In todays news...

[Count Steer]

Didn't I post a link where the MD of Centrica took home a £10m package?
That's who these people are, regardless of where it comes from do you think they'd lower the price of gas on purpose to make less money? They have profit targets and a bonus target and they'll adjust to meet them, it'll go up if it needs to and it could in theory go down but never to the point where the MD doesn't get his £10m and the dividend isn't a multiple of that.

It's too late though, we have a financial and economic system where it's perfectly legal for someone to gamble that he can borrow something, sell it to you and make some money without ever actually owning it.

You would have to question how well the last Centrica CEO (Ian Conn ex BP) and the current one (came up through the ranks - was Chief Finance Officer) have done when you look at the share price and dividends - if there are any). Conn would have been expecting a hefty package when he joined given he'd been hoping to get the big chair at BP, the current guy, not so much. Maybe they're paid for doing damage limitation rather than for successful growth. Either way it's a lot more than anyone got paid for running the considerably bigger*, company before they privatised it.

It's not just Centrica though, in 2020:

'The highest paid FTSE 100 CEO received a total pay package of £58.73 million. This is 1,935 times the median salary of a full-time UK worker.

Six firms paid their CEOs more than £10 million in total'.

But hey, nice work if you can get it. If I could do the job, I'd take that sort of package without blushing too. (Having met some of them I'm not daft enough to think I could do the job, they really are a different breed).

* Centrica is only the supply business, most production and transmission/distribution were split out so one lowly paid boss like Denis Rooke needed 3 CEOs on fat salaries to replace him.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Socialist ideals from a man who moved a tax haven doesn't quite work.

Socialist ideals are what socialists are best at!

FWIW I think Iccy is an idealist, but I don't see that as a bad thing.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Filthy rich landlords are, one presumes.

Ideally there'd be some mechanism to stop them doing it, but ideally that solution wouldn't also stifle the supply by making it an absolute expensive ballache to be a landlord. In an ideal world it would also not require any state support. Ideally speaking, that is.

[Mussels]

I'm not sure being a landlord makes someone filthy rich, rental income normally covers the cost of mortgage interest with a little for repairs. BTL landlords are gambling on house prices going up, if they go down they could lose a lot of money.
Starmer's excuse of a better idea than raising NI sounds nice but private landlords have already been squeezed recently so any more and many will bail out, that leaves corporate landlords but they are likely to be poor if they cover residential and commercial.

I don't think there's anything wrong with derivates themselves but they are used by a lot of con artists as they sound exotic and bring up images of rich people. Bitcoin is rapidly catching up, it seems to be an easy way to part people from their money at the moment.

[Yorick]

I always charged fair prices when letting. I got on well with the tenants, giving them £100 at Xmas etc as an incentive for them to keep the house nice.
The money in renting is in the house value appreciation.

[Noggin]

Some friends rented a house whilst they worked out here. The tax and other costs involved meant they didn't even break even

I'm sure some do and some make a lot of money, but I am not convinced it's the norm

[Mussels]

Some friends rented a house whilst they worked out here. The tax and other costs involved meant they didn't even break even

I'm sure some do and some make a lot of money, but I am not convinced it's the norm

I know people out here that rent their UK house out, but it mainly covers costs/mortgage, it's not done as a money spinner.

The landlords I have an issue with are the ones with loads of slum type properties that make a lot of money from the vulnerable, like banks/lenders that were pushing loans on people that couldn't afford it, it's profiting off those that can least manage it.

I think in general the UK is better than it was for these things, years ago I lived in an awful rented place and the landlord was a twat, most people in the area were in the same boat and most had loans that they couldn't afford to service, it was a pretty miserable merry-go-round.

I'd agree with that and wish I knew what the solution was.

[Count Steer]

I'm not sure being a landlord makes someone filthy rich, rental income normally covers the cost of mortgage interest with a little for repairs. BTL landlords are gambling on house prices going up, if they go down they could lose a lot of money.

I do wonder if they're calling it right when the economists and politicians say that the current increase in inflation is a 'blip'. Wages going up, fuel prices going up, food prices going up looks like a classic inflationary spiral. If interests rates follow it's going to be carnage in the BTL market if rents can't be ramped up to cover costs. IIRC the sensible expectation on BTL is a real world 7% return. If mortgage rates go up and/or house prices rise the whole pack of cards comes tumbling down which knocks on to the whole housing market.

