Thetownend.com

Surprisingly little detail leaked this week.

It will be interesting to see whether this means Boy George is holding back good or bad news.

he probably hasn't made his mind up yet. I think it's fair to assume that it won't be good news.

Too busy setting up his new Twitter account this morning, no way will that have been delegated to one of his minions

He just tweeted this:

@George_Osborne - scrappin' duty on alcohol. Your welcome Great Britain! #ozzieonthepiss!

Did he not finish it with ROOOOOAAAARRRRRRR

Rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

And this bloke will get neither?

http://www.behance.net/RichardPoor

Citywire reporting that Gideon is finally going to allow people to transfer CTFs into Junior ISAs. And about bloody time too!

HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!

what does that mean?

He's spent a lot of time so far saying not a lot.

I like this Speaker fella.

Better than the short one isn't he...

A victory for small investors.

This had better finish with a flourish.  I'm about to drop off.

Well so far the Evening Standard leak has been pretty much spot on.

Beer duty escalator axed! About bloody time!

Editor has apologised

And those in the middle will get fucked over as always

That's me then.

Ed Miliband is a massive cock.

me too

I quite liked the "Hands up if you're not getting the 50p tax cut" :)

Me too. Had 'em going...

He is a politician, so therefore this is obviously true.

Didn't someone once quote that anyone who wants to govern the country is probably not someone who should be doing so.

Personal allowance increased.
Fuel duty rise scrapped.
Beer duty cut.
Help with childcare costs.

How is  that "fucked over"? I'm not trying to defend Boy George, I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him, but there would appear to be very little in the way of a squeeze on 'middle' families.

Who could disagree?  Just a shame that it's taken so long for politicians to realise the effect it was having on the pub trade.

The moves I cannot fathom are the ones that go all out to support house prices.  The Bank of England has been given carte blanche to hold interests low for pretty much as long as it wants (due to the loosening of the inflation targetting regime).  And then there is the mortgage guarantee scheme.  Just as house prices start to return to normal historical levels, the government intervenes to reinflate the bubble.  Great news, in some ways, for existing homeowners and mortgage holders.  But I'm highly suspicious of this.

Re. house prices, i'm pretty much certain that i will never own a home now, so once i get a job again i'll be concentrating on other ways to invest/save money so I can maybe one day afford to be retired and old.

Quite...a bigger problem in my view is the significant jump in stamp duty around the 250K mark which leads to artificially low prices for houses that are worth more thus providing a disincentive to buy and sell. I can't understand why this doesn't get reformed instead to promote the housing market perhaps along proposals in Scotland (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/06/1301)

Philip Johnston at the Telegraph (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/philipjohnston/100208178/budget-2013-should-the-state-be-underwriting-our-mortgages/) sums it up nicely.  He got his article out fairly quickly.

Never looked!!

Didn't hear anything about duty on tobacco or your car tax disc, are they being slipped under the radar?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296253/BUDGET-2013-Osborne-axes-6p-tax-pint-beer-wine-drinkers-forced-10p-bottle.html

House prices are massively over valued, but they have to continue to be over valued or the economy will be absolutely fucked as opposed to,the completely fucked it is now. Slightly different in London though as there is an international market for London properties.

Why are house prices massively over valued ?

Against what ?

Wages - average house prices are about ten times average wages, it used to be about four times. It's completely unsustainable and home ownership for the masses will not be sustainable in the future if they are not revalued. But that would destroy the economy. Something will have to give at some point.

The price/average earnings ratio has already moved back quite a long way since the peak in around 2007/08, so we're already some way down that road.  The point of my original comment was that it would be madness for prices to return to that situation; and not that they are still there.  The bubble has been slowly deflating for some time with respect to earnings.

It's a very complex situation affected by average earnings, employment levels, interest rates and mortgage availability (amongst other things).  Prices are also affected by population change and a shocking housing shortage (being exacerbated by the inadequate number of houses being built each year), both of which - in my humble view - mean that the accepted historic average of 4x earnings doesn't mean a lot any more.

Surely you mean tool?

I'm still a bit unsure about this Help to Buy scheme. On one hand it'll help many people to buy a house, which is good for them and also good for the economy. There is a lot of pent up demand as this should go some way to getting the market moving again. I think we've seen pretty much all there is to see by way of a correction in property values. Prices are down circa 20% in real terms when you factor in inflation. I agree with Ardiles on the price to average earnings link, that disappeared in the 90s.

However, encouraging people to borrow up to 95% by providing additional leverage to do that doesn't sit quite right. Although I would like to think that having had their fingers badly burnt, lenders have learnt their lesson and will be a lot stricter with who they'll lend to. As long as mortgages don't become as freely available as they were in the run up 2008, which I am positive they won't, then there will be no danger of creating another bubble.

Very much this. With the Liberals bleating on about "it would of been so much worse if they hadn't been there to put the brakes on"