so how many given up? had enough?
sure its only Jan Blues?
Never known a quieter time on the roads, I reckon the panic will kick in with the populace this Winter and Spring. Everything costs more and more every month, with less money to buy it.
The only thing that would start the economy again is a massive collapse in property prices, the Government and Bank of England are just too scared to let it happen.
Harry Monk:
The only thing that would start the economy again is a massive collapse in property prices, the Government and Bank of England are just too scared to let it happen.
How would a collapse in property prices kick start the economy ? 
tachograph:
Harry Monk:
The only thing that would start the economy again is a massive collapse in property prices, the Government and Bank of England are just too scared to let it happen.How would a collapse in property prices kick start the economy ?
Because if folk had enough money both to pay for the cost of their accommodation and to buy stuff, then trucks would be needed to move that stuff.
Harry Monk:
tachograph:
Harry Monk:
The only thing that would start the economy again is a massive collapse in property prices, the Government and Bank of England are just too scared to let it happen.How would a collapse in property prices kick start the economy ?
Because if folk had enough money both to pay for the cost of their accommodation and to buy stuff, then trucks would be needed to move that stuff.
They’re caught in a catch 22 Harry.If they put up interest rates it would mean existing mortgage holders defaulting and being declared bankrupt because they couldn’t afford the new rates.The price of housing would only then fall for new buyers leaving the existing mortgage lenders/banks with a load of negative equity as collateral against their existing bad debts.
Which means further recession and more debt for the banks which means less money to lend and even if there was the new buyers for the cheaper housing won’t be in a position to take on the debt to buy the reduced cost housing or spend in the economy at any price anyway.It’s already happened in America where the house price crash just added to their problems not fixed them.
The best thing they could do now is to leave the EU and scrap VAT totally and remove all road fuel taxes and put up trade barriers and massive import tarrifs on imported products that we can make for ourselves and (try to) reopen the mines to cut our dependence on imported energy supplies.
Which just leaves the issue of immigration because there’s no point in growing the economy if the new jobs are given to immigrants and the artificially high labour supply just keeps wages artificially low. 
Carryfast for PM! Be a nice party that would, no vat and no fuel tax, good times. I’m sure there’s a reason or two why they don’t do that though.
Yep zero trade with the rest of the world works for counties like Burma and North Korea why wouldn’t it work for us■■?
Sure, but wouldn’t import duties level that playing field out a bit.
Sub_tone:
Yep zero trade with the rest of the world works for counties like Burma and North Korea why wouldn’t it work for us■■?
This isn’t Burma or North Korea and it’s no co incidence that when the US had the industrial strength to flood it’s own market with home produced stuff the place was a lot better off than it is now with so called ‘trade with the rest of the world’ since opening the doors up to imports in the ‘global free market economy’.
So you’re saying that running an economy with a trade deficit of billions,in which we’ve thrown our own workers on the dole,to provide jobs for foreign workers,is better than what we,and the even moreso the US,had during the 1950’s and 1960’s 
.So how and with what do you intend to keep paying for all of these imports of stuff that we could be making for ourselves .
Silver_Surfer:
Carryfast for PM! Be a nice party that would, no vat and no fuel tax, good times. I’m sure there’s a reason or two why they don’t do that though.
Probably because they’d prefer to keep on giving all the money to the EU instead for the privilege of having a trade deficit with them and making the east europeans better off and so that the bankers don’t have to pay as much income tax as they did before they put it all on road fuel instead and to make rail freight more competitive .
I think we really need to widen our base of industry to make our economy stronger.
We can’t rely on banking look where that’s got us how about offering companies tax breaks to set up factories here. Nissan and Honda and Toyota opened factories here to get round import quotas but they must ake financial sense as they are still here.
The German economy is in the best shape in the eurozone and they have a good mix of heavy industry high tech stuff and banking and service industry
Carryfast, I think I’m in agreement with you Chap… 
I don’t think its the end, I think we as a country are in a real ■■■■ place at the minute. My solution would be to simply if I was in power force the banks to give mortgages to working folks with a 2.5% deposit. I had the rental people round My crib last week, they reckon all these renters are decent folk who have’nt got a deposit but can afford to rent, its a joke, all them lazy landlords coining it in ffs & young people wasting years of there lives getting no further forward on the property ladder 
I think its been the worst January I’ve ever seen, last year January for Me was a stormer, I work directly for one of the biggest foundation/drilling companies in the world & I’ve done 2 jobs for them in 6 weeks!!! don’t get Me wrong they’re busy with a couple of big jobs but the general market is as flat as a witches ■■■ at the minute.
I left Wigan last Sunday @ 4.30pm & apart from a few Asda/Tesco lorries I saw next to no heavies & sailed through Brum on the limiter about 6pm The only lorry I saw on the A14 was a Dyce Carriers motor. Where are all the container men■■? I’m mates with a fair few hauliers & most are scratching at the moment.
