starfished
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Post by starfished on Feb 17, 2021 19:23:34 GMT
In light of some of the previous comments:
Yes, the PF ultimately belongs to RS (now MB).
The PF has only ever been there to protect investors. It was originally 100% funded by borrowers, until the 50% interest haircut introduced last May. The suggestion that borrowers should have any claim on it whatsoever is laughable in my view.
From mid-September to 28th January MB continued to snaffle 50% of my interest, having previously gone on record stating that RS would continue to run my loanbook down and that they (MB) would take no risk on it. Now, whether by accident, design or maybe sheer coincidence MB stands to gain 100% of the benefit of said snaffled interest.
So far as I can see MB has done nothing illegal or in contravention of the RS terms but I can't help feeling the situation stinks and that at the very least they have a moral obligation to repay the interest they took from me to line their own pockets.
I have not yet decided upon which course of action I will take but might wait until RS has closed my account before raising a complaint to file a claim for an amount at least equal to and certainly not less than the interest I received for the period Sep 2020-Jan 2021. The amount is small but I feel there is a principle at stake here.
If that fails then I will consider escalating to the FOS. That will ultimately cost MB whether I win or lose. I owe MB no loyalty. And they have failed to earn any respect from me.
Purely curious: - Do you think the bold should apply to everyone who contributed during that period or just those who have "stayed" since? - What do you think should happen to RYI fees for people who left after that announcement from Metro to buy RS but not take loan risk? If we had lost capital I would agree with you maybe but we are talking about (extra) interest when over at LW they are effectively applying negative interest seemingly with FCA approval...
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Feb 17, 2021 19:13:13 GMT
They aren't being paid. They're volunteers being compensated financially for their time. There is, I'm sure, a difference. Perhaps somebody could enlighten me...?Seriously, being paid to take part in medical trials is not in any way new. They've been happening for years. A friend of ours takes part in quite a few. Very interested in the answer to this, I wonder if it is to do with what Government's can legally spend money on? My understanding is that jury service works in the same way, you are not technically "paid" even if you claim from the Government you are "compensated" (if your employer doesn't pay you). A bit random but not sure if this topic is something you can help with Mousey ? Thanks!
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Feb 17, 2021 19:04:31 GMT
From your no doubt comfortable high horses, you michaelc and you agent69 breezily wave away the damage to an exporting companies' finances. But this is one of thousands, making less profit, making lower tax payments, making people redundant because of a self-indulgent vote you both made made knowing that you would not bear the direct consequences. I know things are no doubt very difficult for you at the moment and I do hope they get better. If I am honest, I am not sure they will on friction-less trade specifically (how can it?). But I have to say I don't think you are being entirely fair either by questioning / speculating on individual motives. People voted for Brexit for all sorts of reasons. The equivalent is saying someone only votes left of centre because it typically benefits them (it usually doesn't financially!)
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Feb 15, 2021 9:21:50 GMT
Deloitte Monday briefing might be of interest in terms of answering why the UK has been hit more economic wise. It is something I was curious about. Note they don't mention the B word. The public sector accounting was an aspect I was not aware of: blogs.deloitte.co.uk/mondaybriefing/The fact that we have been hit by more excessive deaths I am sadly less surprised by. We eat less healthy, we are more inactive and even before Covid came along the NHS / Social sector was under sever pressure. They are fantastic in an emergency but for general health wellbeing it needs to be better and covid I think has just shown a light on the consequences of that. It is not an easy fix, what will be interesting is to see if, as a country, we have the appetite to try and do this better and yes that means both more funding and restructure. Or once this is over all we want to do is return back to "normal" as quickly as possible and hope we don't get another pandemic for at least a generation.
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Feb 14, 2021 15:49:49 GMT
I hate to break this to you but it's only gonna get worse As the economic reality of our response to the pandemic starts to bite I expect a further lurch to the right. It's no coincidence that the new venture GB News is right leaning (putting it politely) as opposed to left leaning (a CNN style channel with the balls to call a lie a lie). The call of nationalism has rarely been more powerful in this country. From where we stand at present I put the probability of a Labour majority at the next election at 0%, and perhaps an optimistic 5% for a hung parliament. We're in this for the long haul. Betfair has it at about 3/1. If you really think its so slim you could make a lot of money betting against..... Personally, I think Starmir is probably the first electable personality (yes people vote on personality more than policy I think) Labour has had since Blair. Unfortauntely for them he comers with a huge amount of Brexit Baggage so will not win the so called red wall. There are other things as he did in his past life as DPP which annoyed some. So I do think the odds of a labour majority a definitely longer than 3/1 but not quite zero. Given that baggage it is no surprise to me that he is not attacking current Brexit consequences. It gains him nothing and potentially costs him a lot. I also still don't think it (yet) gains the country a benefit to do so. People still feel too entrenched about their brexit positions. Right or wrongly, emotionally no one likes being told "I told you so". As I have said before I don't know many people who voted for Brexit (being a soft londoner) but those that I do, still believe Brexit was the correct thing to do and an economic price for it can be tolerated. While things are not where they thought they would end up, (i.e. a higher economic price) they more blame the EU for being stubborn rather than the Tories. The optimist in me thinks, things will get better in the mid-term (both Brexit and Pandemic). How quickly they do so, will determine the Tories fate...
