Government to offer loans to buy cars

SingleSue

purch wrote: »

LEA's have a statutory duty to transport children with special needs.

Can you not appeal to a higher authority.

We (school, specialist teacher and myself) appealed as high as we could go locally but to be honest, it was causing more stress than was good for us all.

Our education authority have a lovely way of doing things....they advise you where would be best for your child to go taking into account the needs of the child and then when you go with their advice, they then tell you that as you have gone out of catchment, you have to provide transport yourself, rather canny if you ask me.

The local catchment school (literally across the road from me), wouldn't take my youngest as they didn't have the facilities and my middle one had to leave there as they and him couldn't cope with each other.

Anyway, things will become easier transport wise in September, for the first time ever, I will have 2 children at the same school.....still 4 miles away though.

I am not the only one I hasten to add, at my youngest sons school they have a special needs department plus an inclusive resource (they had the junior area support unit when they were still around), approx 15 - 20 children are in the former ASU and inclusive resource and only 2 children get transport, the rest have to be taken by their parents..some of those live further out than me and their children have much worse disabilities.

When my youngest was at the specialist Autism school in Ipswich, he did receive transport...or was supposed to but it just didn't work (he couldn't cope with the strange vehicle, ever changing drivers etc, adult companion hitting my son because he was making high pitched noises through stress), it ended up with my son refusing to even go near the vehicles and either myself or his outreach teacher ended up taking him the ten miles to school.

It was more of a begger before my middle son started high school, his primary school was even further away and the school start times were exactly the same...that was fun I can tell you!

One of the problems with provided transport is that the parent is not there for handover....something myself and the school has found essential over the last few years (especially this morning!). It does add to the school run time but my word is it worth it.

Mind you, I wouldn't turn the transport down if it was offered!

Wookster

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

With respect, I do get it. Market fundamentalism led to a debt bubble that eventually led to the Credit Crunch. Market fundamentalists would then compound the damage by failing to ameliorate the fallout from the credit crunch. Having too much and then too little credit is a result of allowing markets too free a rein. It is just a different side of the same coin, laissez faire.

And what needs to happen now is the people need to pay down debt rather than take on more.

People make out that banks aren't lending at all - this just isn't the case - if you have a good credit rating and are in a stable job you will still be able to borrow, perhaps at a higher interest rate than before.

(Though I think buying a new car is ill advised - you're guaranteed to lose at 30-30% of the value by driving it off the showroom floor).

Generali

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

This damages all companies, efficient or not. Just look at the Nissan Sunderland plant for an example. Recessions are not moral, God-like beings that only punish the wicked. The inefficient companies that have been done for in this recession are the banks, which have have had knock on effects to the rest of the economy. Given your banking background, you must realise the systemic importance of the banking system. It does not matter how efficient a company is, if there is no demand for the product. If that lack of demand is due to another sector wrecking the economy, then support is appropriate. I sometimes wonder if right-wingers want Capitalism to survive.

Recessions aren't moral I agree completely.

Now I don't know what's happened at Nissan Sunderland but I guess it's closed or gone on short hours. Did Nissan burn it down or have it bulldozed? My guess is that they didn't.

So what's the problem if the factory goes bust? Another producer buys it, one that can use it better and they make money and so do their workers.

I'm not sure what your point is with the banks vis-a-vis morality. That the banking system survives is important. That particular banks do isn't.

Sir_Humphrey

Generali wrote: »

Now I don't know what's happened at Nissan Sunderland but I guess it's closed or gone on short hours. Did Nissan burn it down or have it bulldozed? My guess is that they didn't.

They have laid off workers. Restoring capacity is difficult when you need engineers, the long term effects on proper industry are very different to the banking 'industry'.

Generali wrote: »

So what's the problem if the factory goes bust? Another producer buys it, one that can use it better and they make money and so do their workers.

Not without demand, they can't. Having a company that is viable in the long term destroyed by a short term recession is just crazy.

Generali wrote: »

I'm not sure what your point is with the banks vis-a-vis morality. That the banking system survives is important. That particular banks do isn't.

