Flexible friend can buy a Rolex but not a tank of Petrol

The other night when I eventually found a petrol garage that sold Petrol as well as Flowers and Charcoal it allowed me to pay at the pump. Great I love that – no hanging around.

But the Point of Sale system didn’t have a pin pad so it said maximum amount £60. That’s not enough for me to fill the tank up….. Last week when I used a pinpad at a pump it said maximum amount £100 and I wondered how long it would be before £100 wasn’t enough to fill up. 

Mad Max didn’t have it this bad. Its easier to buy a Rolex than a tank of petrol these days.

For things economic keep an eye on our Now financial news sites such as our retirement finance news site www.nowretirement.com if your near retirement you’ll remember when a Gallon of petrol was 2 and 6.

Dear Darling…

The predictions are that Bank of England Governor Mervyn King will be getting the quil qwerty keyboard out to write a wee note to Alastair Darling – Chancellor and all round scape goat for anything bad happening in the UK economy.

The reason – well its the tipping point for inflation. Stats from the Office of National Statistics suggest that when they add up all the numbers we’ll be at 3.1% next week for the CPI. Maybe aye maybe no. But watch out for the media talking endlessly about this. The reason – petrol, and output prices, and petrol, and food prices and petrol. Lets face it – its petrol… it impacts everything we do. 139 USD for a barrel of Oil ain’t good news – but it can’t last….can it?

Housing goes negative

It wasn’t that long ago that commentators were saying things like they didn’t see negative equity in the UK housing market as a concern. Well I didn’t believe them then so the report from Citigroup confirming that around 250,000 are now in a negative equity situation didn’t come as a surprise. And things are getting worse. Further drops in house prices are expected as a result of credit restrictions, and because of the rising trend in inflation (oil, oil oil).

And the Bank of England ain’t about to drop interest rates to make things any easier either – the boss made that clear a few weeks back.

The only stories that have a note of optimism are those relateed to the buy to let mortgage type world where demand is on the increase as potential buyers get nervous and decide (or are forced) to sit things out.

3 is the magic number again

Inflation (CPI) up 0.5% since last month to 3%. Quite a jump.

With housing now being trailed by government advisors (thanks to a long lens and a careless visitor to number 10) to fall at least 5 to 10% and housing new starts on the decline you’d look to a decrease in the bank interest rate.

But with CPI inflation on the up cutting interest rates to keep the economy ticking is not an easy decision to make.

Things appear to be unravelling pretty quickly for Mister Broon…. there was the CGT turnaround, now the 10p tax rate fiasco, and of course Wendy in Scotland encouraging the SNP to go for a referendum. Bad news normally comes in 3′s. But it could be 33 or 333 bad news items as the economy slides from housing boom to banking credit crunch to who knows where.

On the upside its nearly July and bad news tends to go away in the summer months – mainly because the media and the great and the good all head of to the South of France. So don’t worry all the bad news is going away soon (but only for a vacation).

Credit Crunchie impacts Malteser rating index

Peter Jones in the Scotsman today made the valid point that there is a lack of good quality stats relating to the state of the Scottish economy. He cites stats showing that if things are as bad as they say in Scotland we should all be shutting up.

So I thought I would help bring the Malteser Rating Index up to date in this post credit crunchie period.

Since July 2007 the price of a packet of Maltesers has gone up 5np to 50np (thats 10 bob or 2 dollar).

The number of Maltesers in a packet has remained at exactly 17 pushing the price per Malteser to 2.94np from 2.6np. And the calorie count remains at 190 level. They were still able to be consumed in the same time – 1 minute. So thats £30 per hour up from £27 per hour.

The average house price is up from £210,000 to £218,594 though prices are down 1.65% over the past quarter.

That means that the Malteser Rating Index has dropped to 7.3 Kilo Malteser Hours (KMH) (divide house price by 30). Almost a year ago it stood at 7.7KMH. 

Clearly this indicates that the Credit Crunchie has had a significant impact on the Malteser Rating Index. House prices are failing to keep up with the inflationary trends of the Malteser.

So what can Peter Jones of the Scotsman surmise from this….

well interest rises are clearly slowing house inflation relative to malteser inflation but malteser inflation is looking periously out of control. We hope this helps fill the gap wrt the shortage in informed Scottish economic statistics.

 

Malteser rating index

You can always rely on the fact that interest rates will go higher than they need to be to control inflation. But to be fair inflation does tend to creep up on you unexpectedly. I bought a packet of Maltesers today. Some of you may remember the advert where the Maltesers float away – carried away by rising warm air I presume. Well today they floated away on an inflationery tide….

A packet of Maltesers costs 45 new pence (45np). Thats 9 shillings (9/-) in real money. Thats 2.6 new pence, or 6d, each (17 in the packet). Thats 4.2 calories per new pence (190 calories in the pack apparently). And thats £27 per hour as they were gone in a minute!

The average house price is £210,000 which is a Malteser rating index of 7.7 Kilo Malteser Hours (KMH) (divide house price by 27). We’ll be keeping an eye on the Malteser rating index as the interest rate hikes eventually stall the econonomy.

3 is the magic number

A day dominated by the number three.

3%: Inflation at a 10 year high of (so expect another increase in interest rates).

3Rs: Reading, writing and arithmetic needs complimented by Free (not three) Financial Education. The Treasury has asked Otto Thoresen, the head of the financial services firm Aegon, to research and design it.

3 hundred years: since the Rose and the Thistle got properly hitched. An anniversary so important that even Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman came to Scotland to sneer at the English and Scottish  contributors to the debate (youv’e got to love him).

The only other number that popped up today? 2 as in the new 2 pound coin to celebrate the 300 year union…. it was going to be a pound coin but that’s inflation for you.

Hidden Personal Inflation

The Office for National Statistics have launched a personal inflation calculator. Very handy I would think – particularly given the recent unexpected hike in the interest rate which is bound to be ahead of worse than expected inflation figures. Finding the calculator proved a wee bit tricky for me so here is the link. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/article.asp?ID=1707&Pos=1&ColRank=1&Rank=224

I was sort of expecting a calculator – not a form to fill in. However, no doubt this will be a handy tool for various folks to make claim and counter claim about the cost of living increases we all suffer from in varying degrees.