Budget June 2010.

[fitz]

Funnily enough*, every single building society that demutualised got in to trouble, with ex-building-socs Northern Rock and HBOS getting into the most. They all got so big that we simply couldn't afford to let them go down - RBS had a bigger GDP than the UK at its high point!

The suggested new regulations around keeping them to more managable size, along with the insurance levy, will hopefully keep this from being as a big an issue in the future, but they need to get on to the statute book first.



*Funnily enough only if you didn't have a job or a mortgage with one of these of course.

The Rock wanted to expand far too quickly, they lost the prudent shackles of being a mutual and went mad. Self certification for mortgages and generally not giving a **** what people could afford to repay was always a stupid idea. Having experience of how treasury in building societies operate I'm far from reassured by the 'prudent' tag either of course.

 

[fitz]

VAT on hot take way food

Not all hot takeaway food is charged with VAT. If you brand your hot food to eat out as freshly made and not 'hot' then its free of VAT charges.