It's going to be an interesting year.

[Count Steer]

I do wonder if they're calling it right when the economists and politicians say that the current increase in inflation is a 'blip'.

It's bollocks, not to put too finer point on it

The current inflation isn't a blip, it's inflation and I'll be a monkeys uncle if it all settles back down nicely at the flick of a switch.
It's a blip that will stay, but by then you'll be used to it and it will be only a blip in terms of headline news because it'll drop off the page.

If it was just politicians saying it, I'd agree but I am puzzled when some pretty straight economic voices are suggesting it's a 'blip'. The independent ones don't usually just trot out the government line although the tame ones get most air time.
Although, I suppose The Economist has been pitching it more as a 'what if it isn't' story and putting up a red flag or two. So they may be hedging their bets.
Everything seems a bit weird when interest on deposit is about 2d in the £100 but some companies are still paying over 6% on dividends. Something's got to give.

Like I said, it's going to be an 'interesting' year.

[Yorick]

Aww bless...

NHS worker on verge of tears after discovery in Chicken McNuggets box.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black- ... Dh7rd3LXZI

He’d only just finished work and he was starving on his way home so he grabbed a McDonalds because it was quick.

Why didn't she make his tea anyway?

[Mussels]

I was hoping for better from GB News but it looks like it will be another Fox.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 25448.html

Andrew Neil tears into GB News and vows he will never appear on channel again over ‘smears and lies’

[MrLongbeard]

M25 protest: Four cars collide as climate activists Insulate Britain block part of motorway.

Idiots - see the vid.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/m25- ... 55371.html

They ain't the brightest lot;

[Yorick]

M25 protest: Four cars collide as climate activists Insulate Britain block part of motorway.

Idiots - see the vid.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/m25- ... 55371.html

They ain't the brightest lot;

I just watched that all the way through. I don't have the words

[Yorick]

M25 protest: Four cars collide as climate activists Insulate Britain block part of motorway.

Idiots - see the vid.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/m25- ... 55371.html

They ain't the brightest lot;

I just watched that all the way through. I don't have the words

Just seen that he's been arrested. Surely being that stupid is a big enough offence to lock him up

[irie]

It has become a cult ...

In modern English, a cult is a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal.

... which attracts the usual suspects from the fringes of society.

[Mussels]

Nobody in that interview looked good, the hosts were on a witch hunt, the protestor veered off into a socialist rant and the woman opposing him said the suffragettes were terrorists and the protestors should be run over with tanks.

[irie]

The science of climate change has to date singularly failed to create a model which reliably predicts climate change resulting from human activity. The latest attempt to circumvent this failure is "attributable climate change", which has become increasingly fashionable. Hey, got to keep the money coming in to academia.

Attribution of recent climate change is the effort to scientifically ascertain mechanisms responsible for recent global warming and related climate changes on Earth.

The effort has focused on changes observed during the period of instrumental temperature record, particularly in the last 50 years. This is the period when human activity has grown fastest and observations of the atmosphere above the surface have become available.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is "extremely likely" that human influence was the dominant cause of global warming between 1951 and 2010. Likely human contribution is 93%–123% of the observed 1951–2010 temperature change.

[Yambo]

The cause is really irrelevant though isn't it. We (hoomans) could well be exascerbating a natural process but imaybe the climate was going to change anyway - it has in the past.

Instead of spending time and effort looking for culprits maybe we should just get on with dealing with the basic problem.

[irie]

The cause is really irrelevant though isn't it. We (hoomans) could well be exascerbating a natural process but imaybe the climate was going to change anyway - it has in the past.

Instead of spending time and effort looking for culprits maybe we should just get on with dealing with the basic problem.

Until we (hoomans) can create a reliable model predicting climate change we can not be certain if the steps we are now taking will exacerbate or alleviate what may in any event be a natural process, a human induced change, or a combination of both.

The basic problem, of course, is global population growth.

[Dodgy69]

I thought new builds were insulated.