Obama's New Tax Costs UK Banks £11 Billion

Barack Obama has announced a new $90 billion tax on the US banking industry that will have massive repercussions in the UK. UK banks will apparently be forced to pay £11 billion as their share of the cost of repaying US tax payers for their support of the TARP programme.

Mortgages - Fix Rate or Not?

I have a had a New Year present from Bank of Ireland Mortgages. My mortgage rate has fallen from a fixed rate 5.99% to a variable rate 2.99%.
My original fixed rate mortgage was taken out with Bristol and West back in 2002. Bristol and West charged me 4.39% for a 5 year fixed rated mortgage. This original mortgage expired in 2007 and was repaced by the new fixed rate of 5.99% for two years. Bristol and West has been acquired by Bank of Ireland and rebranded. Due to the wider financial problems of Ireland - the country - Bank of Ireland have withdrawn most of their attractive fixed rate deals.

The question I now face is whether to fix my mortgage rate again - at around 4.8% for 4 or 5 years with another mortgage provider - or to carry on taking the benefit of a lower variable rate mortgage.

Getting a Dentist

Living in the fastest growing town in the UK has its problems. Government spending tends to be based on census data from 2001 when the population was much smaller.

Getting access to public services tends to present real problems as a smaller budget per person tends to be allocated than for other parts of the country. In addition, a growing population tends to have a higher proportion of children. And these tend to absorb disportionate amounts of heath and education spending. This problem is extremely evident when it comes to accessing a dentist. Children get priority and therefore ordinary adults have to go to the back of the queue.

NHS dental treatment is extremely scarce in the local area and many people are driven by necessity to private dental treatment. The interesting thing is the contrast between optician and dental services. Dental treatment gets more and more expensive and yet competition between opticians is driving down the prices of spectacles and sight testing.