...in your line of business and industry?

The car industry has seen a huge fall in new registrations: SEE HERE

But how bad is it in your line of business??

we have been more busy as the price of scrap etc has droped meaning the pikiey scum wont be getting such a big pay day so more cars will be brought into us as a legitimate company, along with people needing more spares etc has seen profits double over that of previous months.. more abandoned vehicles and more un-insured vehicles also.. tyre sales are also up a fair but as people are buying part worns over new.... plus i can lower buy in prices as people dont have another option... so for me at least... this are looking quite good for the crunch (touches wood)

The true extent is not being told to the public. It has been downplayed.

Slightly but I heard on the radio just about Detroit in the US - Due to the # of reposessions - house prices have plummeted - $250K houses now selling for less than $40K - plus others are being given away for $1 - as the banks just want the bad debt off their books

Hopefully similar will not end up happening here

Oh i hope it does because this is the area where this country up 10yrs ago when house prices rocketed way beyond the stipulated 4% rate.
Plus i am in the market to now buy.

Work in the oil industry so no affect yet.

In the Bars/Nightclub industry slow steady decline over the last 10 years, but with survival of the fittest, the
strongest have managed to survive. However over the the last 6-8 months has seen that steady slow decline
in business turn into a steep cliff face

I'm seriously looking at other lines of work from this week, many well respected & established (in the industry)
DJ friends are really struggling, as are the Bars/Nightclubs we work in. The public is cutting back on disposable
income spending on a massive level. Bars that would have 400-500 people in them on a Friday Night just a short
period of time like 6 months ago are now getting (crowds ) of 50 people instead.

Something has gotta give cos Bars & companies that own them are going under.


BTW Anyone know of any free courses to become and Electrician, Driving Instructor etc ?

NHS is pretty stable so that's cool.
Photography wise I haven't noticed a particular downward trend.

I just thought I would let you all know about becoming a driving instructor. JUST DON'T!!!!!!

Every driving school I know of is starting to be hit, and sometimes quite hard, with the present economic downturn. People just havn't got the money anymore to do it. Neither do alot of people have the inclination to drive either. When one friend passes the test, they can drive three or four other round and share the petrol money.

You have probably seen the adverts which run on the discovery channel from a certain driving instructor training organisation about earning £30,000 a year and being able to fit your career around what ever you want to. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most people who can afford to learn to drive will be working full time so your hours will be between six and nine in the morning and five till ten in the evening. You can certainly fit the instructor training around your current job but once qualifying, the hours are very unsociable. Also, you probably will never find the amount of pupils needed to make £30,000 a year. Also, you need to take your running costs out of this figure and of your really frugal, about £15,000 is going to be your anuall take home wage.

The course will be around £3,000 to do and you probably have a 20% chance of actually passing the qualifying exams.

The driving instructor industry has been saturated by people qualifying and there are not enough people wanting to learn to drive out there. Learning to drive is not a young person's priority any more with more and more people going to university. A vast majority of which will be getting jobs in cities such as London where there is no need for a car.

Besides, working alongside the Driving Standards Agency which is run by a lady by the name of Rosemary Thew who has no other driving qualifications other than the basic standard driving licence who is constantly making bad and quite damaging decisions about this industry, I strongly recomend you look elsewhere for a job.

People treat you so bad when your taching people to drive. I've had one driving school car compleatly written off by some burk hitting me up the back full pelt on a roundabout, all of my driving school cars have been hit by other motorists hitting me as I will never let my pupils hit anything, you get abused, shouted at, screamed at, spat at, driven at etc. Basically your on the bottom rung of a ladder which you will never climb.

Stick with being an electricion or plumber but being a driving instructor is somthing which I now am starting to regret. BIG TIME.

me too fingers crossed we keep needing to pump oil out of the ground but could be knock on effect if people start using less oil, petrol trying to save pennies

I think you will find that the housing market is not going down much more. If they do drop to silly lows then I for one would be happy, £250k houses for £40k each....time to buy 3 or 4 and hold onto them.

Yep the stuff in Detroit is amazing, wish I had the time to go over there and have a look to see what the areas they're in are like.........a lot of them look like pretty nice houses so can't see the downside to buying a few of them............

i work in the motor trade, this time last year we where fully stacked out with work.. but for the past month its slowly died into no work at all... ive had days showing up at work and standing around as theres no work in. The main downside is we work on a bonus scheme... so no work...no money. Needs to pick up soon or i can see my workplace going out the window and us out of jobs.

My day job is OK (Local Government IT consultancy) but market is shrinking with Councils trying to knock you down on daily rate......

Aero industry is plummeting in the civil side cost of avtur and airport fees, boeing and airbus getting it soooooooooo wrong on their super liners and generally people cutting back on their spending, less holidays less flights less hours on the ECU (engine change unit) less overhauling.
However my side which is military is doing great we are looking at expansion due to a few things.

