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And 1st at last.
I take it the same is true of the yellows and purples?
Try this when you get a chance... much the best in it's class
BAT launches nicotine inhaler
BRITAIN’S biggest tobacco company is gearing up to launch another alternative to cigarettes — a nicotine inhaler that it may market under the brand name Voke.
The device is the latest move by British American Tobacco to insure against a decline in cigarette smoking by offering so-called harm reduction products. It recently became the first British tobacco company to sell electronic cigarettes.
BAT is working on plans to bring the inhaler to market. It has registered the trade mark Voke, although the company refused to confirm that this will be the official name of the device. It said that the Voke tag is “just an idea” and that nothing had been decided.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/business/Industry/article1320423.ece
They do say that they should have informed him in advance that the emails would be made public.
You have jumped to a conclusion that is short of any empirical data to support it.
Nothing else. Don't imply something that's not true
Thanks for replying to my question about your views on Johann Lamont and Margaret Curran.
I'm pretty equivocal on Help to Buy - I'd use it if I needed it and, from a pointlessly futile but feelgood POV, it's causing my house price to rocket - up £7k since I bought it in the summer. But it's clearly a demand-side measure when the problem is lack of supply. What's it like for FTBs who HAVE deposits? Presumably some will now be priced out of the market due to crowding over available properties?
House prices are principally driven by the availability and cost of mortgage finance. This applies to almost all UK segments except prime property in central London where foreign buyers tend to pay in cash.
New builds account for only 8.5% of total property sales. The rate of new dwelling construction has therefore only a marginal effect on house prices.
Many house price indices, particularly those compiled by estate agents, are based on asking price rather than transaction price. Asking prices increase in line with consumer confidence in the housing market and the volume of pre-sales activity. Asking prices tend to be more volatile than transaction prices, with higher short term peaks. Media coverage of house price rises unsurprisingly picks on the peaks.
Valuations commissioned by bank lenders are key constraints on increases in completion prices. If surveyors take a documentary view of price rises in a particular location, i.e. derive their valuations from historical transaction prices rather than estate agents' claims of asking price levels, then valuation surveys will become an important determinant of pricing. It doesn't matter how much a seller asks for if a bank is not prepared to lend at that value.
The current mortgage market is flat: new lending is being matched by capital repayments. Volumes of mortgage approvals are rising, from 68,228 in July 69,642 in August, a 2.07% increase. But the average value per approval fell over the same period from £158,400 in July to £156,800 in August, a fall of 1.01%. The prior six month average mortgage approval value is £156,000.
The above BBA stats may demonstrate that a greater proportion of lower than average value, new build properties are being purchased, but more probably they show that press and estate estate stories of "7%" rises are more hopeful thinking than reality.
Paging Ed Balls...
Hunt's alleged defamatory tweet has not been withdrawn nor has he issued an apology, merely a clarification of his core allegation.
Should I be booking a seat in the gallery of the libel courts, tim?
That is the key point which is consistently ignored. How many people go to the BBC website for their 'news'. It has too much power.
...and the PB Kinnocks are whining.
If I had known he was a railway enthusiast I would have been less bothered by him ousting Jeremy Browne. Railway enthusiasts are definitely good eggs.
It is solely due to the BBC's deliberate approach to a pay TV organisation (namely Sky) that F1 is, for the first time ever, not wholly free-to-air.
The BBC did this to ensure that a terrestrial rival (perhaps Channel 4) did not get F1. It looked after the BBC's interest, and didn't give a toss about the viewer. They deliberately shafted the licence fee-payer.
At the same time as F1 was deemed 'too expensive' (£30m), it spent £20m on the concept [NB just the concept, not studio, set design etc etc] of The Voice.
But no problems arose as a result did they?
It was a faction within the IMF below board level that was briefing against the UK and Osborne, That faction was led by the slippery, garlic scented, French and MIT trained economist Olivier Blancmange, of whom Paul Krugman wrote in NYT blog:
Olivier Blancmange Isn’t Very Serious
... That’s a very good thing. What’s even better is that as the chief economist at the IMF, he’s helping make at least one international institution less austerity-mad than the others.
Interesting too to note that back in April, Ed Conway was conniving with Blancmange to spread tittle-tattle about Osborne across the airwaves.
So what fun it is to see Ed Conway distancing himself from Blancmange on Sky News today.
Q2 was 0.7%
Q3 forecasts:1.0%, 1.2% (think I saw a 0.8% figure somewhere).
