Lloyds Banking Share Discussion Threads

[shy tott] 30/6/2019 08:46

I think it's the stance needed when the car window has been smashed to reach in to get the handbag. I suppose it just stuck with him.

[the grumpy old men] 30/6/2019 07:20

Utilities
The Observer view on the water industry being unfit to face the challenge of global heating
Observer editorial
If the private sector cannot develop a water system fit for a dry future it could be time to reconsider the business model

Sun 30 Jun 2019 06.00 BST


Clean water at a fair price is something the privatised industry constantly fails to provide Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

A smelly sewage works in Southampton was the least of Southern Water’s misdemeanours. Almost all of the record-breaking £126m fine imposed on the company last week by Ofwat, its regulator, was attributed to the dirty, untreated water that flowed from the taps of as many as 4.3 million residents.

Southern’s managers, who covered up leaks at treatment plants from Kent to Hampshire, are a gift for those who believe it is time to end a 30-year experiment in privatisation and take all the water companies into public ownership.

Until now, campaigners have focused on the raw deal given to customers, who must pay through the nose to a private monopoly provider. Loaded with debt by their owners, the water companies must use most of their income to pay the interest, while the rest is paid out of profits to shareholders. Deteriorating networks are maintained to the very minimum insisted on by the regulator. Clean water at a fair price is something the privatised industry constantly fails to provide.


Now that Europe is sweltering in record-breaking heat, a second front is opening up against the water companies. And this centres on the investment needed, not just to replace leaking pipes but to support efforts to tackle the climate emergency.

Even in Britain, water is becoming a scarce resource. In the torrential storms that have become increasingly prevalent, the water runs off the land, into rivers, rages through town centres and out to sea. Parts of the country need more reservoirs, which means giving over land near cities that might otherwise be farmed, left fallow for wildlife or used for some form of development. Where aquifers are running dry due to overextraction, public bodies need to decide on the priorities, juggling the competing demands of farmers, local businesses and households.

‘Even in Britain, water is becoming a scarce resource.’

Polluted rivers must be cleaned up and that can only come about when there is more pressure on farmers to stop putting so much nitrogen and phosphorous on the land.

Treatment plants must be upgraded, as Southern Water will need to do. The World Wildlife Fund found that 40% of rivers in England and Wales were polluted with sewage in 2017, mostly from overflows following heavy rain that existing plants failed to process.

Overflows are allowed under the current regime if they are exceptional. The WWF report says that 8%-14% of the 18,000 overflows it examined over a nine-month period spilled sewage into rivers at least once a week, and between a third and a half at least once a month.

A separate study by Manchester University found that the river Tame at Denton, to the east of the city, ranked as the worst in the world for microplastics. We know others might be worse, we just haven’t tested them yet.


The fund managers who dominate ownership of the UK’s water companies have no interest in collaborating to develop a water system fit for a dry future. And they will say that micro-plastics were not put in the water by them, so why should they pay for the clean-up.

Equally, why should public bodies use their precious resources to facilitate an upgrade of the system when profit-hungry investors are one of the main beneficiaries?

The government cannot sit still while the finger-pointing and blame-shifting prevent more than slow progress. Why should households and businesses, all of them taxpayers, be asked to save water when the utilities’ managers and international owners do little more than count their bonuses?

The same could be said of the energy industry, which must also be at the heart of reforms towards a low carbon future but is largely in private sector hands.

Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) is a not-for-profit business that is busily repaying debts from its previous life as a profit generator while also improving the network. It is not the only model for change, but it’s a good start.

[xxxxxy] 30/6/2019 00:14

Britain on the brink

[maxk] 29/6/2019 23:45

Boris Johnson to set up Brexit 'war cabinet' to force through Britain's EU departure in 100 days







Christopher Hope, chief political correspondent Camilla Tominey, associate editor
29 JUNE 2019 • 9:30PM



Boris Johnson is forming a Brexit 'war Cabinet' to force through Britain's departure from the European Union in his first 100 days in office, the Telegraph can disclose.

The "crack team" - as one source described it - would comprise a tightly-knit unit of senior ministers and advisers charged with mapping out and tackling every possible obstacle on the way to Britain exiting on October 31.

