices these days. We have that Thatcherite greed factor in us that seems to be multiplying slowly like a virus. The sense of simply living our lives for the common good is becoming something from the past. The most intelligent people to me are the ones that think of and consider others like they would their own family. That see everyone as equals. I'm starting to miss those people more and more as all we seem to think about is, who has the nicest car, the most expensive looking sunglasses and the house that's increased in value the most. These things shouldn't matter so much to us.

We certainly are not at odds Steve, I agree with so much of what you've said and particularly this.

 

[selrahc1992]

But more importantly they asked for £850,000,000,000 from the public when they lost control of their own greed and are still not required to pay any of it back (which would take them 15 years of all of that £56 billion profit you mentioned, not including interest). The situation they created that took us there does not scream intelligence to me. It screams unbelievable levels of avarice and a planet sized sense of selfishness beyond what any intelligent human being should have.

Sadly manufacturing was moving out of London when I was a kid. There was a small factory just down the road from where I lived that made ceramic fuse wire holders. We used to play in it's abandoned carcass. They probably employed a number of people that had only a short walk to work who then had to travel to office jobs in the newly build offices that were popping up everywhere. I don't think England could compete with the cheaper work houses abroad and that is truer now than ever before.

I don't know what the design behind moving businesses out of London was about but I do know that a lot of companies just need to be close to a motorway to operate and the cheaper the local taxation, property costs and staff are, the better for them. That and the fact that abroad often has looser employment laws meaning cheapy cheap labour.

Everyone is obsessed with property prices these days. We have that Thatcherite greed factor in us that seems to be multiplying slowly like a virus. The sense of simply living our lives for the common good is becoming something from the past. The most intelligent people to me are the ones that think of and consider others like they would their own family. That see everyone as equals. I'm starting to miss those people more and more as all we seem to think about is, who has the nicest car, the most expensive looking sunglasses and the house that's increased in value the most. These things shouldn't matter so much to us.

against the odds - seeing that we are comprehensively screwed for five years - i'm hoping this gets taken to its logical conclusion (some kind of manic consumerist dystopia where veryone hates veryone else, we're well on our way there with the torys) and that there's a more broad reaction against it, a bit like in scotland

 

[flecc]

Barclays got bailed by the Qataris so they did need a lot of help. I think it was around 30% of their business.

But that's nothing to do with us, how they run their business is their business as long as it doesn't affect us. Of our original five clearing banks, Barclays was always the international bank with much of it's interests overseas, so it was natural for them to short term fund from there.
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[selrahc1992]

But that's nothing to do with us, how they run their business is their business as long as it doesn't affect us. Of our original five clearing banks, Barclays was always the international bank with much of it's interests overseas, so it was natural for them to short term fund from there.
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yes, but isnt this kind of laissez fair approach to banks the thing that got us in teh doggy dooh in teh first place?

 

[trex]

IIRC, the quataris bought Barclays convertible preferential shares, they made about £1.5B within a year.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2271795/Barclays-investigation-claims-lent-Qatar-money-buy-shares-avoid-Government-bailout-height-2008-financial-crisis.html

 

[flecc]

against the odds - seeing that we are comprehensively screwed for five years - i'm hoping this gets taken to its logical conclusion (some kind of manic consumerist dystopia where veryone hates veryone else, we're well on our way there with the torys) and that there's a more broad reaction against it, a bit like in scotland

I'm not so sure there is a "we" any more, there certainly isn't in London where well under half of the population is white, British born. Personally I'm happy with this where we are all minorities, but it isn't conducive to a "we" view of Britain and it's future with so many diverse "we" groups.
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[flecc]

yes, but isnt this kind of laissez fair approach to banks the thing that got us in teh doggy dooh in teh first place?

No, as Trex replied, Barclays were not in any way irresponsible in that they were always able to cover their dealings, just as HSBC were too.

The problem was exclusively with the two Scottish banking operations, and not for the first time. Remember the pensions debacle of a few years ago when so many lost their pensions? That was Equitable Life, Standard Life, Scottish Widows and Abbey Life, all Scottish operations.

Perhaps we should have given them independence over two decades ago!
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[selrahc1992]

I'm not so sure there is a "we" any more, there certainly isn't in London where well under half of the population is white, British born. Personally I'm happy with this where we are all minorities, but it isn't conducive to a "we" view of Britain and it's future with so many diverse "we" groups.
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i see where youre coming from (certainly scotland seem to have a sense of communnity that seem very absent here), BUT ethnic diversity doesnt have to mean competition: I'm a first generation migrant (of not too many years) who voted labour because i believe in a more shared community, much of the divisive, conservative politics in this country often seem propelled by very traditional british born citizens

 

[selrahc1992]

No, as Trex replied, Barclays were not in any way irresponsible in that they were always able to cover their dealings, just as HSBC were too.

The problem was exclusively with the two Scottish banking operations, and not for the first time. Remember the pensions debacle of a few years ago when so many lost their pensions? That was Equitable Life, Standard Life, Scottish Widows and Abbey Life, all Scottish operations.

Perhaps we should have given them independence over two decades ago!
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paying £1.5 billion/annum to cover debt isnt irresponsible, or at least worrying?

 

[flecc]

paying £1.5 billion/annum to cover debt isnt irresponsible, or at least worrying?

Not as far as we are concerned, as I replied earlier, it's their business to run as they wish. After all, any recent losses have to be balanced against around a hundred years or so of large profits, which in total dwarf the loss. I'm quite sure they are not ashamed of their record.

It's so easy to be wise after the event, but the fact is our banks were caught by a US sub-prime situation that they didn't create. They bought into those investments in good faith. With the benefit of hindsight that was careless, but they didn't have that hindsight so relied on the trust in US banking which had previously always been reliable. Obviously they won't do that again, we all live and learn.
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