Osborne is now considering giving all taxpayers a £400 bung for the [url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/george-osbornes-rbs-exit-plan-400-share-gift-for-every-taxpayer-to-woo-voters-8497525.htmldisposal of RBS[/url in the lead up to the 2015 election.

Is he so shallow as to think the majority of people would accept £400 as a sweetener? Most will have paid way over that amount in increased VAT alone.

Instead of flogging off RBS at a knock-down price to his mates in the City and seeing as we've already socialised 81% of RBS: why not take the remaining 19% into public control and run RBS as a Citizens' Bank? It could then offer basic accounts to those who struggle to open an accout with the major banks, with ineterest rates reflecting a lack of massive bonuses to spiv bankers. They could take a look back at how other banks operated, like the Quaker principles of the original Barclays or that there Trustee Savings Bank f'ristance

So if those who struggle to open an account are offered credit at abnormally low interest rates, what do you think that will lead to and who will pick up the bill?

the question is are people shallow enough to vote for someone for £400?

really? to pay £400 vat would require a purchase of around £2,300. as vat went up by 2.5%, that £400 would require an additional spend of, what, £15k? so, £7.5k per year or just less that £150 a week. perhaps they're buying your super dooper fish/meat.

Are you arguing with him because your maths seems to prove his point and then some?

Basic bank accounts don't have a credit facility.

VAT was increased to 20% in January 2011 so that would be four years of paying an extra 2.5%. There would be no need for any additional spending to account for the £400 in VAT.

Those buying my excellent food need have no worries however, apart from our desserts, all the food I sell is zero rated.

Correct, my comment was aimed more at a bank paying interest on savings.

I am also convinced that if RBS was converted into a mutual "Peoples' Bank", it would attract not only those who struggle to find basic banking facilities but others may well shift their accounts to a more equitable banking operation.

Mind you, the established banks may lose out, so it's a guranteed non-starter

I'd rather just have the £400.

I doubt Osborne's little ruse is aimed at blue-boys like you

Thank you for proving you don't have a clue about this.

I see the legal money sharks have found a new angle on TV advertised money lending now - new to the screens today is an advert for one company who are "going back to the old way of money lending", sounds very benevolent, is pitched at those with bad credit ratings who can't even convince the sharks to lend to them at a couple of thousand percent p.a.

Its called "using a guarantor", "like in the old days of borrowing money", you simply get someone to stand guarantee that you'll repay the loan.

The cynic in me tells me that the sharks are rather disappointed that the sort of people who ring their 0800 numbers to borrow (relatively) small sums of money (and then again in a pyramid style multiple borrowing spiral) have such poor credit ratings that they won't take a punt on them - but if they can find someone who wouldn't have normally touched them with a bargepole to stand guarantor, well thats another trenche of the population they can suck into the web then.

I prefered it when all this stuff was done on the doorstep and not on TV, bringing it into your living room just winds you up between programmes these days.

Is this £400 for everybody in the country?

Have they costed how much of this is going to immigrants, Muslims, gypsies, gays? People in council estates?

Because the Daily Mail will soon cost it and print it on the front page.

Is it right that government should be giving so much money to their kind?

The bale out came from our taxes and as we the tax payers own RBS, he isn't giving anyone anything.

Tax payers only. So if you don't pay income tax you wouldn't get your "free" £400 worth of shares.

So all those people who lost jobs as a result of the recession brought on by the likes of RBS are disenfranchised. As are people unable to work (disabled, mentally handicapped etc) or those out of work temporarily such as Mum's (or Dad's) doing things like child care for young children.

As usual another half baked ill-thought out idea from Osbourne and Co.

Once the taxpayers have the shares they'll wind the wretched bank up and let the shareholders lose out.

I thought they did. I thought if you overdraw by £1 you then owe the bank about £18,652 a day?

Think yourself lucky, one proposal was to "sell" us the shares.

But after all, the tories do have previous on selling publicly owned assets to the public that already own them

My hunch is that people WILL take a free 400 quid on offer. You just have to look at the likes of the old building socities or mutual institutions where people thought "wow, I'm gonna get what for simply being a member? Course I'll vote yes" when in the long run their interest rates are higher on their mortgages than they were in the building societies.

HOWEVER.