It would then report back to the broader cabinet, which itself will be comprised entirely of ministers who signed up to Mr Johnson's deadline.




The real story is in the comment section:





Full on remainer chimp heaven. Talk about desperation :-)

[minerve 2] 29/6/2019 23:08

No climate no trade.

[maxk] 29/6/2019 23:07

What's new?

[diku] 29/6/2019 22:11

G20 guys want to talk about trade...and May wants to talk about climate change!!...

[diku] 29/6/2019 21:50

5x....just admire your one liners...

[cheshire pete] 29/6/2019 21:47

Hope he keeps off the sauce tonight if Sophie is grilling him first thing.

[xxxxxy] 29/6/2019 21:41

Boris for PM

LEAVE and WTO

[xxxxxy] 29/6/2019 21:40

OBSERVATIONS
No taxation without representation

The fundamental democratic concept of “no taxation without representation”; started in England in the 1600s and was developed in the 1760s by American colonists and was a rallying cry for American independence from the Crown. Since then it has become a central tenet of democratic societies.

Under Mrs May’s surrender treaty the British people would have had no representation whatsoever, but plenty of taxation. It would be interesting to know what Americans would think if this were explained to them. Indeed, we suspect that a sizeable proportion of the British people are also unaware of the full import of the so-called Withdrawal Agreement.

In the end May’s ‘deal’ was voted down three times by the House of Commons and should be declared as officially dead by all protagonists – and especially the two Conservative leadership contenders.

In the next two articles we will focus on two forms of trading arrangements between the UK and the EU which could be possible without a divorce deal imposed by the EU.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, 29 Jun 2019

[cheshire pete] 29/6/2019 21:21

errr...need to think about that one...slide away.

[minerve 2] 29/6/2019 21:20

Lots of puppets on this thread, all 'successful capitalists' (tongue in cheek) who seem to chomp at the bit when dividend day approaches. No different to benefit claimants waiting for their next hand out.

[minerve 2] 29/6/2019 21:17

You're not a capitalist cheshire, you are a capitalist's puppet.

[cheshire pete] 29/6/2019 21:11

yeah yeah...bet your ---- is bigger than mine as well lol. What's the story morning glory brill.

[minerve 2] 29/6/2019 20:53

Cheshire makes me laugh. I could buy him out with my current account balance. LOL

[minerve 2] 29/6/2019 20:47

So tax money helped prop up the banks...

Socialism kept capitalism alive. It was flatlining and a socialist act brought it back from the dead.

[corpbull] 29/6/2019 20:40

Date Share Buy Back Avg. Price Total Paid

Mar-19 - 170,980,167 @ £0.63082 £107,857,823.369
Apr-19 - 248,237,129 @ £0.64090 £159,096,206.55
May-19 – 290,928,034 @ £0.51575 £150,046,706.99
Jun-19 – 303,677,736 @ £.057627 £175,001,078.72