The point is the inter-relatedness of the banks. If one is allowed to go bust, with a wipeout of depositors, then there would be a flight from other banks. This is exactly what happened in the USA in 1930/31. Even banks without depositors, such as Lehman's, caused these knock-on effects. It is cheaper to rescue them (there are various ways of doing this, Roosevelt's method is probably the best) then nail their nadgers to the board with regulation in the eventual upturn so they don't do it again. It worked last time in the 1930s. If banks cannot be restrained, then the conclusion would be that Capitalism just doesn't work (history shows they can be restrained BTW).

purch

Our education authority have a lovely way of doing things....they advise you where would be best for your child to go taking into account the needs of the child and then when you go with their advice, they then tell you that as you have gone out of catchment, you have to provide transport yourself, rather canny if you ask me

Doesn't surprise me unfortunately. :mad:

My LEA tried to amalgamate their dedicated special needs mini-bus with my son's mini-bus after Xmas, to save ££. Didn't bother them that one of the SN kids has cystic-fibrosis and cannot walk far, and that the new bigger bus couldn't get to her house, only to the end of a lane 1/2 mile away !!!!

It took the Bus operator to make the decision to continue to run 2 vehicles, even though they now only get paid for 1 !!!!

WTF?_2

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

Making stuff that no-one needs is called Capitalism, my dear old thing. If you do nothing, then having a long running recession/depression becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, with all the problems that causes. There is a choice: the recession cannot be avoided now but it can be ameliorated. EDIT: I don't think people have stopped wanting cars, the lack of demand is due to the credit crunch. You need to look strategically at these issues, and not just follow market fundamentalism.

Give people money and they'll certainly spend it and boost the economy. The credit bubble was as close to giving people money as you'll ever see. Just about anyone could secure a large amount of money at a cheap rate so long as they could sign their name on a credit agreement.

The problem is that money is supposed to represent a store of wealth accrued as a result of doing something productive. And credit means you agree to pay back the loan with your own work in the future, plus interest on top.

Hence you can't just keep creating endless credit. At some stage the people have to work to pay it back - their part of the bargain when they borrowed the money. That time has now come, en-masse, due to the complete implosion of the infamous 'shadow banking system' that was fuelling the bubble - which ain't coming back any time soon.

This economy is only going to recover when people have paid down debts to the level where they are manageable and savers have recapitalised the banks to a level that supports sensible lending. That means a large part of the 'prosperity' we took for granted since the turn of the century is gone - unless we can grow our economy to be productive and efficient and earn the money to live that sort of a lifestyle.

Any

Wookster wrote: »

And what needs to happen now is the people need to pay down debt rather than take on more.).

And what if they haven't got any???
There are some people out there that find it difficult just because they haven't got any credit yet and still find it difficult to get a loan.

[/quote](Though I think buying a new car is ill advised - you're guaranteed to lose at 30-30% of the value by driving it off the showroom floor).[/quote]

That is true, or maybe was true. now you can buy a new car with 25% off the list price, so you will not loose the value as you used too....

Anyway, who buys a car just to sell it in a year????

I want a new car, drive it for 7 years and then see (my current car is 13yrs old this March)...

anguk

The thing is it's not just the inability to get bank loans that has stopped people from buying new cars, it's the fact that they cost so much to run now. The government has penalised and taxed drivers so much that many people now can't afford to run a car, so they're not buying them, so the car industry suffers, then the government bails them out! Is it just me that thinks this is mental?

If the government reduced duty on fuel and made it more affordable to run a car then more people would be buying them and maybe the car industry wouldn't be suffering as much.

Sir_Humphrey

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Give people money and they'll certainly spend it and boost the economy. The credit bubble was as close to giving people money as you'll ever see. Just about anyone could secure a large amount of money at a cheap rate so long as they could sign their name on a credit agreement.

You fail to distinguish different uses of credit. Having a credit fuelled consumer boom was crazy, and I hope it doesn't happen again. But businesses need credit. They then put that to productive use and then use part of the resulting profit to repay the debt. Good bankers ensure that happens with the credit given out. I am sure you can see that the second use of credit for businesses is sustainable. Before the crunch, the banks failed to give credit to the correct parts of the economy, now they will not give it to any part of the economy. This must be remedied to avoid collapse, and it will happen eventually by any means necessary.

Generali

My Dear Sir Humphrey.

I'm still unclear why it is good for taxpayers to pay a company to make things that people don't want to buy. The point is the same be the product financial services, cars or hamburgers.

That was what the UK tried in the 1970s. Taxpayers paid people to make hopeless cars, ships & steel, dig coal, do removals (Pickfords was nationalised!), construct computers etc. It ended with the IMF coming in and (I assume) your bete noir (the Tories) gaining power for 18 years.

Perhaps anti-Capitalists/Socialists could try to find a better model to revert to than that which has failed so many times and so disastrously that tens of millions have paid with their lives (eg Nazism, Pol Pot, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism etc).

Best regards,

Generali.