Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
I am not sure British domestic policy should be geared to providing nice pieds-a-terre to millionaire citizens of nowhere.
In the 1972 horror film "Death Line", there's a line where homeless people are so unusual it's remarked upon. Now every town has a high street with at least one tramp. Not everything got better for everybody.
On street homelessness we reduced it massively during the pandemic in a few weeks. Just takes will, and some resources to make a big difference, if it was a priority for government. Was also massively reduced under new Labour.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
What it boils down to is that London property was relatively cheap in the 1970s because few people found it an attractive place at the time.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Not in my experience. They have some obscure foods from the mediterranean, even "luxury" brands of high-quality British ready-made foods and recipes, with no artificial preservatives in them, the like of which I've never seen in Tesco or Sainsbury.
They also seem to understand even how to get hold of the best British and local-made and home-grown products, rather than pitting out awkward crap of own-brand quality, under their own name.
Got to agree with the pupil there - I'll quote for those who can't see the paper
The 100-year difference completely changes the correct answer to the question. Sydenham's discovery did not have impact in this time period and his ideas were not accepted until long after his death, in fact he was ridiculed while he was alive.
"The mistake in the question led me and other students to question our own knowledge and threw us completely off."
And I can see her problem - 1 fundamental error like that where you thought you knew the answer will lead you to question all your knowledge.
It's like the reason I don't read the economist. - it published 1 article on something I fully understood that was so wrong on 80% of the basic facts (twas an internet article back in the mid 90s) that I've doubted the quality of all it's journalism ever since.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Generally speaking, yes, in that they will tend to have one choice of olive oil, one choice of peanut butter, one choice of strawberry jam (maybe two), instead of a dozen.
However, they do use the headroom this creates to have a wide range of different products - things like kangaroo and ostrich steaks - though the more unusual items tend to be available only for a limited period at a time, on rotation with others.
So you can say that they have a wide range of different products, but they also have a narrow range of different brands of the same product, and so a smaller number of stock items overall.
It also means that you can't guarantee they will have a specific non-core product in stock at a specific time - such as venison for your woke dinner party. You might say that, "Lidl is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get."
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Yes I get all that. If I wanted to buy a house in Addison Road or on the Phillimore Estate I would have to splash out tens of millions of pounds. But it is not sensible. As we agree. I was just setting out my theory of why this was so.
Sats paper that left children in tears was aimed at older pupils
A Sats reading paper that teachers and parents said was too difficult has been published, revealing that it included a passage from a book aimed at older pupils.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Most UK Lidls have a fresh bread section which is quite good. Aldi has no fresh bread. Overall I prefer Aldi but wish they had the fresh bread like at Lidl.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Yes I get all that. If I wanted to buy a house in Addison Road or on the Phillimore Estate I would have to splash out tens of millions of pounds. But it is not sensible. As we agree. I was just setting out my theory of why this was so.
It was quite a boring theory to be fair. “London became more expensive when it became more economically dynamic so more people wanted to live there”
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Yes I get all that. If I wanted to buy a house in Addison Road or on the Phillimore Estate I would have to splash out tens of millions of pounds. But it is not sensible. As we agree. I was just setting out my theory of why this was so.
It was quite a boring theory to be fair. “London became more expensive when it became more economically dynamic so more people wanted to live there”
It’s not the General Theory of Relativity, is it?
I am actually a very interesting person. The only quibble I might have, and historians of the period please note, is that it was specifically big bang and the US investment banking model that contributed to if was not responsible for it.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Of course our ridiculous class system extends to supermarkets like every other corner of British life and unlike other countries which just have cheaper or more expensive shops.
So we have Waitrose and M&S for the broadsheet readers, Tesco for the mass middle class, ASDA for the lower middle, and Iceland etc for the working class, with Sainsbury’s being the only UK supermarket with any claim to cut across class divides.
That’s why Aldi and Lidl are so refreshing. They are classless and open access because they are foreign, as for example are shops like “Cyprus Food Market” near me.
In France by contrast it’s pretty difficult to work out which is more or less posh out of the big chains Carrefour, E Leclerc, Auchan and Intermarché. They vary between stores more than between chains.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Perhaps if we banned foreign nationals/companies from owning accommodation, then although the restaurants will be less fashionable, it would be a nice place to live. If billionaire foreign national wants to live in a nicer flat overlooking the river, they can rent from a British landlord.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Of course our ridiculous class system extends to supermarkets like every other corner of British life and unlike other countries with just have cheaper or more expensive shops.
So we have Waitrose and M&S for the broadsheet readers, Tesco for the mass middle class, ASDA for the lower middle, and Iceland etc for the working class, with Sainsbury’s being the only UK supermarket with any claim to cut across class divides.
That’s why Aldi and Lidl are so refreshing. They are classless and open access because they are foreign, as for example are shops like “Cyprus Food Market” near me.
In France by contrast it’s pretty difficult to work out which is more or less posh out of the big chains Carrefour, E Leclerc, Auchan and Intermarché. They vary between stores more than between chains.
There is mobility too. Tesco used to be the lowest of the low and then rocketed up to middle class.
The very best supermarkets in the world are probably an upmarket El Corte Ingles in a rich bit of Spain or a Carrefour in a rich bit of France
Tho even there the British equivalents will offer more variety in areas like wine or world cheese. They are better at bread and fresh stuff tho
I would place a full size Booths at the top with Carrefour second...
The Carrefour in Monaco is quite something. They have a wide choice of live oysters
When I visited Vienna last year (and worked there back in 2018) half the Billa(s) had live lobsters waiting to be taken home and boiled (and Billa is really just the local equivalent to a Tesco Express).
So all of those people who were pushed into degrees by New Labour initially, who determined the jobs of the future will need degress, and carried on by subsequent govts. The striking doctors and uni lecturers and other middle class, white collar jobs, @Leon is right about this. AI is going to hit many white collar, middle management jobs like a steam train.
That article leads on customer service jobs, which have already been decimated by overseas call centres and AI chatbots. What else? Gigging freelancers, perhaps, like the ones on fiverr. More likely in the short term is that AI will open up services to the person on the street, in the same way drones meant every Youtube video can have overhead shots, not just mainstream television with budgets for helicopters. AI can provide you and me with translations of foreign web pages, but professional interpreters are still in demand.
In computing, programmers are still there but are increasingly using AI to get help rather than sites like stackoverflow.
In medicine, one can imagine AI scanning X-rays but before radiologists resign en masse, we must remember IBM's Watson AI flopped in its trials with top American hospitals.