[xxxxxy] 29/6/2019 20:39

Boris for PM

LEAVE and WTO

[xxxxxy] 29/6/2019 20:37

BrexitCentral

June 27, 2019
Why the Eurozone’s fate makes an immediate Brexit vital

The huge financial liabilities associated with EU membership require a quick clean Brexit. From research using publicly available figures, I have prepared a 40-page report published today by Global Britain that demonstrates the huge financial risk that the UK Government has thus far ignored in its efforts to deliver the EU’s Withdrawal Agreement that keeps Britain still on the hook. Never mind the £39 billion divorce bill, it is practically petty cash compared to the UK’s maximum possible liability now of €207 billion that could be escalated to €441 billion – or even more if our exit is drawn out into the period of the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework. The Eurozone financial system is teetering on the edge of a renewed crisis but, unlike the one in 2013/14, this one can only be solved by the large and solvent EU Member States borrowing themselves and paying to reduce the liabilities of others. To avoid this scenario the UK needs to both leave the EU and sever its contractual connections with the EU in order not to be caught up in this “re-set”. The UK’s likely share of such a “re-set” exceeds €200 billion, a horrendous outcome that would set the country back many years in its efforts to escape from austerity. This would be all the more unacceptable when we voted to leave the EU three years ago, and the best our negotiators have managed is a half-baked agreement that leaves us exposed to risk for at least twenty years. The Eurozone financial system is drinking in the last chance saloon, a saloon that is a hall of mirrors in which each participant appears solvent only because it accounts for its claims on the other participants at face value. Behind this pacific façade lies a black hole of €1 trillion – the financial hangover built up over 20 years from banks and investors acquiring assets in the “Club Med” countries and Ireland for far more than they are worth now. The apparent recovery of the Eurozone since 2012/13 is an illusion, kept intact by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the other Eurozone national central banks buying up government bonds in €trillions, reducing yields and enabling their owners – Eurozone governments – to issue new debt at subsidised rates of interest, as well as flooding financial markets with cheap money. In turn this enables bankrupt borrowers – “zombies”; – to remain alive, and for lenders into these “zombies”; to rank their loans as “Performing221; when the borrower cannot repay the capital or sustain a rise in interest rates. The lenders are zombies themselves, kept animate by ECB money and creative accounting. Lending banks continue to be allowed to under-assess the risks in their businesses via “Internal Risk-Based” methodologies, and in turn to claim that they are well-capitalised when they are not. Non-Performing Loans are either massaged back into “Performing221; status without borrowers paying any debt service, or are sold off in bogus securitisations where the bank continues to carry a high risk of loss. Financial markets recognise the size of the problems in the Eurozone’s banks by valuing bank shares at a considerable discount to their book value – in Deutsche Bank’s case by 80% – and the ECB bank supervision department has quantified bad loans as being 3.6% of all loans that banks still hold on their balance sheet: both these indicators point towards a Eurozone-wide “black hole” of €1 trillion. A meltdown could be triggered in any number of ways, but the “longstop̶1; is a realisation in 2020/21 that it is economically and politically impossible to achieve compliance with the EU Fiscal Stability Treaty by 2030: not only Greece, Italy and Portugal, but Cyprus, Spain, France and Belgium have Debt-to-GDP ratios over 90% and only Greece’s ratio is falling. This is the treaty that was meant to demonstrate that the Euro is a single currency and not a synthetic one, and that the countries using it are converging economically and not diverging. Only a debt transfer from the over-indebted countries onto the stronger ones – to initially achieve a consistent 87% Debt-to-GDP ratio across the Eurozone and EU – can keep the façade intact. Even then, all countries would have to run an annual budget surplus of 2.5% consistently for 11 years to reach the Fiscal Stability Treaty target of 60% from the startpoint of 87%. This is scarcely credible but at least the initial debt transfer would enable a gentler glide path and put off the day of reckoning. The amount of debt to be transferred is again of the order of €1 trillion. The UK must not become embroiled in this “re-set”, and needs urgently to distance itself from involvement. The way to do that is to leave the EU as soon as possible and without a “deal” – and certainly nothing based on the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration.
Economy Euro OpinionTags: Bob Lyddon, debt, Debt-to-GDP ratios, European Central Bank, Eurozone, Financial markets, Fiscal Stability Treaty, Global Britain, Withdrawal Agreement


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[cheshire pete] 29/6/2019 20:14

Down to more important things....anyone know what time Liam hits the stage at Glasto?

[cheshire pete] 29/6/2019 20:10

Grahamite2: "Half of all income tax paid by top five per cent



The percentage paid by the top 5% has been steadily increasing from 1980 and is now DOUBLE what it was then.

Of course, that won't be enough for our socialists, but what exactly do they want? What do they expect?"

Rings a recent bell G2 ...Socialists are brain dead ....they haven't got a clue about finance, economics or what makes the world go round. All they want to do is rob the rich and give to the poor....medieval.

[edmundshaw] 29/6/2019 19:59

No point in saying more about Brexit - smarty doesn't listen and doesn't appear to understand the difference between trade deals and an FTA or GATT24. I shall desist from any further comment on Brexit not directly related to Lloyds. I apologise for rising to the bait...

Lloyds is in my portfolio as a good-performing bank, and a solid yielder with good chance of a capital gain once all the mis-selling is out of the way (assuming that happens! :-)). Being a simple, boring bank now, there appears to be far less to go wrong.

Brexit looks a low risk element. They have reaffirmed guidance in spite of Brexit uncertainties in May, and have made no mention of provisions against any particular outcome.