https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/uk-inward-investment-is-at-a-record-high-so-why-has-almost-no-one-reported-it/

Good to balance out the “news” from the Guardian.

Isn't this partly due to the £ weakening? Its weird how inward is mentioned in the hyperlink but not on the page or article. Also references US twice as a typo.

"The estimates in this release are short-term indicators of investment in non-financial assets in the UK, such as dwellings (residential buildings), transport equipment (planes, trains and automobiles), machinery (electrical equipment), buildings (non-residential buildings and roads) and intellectual property products (assets without physical properties – formerly known as intangibles). This release covers not only business investment, but asset and sector breakdowns of total gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), of which business investment is one component."

Why does it include residential dwellings? Its for construction companies building and not buy for let for example?

"Business investment in the wider economy
The Bank of England, in its most recent Agents’ summary of business conditions (PDF, 484KB), stated that investment intentions had “remained positive”, however, it is noted that these intentions are mainly the investment needed to maintain business activity and improve efficiency. The Bank of England states that strength in global demand and growth should encourage exporters to invest in additional capacity.

The Bank also notes that a range of different indicators suggests that Brexit-related uncertainties and expectations around lower future sales are weighing on business investment growth. From a survey source, it was found that nominal business investment was 3 to 4% lower in the year to June 2017 than it would have been otherwise. For a more comprehensive analysis around Brexit and business investment, please see page 17 of the Bank of England’s latest inflation report. (page 17 on its own was not useful, document itself is 50 pages)

Another important factor to consider when looking at business investment is the availability or supply of credit. Although the increase in Bank Rate has pushed up the cost of borrowing, the cost of borrowing to firms remains low. The Credit Conditions survey, however, reported a fall in demand for lending across firms of all sizes in the second half of 2017."

"While we are on the subject, it is reported that the U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars. The Failing N.Y. Times reports that “the size of the company’s lobbying staff has ballooned,” and that... ...does not include the Fake Washington Post, which is used as a “lobbyist” and should so  REGISTER. If the P.O. “increased its parcel rates, Amazon’s shipping costs would rise by $2.6 Billion.” This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!" Trump on twitter

For a man who said not paying taxes makes him smart he's really off base here. Should Amazon demand higher prices? Why would you blame Amazon and not the Post Office or whichever idiot accepted this sort of deal?

"Sandbulte’s claim is based on how the Postal Service sets its prices. USPS is not allowed to set prices so low that it loses money on delivering packages. (If it could, it could undercut competitors like FedEx or UPS.) But the formula for how it sets its prices was created by Congress in 2006, and doesn’t account for the fact that packages are a much bigger share of the USPS’s business than they used to be.

Sandbulte drew his conclusions based on a Citigroup analysis that suggested the average USPS parcel should cost about $1.46 more per package across the board than it does right now. (Sandbulte works for a firm that owns FedEx stock.)"

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/30/17176852/trump-amazon-post-office

I've always been an ardent supporter of the notion there's no such thing as bad publicity. Yet recent images like Lord Sugar tweeting Corbyn next to Hitler and Corbyn wearing commie hat outside the Kremlin have made me rethink. Even the most avid Jezza supporter must accept he sucks at riding the media fairground and as such he's a disaster for the party. The first two words in Leftie retaliation will be "yeah but"...those images are doctored, "yeah but"...he says sensible things, "yeah but"...if only people weren't such simpletons. Well "yeah but" nothing because you need to be a media player in this day and age, Trump has demonstrated that precisely. So why keep trying to stop the world turning and spin it the other way? "Yeah but"...

Last week my mate (who was admittedly very very drunk) told me about his vision for a new swanky London eaterie. The only thing on the menu was Avacado. He took me through all the details about how healthy Avacado is and how the restaurant would support Fair Trade, sustainable, bio-degradable, swanky, trendy. I kept saying "But no fecker will come". Didn't matter to him, "yeah but" once they realise about the different recipes and charity work. "But no fecker will come". "Yeah but"....

Incidentally: I was driving down the road the other day when a cyclist shouted that my car was green and ugly....Yeah but at least I avacado.

https://www.avocaderia.com/stories/

Opened early last year expanding to a 2nd NY location. Not saying London is the same as NY but food for thought. Pretty sure he stole the idea from Shark Tank.