AI is already being used in healthcare (technically machine learning not AI). Radiology is one of the principal areas given the chronic shortage of board certified radiologists
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
I agree with much of this
However there is something in human nature which wants to be “where it’s at” - particularly if you are young - even if that means a demonstrably inferior quality of life
I mentioned the other day the Aussie PR girl I met last week who took a 70% pay cut to move from Tasmania to London and does not regret any of it and loves london “because london is where everybody lives” and she can go anywhere in Europe in 2-3 hours (unlike Hobart)
For the young and ambitious Paris will always be better than Lyon and New York always superior to Boston
Re supermarkets, Sainsbury's has just emailed me with the chance to win a Ninja Air Fryer. It's a scam and nothing to do with Sainsbury's but it is a more convincing scam than most of the others, with the right colours and all. Stay safe.
I travel widely in Europe and I have never seen this “huge gulf” in quality between cheap German supermarkets and cheap British supermarkets
For a start they are usually the same supermarkets. Lidl and Aldi
Mid range supermarkets are about the same across Western Europe, tho each country will have areas of strength. Eg the bread will be better in France. The ham better in Spain. The wine variety better in the UK
Germany is a more orderly country than the Uk. There is less litter (we really need to sort that out). But it also has infrastructure problems and it generally doesn’t feel significantly richer than the UK (not like, say, Switzerland)
What Germany doesn’t have (that I’ve seen) is intense deprivation like you get in some post industrial British towns, or decayed seaside resorts like Blackpool
But then I’ve NOT travelled widely in post industrial east Germany and maybe it is quite bad there
A UK booze section, a Spanish fish section and everything else French would be the ideal supermarket.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Of course our ridiculous class system extends to supermarkets like every other corner of British life and unlike other countries which just have cheaper or more expensive shops.
So we have Waitrose and M&S for the broadsheet readers, Tesco for the mass middle class, ASDA for the lower middle, and Iceland etc for the working class, with Sainsbury’s being the only UK supermarket with any claim to cut across class divides.
That’s why Aldi and Lidl are so refreshing. They are classless and open access because they are foreign, as for example are shops like “Cyprus Food Market” near me.
In France by contrast it’s pretty difficult to work out which is more or less posh out of the big chains Carrefour, E Leclerc, Auchan and Intermarché. They vary between stores more than between chains.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
I agree with much of this
However there is something in human nature which wants to be “where it’s at” - particularly if you are young - even if that means a demonstrably inferior quality of life
I mentioned the other day the Aussie PR girl I met last week who took a 70% pay cut to move from Tasmania to London and does not regret any of it and loves london “because london is where everybody lives” and she can go anywhere in Europe in 2-3 hours (unlike Hobart)
For the young and ambitious Paris will always be better than Lyon and New York always superior to Boston
Which is why those periodic surveys that conclude the best city in the world to live is Zurich or Vancouver just don’t cut it.
Re supermarkets, Sainsbury's has just emailed me with the chance to win a Ninja Air Fryer. It's a scam and nothing to do with Sainsbury's but it is a more convincing scam than most of the others, with the right colours and all. Stay safe.
Easily spotted as a scam. Air Fryers nowadays tend to be machines rather than Japanese samurai assassins.
What do people think of 'cozzy livs' as a term for the cost of living crisis?
As in, "there are many challenges facing the Sunak government but perhaps the greatest of them, at least as regards electoral impact, is how to mitigate the cozzy livs."
Or, "the cost of the Coronation might in normal times be something barely worth a mention but these are not normal times - there's a cozzy livs."
I can't decide whether it's excellent or a bit naff.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Most UK Lidls have a fresh bread section which is quite good. Aldi has no fresh bread. Overall I prefer Aldi but wish they had the fresh bread like at Lidl.
True, but Aldi does the croissant of NE Scotland, the buttery.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
You'll do well to get better access to green spaces than you get in London. But broadly agree.
What do people think of 'cozzy livs' as a term for the cost of living crisis?
As in, "there are many challenges facing the Sunak government but perhaps the greatest of them, at least as regards electoral impact, is how to mitigate the cozzy livs."
Or, "the cost of the Coronation might in normal times be something barely worth a mention but these are not normal times - there's a cozzy livs."
I can't decide whether it's excellent or a bit naff.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Yes I get all that. If I wanted to buy a house in Addison Road or on the Phillimore Estate I would have to splash out tens of millions of pounds. But it is not sensible. As we agree. I was just setting out my theory of why this was so.
It was quite a boring theory to be fair. “London became more expensive when it became more economically dynamic so more people wanted to live there”
It’s not the General Theory of Relativity, is it?
I am actually a very interesting person. The only quibble I might have, and historians of the period please note, is that it was specifically big bang and the US investment banking model that contributed to if was not responsible for it.
But now I'm boring myself.
Don't listen to the knockers. Your theory was worth floating. I was moderately stimulated by it.
I travel widely in Europe and I have never seen this “huge gulf” in quality between cheap German supermarkets and cheap British supermarkets
For a start they are usually the same supermarkets. Lidl and Aldi
Mid range supermarkets are about the same across Western Europe, tho each country will have areas of strength. Eg the bread will be better in France. The ham better in Spain. The wine variety better in the UK
Germany is a more orderly country than the Uk. There is less litter (we really need to sort that out). But it also has infrastructure problems and it generally doesn’t feel significantly richer than the UK (not like, say, Switzerland)
What Germany doesn’t have (that I’ve seen) is intense deprivation like you get in some post industrial British towns, or decayed seaside resorts like Blackpool
But then I’ve NOT travelled widely in post industrial east Germany and maybe it is quite bad there
A UK booze section, a Spanish fish section and everything else French would be the ideal supermarket.
You get a much better world food choice in a UK supermarket. And Spain is probably better at charcuterie - certainly ham
The best smoked salmon can be found in Greenlandic supermarkets. No joke. It’s sensational and ridiculously cheap (because it is usually landed and smoked in a big warehouse next door)
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Depends what language you want and what culture you are interested in. Madrid is the capital of the Spanish-speaking world - and its cultural and gastronomic life reflect that, as does the relentless influx of people from Latin America. So do its house prices!
What do people think of 'cozzy livs' as a term for the cost of living crisis?
As in, "there are many challenges facing the Sunak government but perhaps the greatest of them, at least as regards electoral impact, is how to mitigate the cozzy livs."
Or, "the cost of the Coronation might in normal times be something barely worth a mention but these are not normal times - there's a cozzy livs."
I can't decide whether it's excellent or a bit naff.
It's very naff and its time was up with platty joobs.
Biden says US wont block any transfers from European countries
Positive if you're right but has any country said they will do transfers?
We don't have F16s to give, the US isn't giving any. Which countries have an abundance of F16s they're planning on giving? I'd love it if were true, but I'm not holding my breath.
Norway have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick.
For som reason (age?!) I initially read that as "No way, I have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick." I thought you were even richer* than I'd realised or wondered whether the post was in fact from Dura Ace.
