Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[Nealh]

Yep manage your own money and do the homework and you might get lucky . Don't let someone else like an IFA live off your money.
I dabble 5% of my portfolio in the high risk US penny stocks (which generally are stocks under $5).
Current portfolio down by 2k some have tanked but one back in May I made great money on .
Invetsed £400 in a very high risk venture as all the talk was on a pump and dump run on the stock and a net gain of £33,600 tax free in 5 weeks.
I got a bit lucky with the Ai meme stock and it went from $0.0411 to $3.5 and a 8500% gain, if I had stayed a bit longer it hit $3.7 but I'm not complaining.
I tend to jump on the pump and dump US stocks and buy and sell if I can with in 24hrs to make a quick profit , mostly 25% - 300% gains. I don't put on big money but 300 - 500 quid for a quick profit all within an ISA stocks and shares.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

Yep manage your own money and do the homework and you might get lucky . Don't let someone else like an IFA live off your money.
I dabble 5% of my portfolio in the high risk US penny stocks (which generally are stocks under $5).
Current portfolio down by 2k some have tanked but one back in May I made great money on .
Invetsed £400 in a very high risk venture as all the talk was on a pump and dump run on the stock and a net gain of £33,600 tax free in 5 weeks.
I got a bit lucky with the Ai meme stock and it went from $0.0411 to $3.5 and a 8500% gain, if I had stayed a bit longer it hit $3.7 but I'm not complaining.
I tend to jump on the pump and dump US stocks and buy and sell if I can with in 24hrs to make a quick profit , mostly 25% - 300% gains. I don't put on big money but 300 - 500 quid for a quick profit all within an ISA stocks and shares.

I sort of have the opposite strategy (although completely agree with not paying ifas) I just have left my money in the lowest cost global tracker I could find and let compound interest do the rest

Review of Vanguard LifeStrategy Funds

Vanguard's LifeStrategy funds seem too good to be true: multi-asset, diversified, low-cost with a choice of five risk profiles. Is there a catch?

pensioncraft.com

.

 

[Woosh]

I agree with the last point. We do need to invest more in industry. A HUGE amount more. And government should lead that process.

I have never seen any technical discussion which says you can make high quality, steel for technical applications from scrap. Scrap steel is contaminated by a variety of metallic and other matter which when melted in an arc furnace makes it useless for many kinds of steel that a developed industry needs. If you just want to make tin cans, buckets, and rebar for concrete reinforcement, scrap is fine.

Iron ore is of a variety of sorts, but it is all highly reacted with oxygen. It is essentially one form of rust or another. To make iron and steel, the oxygen has to be extracted by heating with carbon from coal in a blast furnace. This reconstitutes the iron in into the form we all use and also produces a lot of co2. The UK started this process and developed it in the Industrial Revolution. We were not the only ones though.

If the UK abandons entirely its ability to smelt iron ore and make virgin steel, we will be the only major country to have done so and we will be entirely at the mercy of long supply chains. I can't see our strategic rivals ever doing that. Russia? China? I think they know that their power depends on the ability to make every kind of steel on their own turf.

In any case, abandoning our virgin steel making capacity won't reduce co2 globally will it? We will just have to buy high quality steel from our rivals who will probably make even dirtier steel than we would have, and we can concentrate on patting ourselves on the back and making steel for steel for tin cans and other crap. I expect in the coming days to hear Ed Miliband championing this plan, like i heard various Conservative know-nothings doing it before.

We used to make specialty steels but it's not something that Tata wants to do at Port Talbot. The choice for UK government is simple: let Tata close Port Talbot or help Tata compete on price against Chinese imports.
If UK government wants to save jobs, it has to give Tata £500 millions, Tata will put in about £750 millions of their own money, to build the new Electric Arc Furnace. The project may save about 2000 job, £300-£400k per job. Don't bother about the green argument, EAF needs to be fed with DRI by another furnace which may be in the UK or imported.
Even with the new EAF, fewer jobs in the steel industry will be necessary with automation in the near future.
I don't think the deal is good enough but I there is little else available in the area to offer to steel workers.