Agree re media thoughts but JC being genuine is part of what I want to support. At some point principles have a price I guess and its probably a good reason for him never to have become Labour leader. Not really sure on what the answer is as I think principles and media-savvy don't really coexist.

Not a troll of Kuku as he is one of the interesting posters here and I like reading a range of views. Not just the simplistic tory boy fantasies of Manters and Wooders :-)

I do think Corbyn has something of a blindspot on this issue - platitudes about "I've always protested racism etc so I can't be anti Jew"don't really wash.

It seems quite apparent that these two elements are easy bedfellows for the left - virtue signal your antic racist views with rhetoric and also embrace anti jewishness - it doesn't make you completely bad to a level you need to apologise and cry at a press conference, but it does mean you can't confront your own prejudices in an honest way.

The right also being anti jewish doesnt get you off the hook either

Love your posts, no risk of me mistaking me you for a troll. I lost the faith when you lost the plot re:Brexit but you're still in the top 3 posters in my book.

I think the fact that JC has a very strong stance against human rights abuses in the Middle East has made the party attractive to some nutters with extreme views, crazy but to my mind true. If you saw the determination and pasision of the people who will get the nutters out of the party from my view, I hope that you would be impressed.

Agreed that the racist right justifies/excuses nothing. I was just replying directly to Rick that the right is a: much more racist and b: does fuck all about it.

Voting for Brexit, for me, was like an affirmation of historical left wing principles, my most obvious Corbynite tendency, and it's not really articulated much these days other than by rogues like Galloway. Unfortunately, this brings me into sharing a 'cause'  mainly led by neo-liberals. Cause is a bit strong because I'm pretty ambivalent about Brexit even though it was clear to me which way I would vote from the outset.

It's hard for me to decide whether I should dislike neo-liberals more than the soft peddling, middle of the road, centre-right capitalists that form the bulk of the vocal leadership of remain. On balance I probably prefer the neo-liberals to the Tony Blair/Paddy Ashdown/Michael Heseltine type coalition around this issue.

I always thought we were on opposing sides but this is something I completely agree with. Weird how these bias forms from just a few of the more memorable posts sticking out.

And yeah sorry Rick I felt like I'd done you a disservice today as I realised you could be talking about the structure of Brexit and not just the economic outcome or w/e.

Great few pages and lots to think about despite the venom. Thanks all

YouGov poll for thetimes gives May 11-point lead on best PM, highest since before election http://bit.ly/2E7ibfq

Have to say I really admire her resilience through such a testing period and I think she's somehow managed to work herself into quite a trusted position (in the eyes of the general population) on Brexit..that's no mean feat

It would be that much more impressive had she actually done anything. Still, as previously said, the plan seems to be to not to really do Brexit and say just enough to pacify the simpletons, she's done better than that, one of the simpletons (itt) seems to be cock-a-hoop.

Seems like 43% of the voting public (see Tighty's latest poll numbers) are simpletons right now eh? In historical terms that's a pretty healthy percentage (especially as she is clearly a weak leader).

What is crazy in the political world is the way the Lib Dems have committed politically suicide and seem even better than you at insulting people.  At least Vince can feel all smug and smart whilst leading them into the wilderness.

Wouldn't it be better to respectfully disagree than talk about simpletons this way?

Surely we can describe simpletons as simpletons?  

People do need to go easy on the insults though.  It just ruins the debate.    Woodsey is right, you aren't going to persuade anybody of the case by throwing personal insults, if only he followed his own words we might all now be Brexiteers.

I think Woodsey is just a WUM who gets right under the skin of certain simpletons contributors on here 

Its going to be a fascinating year or two. We'll finally get to see what Brexit really means and we'll see if our economy falls apart as so aggressively predicted during the campaign prior to the vote.

I think it's unrealistic for the consequences of brexit to be looked at within a year or two. I don't think macro policies like this can really be understood within 10-20 years. Furthermore it's not an event you can examine in isolation so it's quite possible some outside event happens (ww3?) Meaning we never truly know.