*you know, being a pensioner and all
I wish
If Malc owned 60 F16s I can think of at least one poster on here who we might not have heard from again.
I though half the Norwegian F16s have been sold to the Romanians, already?
Hasn't yet been approved by the US, I think.
And the US has a very large number of surplus F16s. If they don't want to sell them to Ukraine, they could supply European NATO partners instead.
I thought it was approved and they had been fairly massively upgraded as well?
You could well be correct. Still leaves around a dozen (plus the dozen to be sold for US training purposes).
There are also a number between Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland. While it's unlikely that any of those want to deplete their current fleets while the conflict is ongoing, for obvious reasons, it does provide routes for the US to supply surplus airframes indirectly.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
I agree with much of this
However there is something in human nature which wants to be “where it’s at” - particularly if you are young - even if that means a demonstrably inferior quality of life
I mentioned the other day the Aussie PR girl I met last week who took a 70% pay cut to move from Tasmania to London and does not regret any of it and loves london “because london is where everybody lives” and she can go anywhere in Europe in 2-3 hours (unlike Hobart)
For the young and ambitious Paris will always be better than Lyon and New York always superior to Boston
Which is why those periodic surveys that conclude the best city in the world to live is Zurich or Vancouver just don’t cut it.
Or that the best place to live in the UK is "Wadhurst". You what?
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
I agree with much of this
However there is something in human nature which wants to be “where it’s at” - particularly if you are young - even if that means a demonstrably inferior quality of life
I mentioned the other day the Aussie PR girl I met last week who took a 70% pay cut to move from Tasmania to London and does not regret any of it and loves london “because london is where everybody lives” and she can go anywhere in Europe in 2-3 hours (unlike Hobart)
For the young and ambitious Paris will always be better than Lyon and New York always superior to Boston
Is it inherent in human nature? Or is it just in the personality types that end up in London and you have confirmation bias because you live there and relate to those people? There are plenty of young people who visit Manhattan and think "ugh, this isn't for me."
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Of course our ridiculous class system extends to supermarkets like every other corner of British life and unlike other countries which just have cheaper or more expensive shops.
So we have Waitrose and M&S for the broadsheet readers, Tesco for the mass middle class, ASDA for the lower middle, and Iceland etc for the working class, with Sainsbury’s being the only UK supermarket with any claim to cut across class divides.
That’s why Aldi and Lidl are so refreshing. They are classless and open access because they are foreign, as for example are shops like “Cyprus Food Market” near me.
In France by contrast it’s pretty difficult to work out which is more or less posh out of the big chains Carrefour, E Leclerc, Auchan and Intermarché. They vary between stores more than between chains.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Depends what language you want and what culture you are interested in. Madrid is the capital of the Spanish-speaking world - and its cultural and gastronomic life reflect that, as does the relentless influx of people from Latin America. So do its house prices!
Madrid is interesting. It’s not quite a world city but it does have wonderful art and food
I didn’t know that it too has insane property prices
It’s also sad - terribly sad - that we have to take Hong Kong OFF the world city list. But we do. Because
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Depends what language you want and what culture you are interested in. Madrid is the capital of the Spanish-speaking world - and its cultural and gastronomic life reflect that, as does the relentless influx of people from Latin America. So do its house prices!
Madrid is interesting. It’s not quite a world city but it does have wonderful art and food
I didn’t know that it too has insane property prices
It’s also sad - terribly sad - that we have to take Hong Kong OFF the world city list. But we do. Because
I travel widely in Europe and I have never seen this “huge gulf” in quality between cheap German supermarkets and cheap British supermarkets
For a start they are usually the same supermarkets. Lidl and Aldi
Mid range supermarkets are about the same across Western Europe, tho each country will have areas of strength. Eg the bread will be better in France. The ham better in Spain. The wine variety better in the UK
Germany is a more orderly country than the Uk. There is less litter (we really need to sort that out). But it also has infrastructure problems and it generally doesn’t feel significantly richer than the UK (not like, say, Switzerland)
What Germany doesn’t have (that I’ve seen) is intense deprivation like you get in some post industrial British towns, or decayed seaside resorts like Blackpool
But then I’ve NOT travelled widely in post industrial east Germany and maybe it is quite bad there
A UK booze section, a Spanish fish section and everything else French would be the ideal supermarket.
You get a much better world food choice in a UK supermarket. And Spain is probably better at charcuterie - certainly ham
The best smoked salmon can be found in Greenlandic supermarkets. No joke. It’s sensational and ridiculously cheap (because it is usually landed and smoked in a big warehouse next door)
I don't think the ham is that good in Spanish supermarkets. The decent stuff is sold elsewhere. You'd want it sliced direct off the bone rather than pre-packed. What you will get is very good cooking chorizo. And the eggs. Spanish eggs are the best in the world. By far.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
You'll do well to get better access to green spaces than you get in London. But broadly agree.
London has excellent green spaces but on a hot summer's day they are so congested it makes them unpleasant.
What do people think of 'cozzy livs' as a term for the cost of living crisis?
As in, "there are many challenges facing the Sunak government but perhaps the greatest of them, at least as regards electoral impact, is how to mitigate the cozzy livs."
Or, "the cost of the Coronation might in normal times be something barely worth a mention but these are not normal times - there's a cozzy livs."
I can't decide whether it's excellent or a bit naff.
Naff naff naff.
Ok, I sense it has few friends. It won't pass my lips again.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
I agree with much of this
However there is something in human nature which wants to be “where it’s at” - particularly if you are young - even if that means a demonstrably inferior quality of life
I mentioned the other day the Aussie PR girl I met last week who took a 70% pay cut to move from Tasmania to London and does not regret any of it and loves london “because london is where everybody lives” and she can go anywhere in Europe in 2-3 hours (unlike Hobart)
For the young and ambitious Paris will always be better than Lyon and New York always superior to Boston
Is it inherent in human nature? Or is it just in the personality types that end up in London and you have confirmation bias because you live there and relate to those people? There are plenty of young people who visit Manhattan and think "ugh, this isn't for me."
The relentless rise in London’s population suggests that enough people are of this mindset…
Besides I’m not sure we are arguing. There are some people who are much happier in Lyon and there are some people who will always want Paris and suffer terrible FOMO if they end up in Lyon
I travel widely in Europe and I have never seen this “huge gulf” in quality between cheap German supermarkets and cheap British supermarkets
For a start they are usually the same supermarkets. Lidl and Aldi
Mid range supermarkets are about the same across Western Europe, tho each country will have areas of strength. Eg the bread will be better in France. The ham better in Spain. The wine variety better in the UK
Germany is a more orderly country than the Uk. There is less litter (we really need to sort that out). But it also has infrastructure problems and it generally doesn’t feel significantly richer than the UK (not like, say, Switzerland)
What Germany doesn’t have (that I’ve seen) is intense deprivation like you get in some post industrial British towns, or decayed seaside resorts like Blackpool
But then I’ve NOT travelled widely in post industrial east Germany and maybe it is quite bad there
A UK booze section, a Spanish fish section and everything else French would be the ideal supermarket.