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Feb 8, 2021 0:08:16 GMT
I agree that this is not a fair offer from Metro Bank and I already complained to them. They pointed me out to the investors T & Cs 3.1 and 3.2, which clearly state that we have appointed RateSetter as an AGENT, to which I replied that they are not an Agent anymore in this transaction but a related party and so the investors Terms don't apply. As pointed out by others on this forum, there should be at the minimum a competitive auction process where other banks and credit hedge and private equity funds can have a view of the loan book, value it according to their own assumptions and bid for it. Given the amount of money looking for yield at the moment I am confident that a loan book with a 8% gross yield should attract a slight premium to par value even after accounting for a higher default rate than implied by RateSetter Provision Fund. Especially that other good P2P lenders have also started to stop diverting a portion of the interests to provision funds (LendingWorks) or lower the extra fees they were charging to manage the loan book (Assetz Capital) so the credit situation seems to be generally improving and MB will benefit from it on our back. If not, then I would accept MB offer. I also think that we would be better off asking for this as a group of lenders rather than individually which MB clearly knows it can ignore so would any other lender be interested to form a group, if it doesn't already exist, to request a competitive auction process to sell the RateSetter loan book? And if they refuse potentially start a class action as I believe there could be enough money involved from a few percent bonus to pay lawyers' fees. Also happy to hear about those who have already asked their solicitors to take action... To play devil's advocate, would MB and RS (MB's wholly owned subsidiary) not have considered lenders reactions to the announcement? I suspect they did. I also suspect they realised that a number would have sighed massively and rejoiced at exiting RS unscathed (and, indeed, in profit; even if marginally over a short period, but quite handsomely if an RS lender for many years.) I further suspect MB/RS realised that a number of lenders would feel cheated and potentially look to air those grievances via the courts. So, is it beyond the realms of possibility that MB/RS sought legal advice as their chosen course of action and, having been given the green light, proceeded with the transaction as announced? After all, given that the transaction between MB and RS did " constitute a 'smaller related party transaction' falling within LR 11.1.10R", advice was sought on the transaction from the MB shareholders perspective. If there had be any possibility of issues with disaffected lenders, couldn't MB have 'bought those lenders out on the cheap' via some other route. MB had just sold a " £3bn residential mortgage portfolio to NatWest Group plc", so why not just top up RS' balance sheet by a few mill and have them buy back the loans from lenders as per 16.1 of the Ts&Cs? I'm pretty sure MB / RS will have had the angles covered, but by all means line the lawyers pockets if you feel that way inclined. If you get as far as asking any lawyers their opinion, I'm almost certain they'll tell you what you want to hear ... It is a shame we didn't do a poll at the time. I vaguely remember at the time some suggesting MB had a duty to take the risk. They now have done that and understandably still there are complaints. Sad to see RS go, but given all that has happened I think MB/RS have been fair.
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Jan 25, 2021 18:40:26 GMT
At the start of Covid, (before lockdown) buses were still packed with no screens and it was not uncommon for people to stand very near to the driver in a packed bus. Nowadays, none of that happens. In contrast, Taxi drivers can only get so far from their passengers, only maybe 50% of the ones I have been in had screens and for some reason none have asked to open a window (but if I asked they happily said yes and expressed relief at my suggestion)
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Jan 25, 2021 17:09:07 GMT
While I am personally still on the fence about the priority that should be given to teachers (partly because kids not being in school is severely determinantal), we need to be careful not to again be perceived to be cheapening the death of women...
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Jan 25, 2021 17:05:45 GMT
Interesting article from the BBC regarding which work groups are highest risk from covid:
Per 100,000 men aged 20-64, 31 died in the population as a whole compared with:
119 restaurant and catering staff per 100,000 110 care workers 106 metal-working machine operatives 101 taxi drivers 100 security guards 79 nurses
Per 100,000 women aged 20-64, 17 died in the population as a whole compared with:
47 care workers per 100,000 32 social workers 27 sales or retail assistants 25 nurses 22 cleaners 21 secondary education teaching professionals
?
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Jan 11, 2021 18:45:27 GMT
This made me lol (not THAT lol David C )... The use of the word "Alas" Just to be clear, I don't care if he was on a bike ride a few miles from his home, he's the PM for *******. He should rightly come in for a lot of criticism but not for this. Yes I liked that usage too. If he cycled all the way from downstreet then presumably no question about a rule break. If he took his bike in a car then it depends on whether that area is "local" to him. Either way I see anything of that sort as minor but slightly more serious is the ill defined nature of the law which has led some forces to apply fines for things like that. As I think you were hinting at, he has far more serious fish to fry and he better get frying them !Boris is far from my favourite person but the man is allowed to exercise. I suspect it is very much in all our interests that he does!