This is a 10 year cycle though and aero industry see it alot more than anyone else so we can kind of predict the downturns . Don't know what it is but there always seems to be something every decade that does for the economy, nevertheless people should really have seen this one coming and all the banks, goverments and estate agents have been hugely irresponsible in letting this occur.
Personally i think there will be a 33-35% reduction in the house prices, i may get sneered at but then i predicted the credit crunch and got told it would never happen and i should go buy a house. In a way i want to be smug about it because i stand to gain alot should it really bottom out, but i have friends who bought houses at the peak and i can see them struggling which isn't so good. Think the best thing to do at the minute is hang in and take solace in the fact the wheel will turn again

In at least 18-24mnths (thats being liberal) perhaps even then the overall impact will be felt for approx 5-10yrs.
A lot of ppl will have to start learning janitorial and lavatorial skills to make ends meet.

Some interesting figures:

heres a list of banks with the worst CDS(credit default swap) ratings in April, next to them is what has happened to them recently...

1. Kaupthing 833.3- Are safe at the moment, recently had some injection from quatari investors but CDS ratings were quoted at 1500(2x that of lehmenn brothers before they went)
2. Kazkommerts 766.7 -Kazakhstan has set up a 6bn distressed asset fund for the countries banks, CDS rating is now at 1400-1500
3. Glitnir Bank 757.5 -Nationalised
4. IKB 612.4- 8bn Govt bailout
5. Landsbanki 604.6- Company assets sold to Straumur
6. Banca Italease 397.0
7. VTB Bank 332.5- Share value has lost 80%, Russian govt has stepped in to support the shares.
8. Anglo Irish Bank 322.7 - Govt has guarenteed all deposits in irsih banks (valued at £500bn)
9. HBOS 236.7 -Merged with Lloyds
10. Sberbank 221.3- will supposedly sign a 1.3bn loan today to bail themselves out
11. West LB 212.5- Nationalised
12. UBS 209.0- Have announced major restructuring to cut costs, just today they have said 1900 people will lose their jobs
13. Natixis 205.0- shares have plummeted over 70% this year.
14. Bank of Ireland 202.5- See anglo irish bank, irish govt have guarenteed all deposits
15. Allied Irish Banks 195.8
16. Dexia 195.0- Nationalised

Notice anything in that list?

Well I won't be sneering at you for having those views - I think you're spot on. Two things drive house prices - demand, and available credit. Strong demand and too cheap/badly regulated credit forced them far higher than they should ever have been.

Demand is dropping for two reasons; firstly large numbers of temporary migrants going home (eg Polish workers) because of better wages back home, and secondly because a lot of the demand was people buying second/third properties as an investment rather than somewhere to live.

Available credit is dropping through the floor because mortgages are much less widely available; with property prices so high, decent deposits are much harder to save up for, and with the reduction in 90%+ LTV mortgages there will be a crash of the first time buyers who fuel the whole market from the bottom up. Suddenly they need to save £20k instead of £5k, and that takes time to do.

Unfortunately what has happened over the last ten years, and the last five or six especially, is that people have been using cheap credit to live way beyond their means, and now that the interest rates have increased on all those discount mortgages have shot up, are suddenly feeling the pinch big time which will have a knock-on effect on the wider economy. Once that starts to drop, job losses will rise, and the situation becomes self-perpetuating with more unpaid mortgages and credit card bills etc etc.

It's only partly true to blame things on the US sub-prime situation, the simple fact is that people took on far, far, too much debt that they couldn't really afford, ignoring the warnings on their mortgage applications that say things like 'consider whether you will be able to pay this back if your circumstances change or interest rates rise' - instead, they took affordability to mean the cost of 'servicing debt' rather than 'repaying debt', thus leaving themselves open to real problems when the interest rates rose.

Things will get better, but not any time soon. The longer the boom the bigger the bust, and this boom has been going since 1992 when we came out the last recession.

Totally agree with everything above, and the 30% mark is what I expect the house price drop to be around - that didn't mean you couldn't buy a house, I bought a place 4 years ago and in the summer was valued to be worth 75% more than what I paid for it..........obviously it isn't really anymore but even if they fall 30% most people will be safe as long as they can afford to pay their mortgages. You are absolutely right though, for those that can afford the payments, there isn't really a problem as things will turn around, but there are so many that are right on the brink of financial ruin, so a shift in interest rates, etc could cause a massive problem.

As Mike says, for some reason people bought houses using the maximum they could afford as the interest payment.........and brokers let them, ok not as bad as the US (at least over here people are paying the interest due) but it's still not great.

I've got to say although I expected there would be some form of decline but never such a catastrophic blow up!

The worst part is it's so hard to predict what's going on with the banks, so where are you supposed to put your money!