You get a much better world food choice in a UK supermarket. And Spain is probably better at charcuterie - certainly ham
The best smoked salmon can be found in Greenlandic supermarkets. No joke. It’s sensational and ridiculously cheap (because it is usually landed and smoked in a big warehouse next door)
I don't think the ham is that good in Spanish supermarkets. The decent stuff is sold elsewhere. You'd want it sliced direct off the bone rather than pre-packed. What you will get is very good cooking chorizo. And the eggs. Spanish eggs are the best in the world. By far.
In a really good El Corte Ingles in a rich place like Marbella they will have someone slicing the ham off the bone - and wrapping it for you
In my experience, the French are much more ready to take risks and be entrepreneurial than the Germans. German business is very conservative. It has its models and really struggles to adapt them.
I travel widely in Europe and I have never seen this “huge gulf” in quality between cheap German supermarkets and cheap British supermarkets
For a start they are usually the same supermarkets. Lidl and Aldi
Mid range supermarkets are about the same across Western Europe, tho each country will have areas of strength. Eg the bread will be better in France. The ham better in Spain. The wine variety better in the UK
Germany is a more orderly country than the Uk. There is less litter (we really need to sort that out). But it also has infrastructure problems and it generally doesn’t feel significantly richer than the UK (not like, say, Switzerland)
What Germany doesn’t have (that I’ve seen) is intense deprivation like you get in some post industrial British towns, or decayed seaside resorts like Blackpool
But then I’ve NOT travelled widely in post industrial east Germany and maybe it is quite bad there
A UK booze section, a Spanish fish section and everything else French would be the ideal supermarket.
You get a much better world food choice in a UK supermarket. And Spain is probably better at charcuterie - certainly ham
The best smoked salmon can be found in Greenlandic supermarkets. No joke. It’s sensational and ridiculously cheap (because it is usually landed and smoked in a big warehouse next door)
I don't think the ham is that good in Spanish supermarkets. The decent stuff is sold elsewhere. You'd want it sliced direct off the bone rather than pre-packed. What you will get is very good cooking chorizo. And the eggs. Spanish eggs are the best in the world. By far.
In a really good El Corte Ingles in a rich place like Marbella they will have someone slicing the ham off the bone - and wrapping it for you
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Indeed.
Also : better cakes. Lidl also seem to be about the only UK supermarket that can make nearly-correct U.S chocolate Brownies, or Portugese Natas, for instance. Just some sort of attention to detail, and good value, that isn't there with some of the other mid-range and cheaper British supermarkets. You won't find that kind of quality in your local Asda in Neasden, that much can be said for sure.
Re supermarkets, Sainsbury's has just emailed me with the chance to win a Ninja Air Fryer. It's a scam and nothing to do with Sainsbury's but it is a more convincing scam than most of the others, with the right colours and all. Stay safe.
Easily spotted as a scam. Air Fryers nowadays tend to be machines rather than Japanese samurai assassins.
I’d be careful suggesting the Ninja are anything to do with Samurai. The later made the phrase “checking your sword is sharp on the neck of a passing stranger” a thing.
They also despised Ninja as a bunch of cowardly back stabbing scum.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
You'll do well to get better access to green spaces than you get in London. But broadly agree.
London has excellent green spaces but on a hot summer's day they are so congested it makes them unpleasant.
I’ve lived in london nearly all my adult life and this really isn’t true. London’s parks are vast and glorious. Even on the loveliest day in July you will find an empty corner of Regent’s Park or Hampstead Heath. I know because I’ve done it many many times
A decision by Greene King to trial card-only payments in some of its pubs in Notts has led to a boycott by some customers who say they will take their business elsewhere. The pub group has chosen to ditch cash in certain venues, saying the majority of payments are already made by card.
The Travellers Rest, in Mapperley Plains, is one of the pubs involved in the trial, but some punters aren't happy. One of them, Ross Da'Bell, of Arnold, said: "We are an older couple of regulars that choose to pay cash and now, if we want to go, we have no choice. I personally think that is a mistake on their part. I should have the choice. We eat out a lot and no where else we go does this. It is likely we will go elsewhere in future. It's such a shame."
Pubs that take only cards are fairly commonplace down here – indeed seeing anyone paying in cash is rather rare and somewhat time-consuming, both for the bar staff and other punters. I'm surprised at their reaction.
Biden says US wont block any transfers from European countries
Positive if you're right but has any country said they will do transfers?
We don't have F16s to give, the US isn't giving any. Which countries have an abundance of F16s they're planning on giving? I'd love it if were true, but I'm not holding my breath.
Norway have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick.
For som reason (age?!) I initially read that as "No way, I have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick." I thought you were even richer* than I'd realised or wondered whether the post was in fact from Dura Ace.
*you know, being a pensioner and all
I wish
If Malc owned 60 F16s I can think of at least one poster on here who we might not have heard from again.
I though half the Norwegian F16s have been sold to the Romanians, already?
Hasn't yet been approved by the US, I think.
And the US has a very large number of surplus F16s. If they don't want to sell them to Ukraine, they could supply European NATO partners instead.
I thought it was approved and they had been fairly massively upgraded as well?
You could well be correct. Still leaves around a dozen (plus the dozen to be sold for US training purposes).
There are also a number between Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland. While it's unlikely that any of those want to deplete their current fleets while the conflict is ongoing, for obvious reasons, it does provide routes for the US to supply surplus airframes indirectly.
A pitch to the Americans is that F16 for Ukraine would mean back filling in the west with F35. Which means $$ sales…
A decision by Greene King to trial card-only payments in some of its pubs in Notts has led to a boycott by some customers who say they will take their business elsewhere. The pub group has chosen to ditch cash in certain venues, saying the majority of payments are already made by card.
The Travellers Rest, in Mapperley Plains, is one of the pubs involved in the trial, but some punters aren't happy. One of them, Ross Da'Bell, of Arnold, said: "We are an older couple of regulars that choose to pay cash and now, if we want to go, we have no choice. I personally think that is a mistake on their part. I should have the choice. We eat out a lot and no where else we go does this. It is likely we will go elsewhere in future. It's such a shame."
Pubs that take only cards are fairly commonplace down here – indeed seeing anyone paying in cash is rather rare and somewhat time-consuming, both for the bar staff and other punters. I'm surprised at their reaction.
