Robinio on the bus? (How has the Credit Crunch affected you?)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	How has the Credit Crunch affected you?
Date:	21/11/08 (270 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The bargains will come

Disadvantages: One-in-ten of us will be canned

Times are tough out there guys! Even Robinio, Britain's most expensive footballer, has been seen taking the bus from his house in a suburb of Manchester to the Trafford Center for some shopping with the misses, running the gauntlet of our much maligned public transport system. Let's hope lone innocent Brazilians with their head down on the Metro up north are much safer than they are in London. In fact if Manchester Borough council gets their way on congestion charging the whole city will have to join him, only Manchester Uniteds player's in their super cars able to afford to drive around the way its going.

But driving costs are catching a break in the crunch, greedy speculators no longer having the cash to drive up petrol costs, which is exactly what the divisive equity and sovereign funds were doing in the summer. But now demand is falling from the recession triggered by ours and their greed the barrel cost dropped below $50 this week for the first time in two years. As expected the oil companies dragged their feet on passing on that drop at the pumps. One excuse given was that because all word oil trades are done in dollars at source-per barrel-and then sold again in local currencies, because stirlings chin is on the floor like a broken heavyweight boxer, being whacked from both sides by the Euro and the dollar, then prices stay higher than the 50% drop we have seen of the barrel. But its coming through now and a litre is about 94p in my town from a high of 119p, around a 28% drop. Brown has lost over £6 billion pounds in tax revenue from that fall and a further 2 billion from the smoking ban from lost fag and drink sales in the pubs. I bet he's regretting that November 2007, 2p in the pound income tax cut now! I've certainly curtailed my drinking habits now the pubs are empty of smokers and so no atmosphere. And with a 30% hike of beer prices over the next five years the traditional British pub is surely going to die out.

So if the credit crunch is biting 30 million pound footballers (or maybe he just can't drive) then it's biting me, although, fortunately, my credit card isn't maxed out like most Premiership clubs are. West Ham are on the brink of going under and Roman Abramovich lost £10 billion on the Russian stock exchange collapse. The current Premiership model, like the banking system, is doomed to failure without a wage cap soon. It's along time since my credit card was able to afford a Premier League ticket! That's why the league will go bust. My team Manchester Uniteds bizarre price hikes of 40% on season tickets suggest money is tight.

I have been a great customer for my credit card companies over the year as I always pay the minimum payment, usually around a tenner, so pay them threefold back what I borrowed. So I was surprised when MBNA demanded a minimum monthly payment of £25, instead of the usually 2% of the balance that I budget for, around £9. Clearly they are short of cash like most banks and so want to pull their cash back in, which I can understand. But they must realize that people like me have other cards, the companies looking to recruit my profitable bad habit of paying only the minimum and so would offer me deals in the post (and on that subject, isn't it cool how much less junk mail we get in the crunch), which they have been and which I gleefully accepted. I changed my balance within 33 minutes of getting the bill and now I'm with a card offering me the chance to pay just £8 a month, plus the one off 2.25% on the balance, it, to, a struggling bank.

My brother has the mortgage so I can't tell you where we are on that but I pay my keep and the debts I owe on time. But not everyone can and we now know that over one million houses in the U.K.are already in negative equity. But it is the United Sates that bought this chaos to the mortgage markets as one third of all their mortgages where 100% or more, compared to just 6% here, poor Americans allowed to pay the first few payments with that cash equity. America's financial system is based on people being allowed to go bust and getting a second chance, the Chapter 7 & 13 insolvency law the reason why. Americans live their selfish lives as if they never have to pay debt and the country owes a staggering ten trillion dollars.

Shopping wise (for Robinio and the misses in the Trafford Centre) the so called 'footfall' punters, people walking around the shops, is still good, as it is across the country, retail sales down only 0.1% this month on this time last year. That statistic surprised analyst and they scrambled for explanations why the shoppers don't seem to be in a panic like the banks are. To me if you haven't lost your job yet its business as usual as you know what little savings you have left after all these punishing utility hikes those funds aren't going to help much if you are fired. Most people being let go right now are temps and casual contractors, people who expect to be let go at some point. Who really has a safe and secure job these days anyway? The big corporations would much rather employ hard working Pole's who don't get holiday pay or benefits and pensions on short deals than angst ridden mortgage holders like you guys. We are just going to continue with our retail therapy and so to hell with it all!

Utilities are killing us, prices up 50% in the last three years. This is baffling because we are continuously told the world is warming up so we would use less gas and so prices would fall, the reason why pensioners move to Spain. But the prices just keep getting hiked from a broken market where the big six energy companies are clearly operating a cartel. But because Brown gets 17% VAT and yet more back on EU green taxes on gas he is doing nothing for hard working families that are clearly being fleeced. French gas is 49% cheaper today and in some areas we are subsidizing French consumers by French company EDF charging British customers more for the same gas! Because we have only 10 days of gas storage to their 101 days (cheers Thatcher!) they can afford to buy cheap gas and store it in the summer. If we don't see big cuts soon because of that tumbling oil price gas unit costs are tied to then we will know how bent the market is. Gas is plentiful and there's no reason for price increases. They should really be crashing. But like with your water bill, the gas guys are always looking for ways to hype the prices on feeble excuses. If they don't rig the market then two of the six big gas giants would go out of business. The water companies hiked the price on drought hype-we have just had our two wettest years for a century-and the gas companies are using the same illicit tactics.

My food prices are also tumbling, the oil price fall getting goods moving on the roads again and helping farming costs. The much hyped global warming droughts HEVENT materialized in four of the five regions they were supposed to and so food is more plentiful. The grain and wheat price has also tumbled because the big wheat bowls over produced to cater for the predicted droughts, global warming hype the real reason prices went up 400%. Because of the credit crunch the cost to move goods in ships has dropped a mind boggling 90%.

The recession hasn't stopped me buying brand names because I rarely bought them in the first place but it has affected the professional classes purchasing penny. Budget chains like Netto and Lidl have seen huge profits in the last 6 months and have grand plans for new store role outs, presumably expecting to hang on to most of their new customers when the economy turns now that clientele is used to mixing with the proles.

One thing I wasn't expecting to happen that's relates to green issues is the collapse of the recycling system in the U.K. The councils have seen prices fall by 75% for tin and glass and so are now losing big money on their collections as there's no demand for the glass and metal. It's expensive to recycle materials and so the market has collapsed, which if you think about it makes mockery of the system in the first place. Surely the point was to use this stuff first before we pull more raw materials out of the ground? That doesn't seem to be the case. My home county of Northamptonshire are just stock piling it all in warehouse in Rubik cube shaped blocks. They are even talking about a collection fee next year to get the money back! A lot of councils have started to incinerate more and others have shipped it off unsorted to China and Indian landfill sights, burning up more greenhouse gasses in the process.

Summary: Depression is coming in so many ways