If you are interested in the chemistry and steels, read this:
Direct reduced iron - Wikipedia
What's 'Good Quality' Steel and How Do You Achieve it? | GlobalSpec

 

[lenny]

"Rachel Reeves says new government has inherited ‘worst set of circumstances since second world war’"

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jul/08/keir-starmer-labour-government-northern-ireland-wales-rachel-reeves-angela-rayner

 

[lenny]

 

[Woosh]

I am not surprised. 40-50 years of Thatcherism has finally crystalised in the state we are in. Planning laws that pushed up property prices to the point that half of people's wages go to paying for their lodging. If someone inherits any money, it goes straight into property instead of some other investment that produces food or goods or divivend and taxes. Thatcherism wants small government budget while we have an aging population and an extensive road system with not much left of state owned businesses for sale. No wonder we have 8 millions waiting for hospital treatments and millions of potholes to repair.
We need a long term strategy to channel investment to produce taxes and another new town like Milton Keynes to wean people off properties.

 

[flecc]

Labour' Streeting to 'fix front door' of NHS by diverting billions to local surgeries. Ministers will divert billions of pounds from hospitals to GPs to "fix the front door to the NHS", Wes Streeting has pledged as he said millions of patients will be able to see the same family doctor at every appointment.

How utterly stupid of Streeting, doesn't he know the background? This is exactly what the Tories did that got th e NHS into the mess it's in. They diverted the money for consultant appointments and operations from hospitals to GPs, who should then pay from that income to the hospital for each referral they make. Of course they cynically knew GPs would soon regard it as part of their income and avoid making referrals, and that is exactly what happened, cutting the NHS costs by denying treatments. I know this only too well, 17 years after the first heart attack I've still not had a single GP referral to a consultant, despite a family history of heart disease and open heart surgery and repeated attempts through two different GPs to get a referral for attention to my multiple heart attacks, sometimes averaging every second day.

Hence the ever growing waiting lists to nowhere and the GPs being the one doctors group not calling strikes, why would they with all that fat extra income? All part of the Tories long term plan to destroy the NHS in favour of private medicine.

Now Streeting wants to do exactly the same again, there'll be some Tories laughing up their sleeves right now.
.

 

[saneagle]

How utterly stupid of Streeting, doesn't he know the background? This is exactly what the Tories did that got th e NHS into the mess it's in. They diverted the money for consultant appointments and operations from hospitals to GPs, who should then pay from that income to the hospital for each referral they make. Of course they cynically knew GPs would soon regard it as part of their income and avoid making referrals, and that is exactly what happened, cutting the NHS costs by denying treatments. I know this only too well, 17 years after the first heart attack I've still not had a single GP referral to a consultant, despite a family history of heart disease and open heart surgery and repeated attempts through two different GPs to get a referral for attention to my multiple heart attacks, sometimes averaging every second day.

Hence the ever growing waiting lists to nowhere and the GPs being the one doctors group not calling strikes, why would they with all that fat extra income? All part of the Tories long term plan to destroy the NHS in favour of private medicine.

Now Streeting wants to do exactly the same again, there'll be some Tories laughing up their sleeves right now.
.

There is a dodge that might help you. I've used it before and I think it still works. You go to the GP and ask them to make a referral to a consultant privately. It was £100 in 1986, and I paid £200 in 2008, so probably gone up now. If the consultant decides that there's something wrong and you need treatment, they can arrange for you to get it done fairly quickly on NHS. Basically you pay to jump the queue and have to deal with the morality of that.

 

[Woosh]

the simplest solution to cutting queue is to allow patients to get treated in the private sector and refund their cost at a fixed tariff. The patients may get back less than they spend but can then take out insurance for this purpose. It's not a perfect solution but can help reducing the queues for perhaps a million+ patients a year.