I'm not surprised at their reaction -some people use cash to manage how much they can spend and debit / credit cards make things impossible for them.
A decision by Greene King to trial card-only payments in some of its pubs in Notts has led to a boycott by some customers who say they will take their business elsewhere. The pub group has chosen to ditch cash in certain venues, saying the majority of payments are already made by card.
The Travellers Rest, in Mapperley Plains, is one of the pubs involved in the trial, but some punters aren't happy. One of them, Ross Da'Bell, of Arnold, said: "We are an older couple of regulars that choose to pay cash and now, if we want to go, we have no choice. I personally think that is a mistake on their part. I should have the choice. We eat out a lot and no where else we go does this. It is likely we will go elsewhere in future. It's such a shame."
Adnams have been doing this for some time. You can't go to a pub in Southwold and use cash.
A fair move by Adnams.
Cash is just a complete waste of valuable time.
Barmaids/barmen are more gainfully employed chatting to punters and keeping an eye on orders than faffing around with a load of worthless shrapnel all day.
As previously discussed, this is only going one way.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
I agree with much of this
However there is something in human nature which wants to be “where it’s at” - particularly if you are young - even if that means a demonstrably inferior quality of life
I mentioned the other day the Aussie PR girl I met last week who took a 70% pay cut to move from Tasmania to London and does not regret any of it and loves london “because london is where everybody lives” and she can go anywhere in Europe in 2-3 hours (unlike Hobart)
For the young and ambitious Paris will always be better than Lyon and New York always superior to Boston
Is it inherent in human nature? Or is it just in the personality types that end up in London and you have confirmation bias because you live there and relate to those people? There are plenty of young people who visit Manhattan and think "ugh, this isn't for me."
The relentless rise in London’s population suggests that enough people are of this mindset…
Besides I’m not sure we are arguing. There are some people who are much happier in Lyon and there are some people who will always want Paris and suffer terrible FOMO if they end up in Lyon
I thought London's population was falling?
But anyway, I think you're broadly right. Clearly many people would rather live in London. If money were of no object, I think it would be a fantastic place to live. Just the sheer relentless awesomeness of it. The main downside, of course, is that it's so bloody expensive that you can only afford three square feet of a HOMO in Zone 17 for the price of a mansion in Didsbury or Gosforth or Headingley or Edgbaston or Broomhill or Clifton.
A decision by Greene King to trial card-only payments in some of its pubs in Notts has led to a boycott by some customers who say they will take their business elsewhere. The pub group has chosen to ditch cash in certain venues, saying the majority of payments are already made by card.
The Travellers Rest, in Mapperley Plains, is one of the pubs involved in the trial, but some punters aren't happy. One of them, Ross Da'Bell, of Arnold, said: "We are an older couple of regulars that choose to pay cash and now, if we want to go, we have no choice. I personally think that is a mistake on their part. I should have the choice. We eat out a lot and no where else we go does this. It is likely we will go elsewhere in future. It's such a shame."
Pubs that take only cards are fairly commonplace down here – indeed seeing anyone paying in cash is rather rare and somewhat time-consuming, both for the bar staff and other punters. I'm surprised at their reaction.
Ah just while you're here, I have some further grist to your 'can cash' mill - it facilitates the black economy and 2 features of the black economy are malign activities and tax evasion.
Re supermarkets, Sainsbury's has just emailed me with the chance to win a Ninja Air Fryer. It's a scam and nothing to do with Sainsbury's but it is a more convincing scam than most of the others, with the right colours and all. Stay safe.
Easily spotted as a scam. Air Fryers nowadays tend to be machines rather than Japanese samurai assassins.
I’d be careful suggesting the Ninja are anything to do with Samurai. The later made the phrase “checking your sword is sharp on the neck of a passing stranger” a thing.
They also despised Ninja as a bunch of cowardly back stabbing scum.
As long as they don't air fry me alive I'll settle for the sword.
On cash, this can cut both ways. A small businesswoman my mother knows doesn't ban card transactions but does hide the machine to perform them unless customers specifically ask to pay by card. She prefers cash because the processing fees are lower.
She's wrong though. Real-world cost of businesses handling and processing cash is demonstrably and provably higher than the (minimal) fees charged on card payments.
Many retailers down here are now wise to this – and have gone completely cashless as a result. It's cheaper. And quicker. And easier.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
You'll do well to get better access to green spaces than you get in London. But broadly agree.
London has excellent green spaces but on a hot summer's day they are so congested it makes them unpleasant.
I’ve lived in london nearly all my adult life and this really isn’t true. London’s parks are vast and glorious. Even on the loveliest day in July you will find an empty corner of Regent’s Park or Hampstead Heath. I know because I’ve done it many many times
And Richmond park is vastly bigger still
+1 walk 5-10 minutes away from a gate and you will always find a quiet space in a park even in Central Park NY.
Biden says US wont block any transfers from European countries
Positive if you're right but has any country said they will do transfers?
We don't have F16s to give, the US isn't giving any. Which countries have an abundance of F16s they're planning on giving? I'd love it if were true, but I'm not holding my breath.
Norway have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick.
For som reason (age?!) I initially read that as "No way, I have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick." I thought you were even richer* than I'd realised or wondered whether the post was in fact from Dura Ace.
*you know, being a pensioner and all
I wish
If Malc owned 60 F16s I can think of at least one poster on here who we might not have heard from again.
The Ukrainian military has used a Patriot anti-aircraft missile system to shoot down at least one Russian fighter jet from a distance, CNN reports, citing representatives of the Pentagon and the US Congress. According to them, the Russian fighter jet was shot down in recent weeks https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1659514249528393728
asked Ukraine Defense Minister Reznikov in Kyiv about Zelensky’s G7 visit. He said a “top priority” is to discuss “aerial support” — jets. But he said more of everything is needed. Asked if he’d confirm reported Patriot shoot-down of a Russian jet, he said “no,” with a grin. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1659512056465203200
A decision by Greene King to trial card-only payments in some of its pubs in Notts has led to a boycott by some customers who say they will take their business elsewhere. The pub group has chosen to ditch cash in certain venues, saying the majority of payments are already made by card.
The Travellers Rest, in Mapperley Plains, is one of the pubs involved in the trial, but some punters aren't happy. One of them, Ross Da'Bell, of Arnold, said: "We are an older couple of regulars that choose to pay cash and now, if we want to go, we have no choice. I personally think that is a mistake on their part. I should have the choice. We eat out a lot and no where else we go does this. It is likely we will go elsewhere in future. It's such a shame."
Pubs that take only cards are fairly commonplace down here – indeed seeing anyone paying in cash is rather rare and somewhat time-consuming, both for the bar staff and other punters. I'm surprised at their reaction.