If people were smart and don't listen to the inevitable ads telling people how they can make even more money by selling them off quickly, and are not after a quick quid. They should take the 100+ shares not cash on offer and KEEP them. Things are very bullish on the old markets over the last few months. This way people will actually make money out of it for themselves. I just looked up the price and a couple of charts and saw that the current pirce is around £3.39 per share. This bank is recovering, which is probably why the govt want to flog it. The world markets are recovering. This bank will make money. It's share price will, eventually, go up, a lot. To give you an idea, the RBS share price in Jun 2008 was over £35 per share before it all collapsed. Over 10 times what it is now. So your 400 quid will be 4000 quid. If they pay dividends (which they haven't since 200icon_cool.gif, reinvest them as more shares and take the franking credits to reduce your tax bill. In oz, the big banks are back and above what they were before the crash.

Will this happen? Nah, people will take the shares and sell them on the first day earning believing the ads, like they did with the privatisations in the 80s and get as much as 4% and thinking they've had a blinder. Whilst all the rich tory mates and corporations are buying them off these people knowing they'll be minted later.

All this said and done, I can't see buying the last 18% or whatever, where the government should not touch it and make money for the country by keeping the shares for a very long time.

I think Osborne is seeing this as a way of boosting GDP. There will be plenty of people out there who need a new washing machine or suchlike and will see this as the ideal opportunity to cash-in their shares immediately. Gideon becomes a hero, the State loses its share in RBS and Stephen Hester is freed to ride off on his amply padded @rse to collect juicy bonuses for not running a bank very well and can spend more time with his 350 acres of Oxfordshire, his ski chalet in Switzerland and riding to hounds with the Warwickshire hunt, without Treasury officials asking him dumb questions. After all, he deserves it. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/busin ... nk-1716860

I think Osborne is seeing this as a way of boosting GDP. There will be plenty of people out there who need a new washing machine or suchlike and will see this as the ideal opportunity to cash-in their shares immediately. Gideon becomes a hero, the State loses its share in RBS and Stephen Hester is freed to ride off on his amply padded @rse to collect juicy bonuses for not running a bank very well and can spend more time with his 350 acres of Oxfordshire, his ski chalet in Switzerland and riding to hounds with the Warwickshire hunt, without Treasury officials asking him dumb questions. After all, he deserves it. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/busin ... nk-1716860

Quote ="El Barbudo"I think Osborne is seeing this as a way of boosting GDP. There will be plenty of people out there who need a new washing machine or suchlike and will see this as the ideal opportunity to cash-in their shares immediately. Gideon becomes a hero, the State loses its share in RBS and Stephen Hester is freed to ride off on his amply padded @rse to collect juicy bonuses for not running a bank very well and can spend more time with his 350 acres of Oxfordshire, his ski chalet in Switzerland and riding to hounds with the Warwickshire hunt, without Treasury officials asking him dumb questions. After all, he deserves it. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/busin ... nk-1716860'" Quite.

Quote ="El Barbudo"I think Osborne is seeing this as a way of boosting GDP. There will be plenty of people out there who need a new washing machine or suchlike and will see this as the ideal opportunity to cash-in their shares immediately. Gideon becomes a hero, the State loses its share in RBS and Stephen Hester is freed to ride off on his amply padded @rse to collect juicy bonuses for not running a bank very well and can spend more time with his 350 acres of Oxfordshire, his ski chalet in Switzerland and riding to hounds with the Warwickshire hunt, without Treasury officials asking him dumb questions. After all, he deserves it. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/busin ... nk-1716860'" Quite.

Given the govt had no option but to bail out RBS by basically buying the bank shouldn't the object of the exercise to be to sell it for at least as much as you paid for it so the tax payer gets their money back?

Giving it away in chunks of £400 might produce a spike in the retail sector but it will be a short term blip. That isn't even certain as people may just sit on the shares hoping they will offer a better return than savings accounts.

If he sells it and breaks even or makes a profit the govt has got its money back and he could use the cash to stave off further cuts, or to boost the economy by funding infrastructure projects or whatever. A house building program might be a good use of the money to help drive down the price of renting by increasing the housing supply.

All well and good, but the price per share isn't near what was paid. How long do you wait?

You get it into a position where it isn't costing us money and then wait for the share price to improve, giving the tax payer the windfall, not investors speculating.