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Listed below are comments made by DigAndDelve between Saturday, 28th February 2009 and Thursday, 17th September 2009.

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Banks can learn from retailers 10:50pm on 17 Sep 2009 #63. writingsonthewall

"VAT rate ... However I will be surprised if they keep the rate at 15% - because we all know it's difficult to get something back from someone the more they get used to it."

When I did my VAT return on-line a couple of days ago, I think that I saw on the HMRC web site a notice that VAT will return to 17.5 per cent in January.
Should the banks back Britain? 08:56am on 08 Apr 2009 #191 moraymint

First, I endorse everything you have said in your comments to this RP blog entry.

Second, something about the choice of reports included in the Radio 4 "Today" 7.00am bulletin this morning suggested to me that the way NuLabour are going to deflect public anger about their abuse of expenses is to set one group of people against another. We know how insidious and destructive that device is: from Baghdad to Harare, from Palestine to Nairobi, divide and rule breaks dependencies and undermines tolerance.

For instance: some people's outrage will easily be deflected away from politicians's greed by learning that the State pays for hospital chaplains.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7988476.stm

I heard an interviewer on Radio 4 asking if a patient in a hospital bed would rather be surrounded by more cleaners and nurses or have access to a chaplain. I think that ill or badly injured people should have everything they need. Making them choose between cleaners and spiritual comfort and support is just obscene.
A cuckoo in the stock market? 8:36pm on 06 Apr 2009 No, we haven't heard a cuckoo announcing green shoots or anything like it. The Grocer magazine reports that the price of staple foods has risen by 18 per cent in the last year. Many forms of protein that were good and fairly cheap alternatives to (expensive) meat now cost 30 per cent more. Those price rises are not about to be reversed.

Another comment made here a day or two bears repeating: a million people in the UK with jobs today will not have jobs by next Christmas.

Shall we run a sweepstake on when State benefits are withdrawn or drastically reduced - because of all that tax revenue lost when businesses go bust because banks won't lend them the wherewithall to fulfill their orders - after all, the State benefit system is a fairly recent innovation? There is no let up in my stockpiling of tinned food, extending my chicken run, etc. I see no hope whatsoever of things getting better for another decade. I do see politicians in league with bankers to keep the bubble in the air until the next election.
Goodwin's tax break 8:33pm on 17 Mar 2009 According to someone posting this evening on the Democratic Underground Forum (in the US), Congress is considering a bill under which any of the 73 (?) executives who received AIG bonuses - made possible only by the bail-out - would have to pay tax on those bonuses at around 90 per cent.

I am sure there is downside to that but the greed with public money has to stop.

Robert, tell us more about how Cherie Booth is about to become even richer, feeding off the carcass of our tax revenue, enabled by her husband's successor. The whole scene grows more grotesque by the minute.
Clawing back Sir Fred's pension 09:48am on 04 Mar 2009 #181 novoludo wrote:

The reality is that we don't really know now where to go from here. I would be grateful for anyone who has any real insights ... So where now?

Well, I offer this, although I don't know if it qualifies as a real insight.

I was born and brought up in African countries and I think that the UK has to start thinking like a Third World country now, in order not to become a Third World country. Everyone over the age of 8 should be inventing, growing and making stuff to sell. Starting today.

I also think that the Church of England should pull its money out of investments in shares and make it available as micro-loans to people to buy stuff to enable them to start making or growing stuff. Eg to acquire the kit to start a canning business and the basic food hygiene qualification necessary.
Clawing back Sir Fred's pension 09:40am on 04 Mar 2009 Did anyone else hear Gordon Brown on Radio 4 "Today" this morning saying that it was the fault of the Dutch authorities that RBS' takeover of ABM Amro had been a disaster?

Does he know what due diligence means?

Brown also kept saying that the global banking system had "seized up", as if this was something that could happen to anyone by chance, by pure bad luck.
Will China be strengthened by adversity? 3:01pm on 02 Mar 2009 #92 writingsonthewall wrote:

Chinese record on product safety ... no worse than the rest of the world - they're just not as good as covering it up as us.

Over the next few years the increased dominance of China will cast a bright light over the Hypocrisy of the west.

Not until they stop putting the industrial chemical melamine in infant formula (poisoned more than 50,000 Chinese babies in 2008) and other milk products, and in eggs and pet food (in 2007 around 4,000 pet cats and dogs in the USA died of renal failure caused by melamine in pet food).
HBOS: Strong men will weep 11:00pm on 01 Mar 2009 # 528 shireblogger wrote:

Talking of last October, this January and now can you introduce us all to these "advisers" who have conceived and delivered Bail-out Number One ( capitalisation and credit guarantees), Bail-out Number Two and Bail-out Number Three ( extended liquidity schemes, asset purchases, asset guarantees). Tell us about ...

And all without any Parliamentary debate or oversight. Absolutely insane.
HBOS: Strong men will weep 5:14pm on 28 Feb 2009 # 397 lobbygroupdotorg wrote:

"It would be neat if the Post Offices were inundated by people opening accounts on Monday morning. Might stop MandyPandy's scheme."

The Post Office seems only to introduce savers to the Bank of Ireland. From the Money Saving Expert forum, Martin Lewis' blog:

Bank of Ireland provides all Post Office branded savings products (with the exception of its Child Trust Fund)

Whether or not the Irish government could meet its compensation guarantees is not known, particularly since (a) it took over ownership of the Anglo Irish Bank and (b) as reported in the Daily Telegraph 24 February 2009 the Irish police have raided the head office of Anglo Irish Bank.
HBOS: Strong men will weep 08:47am on 28 Feb 2009 #304. rbs_temp wrote: "There have been recessions before and there will doubtless be many more ahead. This one is a little deeper than others recently but, in the end, it is just a recession and recessions are little more than a collective state of mind."

A "collective state of mind" is not a definition of a recession that I have read anywhere else. Lost manufacturing, mounting unemployment, jobs gone overseas, home repossessions running at several hundred a week, ordinary savers losing 80 per cent of their income from their own savings (or losing their savings altogether), ballooning State benefits bill, eye-watering rises in prices of staple foods - all just a "state of mind" to you?

"Two years from now the banks will be profitable again, house prices will be rising and the financial panic of 2008/9 will be all but forgotten."

If this crisis were just about UK banks, you might be right. But it is not - it is a worldwide contagion - and when VAT goes up to 20 per cent, and everyone is being taxed at 45p in the pound, you will not see house prices rising.

We are only at the start of an accelerating cataclysm. More bank crashes to come and, very likely, resignation of the Government.

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