Lets hope it picks up in February & good luck to all still at it, fingers crossed for you all…
I think there is a bit of the January blues in this thread.
There is no doubt that the country is on its knees just now and that the general state of the economy can best be decribed as asthmatic. However, I can remember far worse times than this (and I’m far from even being described as even middle aged!). I remember in the early 90’s, living in a small cul-de-sac of a dozen houses and my parents were the only ones to have a wage coming in, our neighbours were having cars reposessed off the drive on sunday mornings and family holidays were completely out of the question for most people in our town.
I don’t see any of that happening now, certainly not on the same scale. Sure, people are having to tighten their belts a bit, but its nothing like what it was back then. People are still taking holidays like they were 5 years ago, only now it’s once a year instead of twice. New cars are still flowing out of showrooms, slower than they were I’ll grant you but they are still selling healthy numbers none the less. Houses are still selling, not at the rate they were but then again everyone knows (and most knew then!) that it was an artifical boom which could not be sustained. People are made redundant, some get new jobs, some even move into other industries, some retire early and some sit on the dole for the rest of their lives - but this is nothing new, it’s been happening all my life, even during the boom times.
All the doom and gloom only serves to extend the downturn and make it even more self-perpetuating. If people constantly hear ‘bad’ news then it only makes them more cautious about spending, which in turn drags the economy down even further. But again, this is nothing new and we’ve all seen it happen before!
The haulage industry is pretty screwed, but it was screwed 5 years ago, and 5 years before that, and it was screwed in the 70’s too apparently. I believe even Jesus once commented to Moses that the bloody Romans were carving the job up and he was planning to sell the donkeys and lay off the disciples.
The economy will get out of this hole in the same way it got into it. There is a cycle of boom and bust in many western economies, and looking back it has been happening on a fairly consistent basis, in loose terms, since the dawn of time itself. We have a few good years, then a few crap years. We’ll have good times again in a few years, and then we’ll hit hard times, and so the cycle will continue …
Gogan:
I think there is a bit of the January blues in this thread.There is no doubt that the country is on its knees just now and that the general state of the economy can best be decribed as asthmatic. However, I can remember far worse times than this (and I’m far from even being described as even middle aged!). I remember in the early 90’s, living in a small cul-de-sac of a dozen houses and my parents were the only ones to have a wage coming in, our neighbours were having cars reposessed off the drive on sunday mornings and family holidays were completely out of the question for most people in our town.
I don’t see any of that happening now, certainly not on the same scale. Sure, people are having to tighten their belts a bit, but its nothing like what it was back then. People are still taking holidays like they were 5 years ago, only now it’s once a year instead of twice. New cars are still flowing out of showrooms, slower than they were I’ll grant you but they are still selling healthy numbers none the less. Houses are still selling, not at the rate they were but then again everyone knows (and most knew then!) that it was an artifical boom which could not be sustained. People are made redundant, some get new jobs, some even move into other industries, some retire early and some sit on the dole for the rest of their lives - but this is nothing new, it’s been happening all my life, even during the boom times.
All the doom and gloom only serves to extend the downturn and make it even more self-perpetuating. If people constantly hear ‘bad’ news then it only makes them more cautious about spending, which in turn drags the economy down even further. But again, this is nothing new and we’ve all seen it happen before!
The haulage industry is pretty screwed, but it was screwed 5 years ago, and 5 years before that, and it was screwed in the 70’s too apparently. I believe even Jesus once commented to Moses that the bloody Romans were carving the job up and he was planning to sell the donkeys and lay off the disciples.
The economy will get out of this hole in the same way it got into it. There is a cycle of boom and bust in many western economies, and looking back it has been happening on a fairly consistent basis, in loose terms, since the dawn of time itself. We have a few good years, then a few crap years. We’ll have good times again in a few years, and then we’ll hit hard times, and so the cycle will continue …
I think the figures involved,concerning the amount of combined debt that the (once) developed industrialised countries have got themselves into,and are continuing to add to with the trade deficits that we’re running in the global free market economy,added to amount of bad debts,run up by other poorer countries,that they’ve invested what money they had in,say that something a lot worse is heading our way unless we put the shutters up and start looking after ourselves.
Carryfast:
I think the figures involved,concerning the amount of combined debt that the (once) developed industrialised countries have got themselves into,and are continuing to add to with the trade deficits that we’re running in the global free market economy,added to amount of bad debts,run up by other poorer countries,that they’ve invested what money they had in,say that something a lot worse is heading our way unless we put the shutters up and start looking after ourselves.
I respect your sentiment, but I think you’re letting the ‘flash and bang’ misdirect your thoughts. The dust hasn’t cleared yet, so there’s no way we can ascertain the level of damage yet.
