Credit Crunch: The return of the map.
What single factor is hurting you most about the credit crunch? In conjunction with the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, we're mapping the results:
To take part visit this page of MapTube website (or on the picture above), answer the question, and enter the first part of your postcode.
The map will update to reflect which factor gets the most votes in each region every hour or so. It's not a scientific study, we're calling it a mood map, but we hope to use the results to guide our reporting. If you think we're missing the real story, email us or post a comment below.
You can see latest results here. For the results of our previous crunch map click here
The excellent photo at the top of this post is from McFilter via the Britblog Roundup
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Yes, great, and how exactly does one read text completely concealed under your information sheet on the right?
I did hope yesterday when I first saw this that it might get repaired so I could see what you had to say.
Everyo
hurtin
Spatia
is probably enthralling in its own way, but not very informative.
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Dear CG..
There is a browser issue..we're on to it -but for most folks the page is framing fine..safari isn't great, or google chrome. Please bear with us.
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yes -- sorry for being grumpy, Rupert, I have gathered in other places that I am not alone in finding this a bit imperfect.
I suggest that it may be a case of 'for Macs it isn't fine', though, judging by some comments elsewhere: that might be worth looking into, given that M$ is only 90% of the market even now?
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Also interesting is the change of categories to reflect changing priorities.
Last time on the old map we had:
Mortgage or rent
Fuel
Food
Holidays
Other
Not affected
No data
This time round its:
Mortgage or rent
Petrol
Food
Job security
Utility bills
Not affected
No data
Out go holidays, and in comes basic job security.
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Hi Chris_Ghoti
Sorry our blog has been looking bit out of shape. Some stray tags that have now been fixed.
Let us know if you still having probs but that should be it.
thanks
Jen
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Hi Jen,
In another town and with Firefox (which is still having trouble with superimpositon of text and pictures in the PM blog) I can now see the page above properly, and I can go to the questionnaire, but cannot apparently see the map at all. I'll have a look with iCab and NetScape when I am back in front of those.
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Update for Jen,
Yup, iCab and Netscape are both happy with this page, which is cause for congratulation - congratulations!
But with them as with Firefox, I can access the page to say which of the bit of the credit crunch is worst for me, but I cannot access the map if I do as asked and 'You can see latest results here.' Click as I please on any of the three browsers, I get no map.
I suspect that's out of the control of the iPM tech team, though. So thank you for what you *have* done.
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Update for Jen and Chris-ghoti
unless the web site has been altered since you added your comment, I have to say that the problem seems to be at your end. I also use Firefox but have had no trouble accessing the map
Regards
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Critical omission in the list of options:
"Money trapped in Iceland"
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Problem is, while we are affected by the credit crunch, our problem isn't covered by the alternatives provided.Could there not be a further option (i.e. 'other') so that people like us can contribute?
And, no, it isn't the option mentioned in No. 9 above - it is the inability to sell a property.
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I subscribe to the Tinkerbell theory of economics. It only stays up and working if we all believe in it. If we start to disbelieve and withdraw our funds the whole edifice collapses. Unfortunately there are pirates who have stolen most of the gold from us - we need a Peter Pan to lead us to get it back ..... Alistair Darling? ..... right surname!
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I heard another take on the credit crunch this week.
I was quick to complain that our supermarket was stocking Christmas goods in September, and I'm still complaining as more aisles are given over to more Christmas goods.
I was chatting with one of the women on the tills, and she told me that this week there have been a significant number of people filling their trollies with this stuff - and a number of them have said they're trying to do as much Christmas shopping as possible now, as they're worried they won't be in work, or be otherwise unable to afford it, in December. It put an end to my moaning.
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Chris
Nit-picking, moi..? YES!
You say: "Everyone is worried about the credit-crunch. On iPM we want you to tell us what single factor is hurting you most in the current economic downturn and, in conjunction with the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, we're mapping the results:"
But you're not! At least, not if the postcode refers to a non-UK address..!
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Other categories:
1. No small houses coming on to the market
2. Unable to retire. They stole the pension
3. Stagnation due to a complete lack of trust in any UK institution.
4. Debt collectors
5. Car repossessions
6. Christmas (Thx Gillianian)
7. Future council tax increases (Iceland got their pot holes filled, and much more)
8. The lack of trees. There seems to be a lot of "thinning" of immature tree stock to keep the home fires burning.
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Lack of home-grown food security is the real threat to Britain, not a global recession
Food shortages and a possible famine in the UK are far more liable than ever before. Lord Cameron of Dillington, a farmer and first head of the Countryside Agency coined the phrase 'nine meals from anarchy'. Cameron saw the potential of a real food crisis hitting not just the poor of the Developing World, but we here in the UK during this present Century. His thinking was that it would only take three full days without food on supermarket shelves, before law and order started to break down and where British streets would descend into chaos. If you think that this is far fetched, that's exactly what happened in the U.S. after Hurricane Katrina in the US where people started to loot their neighbours and communities in order to feed themselves and their families. A mere three days after the disaster struck.