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Dec 29, 2020 9:49:01 GMT
Are you a Gousto customer? Do they offer anything massively different to HelloFresh, MindfulChef, or the similar services from established suppliers like Riverford or Abel & Cole? Hello Fresh have gone very strongly for the mass market so I found their recipes to be on the bland side but very generous portions. So I reverted back to Gousto. Riverford I tried a couple of times and I would say food and customer service was slightly better (but more expensive) than Gousto but the logistics didn't work for me at the time, as they delivered only one day a week to my part of London. This was back before Covid when I couldn't assume I would be home to get a delivery and didn't trust it to survive not being stolen left outside for hours! Especially as I live in flat block not a house with a garden that they could have hid the package perhaps.
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Nov 30, 2020 15:48:03 GMT
Given the current climate, it wouldn't surprise me if "No more P2P" won it by a mile... Given the history of these polls does this in fact mean, this is the wrong choice ?
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Nov 10, 2020 17:09:34 GMT
Ace , my balance is zero. I have checked , there were no loans at £10 or less so that is probly the reason.
and I don't wish to tar all P2P with a negative brush.
I made a good rtn from RS, Assetz, Funding Knight, Unbolted, even FC!
I got burnt on Lendy but overall I am up from P2P by about 4% pa. But it wasn't worth the worry and bother.
My property and S&S portfolio beats P2P hands down, because there is no dishonest middlemen playing their own game. And thats the problem with P2P,,, its very hard to spot the sketchy platform till its too late and by then there is very little an individual lender can do to see justice prevail. Its not investable class for me until the regulatory environment for it changes a good deal.
I just had a long phone convo with an RS guy on a treatment of sellout interest. Issue resolved. You would never get that from Lendy. So I am pretty hopeful all lenders will get out of RS with most maybe all, of their shirt intact. I hope so.
Funnily enough (at the moment) I am also c. 4%p.a. over 10 years*. Definitely lower than I had hoped when I started with Zopa but equally, I would still say I have actually enjoyed the last 10 years learning about this nascent but ultimately doomed industry. *P2P being: Zopa joined 2010, Ratesetter joined 2011
Abundance joined 2012
Bondora joined 2012 Funding Secured joined 2013 Moneything joined 2016 Bond Mason joined 2017 Unbolted joined 2017 Lending Works joined 2018
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Oct 28, 2020 18:54:21 GMT
I thought a requirement for murder in the UK was premeditation and he had already plead guilty to manslaughter? I am loathed to say juries have got something wrong when they have heard a lot more information than me. But it does sadly feed into that narrative that a woman's life can be very cheap when a man looks a certain way and/or does a certain job...
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Oct 28, 2020 11:12:31 GMT
It is interesting, while I do agree we should hold politicians to account. A part of me think that ends once the electorate strongly endorses that position. The conservative party are many things but were very clear on their brexit strategy/priorities and we collectively voted for that. I guess I see a distinction between saying "X is a problem, how are you going to fix it?" vs "X is happening because of Y, you made Y happen, it is your fault, how are you going to fix it". The latter utterly absolves the electorate which I don't think is fair on politicians. Does this analysis not disregard a big part of the picture though? Claiming that we collectively voted for the Conservatives because of their very clear Brexit strategy, is to me rather akin to saying that we voted for a slap in the face knowing what we were in for... but missing out that that was because the only alternative was a kick in the head. i.e. many people voted Conservative in 2019 principally (and reluctantly) because Jeremy Corbyn was regarded as any one/more of a danger to national security, antisemitic or tolerant thereof, or would herald a return to the 1970's economically speaking. Certainly many of my anti-brexit family voted for one or more of those reasons. I'm pretty sure the Tories would still win against Corbyn if there was an action replay today. That is still not one and the same as a strong endorsement for their Brexit strategy and priorities though, just a very unfortunate byproduct of avoiding something that we collectively perceived as even worse. We were asked to make a difficult choice at the election but characterising it as it as a choice between "slap in a face" vs "kick in the head" I do feel abdicate responsibility from the electorate. If the choices were that unpalatable, we would have seen a groundswell movement for change/new parties, etc. we have not. If someone genuinely felt that Jeremy Corbyn was such a threat to national safety given our country's existing structures (I think the reality is many simply did not like him and picked a reason that suited their sensibilities) and voted accordingly when the other party was saying very explicitly what they will do, then yes it must be taken as an endorsment or surely the whole nature of democracy starts to fail? On your other point, I will reflect more on that as you do raise good/interesting points. A significant majority shouldn't remove the ability to hold politicians to account. I guess what I am trying to say is how you hold them to account should acknowledge the electoral preference even if that differs to your own preferences. I'll ponder more on that.
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