Not sure if this is new as I found it on reddit but wth

https://gfycat.com/DapperNeatFossa

"Brexit insider claims Vote Leave team 'may have broken law' "

How can the Observer lead with a piece that says “may”.

I thought heavy weight papers would only lead with stories that were 100% checked out and verifiable?

Well the donation is "legal" as in it gets round the spending limits but the question is whether the spending was controlled by the donator's after the fact and this is something which is extremely difficult to prove. Proving who introduced someone is extremely difficult and really that is the type of margin it comes down to. Turns out people lie in these situations, just like the Leave campaign has lied about hiring/not hiring Cambridge Analytica.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r693TPGG0Q

The election laws are extremely complicated as you should know.

""In order to bring a charge, it must be proved that a suspect knew the return was inaccurate and acted dishonestly in signing the declaration. Although there is evidence to suggest the returns may have been inaccurate, there is insufficient evidence to prove to the criminal standard that any candidate or agent was dishonest.""

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/sunny-hundal/cps-doesnt-press-charges-over-tory-over-spending

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Mackinlay#Electoral_spending_criminal_investigation_following_the_2015_General_Election

Oh dear.

The new/old blue passports are going to be imported from the EU cos the current UK supplier won't be able to match the EU supplier's prices after Brexit.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/22/post-brexit-passports-set-to-be-made-by-franco-dutch-firm

Probably some dickhead remainers deliberately wanting to cause mischief involved in the decision. PM should get involved and fk them off....

Sutherland acknowledged that his firm had been beaten on price in an open competition, but he said that was unfair. He said that in France, as a foreign-based firm, De La Rue would be barred from bidding to produce the French passport.

The Labour MP John Spellar said “no other EU country behaves like this”, claiming others “support their industry”. Such decisions had driven the Brexit vote, he said.

He must be fucking stupid. How is it the EU's fault if France has barred foreign competition? Putting power back into the hands of incompetent British politicians. Why blame the EU for your own mess. I don't think any person would have a problem with a British company making British passports but it really highlights the stupidity of this whole mess when the EU is yet again blamed for a decision our politicians have made.

I think as its not literal its still an idiom but I am not sure. Google seems unclear, wikitionary calls it idiomatic

Gooner why would you care about people making money through scams in cryptocurrency? Who drives the money behind regulators and what makes crypto special for scammers? It is very silly to think that scamming is ripe in crypto, it is however new. If everyone stops letting people holding their own money then crypto is already the most trustworthy transfer and store of value.

Perhaps we should regulate Nigerian princes too? They were ripe and that scam probably netted a group of people some money.

Because I don't like seeing people ripped off. I find it astonishing that you can't see that in an unregulated environment there are hundreds of scams out there, some more high profile than others. That's even before we look at the illegitimate uses of bitcoin to launder the proceeds of crime.

When someone who has a background in marketing/recruitment is paid thousands of dollars to promote an ICO, it's inevitable there is a conflict of interest (this is a british youtuber btw). Prior to Jan 2017, he had no prior knowledge about crypto currencies in March 2018, he is seen as a prominent knowledgeable crypto guru with over 100k followers, really??!!

This is replicated all over the internet. There are pump and dump artists galore on youtube.

With regards to regulation, it is the bain of many advisers lives both in the UK and the US. And that's the way it should be, the pain of regulation ensures that consumers are protected if they are given bad advice for any reason. A recent example of this was the British Steel Pension scheme debacle. The regulators have come down like a ton of bricks on these people who have given inappropriate advice. What happens to the people who promote the merits of bitconnect either as an intermediary or as a so-called director of the company?

As things stand you can promote an ICO, not do any due diligence on the company you are promoting, make thousands if not hundreds of thousands of pounds for something that has no inherent value. If it goes belly up, then there is no recompense for the people who you made the recommendation to and you can disappear back into the hole you came from, much richer. It gets quite boring repeating myself many times, perhaps in a few years time when the fad element has gone away with the regulations in place, we can start focusing on the real world application of each project rather than worry whether something is a scam or not, and make informed investment decisions. Sooner or later those in denial will get it.