But this is getting much closer to home now than people realise, for food supply is directly linked to oil supplies through transport and production (fertilizers et al). Indeed, according to Professor of Food Policy Tim Lang at City University, London, 'We are sleep-walking into a crisis.'
He is correct, for the official facts are that Britain now has only a national home-grown food security of 58% (official statistics for 2007 from the ONS) We are therefore totally dependent upon the remaining 42% from imports from other foreign countries. Therefore in a crisis, we could not feed 42 out of 100 people. But, we have also to understand that the threats to a global food supply are getting far worse by the year for Britain, as more and more food is being consumed by the increasingly affluent Far-East who are importing far more of western food supplies now than they did just a mere 10-years ago. For as the credit crunch and recession hits together with our high debt factors in the UK and a falling pound, those in the East will command far more buying power than ourselves to secure food supplies for their people. Another dictum of the ‘free market’ and capitalist forces economic mechanism that is flawed towards consumers but not global suppliers.
Unfortunately also we are all aware now that governments are reactive and not proactive. In this respect governments only act in times of crisis and on impulse. But with food, one has to prepare long before, for once the food has gone elsewhere, there is none to be had. Indeed, we can weather everything else but not a food shortage. Considering this truism, governments have to start NOW and invest heavily in ‘home-grown’ food production before it is far too late to do anything about it.
For in reality we are not that very far away from the 'nine meals from anarchy' scenario and where government has to act to prevent a human disaster that would make the credit crunch feel like a holiday. For without food, we starve and where food and water supplies are our most vital commodities, not financial wealth. We have sufficient of the latter but where we are nearly half bankrupt in the former. Therefore let’s do something about it whilst we can for denial is the worst form of ignorance ! Presently we have our eye 'off the ball'.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity (WIFC)
Bern, Switzerland
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How about an option for benefitting from it?
We're not all rich. 30% (?) of us don't own property, and that's not just the young. Most of our income goes in two things: tax and rent.
Falling house prices (and more recently falling rents) are an unadulterated Good Thing for those with nothing.
Looking at it another way, we're recouping some of the staggering losses we've made in recent years, when we'd have had to *save* £20,000 a year from *taxed income* just to avoid falling ever further behind the affluent majority.
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The credit crunch has greatly diminished the quality of my life. Since my husband's premature death, I depend for much of my adult 'conversation' and intellectual stimulus on Radio 4. For the last few weeks it hasn't been worth listening to. Endless blather, queues of experts all saying something different in terms of cause, forecast and cure - and always the feeling that a) one can do nothing whatever about it, b) it appears to be abstract and arbitrary and to depend on what the latest pundit has said and c) that the media, including R4, are intent on eroding further the 'confidence' on which apparently the 'market' and entire financial system depends.
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Reducing VAT for a short time is very short sighted and is unlikely to help much with jobs in the UK. It will mostly help maintain sales of manufactured goods, such as flat screen TVs, mobile telephones, digital cameras, electronic games and endless amounts of cheap plastic goods, all of which are exclusively manufactured in China. This will help the Chinese economy no end and will consolidate their strategy of siphoning all the spare cash in the world to their shores. It was the huge amount of cash accumulated by China and dumped on investment banks in the West that enabled the credit crunch in the first place. Since the US investors did not have a US based manufacturing economy to invest in they put it all into sub-prime mortgages and then fraudulently passed these off to rest of the world. Everybody knows all this but why don't you hear it spelt out and why is the Chancellor of the Exchequer still promoting the whole thing with cuts in VAT.
To get the economy going again, we need to stimulate what little industry that still survives in the UK. That is construction, and other areas where we can still compete with overseas companies. Unfortunately banking services etc. are increasingly ceasing to be British, as a result there are signs that the UK government is looking to bail out overseas banks.
How on earth did it happen that financial "experts" in this country saw fit to invest in Icelandic Banks. If they thought about it, Iceland has the same population (300,000) as a UK town the size of, say, Poole. Can you imagine that Poole Borough council started up a bank and all the huge London Boroughs, huge charities and everybody else invested in a bank that was underwritten by the inhabitants of a small English coastal town.
Such sheer stupidity deserves to be rewarded by sacking on a grand scale.
