Nice people thread part 7 - a thread in its prime

dinofabio

PasturesNew wrote: »

Talking of stickered items - I frequent a 24 hour Tesco round these parts.... I've been in there at all times of day/night .... the most I've ever seen off anything is 10-30p. Items reduced from £4.50 down to £4.20 .... not a bargain. Sandwiches at £1.89 reduced to £1.79, keep 'em.

Not all stores discount .... or they get emptied before they can be reduced further.

It's all about timing. Supermarkets usually start yellow stickering late afternoon, small discounts to start, then big discounts to get rid of what ever's left.

I've got a friend who lives very close to a big Asda, and pops in most days to grab discounted items. She has got the timing off to a fine art, regularly getting half priced meat, fresh fish, etc

I'm like you - always end up paying the going rate!:mad:

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

Somebody was asking what to do with loads of fresh ginger.... and somebody posted a link to a nice ginger cake.... I now have a ginger cake recipe in my stash of "things I'd like but will never get round to making".

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1711/squidgy-lemonginger-cake

Ooh, my mother makes THE BEST ginger cake, But it's with stem ginger from a jar, not fresh ginger. The modern ones I've tried with fresh ginger are cleaner, hotter and fresher, but it's my mother's I think of when I think of ultimate ginger cakes.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

Ooh, my mother makes THE BEST ginger cake, But it's with stem ginger from a jar, not fresh ginger. The modern ones I've tried with fresh ginger are cleaner, hotter and fresher, but it's my mother's I think of when I think of ultimate ginger cakes.

I like ginger beer and ginger cake.... never made any though and never bought ginger (yet).

Do you have the recipe?

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I like ginger beer and ginger cake.... never made any though and never bought ginger (yet).

Do you have the recipe?

Nope. But it's willed to me. She has given it before and I lost it. I could probably work it out especially as I know three key ingrediants ...but.....it would be cheating.:D

michaels

We had yellow stickered porkchops with built in stuffing at 55% off so probably 2.70 for pork chops that would have cost 4 quid had they not been 'fancy' Generally it is the poncey stuff that is reduced to a price that makes it just normally expensive and stuff that is on 2 for £x where the reduction makes it no cheaper per unit than buying 2. As an example some nice looking potato type thing was reduced from 2 something to a quid but we would have needed 3 pots which meant that just the potato bit of the meal would be 3 quid - normally we get 7.5kg of potatoes for that price...

zagubov

Got prawns in coriander and prawns in linguini and guacamole. £2 the lot. Can't eat them tonight so it's tomorrow.
If I suddenly stop posting we know the prawns will have wreaked an evil revenge on me.

If they decide to make a posthumous film of my life/ put my head on a stamp/ carve my likeness into a hillside whatever/ at least Brad Pitt's still around to remind everyone what I looked like.

misskool

PasturesNew wrote: »

I like ginger beer and ginger cake.... never made any though and never bought ginger (yet).

Do you have the recipe?

Ginger beer is dead easy. Find a jar, 1 tsp ginger (fresh or dried) and 1 tsp sugar with 12g yeast (baking yeast or brewer's yeast will work). Then 2 cups of water of water. Add ginger and sugar everyday. It should start foaming after a day or two.

After a week, drain through muslin and keep half the residue. Add 3 cups of sugar, 4 cups of water and juice of 2 large lemons (the ready squeezed stuff is fine) to the juice and bottle. Leave a gap for gas.

Scrape residue off muslin, keep half and repeat as before. Rinse and repeat ad infinitium

PasturesNew

misskool wrote: »

Ginger beer is dead easy. ....It should start foaming after a day or two.

After a week, .....Leave a gap for gas.

I know... my mum used to make it when I was younger.... and I also know that it has to be kept outside/away from the house as it can explode.

We had a few explode over the years. Nasty mess it leaves.

I have nowhere to keep such things.... I've also never fancied clearing up broken glass

SingleSue

I don't like ginger.....

Generali

michaels wrote: »

What is 1 AUD worth in real money?

About 0.17g of gold.

In fiat currency it's about 63p on the exchanges. Using PPP it's more like 40-50p IMO, depending on how you look at it (I always reckon Gillette razor blades are a good starting point for PPP calculations). I think the official data show the Pound is 10% over valued vs the USD and the AUD 60% using PPP.

Shorting AUD/USD or indeed any currency pair with the Aussie on the short side looks like an immensely profitable trade to me.

michaels wrote: »

A high minimum wage obviously pushes a lot of payments on to employers rather than the tax payer as income support top ups but no doubt it also results n part in the high prices you mention and also at the margin no doubt reduces employment.

Unemployment levels are rarely high in Australia, in fact there are terrible problems getting enough people to do the work that is available right now. Partly that's due to mandated working arrangements, for example it's normal to see one man digging a road and 2 people managing the traffic! Also there is a strange insistence on skilling-up jobs, Australia must be the only country in the world where you need to pass an exam to be a security guard or a barman!

If there is a downturn, which looks highly likely, then people will be priced out of work and we are certainly starting to see that in the retail industry where shops are closing and high salaries are being explicitly named by the liquidator, who has no axe to grind, as the reason for the company folding. Don't forget though that because Aussie taxes are pretty low, it costs less to employ someone at any given salary than in many European countries.

michaels wrote: »

Is it in the case that in the UK tax credits are counted as negative tax and excluded from the % of gdp the govt claims to spend?

They have a so-called 'split treatment': money that is deducted from the tax bill is counted as a reduction in the tax take whereas money that is actually paid out, even if it is nominally a 'tax credit', counts as public spending. It's best to give an example.

Say you have someone on £200 a week paying £20 in tax. They have a child so get £30 in tax credits meaning they go from paying £20 in tax to having 'negative tax' of £10.

In the national accounts that will be shown as a reduction in tax revenue of £20 and an increase in Government spending of £10.

The other way this could be accounted for, but is not in the UK, is a 'gross method'. When the woman in the above article has a child, her tax remains unchanged and Government spending rises by £30. That is what is recommended under GAAP.

I'm not going to politicise the NPT by adding any sort of comment but will merely add that it's worth considering the following 5 questions to guide you to enlightenment:
1. Which party introduced tax credits?
2. Which party benefits from having a large client group that is heavily reliant on transfers of funds from the other taxpayers?
3. Who would benefit from an understatement of Government spending when introducing a new transfer of income from one group to another?
4. Why would a previous Government want to use the split treatment of tax credits when the Office for National Statistics lobbied for a gross treatment to be used?
5. Why would a Government ignore the GAAP methodology that it brought into law so that it appeared that Government spending was lower that it actually is?