I tend to agree with this point of view BUT mortgage providers were extremely irresponsible with some of the products they offered. 125% mortgages,5.5 x salary were typical examples of providers being irresponsible and actually helping to fuel the unsustainable rise in property prices by making finance all too easy to obtain.
I am just thankful that for some years I repaid double my specified repayments and now don't have to worry about interest rates etc.

Just move it around so that you have no more than £50k with any one bank etc. bearing in mind that many banks/building societies are linked. We have joint accounts so can have £100k with any bank etc. Not earning a lot but prefer 5% net to risk of losing it.

Yeah we're not worried about the interest anymore, just keeping the money safe! We had a fairly large amount at Halifax that we had to remove sharpish when they ended..........

Can you have a 3 way joint account raising the limit to £150k or is it just for couples?

Not sure on 3 way. We have moved money so that 3 accounts are safe. Found it so easy to just open accounts and transfer funds but kept to £80k rather than £100k to allow for interest accumulating over next 3 or 4 years. Just needed to keep some immediately accessible in our original accounts as well!

Yep will have to do the same, the hassle of opening 2 or 3 accounts is totally worth at least knowing the money is safe

The £50k thing is all very well, but if more than one of the big banks go under, there is no way there will be anywhere near enough money to pay everyone up to their £50k limit. The government has spent every last penny it had from the good times, and will only be able to afford it by either borrowing tens of billions at the current high rates in the global money market (and require swinging tax rises to pay for it), or otherwise by just printing money which will cause a huge spike in inflation (and thus depressing the value of everyone elses money at the same time).

Good old Gordy - 'an end to boom and bust' he said, back in '97... arrogant berk!

Not really amazing at all. Now America's poorest city, where of the 850,000 residents, 80% are black. White flight has hit the city for the past 40 years, heading for the suburbs. In fact, 1,000 people a week are leaving Detroit for the suburbs. Downtown developments have been frozen due to lack of funding. The big houses selling for less than 40k are in nice neighbourhoods (such as Boston Edison), but you walk two blocks in any direction and you are surrounded by poverty, and crazy crime levels. Detroit's mayor got jailed for perjury. You'd have to be pretty brave to invest your cash in a town that has basically been abandoned.

I did read something about it being an "individual" thing as opposed to account thing...so someone with £60k in the bank risk losing £10k, but a couple with £100k in a joint account will not lose a penny...

I wouldn't worry too much...it's just a market "correction" as they were all loaning out money no one acftually had...just move to a one acount type of mortgage - that's the best thing to do...keep a debit and credit, then it becomes knock for knock should the worst happen...

Having said that - Mike B says, it will take one big casualty and then everyone will panic...

It's getting bad in the IT industry. I'm an IT consultant currently working for an education authority and am OK - some of my mates are having cardiacs about their contracts...especially those in Shipping and textiles - it's becoming harder and harder as each day goes by...one mate works for a clothing retailer and is getting very worried too...

We're about to find out how good the FSCS 50k guarantee is: Linky

You're right about it being an individual type of thing, but IMO wrong about the offset mortgage. If the worst should happen, it won't be a knock for knock at all, you would lose the money you were using to offset, and still owe the mortgage. Worst of all worlds. IMO the best thing to do is to use the savings to pay off a big chunk of the mortage outright - then you'll have less to lose, and much less debt to pay too.

Just spoke to my Financial Advisor - FSA rules are clear...as far as offset is concerned, it is effectively treated as one account, therefore you only get "stung" for any net debit...

I remember where I heard about it orginally - Mark Preston on Radio 5 Live...where he stated that if the debit and credit (i.e. offset balances and mortgage) are in the SAME institution then your credit's pay any debits and you face just the bill or the balance...

Here is a link where this specific question is answered:

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/community/...and-109902.aspx

EDIT - just noticed the shares are down yet again...almost -200 after the Chancellors rescue package, which just doesn't go far enough. The government will profit out of this in the long term, and if anyone has spare cash now might be a good time to buy some shares in banks for the long haul IMHO...

And anyone who still has an old endowment which will mature within 5 years ought to think again NOW - most are linked to UK managed funds and stocks and will be hit even harder. So that £10k deficit may become £12k!

That is true, but with banks falling left, right and centre that would be quite a risky gamble..............

I would say "spread betting" a total of £500 or a £1000 on LloydsTSB, Barclays, HBOS and RBS might b a gamble worth taking...if you can afford it that is...

Hot off the press - the Banks have just dropped Interest rates by 0.5%

Yep I'm not sure if it's a good idea in terms of the economy, but great news in terms of my mortgage

Same here, as I'm on a tracker mortgage this rate cut will help me too.

Remember guys - it's a base rate cut - NOT a motgage cut at this stage...

Normally the Mortgage lenders follow the Base rate (and stay + 1.5%ish) - will they this time? All are suffering with profits warnings and new new business now so we'll have to wait and see!!!!!