 

[flecc]

There is a dodge that might help you. I've used it before and I think it still works. You go to the GP and ask them to make a referral to a consultant privately. It was £100 in 1986, and I paid £200 in 2008, so probably gone up now. If the consultant decides that there's something wrong and you need treatment, they can arrange for you to get it done fairly quickly on NHS. Basically you pay to jump the queue and have to deal with the morality of that.

Thanks Saneagle, but its now too late for me on account of age and my damaged heart. I had my last try in 2019 only to be blocked once again and fobbed off with tablets. I know what is wrong, the same that my Mother and older Brother had, both successfully treated with replacement heart valves, but at nearing ninety with my heart already seriously damaged the NHS wouldn't risk the operation now.

But I'm not bothered any longer, I never wanted to live into incapable old age anyway so the sooner I die the better.
.

 

[lenny]

"There are now more than 260,000 long-term empty homes in England. At the same time, there are nearly 113,000 homeless families or single adults in temporary accommodation - the highest number on record."

Empty homes: Has Wigan found the solution to record homelessness?

Has a trailblazing housing standards boss in Wigan found the answer to record homelessness?

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[saneagle]

Thanks Saneagle, but its now too late for me on account of age and my damaged heart. I had my last try in 2019 only to be blocked once again and fobbed off with tablets. I know what is wrong, the same that my Mother and older Brother had, both successfully treated with replacement heart valves, but at nearing ninety with my heart already seriously damaged the NHS wouldn't risk the operation now.

But I'm not bothered any longer, I never wanted to live into incapable old age anyway so the sooner I die the better.
.

The only solution is to stay young. Unfortunately time will bring all of us to the end of our lives, and life becomes less comfortable as we approach that end. We have to be thankful that we're still here and try not to waste the time we have left, though it becomes harder.

 

[lenny]

 

[lenny]

Thames Water says it has enough cash until May next year

The UK's largest water company saw annual profits increase but its debts also climbed to over £15bn.

www.bbc.co.uk

Village named UK 'best' forced to pull out of competition due to awful smell

Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire has won the title of Best Kept village six times since 2002 - but will be out of the running this year.

www.express.co.uk

 

[Ghost1951]

Jail time needed for the people who did this:

Why is Thames Water in so much trouble?

There are fears that the UK's biggest water firm is close to collapse but how did it come to this?

www.bbc.co.uk

How Thames Water came to be flooded with debt – and what it means for taxpayers

The company’s woes show the risks of privatising one of life’s necessities.

theconversation.com

 

[flecc]

Jail time needed for the people who did this:

Why is Thames Water in so much trouble?

There are fears that the UK's biggest water firm is close to collapse but how did it come to this?

www.bbc.co.uk

How Thames Water came to be flooded with debt – and what it means for taxpayers

The company’s woes show the risks of privatising one of life’s necessities.

theconversation.com

Indeed, but Margaret Thatcher is dead now.

Jeremy Corbyn was right all along with his insistence that he would immediately take water back into public ownership if elected.
.

 

[saneagle]

Indeed, but Margaret Thatcher is dead now.

Jeremy Corbyn was right all along with his insistence that he would immediately take water back into public ownership if elected.
.

Great idea. If I was the Emporor of UK, I'd do the same, butthe cost would be £80 billion, which is about £2700 for every single tax payer - still less than HS2, which is a complete waste of everything.

 

[Ghost1951]

I'd just seize the assets back and prosecute the thieves who organised one of the biggest cons we ever saw.

 

[flecc]

Great idea. If I was the Emporor of UK, I'd do the same, butthe cost would be £80 billion, which is about £2700 for every single tax payer - still less than HS2, which is a complete waste of everything.

It wouldn't have been that when he first said it of course, but I agree with Ghost1951, seize the industry and stand firm against the fuss that follows.
.

 

[Woosh]

There is the cost of fixing leaky pipes and replacing old treatment works. Thatcher did not want to pay for the work from central funds so she sold it. Foreign buyers snapped that up because it was cheap and had high guaranteed yield. Our government has already got the right to impose a higher level of service but didn't because that means the water bills would have been higher.
Compared to rail, water is a less pressing issue.