Curious to be surprised when you have had the conversation on here several times and find plenty who feel the same way each time. You may not approve of their reaction, or think it illogical, but you really should not be surprised.
On cash, this can cut both ways. A small businesswoman my mother knows doesn't ban card transactions but does hide the machine to perform them unless customers specifically ask to pay by card. She prefers cash because the processing fees are lower.
If by "processing fees" you mean VAT, yes its much lower when you don't report cash transactions.
Especially if you use that cash to pay people cash in hand, so you dodge Employer NIC too.
Cash = potentially dodgy is not a narrative we should be engaging with IMO.
I travel widely in Europe and I have never seen this “huge gulf” in quality between cheap German supermarkets and cheap British supermarkets
For a start they are usually the same supermarkets. Lidl and Aldi
Mid range supermarkets are about the same across Western Europe, tho each country will have areas of strength. Eg the bread will be better in France. The ham better in Spain. The wine variety better in the UK
Germany is a more orderly country than the Uk. There is less litter (we really need to sort that out). But it also has infrastructure problems and it generally doesn’t feel significantly richer than the UK (not like, say, Switzerland)
What Germany doesn’t have (that I’ve seen) is intense deprivation like you get in some post industrial British towns, or decayed seaside resorts like Blackpool
But then I’ve NOT travelled widely in post industrial east Germany and maybe it is quite bad there
A UK booze section, a Spanish fish section and everything else French would be the ideal supermarket.
You get a much better world food choice in a UK supermarket. And Spain is probably better at charcuterie - certainly ham
The best smoked salmon can be found in Greenlandic supermarkets. No joke. It’s sensational and ridiculously cheap (because it is usually landed and smoked in a big warehouse next door)
I don't think the ham is that good in Spanish supermarkets. The decent stuff is sold elsewhere. You'd want it sliced direct off the bone rather than pre-packed. What you will get is very good cooking chorizo. And the eggs. Spanish eggs are the best in the world. By far.
In a really good El Corte Ingles in a rich place like Marbella they will have someone slicing the ham off the bone - and wrapping it for you
Ah, now that certainly works!!
It absolutely does. They also do it in El Corte Ingles in central Seville. Which is actually NOT a rich city at all (in GDP per capita). It just takes food - especially ham - very seriously
In defence of Britain a really good Marks and Sparks food supermarket is right up there with the global best
Biden says US wont block any transfers from European countries
Positive if you're right but has any country said they will do transfers?
We don't have F16s to give, the US isn't giving any. Which countries have an abundance of F16s they're planning on giving? I'd love it if were true, but I'm not holding my breath.
Norway have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick.
For som reason (age?!) I initially read that as "No way, I have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick." I thought you were even richer* than I'd realised or wondered whether the post was in fact from Dura Ace.
*you know, being a pensioner and all
I wish
If Malc owned 60 F16s I can think of at least one poster on here who we might not have heard from again.
Ah, but maybe that person has 60 of those '5th generation fighters' from Top Gun, so Malc has to keep his F16s safe in their hangar
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Of course our ridiculous class system extends to supermarkets like every other corner of British life and unlike other countries which just have cheaper or more expensive shops.
So we have Waitrose and M&S for the broadsheet readers, Tesco for the mass middle class, ASDA for the lower middle, and Iceland etc for the working class, with Sainsbury’s being the only UK supermarket with any claim to cut across class divides.
That’s why Aldi and Lidl are so refreshing. They are classless and open access because they are foreign, as for example are shops like “Cyprus Food Market” near me.
In France by contrast it’s pretty difficult to work out which is more or less posh out of the big chains Carrefour, E Leclerc, Auchan and Intermarché. They vary between stores more than between chains.
I'd have put Iceland down as marginal Remain (poor turnout) and Tesco as marginal. Otherwise, yes.
I'd put Lidl/Aldi as marginal and if forced to choose would lean towards Leave.
Yes they're "European" companies, but that doesn't mean their customers are. Indeed if you were to go by how they dress themselves, Aldi and Lidl seems to be the most overtly "British" out of all the supermarkets.
Their HQ may not be in Britain, but Aldi sponsor Team GB and they and Lidl seem to embrace wall-to-wall Union Flags and show off Britishness more than any other supermarket by far. My local Lidl has enough Union Flags it would send @Theuniondivvie into a fit of rage.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs ...Sachs is a "long-time advocate of dismantling American hegemony (sic) and embracing the rise of China." He believes the term “genocide” is mistaken in relation to the repression of the Uyghurs in China...
Re supermarkets, Sainsbury's has just emailed me with the chance to win a Ninja Air Fryer. It's a scam and nothing to do with Sainsbury's but it is a more convincing scam than most of the others, with the right colours and all. Stay safe.
I got the same one, although as I have no desire to own an air fryer (sic) the rascals chose the wrong mark in my case.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, I've often found that the difference between Lidl and many lower-end British supermarkets, and on various fresh and non-fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and wider range, for generally lower prices. The difference is so stark, and staggeringly easy to achieve for a cheap supermarket, that it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphorical first-hand experience of how the German economy and its service culture must be working in general compared to ours, over the last few years.
I thought one of the main points about Lidl is that their range is not wide. Is this not so?
Only been in one German non touristy supermarket recently, was either Lidl or Aldi. Mid size with equivalent fresh product range to a Uk superstore, and better quality, but the processed product range was more equivalent to a Tesco express or Sainsburys local, and lower quality.
No wonder they are healthier.
Fantastic range of bread in German Aldis & Lidls, not as great in UK ones but the bread is still better than eg Tescos.
Of course our ridiculous class system extends to supermarkets like every other corner of British life and unlike other countries which just have cheaper or more expensive shops.
So we have Waitrose and M&S for the broadsheet readers, Tesco for the mass middle class, ASDA for the lower middle, and Iceland etc for the working class, with Sainsbury’s being the only UK supermarket with any claim to cut across class divides.
That’s why Aldi and Lidl are so refreshing. They are classless and open access because they are foreign, as for example are shops like “Cyprus Food Market” near me.
In France by contrast it’s pretty difficult to work out which is more or less posh out of the big chains Carrefour, E Leclerc, Auchan and Intermarché. They vary between stores more than between chains.
I'd have put Iceland down as marginal Remain (poor turnout) and Tesco as marginal. Otherwise, yes.
I'd put Lidl/Aldi as marginal and if forced to choose would lean towards Leave.
Yes they're "European" companies, but that doesn't mean their customers are. Indeed if you were to go by how they dress themselves, Aldi and Lidl seems to be the most overtly "British" out of all the supermarkets.
Their HQ may not be in Britain, but Aldi sponsor Team GB and they and Lidl seem to embrace wall-to-wall Union Flags and show off Britishness more than any other supermarket by far. My local Lidl has enough Union Flags it would send @Theuniondivvie into a fit of rage.