Why is there so much stupidity amongst the bright boys (and girls) who earn such huge incomes in running our economy? We are supposed to pay such large salaries and bonuses so that we get the best. Well for my money the man who runs the corner shop has a lot more sense than most of these. Or is it that their intelligence is geared principally to lining their own pockets and guaranteeing their own pensions at the expense of actually doing a decent days work on what they are paid to do.
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Am I just lucky?
I'm not trying to sell a house, nor buy one, I have a standard mortgage which I took out in 2000 and my repayments are going down.
My employer buys my fuel for my car, but I do pay tax on private use of course, and I'm steadily paying off my credit card debt.
So, since I don't want to borrow any more than I have already, I don't have significant savings to worry about lower interest rates and I guess I'm spending about what I always spend on Christmas, I'm not yet being hurt much by the so called 'credit crunch'...
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Something that is not covered on the map is the way the media makes such a big deal of the issues involved......that is the thing that is hurting me currently.
As a someone who works in a small business, the whole we're doomed mentality the country currently possess is sickening.
It is slowing our economy down.
Food is cheaper, fuel is cheaper and your mortgage has gone down. you now have more disposable cash.
The middle and lower classes are generally better off.
Stop trying to push this government out with your negative propaganda.
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Your categories are misleading. I thought that petrol prices (and therefore food prices), mortgage repayments, and utility bills are all getting cheaper because of the credit crunch. So when people complain about petrol prices being high this is not because of the credit crunch. In fact job security is the only category that should have been included. Other posters have suggested more relevant categories. What a shame because it is otherwise a really interesting exercise.
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There's no option for "kept in limbo".
Picture this scenario:-
You lose your job
You have large debts
You put yourself in the hands of a debt firm
Since you have nothing, no one wants to pay £460 to bankrupt you.
The debt albeit being paid at £1 per month never ever gets liquidated.
Becase of this, you are discouraged from ever getting fresh employment, since you are expected to increase payments to the debt firm based on your new income.
You are therefore encouraged to remain forever in the doldrums - all because debts that the original creditor has long since written off are still being pursued by third-party debt collectors.
There should be a reasonable time limit (a year and a day?) for debt collectors to rein in all the money they can, including via making one bankrupt. If they do none of these things, the debt should be statute barred after a year and a day - and yet it is not. A change in the law is needed.
I estimate a HUGE amount can be done to get the economy moving again should the government make this simple choice that is free to the taxpayer.
Rather than printing money, lowering interest rates, and using taxpayer money to bribe businesses not to lay people off, why not just give people in debt (millions!) their lives back?
It is currently as if banks are to be rewarded for reckless lending, but the full penalty must forever be paid by those in debt - even unsecured and written off debt. It's about time that banks started paying their share rather than the present situation of taking the big taxpayer-funded bailout only to now keep their hands in their pockets and not resume lending to ordinary people.
Another advantage of a "national unsecured debt amnesty" would be that interest rates could then be put straight back to "normal" levels, with only new borrowers paying the higher rates.
To prevent a repeat of the early 1990's with outstanding mortgages - trackers in particular - new products need to be brought in that allow ANY mortgage payer to fix at a rate based on the current base at any time - not just for those with great credit records as is the case at present.
The Economic problems CAN be solved, free to the taxpayer. All it takes is the political will to make the banks pay their share.
Bailing out the banks has merely lined their pockets, and has not dramatically improved the public good. Citizens with savings are being further discouraged from keeping their savings within the banking system - just as the system needs them most. The entire capitalist system has been turned on its head - and for what? Just so the status quo order can be maintained?
It is labour's last chance to really make a difference - so they'd better hurry up and get on with it.
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Credit cruch has not affected me yet, i still have a job i even got a pay rise, there seems to be lots of cheap things to buy and i have no debt. I'm looking to buy a house soon and prices are dropping, lending rates are good and fuel is cheap again. My company is working well and our competition is dropping like flys making us more competitive.
I'm in favor of the cruch!
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Are you talking here about the 'credit crunch' or the recession? These are two very different things with different results.
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At the time of the large increases in gas prices "they" stated that gas prices were linked to oil prices, which at the time were growing like Topsy.
Now that oil prices have more than halved why do gas prices remain unchanged?
It always is an enigma to me how, when gas prices need to rise, there has been no forward purchasing...so they go up immediately. BUT when they should come down there has been forward purchasing for months in advance...so no dercrease.
Am I being cynical or are we being robbed and let down by the government?
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To be honest, none of the choices given reflect what has really affected me most about the credit crunch. My Big Issue is the reduction in interest rates, and therefore revenue, from my savings. This adversely impacts my spending in all areas - mortgage, food, petrol. You should give consideration to the negative impact of ultra low interest rates - no-one else seems too...
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