Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

vivatifosi

silvercar wrote: »

Given that no central heating has ever been put in the house, I wouldn't be surprised if its been owned by the same people since new and certain essential works were never, ever done.

I was really surprised when I saw the house was to see how relatively "young" it was. Wasn't some form of heating installed when it was new? Maybe an old back boiler or underfloor?

silvercar

vivatifosi wrote: »

I was really surprised when I saw the house was to see how relatively "young" it was. Wasn't some form of heating installed when it was new? Maybe an old back boiler or underfloor?

A few electric wall heaters dotted around.

Davesnave

vivatifosi wrote: »

I was really surprised when I saw the house was to see how relatively "young" it was. Wasn't some form of heating installed when it was new? Maybe an old back boiler or underfloor?

Or storage heaters. Easy option in the 70s. I wired up my own and paid for them on 'easy terms!'

silvercar

We looked at a house a few doors down in 1987. It had a downstairs extension, central heating and a new kitchen and bathroom and was on the market at 85k. We thought it overpriced.

StevieJ

Pobby wrote: »

Going to pop up a couple of links. Let me know what you think. Us older members may remember a time on Top of the Pops when he sang Gordon is a Moron.

Yes that little ditty was quite popular around 2008

LydiaJ

lemonjelly wrote: »

Sounds to me you did a good focussed job there mate!
At the peril of teaching you to suck eggs, if you drop the word "safeguarding" into the conversation, the head should sit up a bit more - but you probably know this.:o

I am sure you will monitor this closely & take the right course of action. I would suggest that if there are any repeat incidents & you have to see the head again, I'd be stressing that the head had the option to address the bullyinh at the first meeting, & apparently chose not to, focussing on your son rather than the bullying, which was a mistake.

Thanks lemonjelly. That "safeguarding" suggestion is really helpful - there are other people in my school who officially suck that particular egg (I just have to pass anything on to them), so the jargon hadn't immediately sprung to my mind.

DS said it was as bad as ever today, but he seemed much less upset about it, and reasonably able to shrug off today's incidents and get on with fighting with his sister over whose turn it was to play on the wii. I am not sure if this is
a) because he had retreated into his "don't want to talk about it" shell, or
b) because actually it wasn't as bad today, but he has a problem with discerning shades of grey emotionally and usually remembers things as all good or all bad.

Meanwhile another mother from the class has been telling me shocking stories of X disrupting other kids' work, and lying to get them into trouble, and essentially getting away with it, even when the teachers had worked out what was going on. I am bearing in mind that she has heard the stories from her kids, who may be exaggerating, but all the same.... Interestingly, DS is under the impression that he is the only one on the receiving end of X, Y & Z's unpleasantness, although that's clearly not the case. I have still not managed to get hold of Z's mother.

ETA Am considering getting DS to keep a diary of exactly what is said and done.

Davesnave

silvercar wrote: »

We looked at a house a few doors down in 1987. It had a downstairs extension, central heating and a new kitchen and bathroom and was on the market at 85k. We thought it overpriced.

In Bath, not Herts, but that was exactly what my Dad said about the semi we bought in 1987 after our friends had given it a makeover. We paid £70k.

It would sell now for about £315k, though we got slightly less for daring to continue marketing it through 2008.

Edit: but I forgot that we extended to 4 beds.

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

If there was no implied backing why would anyone lend the Greeks anything at those paltry interest rates?

There is a sort of trade in banking called a 'repo'. This is where a bank borrows money from another bank using bonds as collateral. Ordinarily the fact that a repo exists wouldn't have an impact on relative bond prices. But........

....there isn't a free market in repos. The BoE base rate used to be called the Repo Rate because this is the rate at which the BoE (and latterly the ECB) will enter into a repo. The ECB maintained a fiction that all Government bonds issued by Governments in the Eurozone were equal as collateral so would lend on the same basis to someone offering Greek debt as they would to someone offering German debt.

