General Chat

bailed out at the standard rate of 20%

From Yahoo news this morning:

"George Osborne has played down claims the Treasury is planning to give Britons up to £400 in Royal Bank of Scotland shares before the next election."

Do you remember those windfalls we used to get every couple of years? British Gas, Halifax. It was cash in your purse unexpectedly and a bit of fun. :-) :-)

Sounds like a good idea but every Chancellor in the past 30 years has tried this con trick. You only have to look at, the railways, British Gas, the energy suppliers, BT, and the water industry, to see what happened, increased prices, deteriorating services, and more money in millionaires pockets

Putting my cynics hat on ;-)

Firstly, if they do this, most people will sell the shares for a pittance and they will be bought up by the rich and the financial institutions. This is nothing more than a way to hand the bank back to those who caused the problem in the first place.

Secondly, this is nothing but a devious ploy to try and buy people's votes with people's own money because we already own The Royal Bank of Scotland, in short it is bare faced bribery.

Thirdly, and correct me if I am wrong, £400 may not be a lot of money, however many things like income tax and numerous benefits are based on being below a threshold, so the double whammy is that if the give-away takes people over a threshold, their income tax will rise and benefits will be cut or taken away.

Nice one George, I always thought you were devious, and by the way Mr Osborne we can read between the lines :-)

OFG :-) :-)

Too true. But I think I could be pleased with £400 this year. ;-) Wouldn't make me vote Tory, but would encourage me to give Georgie a kiss on both his chubby cheeks (in a manly continental way)

Twice I have thought the Government were going to drag us out of the doldrums recently. This compensation for RBS fiasco. But also, they clearly stated that an awful lot of people were due big tax refunds owing to a computer problem under Labour (an error in programming, I believe). That got me very excited at time, but all has now gone cold. :-(

Nudged forward because I was interested in why this had appeared and then been played down by Osborne. And £400 in a lot of money to some of us.

Thats all Tax Payers...

Eeyore. That is my undesrtanding too. Presumably those paying tax in year when we bought into RBS. Rumour was fuelled because Economic Secretary to the Treasury Sajid Javid was exploring plans to sell the Government's stake by 2015.

But Osborne reckons Gordon Brown paid well over the odds for the shares and we are unlikely to get much value in shares by 2015 election.

So its not all... its some?

Eeyore. Why repeat it when I agreed with you. Who ever said it was ALL people? Those who didn't bail out RBS are not stakeholders, I would have thought.

Your thread title..."Shares for all" erm... you said it.

:-D :-D

Am I not allowed a headline to grab attention then :-S

I think most people prefer the Thread title to relate to the content correctly... otherwise someone has to bother to point out the error so people aren't misled.

You always seem to grab attention or seek it so no worries there :-D

Can you do me a favour, Eeyore. Could you go through all the threads on first 3 pages and tell the Opening Posters that you don't think heading quite matches what was in the OP.

Wondering how some of the more experienced ones will react. You could be as popular as me within the hour :-D :-D

Have found some headings that I find really baffling:

Wildcats in de House
Respect
Operation
Men--UPDATE...LOL

The only one I can make any sense of is "Respect". That will be about George Galloway's party (political thread)

um methinks the current content has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual title

lolol It's tax payers OR voters for a start.

IMO if true shares were issued to the value of £300-£400 on the issue day some shares would have to be locked in.

The market price would crash with everyone trying to sell shares asap and the £300 value would probably nett everyone c£150 less tax and broker fees if lucky. I reckon they'd drop like a stone and we'd probably all nett about £75.00

Hardly worth it! Just gradually pay back the £45bn this has cost tax payers every April for the next....... oh I don't know 50 years

;-)

I never understood why the bail out was done unconditionally.

It wasn't necessarily the wrong thing to do to keep the banks afloat..but just to hand it over no questions asked always struck me as dead odd.

I read Voters aswell, but as I dont normally read this sort of thing, thought best not to comment on a subject I know nothing about....Oh good some shares for me too :-D

I'd have let it go bust! and don't anyone moan about people with savings and mortgages, they could have been safeguarded.

Don't know enough about how letting them all fall would've worked...but this way the banks get off scot free leaving us to foot the bloody bill.

"Wondering how some of the more experienced ones will react. You could be as popular as me within the hour"

I could never be or want to be as popular as you lol. Had a quick scan down the front page, all logical...now.

I don't know why RBS was bailed out either hohum.