Tom Winnifrith Bearcast 8 July - UK Budget: George Osborne is a twat

Comments

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   MrMoto

   8 July 2015, 14:15

   What a week this is turning into, now NYSE halting trading today. Loads of theory online

   Could really be some traction in the China suspicions though, could the government there be trying to deflect take some of the story and focus away from their market crashing by hacking the NYSE?

   http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/nyse-glitch-hack-china-cia-cyber-isis?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

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   Daniel Victor

   8 July 2015, 14:41

   So you stop big sellers from selling for six months.People know those guys are going to sell later,so they sell now.Potential buyers wait for them to sell to drive down the price.No one wants to be a big holder,so they don’t buy many shares.

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   Paul Scott

   8 July 2015, 15:28

   Hi Tom,

   You’re completely wrong about Min Wage/ Living Wage in my opinion. The move today by G. Osborne was fantastic, and absolutely the right thing to do. Tax Credits have been a subsidy to companies to allow them to pay starvation wages, so I applaud those being reduced, and the Min Wage being significantly raised over the next few years.

   Businesses have 5 years to gradually increase wages to £9 per hour, and it’s long overdue. We cannot have a large portion of the people living on starvation wages. Far better to force Min Wages up a bit, and reduce Tax Credits, and further increase the Personal Allowance.

   Osborne is doing all three, and that’s the totally correct thing to do.

   The one big remaining problem, is that the Govt will have to build millions of new affordable houses, so that the low paid can have a reasonably priced roof over their heads.

   A happy, healthy society can only happen if people have a reasonable standard of living, and stand on their own two feet. I think the measures announced today will go a long way towards us as a country getting there.

   If you and other small businesses have to raise your prices a little, and get a bit more efficient, to be able to pay the Living Wage, then so be it! Get on with it, and pay your people a wage they can properly live on!

   I spoke to the owner of my local sandwich shop today, who was moaning about having to pay his staff another £130 per month. I told him that I would be happy to pay another 20p for my sandwich every day, if it meant his staff were properly paid.

   Keep up the good work with the bearcasts, I do enjoy them!

   Although just one small suggestion. Put a sticker on your computer screen which says;

   “Memo to self: before recording a bearcast, (a) check the date, and (b) put mobile on silent” !!!

   Cheers, Paul.

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   Jimbo

   8 July 2015, 18:08

   All the Government needs to do to fix housing is remove “Help to Buy”, then that’s the artificial floor propping up the housing market removed. A much needed correction may duly follow…

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   Tom Winnifrith

   9 July 2015, 01:14

   Paul,

   Your sandwich shop is lucky. With the 650 sandwiches you order a week – I am amazed you are so thin – and you paying an extra 20p it will absorb the cost. But some businesses will not be able to pass on the costs and operating at the margin they will fail.

   If someone earns £7.50 an hour that is £15,600 a year. It is obscene that they pay tax on any of that to pay for welfare payments for folks who “earn” more for doing sweet FA. The answer is just to take all those folks out of tax altogether. In fact take the limit up to £19k – that is £9 an hour.,

   Osborne is getting business to pay for his "caring" headlines. It will cost jobs. It is wrong and that is why he is not following what I always thought were Tory principles of encouraging hard work, enterprise, job creation and SMEs.

   You say firms can offset this by making “efficiency savings”. Yes of course they can. And the easiest one is just to trim hours. Osborne is a popularity seeking twat. he has not thought this through and he has betrayed true conservatives and entrepreneurs everywhere.

   T

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   LE

   9 July 2015, 01:30

   Hi Tom,

   Interesting mention on RRR. Any thoughts on the nobody is watching o’clock Director buy RNS at 6.20pm, where AB effectively picked up 83m shares for £26,250 i.e. £0.0316 a share (55m shares at £0.0475 and 28m warrants built into those buys at a ratio of 1 for every 2 bought – at a challenging target exercise price of £0.065). The prior day’s close was £0.065. I hope you feel that this “warrants” (sorry!) a mention today as I am feeling pretty aggrieved about it…on top of the 99%-or so I have lost since “investing” in the company.

   Do you really think it’s fair for Directors to pick shares up that cheaply, with further dilution (not bought on the open market), after diluting by nearly another 20% that morning to chase dreams, and then releasing this news after the inevitable drop of the day and at 6.20pm? I certainly don’t. Would be intrigued to hear your views.

   Cheers.

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   Jason

   9 July 2015, 03:11

   Mixed views on Living Wage ~ on one hand I agree that taxpayers should not have to pick up the tab for low pay employers on the other I see rise as artificially compressing the differential between skilled and unskilled workers. Rise will no doubt attract even more migration whilst pricing some companies out of business with jobs being lost in the process. Perhaps this should have gone hand in hand with a change to employers NI rules pushing up the minimum contribution threshold & rates so that saving could partially offset new NLW. One positive is that younger workers (<25) become attractive employment targets.

   Osborne missed a few tricks in my view ~ I’d have liked him to look at higher personal allowances, dropping the 45% rate but removing maximum NI contribution threshold and perhaps merging income tax/NI rates

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   TROYSKA

   9 July 2015, 05:14

   Red Rock cannot monetise anything.

   That’s the issue!

   they bought a Gold mine in Colombia, proved that they made a pigs ear of due diligence, and failed to run it at a profit for XX years.

   They then sold out at a loss.

   THAT is as close as they have ever come to getting an income stream.

   THIS is the issue here – incompetence.

   they held interests in Horse Hill and sold out just a few short days before it spiked.

   They have some insanely complex deal in kenya, and the licenses have been taken away (under legal appeal now) but quite honestly Tom – ‘So What?’ – we have seen again and again that RRR cannot mine anything, nobody will invest in Kenya at the moment, and not in low Gold Grades in complex Geo. So…….more money down the drain.

   Greenland Iron Ore was a load of old tosh, rubbish grades that then failed to be sold. I wonder why – Mine a low grade Iceberg anyone? Fe prices tank….No thanks.

   very very early Ivory Coast gold soil grab sampling – so what – costs millions to firm up and…… then fail to sell?

   and so on and on. The directors get paid, pick up discounted shares and carry on.

   Confetti is due in next 3 months just to keep lights on.

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   alcira16247

   9 July 2015, 06:16

   Tom

   Incredibly even a Conservative Chancellor feels it’s necessary to take measures to correct the balance within the labour market. Employers have been able, for numerous reasons, to gotten away with paying their blue collar workers, no pay or substantially below inflation increases, for the best part of a decade.

   There have been growing concerns over the fearsome gulf between the rich and poor with the potential this could lead to serious social unrest and the breakdown in order within our inner cities. I believe this reason may well have been a consideration for yesterday’s announcement, too.

   Also note the rallying cry of ‘one nation’!

   It’s about time the Tories ditched the failed, divisive and discredited policies of Thatcherism. True Conservatives will be applauding Osborne’s move towards a more caring socially responsible government, hopefully taking up again it’s historical mantle of fighting for ALL the British people, no matter what class.

   Remember, Tom……. whatever Thatcher was …….she was never a Conservative!

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    bwakem

    9 July 2015, 07:22

    Paul Scott you may be willing to pay more for your sandwich and maybe everybody else is too, and not just for sandwiches. But that just means the price of everything goes up inline with the increase in wages – back to square one. It doesn’t work.