Now if you are on the borrowing side of a repo, you still get the coupons (interest payments) on the bonds you have put up as collateral. It wouldn't take a genius to go out and buy Greek bonds and put them up as collateral and then make a small profit on the interest rate differential between the repo and the Greek debt whilst simply ignoring the fact that there was a default risk.

Effectively, the ECB's repo policy forced down market interest rates in Greece, Spain etc and made investment booms (bubbles) all but inevitable. What they should have done IMHO is price different collateral differently but you can imagine how that would have gone down politically. That's the trouble with Governments involving themselves in markets, everything becomes political.

The people in these trades picked up their bonuses and retired long ago. I know a former bond trader who is now taking fly fishing lessons in the West Country. He's a nice guy and retired aged about 37-ish, possibly on the back of trades like that.

lemonjelly

Generali wrote: »

There is a sort of trade in banking called a 'repo'. This is where a bank borrows money from another bank using bonds as collateral. Ordinarily the fact that a repo exists wouldn't have an impact on relative bond prices. But........

....there isn't a free market in repos. The BoE base rate used to be called the Repo Rate because this is the rate at which the BoE (and latterly the ECB) will enter into a repo. The ECB maintained a fiction that all Government bonds issued by Governments in the Eurozone were equal as collateral so would lend on the same basis to someone offering Greek debt as they would to someone offering German debt.

Now if you are on the borrowing side of a repo, you still get the coupons (interest payments) on the bonds you have put up as collateral. It wouldn't take a genius to go out and buy Greek bonds and put them up as collateral and then make a small profit on the interest rate differential between the repo and the Greek debt whilst simply ignoring the fact that there was a default risk.

Effectively, the ECB's repo policy forced down market interest rates in Greece, Spain etc and made investment booms (bubbles) all but inevitable. What they should have done IMHO is price different collateral differently but you can imagine how that would have gone down politically. That's the trouble with Governments involving themselves in markets, everything becomes political.

The people in these trades picked up their bonuses and retired long ago. I know a former bond trader who is now taking fly fishing lessons in the West Country. He's a nice guy and retired aged about 37-ish, possibly on the back of trades like that.

Pssst! We only talk cr4p here about shoes, chocolate, bathroom suites, music, comedy & everyday stuff. That rest of the board type stuff, looks out of place!;) Did no-one tell ya?:p

NB it would look out of place on the board too, to be honest, as it makes sense!:D

PasturesNew

Generali wrote: »

There is a sort of trade in banking called a 'repo'. This is where a bank borrows money from another bank using bonds as collateral. Ordinarily the fact that a repo exists wouldn't have an impact on relative bond prices. But........

....there isn't a free market in repos. The BoE base rate used to be called the Repo Rate because this is the rate at which the BoE (and latterly the ECB) will enter into a repo. The ECB maintained a fiction that all Government bonds issued by Governments in the Eurozone were equal as collateral so would lend on the same basis to someone offering Greek debt as they would to someone offering German debt.

Now if you are on the borrowing side of a repo, you still get the coupons (interest payments) on the bonds you have put up as collateral. It wouldn't take a genius to go out and buy Greek bonds and put them up as collateral and then make a small profit on the interest rate differential between the repo and the Greek debt whilst simply ignoring the fact that there was a default risk.

Effectively, the ECB's repo policy forced down market interest rates in Greece, Spain etc and made investment booms (bubbles) all but inevitable. What they should have done IMHO is price different collateral differently but you can imagine how that would have gone down politically. That's the trouble with Governments involving themselves in markets, everything becomes political.

The people in these trades picked up their bonuses and retired long ago. I know a former bond trader who is now taking fly fishing lessons in the West Country. He's a nice guy and retired aged about 37-ish, possibly on the back of trades like that.

Exactly as I've been saying here for years, of course.

Except that last bit about the chap ..... did you happen to have his phone number?