I still don't quite understand how 1.2% or 1.4% is a likely yearly growth rate.
The next election could go in many directions.
The ONS growth rate is quarter on previous quarter. Its annual growth rate is the product of the four quarter on quarter growth rates.
We are two thirds of the way through this coalition Government. Seven more quarters of growth before people are asked to vote on whether they think Labour has any credibility to do better than that.
The last Labour Govt. 2005-2010 achieved zero point zero percent growth.
Labour. Why would you?
Ed Miliband will never be Prime Minister.
Daily mail front page - MI5 chief :Guardian has handed a gift to terrorist.
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/86147/the_daily_mail_tuesday_8th_october_2013.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/conference/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
Of course King Dan will decide before the election to u-turn again, not out of conviction, but to be Murdochesque and back the winning side by quoting a few Tory policies which were "red lines", which will infuriate the PB Hodges.
19 months......tick tock to realisation.
It may be that Labour wins an outright majority but the alternatives do not have a 0% chance of happening.
PB Hodge: why do you and others so delight in the mass label applied to Those Who Disagree? I realise it's easier than engaging in debate and suggests some sort of mindless unity, but that is simply not true, and those who are regulars here realise that the ones who use such terms tend to have the least degree of objectivity and the highest degree of party loyalty (to Labour).
Perhaps you ought to be known as PB Simons, or PB McBrides. Or perhaps we could focus on attacking arguments rather than labelling people.
Their 2014 figure is 1.9%. If I assumed that the growth rate in subsequent quarters is all 0.5% and Q3=1%, which does not seem unreasonably high, then 2014 should be (2.7+2.5+2+2)/4 = 2.3%.
The third of the three SWIFT 'nowcasts' uses a slightly different methodology to the middle 'nowcast', as it includes more published ONS data to add to its own SWIFT payments traffic data. For Q2 for example, SWIFT's second 'nowcast' was for 0.1% before jumping to 0.7% for their third and final 'nowcast'. So we need to be cautious about the 0.8% nowcast.
If the Markit PMIs are taken as true indicators of GDP growth then 1.2% is the current forecast but economists are cautious of using PMIs to predict GDP outcomes as they tend to be based on mixture of soft confidence data and hard metrics.
So a range of 0.8% - 1.2% is as good as we can get today,
2012 Q3 0.6
2012 Q4 -0.3
2013 Q1 0.4 | y-o-y = 0.2%
2013 Q2 0.7 | y-o-y = 1.3%
2013 Q3 [1.0%] | y-o-y = 1.8%
2013 Q4 [x] |y-o-y=~ 2.1+x%
(0.2%+1.3%+1.8%+2.1%+x)/4=1.4%
(x+5.4)/4=1.4%
x+5.4=5.6%
x=0.2%
So the IMF are predicting ~0.2% growth in 2013 Q4 or less than 1% in Q3?
Sounds plausible.
Next point that could have polling implications will be the Q3 GDP numbers at the end of the month.
The other half will be if people feel like the recovery is theirs not somebody else's.
Chuckle. Do you normally use crayons?
Back to the drawing board!
"Total market sector employment is expected to rise by around 2.6 million
between the start of 2011 and the start of 2018, more than offsetting the total
reduction in general government employment of around 1.2 million. Excluding
the reclassification of almost 200,000 employees from the public to the private
sector in 2012, market sector employment is forecast to rise by 2.4 million and
public sector employment to fall by 1 million"
http://cdn.budgetresponsibility.independent.gov.uk/March-2013-EFO-44734674673453.pdf
p75
I know from playing with OECD datasets that the source for their GDP growth figures are the actual GDP figures released by the ONS in Sterling (and of course regularly revised, so you need a release date or issue reference to cross-check). Then they apply a currency conversion to Euros before calculating the growth percentages. The forex sometimes result in ONS percentages not matching the OECD ones.
I guess the IMF figures will also be sensitive to their exchange rate methodology, There is a footnote to main GDP table: "Note: Real effective exchange rates are assumed to remain constant at the levels prevailing during July 29–August 26, 2013. The aggregated quarterly data are seasonally adjusted." Make of that what you will!