Not that bothered by what people and their retail outlets do in their own country. The supermarkets here seem to go through odd phases of Scottish and British branding but in Glasgow they're a bit more reticent. On an unscientific basis I'd say Morrisons is the worst for UJ shagging.
Biden says US wont block any transfers from European countries
Positive if you're right but has any country said they will do transfers?
We don't have F16s to give, the US isn't giving any. Which countries have an abundance of F16s they're planning on giving? I'd love it if were true, but I'm not holding my breath.
A decision by Greene King to trial card-only payments in some of its pubs in Notts has led to a boycott by some customers who say they will take their business elsewhere. The pub group has chosen to ditch cash in certain venues, saying the majority of payments are already made by card.
The Travellers Rest, in Mapperley Plains, is one of the pubs involved in the trial, but some punters aren't happy. One of them, Ross Da'Bell, of Arnold, said: "We are an older couple of regulars that choose to pay cash and now, if we want to go, we have no choice. I personally think that is a mistake on their part. I should have the choice. We eat out a lot and no where else we go does this. It is likely we will go elsewhere in future. It's such a shame."
Pubs that take only cards are fairly commonplace down here – indeed seeing anyone paying in cash is rather rare and somewhat time-consuming, both for the bar staff and other punters. I'm surprised at their reaction.
Ah just while you're here, I have some further grist to your 'can cash' mill - it facilitates the black economy and 2 features of the black economy are malign activities and tax evasion.
I don't actually believe in abolishing it – that was a shocking misquote by this site's Mr Perma-Angry (Pagan2).
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
Mr. JohnL, been a long time since I learned about it and things may've changed since but I think renting was seen as both normal and had better laws in Germany compared to here.
A decision by Greene King to trial card-only payments in some of its pubs in Notts has led to a boycott by some customers who say they will take their business elsewhere. The pub group has chosen to ditch cash in certain venues, saying the majority of payments are already made by card.
The Travellers Rest, in Mapperley Plains, is one of the pubs involved in the trial, but some punters aren't happy. One of them, Ross Da'Bell, of Arnold, said: "We are an older couple of regulars that choose to pay cash and now, if we want to go, we have no choice. I personally think that is a mistake on their part. I should have the choice. We eat out a lot and no where else we go does this. It is likely we will go elsewhere in future. It's such a shame."
Pubs that take only cards are fairly commonplace down here – indeed seeing anyone paying in cash is rather rare and somewhat time-consuming, both for the bar staff and other punters. I'm surprised at their reaction.
I'm not surprised at their reaction -some people use cash to manage how much they can spend and debit / credit cards make things impossible for them.
Again, it does not make it "impossible". They might not be used to doing that, because they have never done it. But that is a rather different thing.
See also people who found metric "impossible"; decimalisation "impossible" and automatic cars "impossible".
In fact, it's far easier to budget electronically – because most bank apps now give real-time information.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Depends what language you want and what culture you are interested in. Madrid is the capital of the Spanish-speaking world - and its cultural and gastronomic life reflect that, as does the relentless influx of people from Latin America. So do its house prices!
Madrid is interesting. It’s not quite a world city but it does have wonderful art and food
I didn’t know that it too has insane property prices
It’s also sad - terribly sad - that we have to take Hong Kong OFF the world city list. But we do. Because
I think Naples is fantastic, noisy, frantic, exciting, loads of history and culture and the food is delicious and great quality. No idea on property prices but suspect they might be depressed by the presence of a certain volcano. Toulouse was a revelation to me, small city, great character. Melbourne has a lot of charm, culture and gastronomy too but I hear property prices are insane.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
You'll do well to get better access to green spaces than you get in London. But broadly agree.
London has excellent green spaces but on a hot summer's day they are so congested it makes them unpleasant.
I’ve lived in london nearly all my adult life and this really isn’t true. London’s parks are vast and glorious. Even on the loveliest day in July you will find an empty corner of Regent’s Park or Hampstead Heath. I know because I’ve done it many many times
And Richmond park is vastly bigger still
Glad you wrote that. I was just about to call "effing bollocks you twit" on WillG's dimwitted post.
But you got there first and were more measured and polite, so thank you.
Biden says US wont block any transfers from European countries
Positive if you're right but has any country said they will do transfers?
We don't have F16s to give, the US isn't giving any. Which countries have an abundance of F16s they're planning on giving? I'd love it if were true, but I'm not holding my breath.
Norway have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick.
For som reason (age?!) I initially read that as "No way, I have almost 60 retired F16's sitting in hangers in perfect nick." I thought you were even richer* than I'd realised or wondered whether the post was in fact from Dura Ace.
*you know, being a pensioner and all
I wish
If Malc owned 60 F16s I can think of at least one poster on here who we might not have heard from again.
I though half the Norwegian F16s have been sold to the Romanians, already?
Hasn't yet been approved by the US, I think.
And the US has a very large number of surplus F16s. If they don't want to sell them to Ukraine, they could supply European NATO partners instead.
I thought it was approved and they had been fairly massively upgraded as well?
You could well be correct. Still leaves around a dozen (plus the dozen to be sold for US training purposes).
There are also a number between Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland. While it's unlikely that any of those want to deplete their current fleets while the conflict is ongoing, for obvious reasons, it does provide routes for the US to supply surplus airframes indirectly.
A pitch to the Americans is that F16 for Ukraine would mean back filling in the west with F35. Which means $$ sales…
As with Norway - but that's a longer term project.
Most of those countries with F16s can't afford - and might not be allowed - the F35 anyway (though the unit price is falling surprisingly fast.)
Biden says US wont block any transfers from European countries
Positive if you're right but has any country said they will do transfers?
We don't have F16s to give, the US isn't giving any. Which countries have an abundance of F16s they're planning on giving? I'd love it if were true, but I'm not holding my breath.
Poland IIRC
Not really - they want their F16s for their own defence.
What do people think of 'cozzy livs' as a term for the cost of living crisis?
As in, "there are many challenges facing the Sunak government but perhaps the greatest of them, at least as regards electoral impact, is how to mitigate the cozzy livs."
Or, "the cost of the Coronation might in normal times be something barely worth a mention but these are not normal times - there's a cozzy livs."
I can't decide whether it's excellent or a bit naff.
The "cost of living crisis" is a crap term to start with for what is an inflation crisis, or a poverty crisis, or a supply-shock crisis, depending on what aspect you want to emphasise.
I do wonder who started calling it a "cost of living" crisis in the first place, and what they were trying to achieve by doing so.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
Depends what language you want and what culture you are interested in. Madrid is the capital of the Spanish-speaking world - and its cultural and gastronomic life reflect that, as does the relentless influx of people from Latin America. So do its house prices!