People are being frightened by the magnitude of the figures used to monetise the budget cuts, trade defecits and shrinking of the economy. However if you eliminate the magnifying glass of inflation, then in real terms we are no worse off than we have been in the past. The current situation is no worse than the 70’s, and is a minor blip compared to the late 40’s and early 50’s when the country genuinely was bankrupt for all practical purposes.
Gogan:
I think there is a bit of the January blues in this thread.There is no doubt that the country is on its knees just now and that the general state of the economy can best be decribed as asthmatic. However, I can remember far worse times than this (and I’m far from even being described as even middle aged!). I remember in the early 90’s, living in a small cul-de-sac of a dozen houses and my parents were the only ones to have a wage coming in, our neighbours were having cars reposessed off the drive on sunday mornings and family holidays were completely out of the question for most people in our town.
I don’t see any of that happening now, certainly not on the same scale. Sure, people are having to tighten their belts a bit, but its nothing like what it was back then. People are still taking holidays like they were 5 years ago, only now it’s once a year instead of twice. New cars are still flowing out of showrooms, slower than they were I’ll grant you but they are still selling healthy numbers none the less. Houses are still selling, not at the rate they were but then again everyone knows (and most knew then!) that it was an artifical boom which could not be sustained. People are made redundant, some get new jobs, some even move into other industries, some retire early and some sit on the dole for the rest of their lives - but this is nothing new, it’s been happening all my life, even during the boom times.
All the doom and gloom only serves to extend the downturn and make it even more self-perpetuating. If people constantly hear ‘bad’ news then it only makes them more cautious about spending, which in turn drags the economy down even further. But again, this is nothing new and we’ve all seen it happen before!
The haulage industry is pretty screwed, but it was screwed 5 years ago, and 5 years before that, and it was screwed in the 70’s too apparently. I believe even Jesus once commented to Moses that the bloody Romans were carving the job up and he was planning to sell the donkeys and lay off the disciples.
The economy will get out of this hole in the same way it got into it. There is a cycle of boom and bust in many western economies, and looking back it has been happening on a fairly consistent basis, in loose terms, since the dawn of time itself. We have a few good years, then a few crap years. We’ll have good times again in a few years, and then we’ll hit hard times, and so the cycle will continue …
Good post and agreed.
Alas, Camerons no Thatcher and thats the problem we now have, no decent leader about to sort things out.
Common sense says you can’t spend what you don’t have, by ignoring this we’re risking everything.
Gogan:
Carryfast:
I think the figures involved,concerning the amount of combined debt that the (once) developed industrialised countries have got themselves into,and are continuing to add to with the trade deficits that we’re running in the global free market economy,added to amount of bad debts,run up by other poorer countries,that they’ve invested what money they had in,say that something a lot worse is heading our way unless we put the shutters up and start looking after ourselves.I respect your sentiment, but I think you’re letting the ‘flash and bang’ misdirect your thoughts. The dust hasn’t cleared yet, so there’s no way we can ascertain the level of damage yet.
People are being frightened by the magnitude of the figures used to monetise the budget cuts, trade defecits and shrinking of the economy. However if you eliminate the magnifying glass of inflation, then in real terms we are no worse off than we have been in the past. The current situation is no worse than the 70’s, and is a minor blip compared to the late 40’s and early 50’s when the country genuinely was bankrupt for all practical purposes.
The difference is that in the late 40’s and 50’s we were’nt importing manufactured goods on a massive scale and effectively funding the growth of China’s or Eastern Europe’s economies.The 1970’s were great until we joined the EEC and the OPEC oil price increases happened then the zb hit the fan.But the difference is we weren’t a net importer of energy supplies and we still had a mining industry to fuel industry with and decent unions to keep wages in line with inflation and price increases until Callaghan and Thatcher threw a spanner in the works. 
pavaroti:
Alas, Camerons no Thatcher and thats the problem we now have, no decent leader about to sort things out.
Would that be the Mrs Thatcher who is the reason all of our manufacturing and utility companies are now owned by foreign companies? The Mrs Thatcher who worked so tirelessly with Ronald Reagan to bring down the iron curtain so that eastern Europeans could undercut our wages? The Mrs Thatcher who started the process of transferring wealth upwards from the many to the few?
That Mrs Thatcher?
pavaroti:
Gogan:
Alas, Camerons no Thatcher and thats the problem we now have, no decent leader about to sort things out.Common sense says you can’t spend what you don’t have, by ignoring this we’re risking everything.
Thatcher was part of the problem by throwing away a big part of the country’s self sufficiency in fuel fuel provision and the it’s industrial base.
If not enough people can afford to spend then not enough people can afford to buy and if what they are buying is mostly imports then basically the economy is zb’d and it’s just a matter of time.