TripAdvisor lists 12,471 restaurants in the London area:
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurants-g186338-London_England.html
African (73)
American (371)
Asian (395)
Bakery (109)
Barbecue (27)
British (1,994)
Café (540)
Cajun & Creole (1)
Caribbean (77)
Chinese (479)
Continental (59)
Delicatessen (123)
Dessert (101)
Eastern European (30)
European (968)
French (535)
Fusion (85)
German (9)
Global/International (324)
Greek (89)
Indian (914)
Irish (24)
Italian (1,315)
Japanese (337)
Mediterranean (480)
Mexican/Southwestern (127)
Middle Eastern (244)
Pizza (189)
Pub (540)
Seafood (158)
Soups (9)
South American (113)
Spanish (219)
Steakhouse (98)
Sushi (59)
Thai (350)
Vegetarian (174)
Vietnamese (88)
"NINETY-nine per cent of Royal Mail employees have taken up free shares in the newly privatised company, the government has revealed.
The employee scheme was a key part of the government’s privatisation of Royal Mail and just 368 of its 150,000 staff have opted out."
BBC - Glasgow Prestwick Airport to be taken into public ownership
"The Scottish government has confirmed that it plans to take Glasgow Prestwick Airport into public ownership.
The step was confirmed in a statement by Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in the Scottish Parliament.
The airport, which was put up for sale last March by New Zealand-based owners Infratil, has been running annual losses of £2m.
Ryanair, which operates 27 routes from Prestwick, has welcomed the government takeover.
Ministers will now enter detailed negotiations with Infratil on the terms of sale.
Ms Sturgeon told MSPs some private investors had expressed an interest in the airport but it had become clear none was able to commit to buying Prestwick on a timescale that was acceptable to Infratil.
She said the Infratil board had been considering its options, one of which was to seek commercial discussions with a view to public sector ownership and the other being to close the airport."
IMF GDP Growth Figures
Turns out there is a very simple calculation involved. You just need access to the WEO (World Economic Outlook) Subject Code (i.e. data series) NGDP_R.
This is described as:
Subject: Gross domestic product, constant prices
Descriptor: Expressed in billions of national currency units; the base year is country-specific.
Subject Notes: Expenditure-based GDP is total final expenditures at purchasers' prices (including the f.o.b. value of exports of goods and services) less the f.o.b. value of imports of goods and services. [SNA 1993]
Units: National Currency (Sterling Pounds)
Scale: Billions
Source: National Statistical Office (ONS?)
Latest Actual Data: 2012
National Accounts Manual Used: ESA 1995
GDP Valuation: Market Prices
Period: Calendar Year
Base Year: 2010
Chain Weighted: Yes
Primary Domestic Currency: Sterling Pounds
Data last updated: 09/2013
And here is the data series: For the actual outcomes between 2009-2012, the figures are identical to the ONS ABMI series as contained in PN2_CSDB_DS.xls released on August 23 2013 as a downloadable dataset for "Second Estimate of GDP, Q2 2013".
The influence of the surrender-monkey Blancmange is evident.
As we now know that the IMF are using the ONS series for real GDP ("Gross Domestic Product; Chained volume measures: Seasonally Adjusted") and, as this series is used - at a quarterly level - for headline GDP growth figures as announced by the ONS to the UK media, then ....
the 1.4% figure already includes the 0.4% Q1, 0.7% Q2 figures, so ...
the IMF are forecasting that Q3 and Q4 growth combined will be only 0.3%.
So the IMF may have given the UK the highest upgrade in the world but their forecast is still well below what the final outcome is likely to be. If we take the current SWIFT nowcast of 0.8% for Q3 and its forecast of 0.5% for Q4, then the IMF may well have underestimated UK 2013 growth by a full 1.0%!
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/09/home-office-go-home-vans-banned
It would be funny if it was not so sad.
It would be sad if it were't so funny.
"Ah, yes. Schmidt’s German restaurant of blessed memory, in Charlotte Street. As an impecunious student in central London in the late 50′s and early 60′s, I visited it frequently. The elderly waiters were indeed surly to the point of rudeness (except to German or Austrian expats of their own generation), but did provide silver service (when the food eventually arrived). The waiting times were unbelievable, but the food was cheap even by late ’50s standards and usually good. The Wiener Schnitzel was authentic; the braised pig’s knuckle (Schweinehaxe?) was both glutinous and tasty. I was delighted to find when I returned to London in 1974 from a decade abroad that Schmidt’s was still there, essentially unchanged, but alas, having dined myself out from there early in 1977 before a lengthy trip to Turkey, when I returned later that year Schmidt’s, its waiters, and its deli, had all disappeared, and in its place was a glorified pasta house. Sic transit, etc."
http://news.fitzrovia.org.uk/2011/06/19/in-fitzrovia-news-ten-years-ago/
http://www.boisdale.co.uk/belgravia/