is the recession thingy easing?

[chunkolini]

Aside from my work as a sculptor I make CD racks and sell them under the coolshelving name. Typical price around £500, up to the £1000 mark.
For years this had been a damn good earner, making bespoke shelving systems for peope with enough taste in design to know that I**a is a an anagram of poo.

Last year it tailed off from August, and died a death at the beginning of this year, I sold two small units all year. I figured the first thing to stop being bought would be the 500 quid shelves. Then in the last 4 weeks I have turned out 4 units from £400 - £600. And enquiries are on the up, website traffic has doubled. I dont think this is a chrimbo thing as people buy these for themselves. This is stuff people buy because they want it rather then being a 'need'.

I reckon the economy is crawling out of the swamp.

Chunko'.

 

[TechnicAl]

hope so

 

[Omniata]

Things are still slowing down for the company I work for, typical for the window and conservatory company around Christmas...

I hate to say it but as the dreaded VAT goes back up to 17.5% on the 1st January and expected to be upto 20% within 5 years it may not get much better for much longer...

 

[Dangle_kt]

1% wage increase for me for the next few years according to the latest speech.... great

 

[weldequip]

Increase? You're lucky to get any at all mate!

 

[runnach]

From a training establishment point of view, there is a lot more doom and gloom in the offing.......unfortunately. Fab/Weld, H&V mechanical, electrical ect is taking one big humping and, no sign of it easing to date.

Myself along with two of my colleagues are welding examiners for a certain awarding body, which mean we test out tradesmen when their tickets expire, mainly MMA & O&A, awarding body EV paid a visit last week, this is to verify we are working to industry standards, we have not had one tradesman pass our door for ticket renewal during 2009.

And I questioned the gent asking, is this similar across UK? He replied, yes!

My own gut feeling is, various companies are jumping on the pay them off band wagon eg: we could do with loosing say ten folks, lets make it 20 and, the remainder will just have to get on with it, with no extra pay, or rise in the future!!

Hope I'm wrong with the latter???

 

[rtbcomp]

Just got my first blasting job in for 3 weeks. During the last 12 months or so my electricity price has doubled, rateable value of my premises doubled, car insurance up 25%. Petrol price set to rise again in January, VED up and no increase in tax allowance against running a car.

At least I get my bus pass this year!

I've also noticed the number of people supposed to be bringing work in but not turning up has increased.

 

[chunkolini]

rtbcomp, Are you related to Robert Johnson by any chance?
Chunko'.

 

[rtbcomp]

rtbcomp, Are you related to Robert Johnson by any chance?
Chunko'.

Never heard of him.

 

[pidgeon chit welder]

On another site ( henious crime I know ) we have had a similar thread running for two years .
My view is that we will see a dead cat bounce in Nov & Dec this year ( well they do appear to try and get up after you run them over )

The releasing of all the temp seasonal workers doing their santa work will swell the unemployment figures to over 3 million and the subsequent loss of dosh in the circuit will have a great knock on effect .
Couple this with the disclosure that Unky Gord and his cronies have hocked us for a declared £ 178 billion plus say another £ 50 billion that is not financially sensible to reveal at present .

Add in our Darlings pre budget waffle and the fact that we as a country are being funded by major foriegn investors ( we don't have much industry export stuff ).

I'm betting that these investors will pull the plug and take their dosh elsewhere about April 2010

They aren't the green shoots of recovery that we are seeing, it's the bloody weeds coming through big time.

I wonder if our politicians wil have the guts to do the Canadian thing and reduce the government employee numbers and all government system costs by 10% almost overnight , yet still have all the levels of service or better for their population .

 

[Justme]

No, its going to get worse much worse yet.

The people that have money to buy £500 to £1000 CD racks are not the sort of people that are affected by the economy blips & job losses.

 

[Welderpaul]

Our level of enquiries is on the up, and we are about the busiest we have ever been.
We were quite quiet up to a month ago.

Speaking to some of our suppliers, they say trade is picking up. Seems variable. Some say things are getting better, some say they are getting worse.