A bunch of the American Bitconnect promoters are being sued in America, not sure about the actual people behind it, I imagine the real guys are too hidden to get caught. Maybe the names of the directors will get caught somewhere? Are the people on the english papers not liable.

https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2017/11/13/bitcoin-bitconnect-uk-ponzi-investment/

They don't look very real according to this article. I'm on your side too ace with regards to regulation. Lots of obvious scams people need protecting from.

Why weren't we as fired up about Litvinenko where we found a plausible suspect. This seems like kind of a weak case, anyone could in theory make the poisons at this point, the formulas have been published. Seems like weird timing for Putin to bump someone off who doesn't seem to be like much of a critic? God knows what the correct response is, can't see either Corbyn or May doing much.   

Where has it been published?  Everything I have read suggested that only the Russians have made it.  Even if it is possible to make it, it doesn't seem like the sort of stuff you'd experiment with in your bedroom.  It seems a pretty big coincidence that some random has thrown it together, not fecked themselves up and just happens to have found an ex-spy to try it out on?  And if this was an easy thing to do, why aren't more people doing it?

Of course I dare say they haven't got Litvinenko proof yet, but it seems more likely than not to be the right conclusion? 

I would add that Putin has shown little sign of giving the slighest shit what anyone else thinks for a while now.

Found with an alt-right source so glad you made me check.
"Novichok's existence was revealed by chemist Dr Vil Mirzayanov in the 1990s, via Russian media. He later defected to the US, where he published the chemical formula in his book, State Secrets."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43377698

I brought up Litvinenko because we do have a suspect and presumably compelling evidence whereas in this case we don't see to have much apart from the "weapon". We have a full inquiry but didn't seem to do too much about it. "The report found that Litvinenko was killed by two Russian agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun and that there was a "strong probability" they were acting on behalf of the Russian FSB secret service.[138] Paragraph 10.6 of the report stated: "The FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin."[139]"

Not really sure what to make of this guy but its interesting and more informed than your average newspaper article.

 8chttps://www.craigmurray.org.uk

Why weren't we as fired up about Litvinenko where we found a plausible suspect. This seems like kind of a weak case, anyone could in theory make the poisons at this point, the formulas have been published. Seems like weird timing for Putin to bump someone off who doesn't seem to be like much of a critic? God knows what the correct response is, can't see either Corbyn or May doing much.   

https://www.coindesk.com/making-sense-crypto-asset-valuation-insanity/

Interesting piece, couldn't resist linking this picture.

Click to see full-size image.

https://www.coindesk.com/worst-crypto-networks-will-biggest/

Abstract look at the growth of cities and networks in comparison to companies.

Bloomberg is wrong here as I believe he has sold enough of the bitcoin to reclaim the money owed. The next court date is sometime in September and I'm sure people will be watching. Fascinating case where a bankrupt exchange is still affecting customers years later by having a trustee market sell thousands of their asset on the open market. Definite potential in court whether this comes under the terms of negligence, particularly as the CEO at Kraken has stated that they were consulted beforehand and recommended not selling on the open market. Painful to watch the capitulation at the bottom but it would be a real mess if he hadn't got the money out and it went below. Kinda surprised he waited so long tbh.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-07/bitcoin-s-tokyo-whale-sold-400-million-and-he-s-not-done-yet

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-07/bitcoins-tokyo-whale-sells-400m-bitcoin-bitcoin-cash



https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/835eyu/jesse_powell_ceo_and_cofounder_of_kraken_on_the/

Click to see full-size image.

What a great photograph that is.

It was at Billy Graham's funeral. In that context, looks like genuine comfort/reassurance.

At first I was surprised because of the blue suits but the women have black dresses.

"other scholarly and historical analyses provide answers that are more philosophical. These often amount to “money is a convention” – one party accepts it as payment in the expectation that others will also do so."

"Money is an IOU, but a special one because everyone in the economy trusts that it will be accepted by others in exchange for goods and services. One might say money is a “we all owe you”

"As I mentioned before, trust is the fundamental tenet that underpins credible currencies, and this trust has to be earned and supported. There are many lessons from history and institutional economics on the earning of trust that we can use as we move further into digitalisation"



https://www.bis.org/speeches/sp180206.pdf