Are there green shoots out there or not?

I suppose that the famous green shoots are out there in the UK economy but don't tell
anybody in the car industry. However, retail sales are doing well and house prices have not collapsed, although there is not the same size of market. British house prices are still discouraging the first-time buyer and mortgage lenders still want outsize deposits but physical assets retain their allure, if there is going to be major inflation.
Commentators say that the UK banks have stabilised but the spotlight has fallen on the state of the building societies with the West Brom considered to be in trouble. Then, there is the UK property sector, which is in a dire state. Apparently, the banks don't want to pull the plug and make the situation worse. The wheels have fallen off at Brixton Estate and there are mutterings about
Land Securities.
The Bank of England governor Mervyn King is not very upbeat about the short-term outlook to the consternation of the Brown regime. However, the medicine of low interest rates, a weak currency could be helped further if there was a sense of political stability.

I feel quite sorry for Gordon Brown, battered British Premier.

I thought I would never have to say this. But I am feeling quite sorry for Gordon Brown, the battered premier of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He seems unable to
sack a pint-sized Mancunian from his cabinet, even though she has been disloyal and seems to have spent quite a bit of time playing the capital gains system. The story is that is if Gordon Brown sacks Hazel Blears, then he would have to sack Hoon, Purnell
etc.

Hazel Blears looks like she is walking the plank.

British Communities minister Hazel Blears, who is vertically challenged, recently took a pop at her boss UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This act of bravery looks like political suicide, when Blears was found to have been "flipping" her second residences and decided to cough up over £13,000 in capital gains tax. What is quite sad is that Blears' political career is over when she was one of the cabinet's few interesting characters.
Brown himself blames the "system" but not everyone played it to their advantage. The government is quite happy to let loose the police and HM Revenue & Customs on the population. I suppose it is too much to hope that the politicians will receive the
tender treatment from these forces of control. From what I remember the old Inland Revenue used to be very particular about expenses.

PS: It looks like I was completely wrong and that Ms Blears is still going to soldier on in the cabinet together with Purnell and Hoon.

FSA failed savers, claims ex-Singer boss.

That was one of the headlines in the business section of the Daily Telegraph published yesterday. The former chief executive of UK bank Singer and Friedlander ,Tony Shearer said, that the Financial Services Authority (FSA), one of the creations of our great leader Gordon Brown, ignored his concerns about the competence of the Icelandic buyers Kaupthing. Shearer said the Icelandic businessmen were not fit and proper, which is quite an insult in the staid (??) world of banking.

I suppose everyone understands that the FSA really made a horlicks in the supervision of the British banking sector but it is still in denial. In the case of Singer and Friedlander, Kaupthing acquired the British bank in 2005. This followed the strategic need for a new customer base for deposits, since the Icelandic group had run out of savers amongst its domestic population. This amounts to 300,000 people, a similar number to the population of Coventry.
In hindsight the FSA could have been less welcoming to the Icelandic raiders. Perhaps the Bank of England could have done better and it looks like it is making a pitch for future regulation of banks.

Sorry for the recent break in blogs!! Gordon Brown!

Dear Gordon Brown, sorry for the recent break in the blogs. I know you enjoy being Prime Minister of England but I think you should resign our to patriotic duty. You had to jettison your really big pal Damian McBride and you might have to let go your old mucker Alistair Darling. Having to release Pakistani nationals after you described them as participating in a major terrorist plot seems to show that you have forgotten the first rules of dealing with the police and with the Home Office (Jacqui Smith!!). Namely, be very careful because of their stunning incompetence.

I am sure MPs such as Frank Field and the Milibands are sharpening their knives. Even Alan Johnson must think that he can't be any worse than you as a prime minister.
Do you want to give them the credit, just resign. Quite a few of the Labour Party think you are off your head anyway. Gordon, you have gone global but you have forgotten to go local. There was a BBC news clip this week about the dreadful situation in Merthyr. I thought New Labour was going to sort this out. You have managed to abandon your party's heartlands.

Gordon, you have killed the economic goose of England. We could never afford Scotland and Wales (never mind Northern Ireland, perhaps the most subsidised place in the world) even in the good times. So those future public expenditure cuts might mean Trident. However, more likely they will be the much vaunted Scottish university financing system and the massive local councils in Wales. These areas could easily be
pruned.

So to conclude, dear Gordon, you had your chance. Your unique selling point was that you were going to run the economy so competently so that there would be no problem in financing extra expenditure on schools and hospitals (all those PFI hospitals in
Merseyside!!) Now, to keep the show on the road you are expecting Johnny Foreigner to buy shed loads of gilts. Dream on!!

Are we experiencing a bear market rally?

Suddenly, the stock markets either side of the pond have perked up. There might be some of those green shoots of recovery but are we experiencing a bear market rally? The UK property market seems a bit perkier in terms of anecdotal evidence and of the Nationwide Building Society positive numbers for the month of
March.
The Bank of England governor Mervyn King seems to be in a bit of a quandary about quantitative easing and after using it to buy a few gilts. The governor has acknowledged that inflation is too high. In his column in the Sunday Telegraph, pundit Liam Halligan notes the Bank of England's own pension scheme is 70 pct invested in index-linked instruments compared with the previous 25 pct.
The British government still has to rescue the car industry, which means giving money to foreign manufacturers. This compares with the rise in car sales in Germany helped by the country's scrappage incentives. The British government has been traditionally anti the motorist and seemssto want cars to be sold from the forecourt so they could sit on the drive.

Enough of the doom and gloom, let's praise the top corporates!!

My dear readers, I know that I moan on about the state of the British economy and the uselessness of UK Premier Gordon Brown. A slight diversion on the new powers being assumed by HMRC from April Fool's Day, aaggrrhh!! Why does the Revenue needs draconian search powers? I recommend retail investors (although I should not because the blog is not an advice page) to put as much moolah in tax-efficient schemes such as pensions, ISAs and even National Savings
(such as humble premium bonds, if there is deflation).

But today I am going to extol the virtues of Sky.Com. I like the easy-to-use satellite television service and its broadband internet service is quite robust. It always seems to work and does not have the connection problems of Virgin Media.

I read in last week's Sunday Telegraph a profile of the head of the Tesco
retail services group Andy Higginson but I am just amazed by tesco.com. I recently got some car insurance for an old banger, so that the nipper can do some driving practice and it came up with the Irish insurance company Quinn Direct. It also getting me interested in Tesco's offers and promotions.

Another top corporate is Manchester United. I recently went to see them play at home to Liverpool and whereas the match was more of a disaster than the sinking of the Titanic, I was seriously impressed by how well they organised the mass corporate hospitality. It was a shame that a lot of Man Utd fans did not stay to the end to support (in the real meaning of the word) their team through thick and thin. I expect some Man Utd fans are just satiated with success. I remember watching them in the season they went down and the fans still cheered although it was pretty dire stuff.

The final corporate in my list is JD Wetherspoon and I frequent their hostelries in Enfield and Potters Bar. I am very attracted by their promotions.