yes, sir.

it is quite an eye opening tax affair in the UK.

aye. As it is the price has gone from 97.9pence per litre in october last year to 133.9p a couple of weeks ago, although a couple of the supermarkets who run petrol stations plus Shell have knocked about 4 to 5pence a litre off in the last week or so, many stores are doing mega-savings on some foodstuffs too as the economy grinds to a halt. Current price is roughly 127.9p per litre (of diesel which is what we use) and I think about 116.9p for Unleaded.

this country for one is heading to a recession, and it's ironic that the guy who's controlled the purse strings for 10 years is now the prime minister

I was considering a job in the U.K

reasons why I'm turning it down, for now.

Ah I see. it depends what type of work you're looking at, several industries are being hit hard at the moment, mostly the engineering and house building ones as like in the US some of the mortgage lenders are finding it hard to get capital to lend. My brother's just taken a job in Alberta, Ca and the wage is 3x what an equivilent one would pay here including his tax free living allowance, plus the rates of tax & cost of living there is the cheapest in canada overall (although fort mcmurray is expensive as it's a working town only) so he'll be way better off there than here.

Interesting, a close English friend of mine works for DaimlerChrysler Co. in London, I can imagine the anxiety of not knowing if you're going to loose your job or not, it's just getting way out of hand and i don't see this going anywhere but down.

I was applying for a teaching position in Nottingham through a close friend of mine responsible of the referral.

a lot of it is because firms are being badly run anyway and have been able to get away with it for a long time because there has been so much demand for business. However Toyota for example, for which my little cousin works for and is being trained by at the moment have not cut jobs, just reduced the production levels by 150 cars a week and are sending workers on more training because they forecast it picking up in 12-18 months time, but a lot of companies have been hiring in huge numbers and are now firing cos of bad management from before.

I think overall though this country (not sure about the reasons for the US problems) needs to just build for the future & be clever, for example we produce our own gas, but have nowhere to store it, so sell it off to companies in europe and then pay them about 2.25 times as much to buy it back So if we used many derelict old power station sites to build huge safe gas storage chambers, which could be buried deep in the ground, we could save a fortune then as consumers whilst allowing the companies to also make a healthy profit. I think that by investing in infrastructure now we can actually do a lot for the future, rather than just blaming the people in the past who didn't forsee everything we have to deal with now.

rant over

Well, the gas prices are slowly dropping around here; finally getting below the dreaded $4 mark. Who knows how far it will drop, and who knows how soon it will rise again. Congrats to Exxon Mobil for now being able to afford to buy all of New York and a small island for vacation purposes.

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Duly noted, on both accounts. I think Ian has a very interesting approach, although most of the people are talking about alternative fuel investment (solar, wind, etc) very few have talked about nuclear energy for the future and even if it's off-topic I found it befitting. If the UK is in the position to grow enough fuel to boost an entire economy, more power to you. In the US the main problem is that there are very few oil refineries and most of the oil comes from abroad - on the same topic, the up-coming New York City candidate for major* (forgot his name) said he would invest in oil refineries in America which would boost the economy and lower the cost of energy production as a whole. The man is also willing to spend $1 billion on his campaign.

Last edited by winston on Jul-31-2008 at 16:38

Nuclear energy also is a good idea, I know we've done a deal with i think saudi arabia where we get more oil and in turn we're going to educate them on nuclear power and different techniques, but I think that for now we need to decide what we're doing and invest in it, perhaps some of these companies with huge profits should be taxed themselves on it to give a certain percentage towards the development of the future.

Just to mention too, Nottingham is a bit rough, i lived nearer to it for a few years when younger, but it's not a bad place. Some gun crime (most in the uk i think) but nothing too bad and it's a lot cheaper to live than in London where many people from abroad end up living.

Oh, thanks for the tip. Being assaulted by chavs was the last thing on my mind.

two acronyms: FIFO, LIFO.

please learn what they mean before talking about oil accounting.

I beg your pardon?