It's an opportunity for them to see more immediate cashflow, so no doubt they'll act like a CARTEL and lean one way or another together!!!

Depends on the mortgage of course, but for me it is a cut - my rate is base rate +0.75%, so if base rate drops, my rate drops

but are you not only guarenteed 50000 in one account and the rest goes bye bye. shoe boxes fill them up and get a safe in your house bolted to wall. lol

£50k per bank per customer, if joint account £50k each. So therefore £100k per bank in as many banks as you need - obviously there is an upper limit restricted by the number of banks available but I don't know anyone who has that much cash!

I'd forget the bank investments atm and put your money into canned food and shotguns

If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock stock one year ago, it would be worth £4.95 today.
With HBOS, you would have £16.50 left of the original £1000
With XL Leisure, you would have less than a fiver.
And if you had purchased £1000 of Seguro Air Lines stock, you would have a measly 49p.

However, if you had purchased £1000 worth of stella one year ago, drank the lot of it, then re-cycled the cans at an aluminium plant for a cash refund, you would have £21.40.
And so, based on the above information, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle......

I like the way you think

GORDON BROWN was visiting a primary school and he visited one of
the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and
> their meanings.
>
> The teacher asked Mr. BROWN if he would like to lead the
> discussion on the word 'tragedy'.
>
> So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a
> 'tragedy'.
>
> A little boy stood up and offered: 'If my best friend, who lives
> on a farm, is playing in the field & a tractor runs over him and kills him,
> that would be a 'tragedy.'
>
> No, said GORDON - that would be an accident.'
>
> A little girl raised her hand: 'If a school bus carrying fifty
> children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a
> tragedy'
>
> I'm afraid not, explained GORDON - that's what we would call a
> great loss'
>
> The room went silent. No other children volunteered. GORDON
> searched the room. 'Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of
> a tragedy?'
>
> Finally, at the back of the room, little Johnny raised his hand...
>
> In a quiet voice he said: 'If a plane carrying you and MR. DARLING
> was struck by a 'friendly fire' missile & blown to smithereens, that would
> be a tragedy.'
>
> 'Fantastic!' exclaimed GORDON. 'That's right. And can you tell me
> why that would be tragedy?'
>
>'Well,' says little Johnny 'it has to be a tragedy, because it certain wouldn't be
a great loss and it probably wouldn't be a bloody accident either!'

my line of business is quite bubbly at the moment, seems to be lots of money flowing into it.....i suppose i shouldn't complain really

Love it Gord

just tried a can of that new 4% Stella, not for me at all.
Man who is the fountain of knowledge of all things Stella (& most recently Vodka Red Bull )
what do you think of the 'new' Stella ?

Its Inbev's way of trying to change the way people think about the normal stella, wife beater, park bench stuff.

Ive not had any yet, but is it still called stella or just artois ? as i think thay are going to be dropping the name stella artois to just artois as part of the image change

Still be good old stella to meeeeee

I also tried that 4% Stella the other week, and thought it was horrible.

I like normal Stella too, although I've started drinking proper German-brewed beer because I reckon it's a bit more pure (less additives/chemicals). My favourite is Lowenbrau but I can't find it anywhere now, so have switched to Becks.

had some good news y/day in that a script I wrote to identify people who are entitled to council tax benefit but are not getting it is to be marketed by a major software house. Deal is I do my bit 4 times a year for £800 and that takes me 1 hour to do (for all 4 extracts)...yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee best thing is can do it from home after a normal days work.

I can then start to recycle Stella cans.............

Technically it's not per 'bank' but per banking license. For example, RBS and NatWest are covered under the same license, so keeping £50k in both means you're only protected in one of them. Similarly Banco Santander own both Abbey and Alliance & Leicester, so the same applies. You need to find out which banks own each other and spread your money between groups rather than 'banks'. There are lists of insitutions that come under the same licence around, can't remember where they are off-hand though.

You'd be surprised how many people have cash lying around - sometimes it's just a matter of timing. On another forum I frequent, a guy sold a house and stuck the £200k equity into Icesave while he was finalising buying another one. As of now, that money simply doesn't exist any more - he might get it back at some point, but not straightaway.

Slightly but related.

I set up savings accounts for my 2 sons when they were born - and my eldest (7 yrs old) now has a reasonable amount saved up - Both my wife and I contribute to it each month and have set up a target of at least £1000 for each year old they are
Intention is to keep going until they are ~21 or so.

My question is - does the protection also apply to children/childrens accounts - I'm pretty sure it must do but its not something that gets mentioned.

Yep that's a very good point, cheers for pointing it out. Yep we had a fair amount of money in the Halifax after selling a house too, and got a little scared when they collapsed and took it out at the first opportunity, thankfully all seems safe now but makes sense to stay under the guaranteed limits.......