 

[migwig]

I'd love to think that things are on the up, but I don't think it is. 2010 is going to be hard. The economy operates on many levels; just because things are getting better in the city doesn't mean they are elsewhere. The economy will only improve when people start spending again. But the banks aren't lending anymore and we aren't splashing-out on luxuries.

 

[chunkolini]

RTBcomp,
Never heard of Him? Is you joking?
I had not spotted this but I think He is your avatar, small world.
Robert Johnson, the late great blues singer. your first post sounded like the start of a great blues song, you know the ones where they sing a great long list of woes, then drink whisky .

I had one of those happen to me recently,
Workshop Blues No1

Da Da da da DA My belt sander blew up,
Da Da Da da DA and my angle grinder toooo
So did my router and my wallet toooo
Then my dang work stereo croaked
I had to go and get soaked.

Damn near £500 in a week. Ho Hum. The tools is upsetting, but the stereo was a disaster, I work alone in a shed, I love my sounds and need music. I tried the radio and was going to kill Jeremy Vine and his contributors, I went home to sulk. Then paid a tenner for a massive CD ghetto blaster in a charidee shop. Saved!!!!! For the time being, birthday is just after xmas, new steroe beckons. A loud one.

Anyway, where we? recession thingy. I think that people are starting to get their optimism back and spend their cash at a consumer level. The companies are still panicking but hopefully realising that things will pick up, they always do in the end. Then there will be a bit of an upsurge, and it will all happen again?


Chunko'.

 

[Marty2005]

RTBcomp,
Robert Johnson, the late great blues singer.

He was the guy who, legend has it, sold his soul to the devil in return for being a great blues guitarist. If I'm right, the photo in the avatar is the only one of him that exists.

As for the recession thingy. I reckon we'll see a quickening of what has been gradually happening over the last few years, real full time skilled jobs disappearing for good, being replaced by part time unskilled jobs, which offer just enough pay and hours to get people desperate for anything of the unemployment register. HMG can then say 'look at all these jobs we've created and how we've reduced the dole queue'

 

[Chipper]

There's 2 pics of the great RJ, one is a close-up-ish shot with tab in gob.

Recession, no idea... But re the skilled jobs and dole, it's been going on for decades. Remember the Tories endlessely tweaking the figures when they were in, I lost count at nine downward "adjustments". Knew guys then who were out of work for 5 years plus. It doesn't seem as bad, this one. Yet.

 

[rtbcomp]

RTBcomp,
.....I had not spotted this but I think He is your avatar, small world.
......

Geez man. that's ma pa!

 

[English Steve]

Our workload dropped by around 80% at the start of '09. Inevitably three-day-weeks and redundancies followed, but in the last month we have re-employed all of the shop floor staff we had lost, and taken on more. We suddenly have around £2 Million of orders on the books, but the bank won't lend us the money to buy in the raw materials. We are managing - just.
Downside is that I am now the only Engineer left in the company with no plans to get me any help There is absolutely no way that I can cope with the current workload, and if it gets any busier ...

The worry is that all our current order value comes from just a few customers, one of which is a largeish County Council. Feeling is that this 'recovery' could be just a happy blip with another crash to follow in April

 

[Robotstar5]

At least I get my bus pass this year!

I cheated and married a bus driver, entitles me to free pass!

On the work front, one of our lines is due to finish in 2011 with nothing to replace it but the other has order levels increasing into the new year. We have a plant meeting next week so will get the good / bad news then, just hope it's not as bad as last year - 30% redundancies and a pay cut

 

[matt1978]

I have noticed things getting better in general since March, but its so unpredictable. For no apparant reason, September was shocking, while 2 months either side of it was really really good. It looks like December is going to be slow though

On the plus side, lots of demonstrations and enquiries are in place for the new year and almost all of the end users I have visited in these last 6-8 weeks say that they are now much busier and have work for well into the new year.

I think confidence is the key, if people and the media constantly talk about doom and gloom then its obviously not going to give people confidence in spending money is it. Concentrate on the positives and the good news rather than the bad all the time, or we'll all end up in the nuthouse............unemployed!