Madrid is interesting. It’s not quite a world city but it does have wonderful art and food
I didn’t know that it too has insane property prices
It’s also sad - terribly sad - that we have to take Hong Kong OFF the world city list. But we do. Because
Madrid is certainly one of the great gallery cities - certainly in my personal top five (alongside NYC, London, Paris and Vienna. Sorry, Italy!).
It had great nightlife too, though I've not been for 15 years so no idea on the scene these days.
Re these F16s. How long does it take to train an F16 pilot, albeit one who may have experience of other aircraft?
Saw yesterday where the US had done tests with a couple of Ukranian pilots and said they were pretty good and that it would only need 4 months rather than usual 18 to get them trained. Imagine the ground staff , etc might take a bit as well though.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
From what I can see online, Germany's population was forecast to drop or stay stable, but hasn't.
I wonder if that's because of the Ukrainian war, and Germany still accepting a lot of Russian and Central Asia Jewish populations. So that maybe could be the reason why it's been actually repeatedly forecast to fall, or stay stable, but instead seems to have risen from about 81 or 82 million 20 years ago, to approaching 85 million now. Even the population predictions from various world websites from last year seem to be wrong, so I wonder whether perhaps the Ukrainian war, and the way in which that might have accelerated Gemany's long-standing policy of accepting post-Soviet Jews, might have been two key factors, there.
Why are you so pig-headed over this? What would you call this if not stable? 🤦♂️ Apart from a brief fall in 2010, subsequently reversed, their population has barely changed all century.
Germany is not Britain!
But again, that graph seems to stop about two years ago, because the current figures are moving towards 85 mill.
Germany seems to have already added another couple of million or so since then. That doesn't look like an unchanging population, to me. I think it might be easier to see what's actually going on in a couple of years, after the Ukraine War.
The graph stops in 2021 which is 17 months ago because that's when accurate data ends. Its also not that long ago.
There may have been some variance since then, but not enough to create a multi-decade pressure on affordability like the UK has.
The UK's population started rising in 1997. It took a few years until 2003 of consistently doing so before pressure really started to significantly affect the housing market - and since then the UK has consistently had growing population and a shortage of construction.
If Germany's population has risen in the past 12 months then that may put them where we were in 1997. If theirs rises consistently for years to come, and their construction fails to keep up, then they too will face an inevitable affordability crisis. But they're not in that position today.
Median German house price is €551,483, in the UK it is only £290,000.
It is only the fact that most Germans live in apartments where the average cost is only €312,411 and indeed most rent that makes it more affordable. UK houses are actually cheaper on average than German houses outside London and the SE
Housing price details The median price of an apartment for sale is GBP 435,585. That means there are as many properties more expensive than GBP 435,585 as cheaper. As for houses for sale, the median price is GBP 663,111.
I think it's the median price of a house on their website - which looks to be at the higher/more expensive end of various markets.
So I think the €551,483 figure isn't right for Germany nationally.
In my experience German properties are larger than British ones, and built to a higher spec, so price comparisons that don't correct for that are probably a bit off. (Germans are richer than we are and so they tend to have better stuff than us across the board).
Continuing the general German theme, the difference between Lidl and some British supermarkets, on various fresh goods, is quite staggering.
Better quality, and a better range, for lower prices, and the difference is so staggering it's repeatedly struck me as some sort of metaphor for how the German economy and sizes must be working in general , compared to us , and ovet the last few years.
Indeed. A visit to Germany is a sobering experience! They face serious challenges maintaining their position given the disruption in sectors like autos that they are so successful in, but I would not bet against them. The European single market is a massive boon for them, their borders are open with allies on all sides, and they are really good at marrying engineering and commercial imperatives.
Must be recent , I was there 2 years ago and it was much better than here, clean streets , looked prosperous , food prices and especially beer prices were not ridiculous. No run down high streets full of bookmakers , takeaways and boarded up shops.
Gemany's 1990 population seems to be variously quoted at something around 78 or 79 million, and the figure for 2023 is given at 84.5 million.
1990 was 33 years ago. Its completely irrelevant. Yes, Germany's population rose between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then. Britain's population didn't between 1990 and 1995. That affected prices then too.
What happened in 1990 isn't affecting prices today. Why do you want to bring 33 years ago into it, just to pretend that Germany's population has been growing in recent years? 33 years ago is not recent.
Two decades ago both Germany and Britain had affordable housing. In the past 2 decades, Germany's population has not grown - Britain's has soared but construction has not kept up. That is it.
That is the full story, as much as you want to drag the fall of the Soviet Union, or migration many decades ago into it.
Time to roll out my Big Bang theory. Everything was ticking over perfectly well pre-Big Bang. Doctors, (commercial and merchant) bankers, lawyers, teachers, etc all rubbed along and housing eg in London was sensible.
Then with the advent and influx of zillions of US investment banks which hugely inflated wages in The City and brought in people with money to spend buying houses. This then pushed out the "traditional" professions and/or inflated wages also. The result being that property prices in core London went bonkers and then as people sought out areas adjacent to "nice" areas, those areas were gentrified and property prices went through the roof also.
I remember some friends being super-edgy by buying a house in Leamington Road Villas, London W11 for whatever it was 30-odd years ago. You can now buy a six-bedroom house in the adjacent road for £8.5m. Damn them!
From 1939 to 1986 - the Big Bang - London’s population was in perpetual decline. From nearly 9m to 6m-and-change. Big drops
I moved to London in the early 80s and I can still remember the vast areas of dereliction - from docklands to Kings X, Spitalfields to the south bank, Wapping to Islington. Entire streets in Bloomsbury were virtually slums (I know coz I squatted them in the late 80s)
Then the thatcher revolution turned london around and the city started growing again. It recently overtook its 1939 peak - finally
You really want london to return to the “sensible situation” of the 70s and early 80s?? The endless decline and decay? Absurd
We are where we are - and please don't bang on again about how dreadful Kings Cross was then; we all know just that it was a shock to out-of-towners. I'm just trying to explain London's property prices. No doubt there were plenty of good things that came at the same time, for one reason or another, but are you saying that paying £8.5m for a house opposite Portobello is sensible or even a good thing?
It’s neither good nor sensible it’s just a thing
You can have a super attractive world city like London Paris or NYC as your capital or you can have a tier 2 city like Berlin
If you want the world city you will get great restaurants, theatre, art, universities, music, conversation, and so on. But you will also get world city property prices. Because a world class urban experience is desired by rich people around, er, the world, meaning really nice housing is outrageously expensive - just as it is in london Paris or nyc
The nice Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are much more enjoyable places to live than NYC or London for the vast majority of the population. The elite institutions and Michelin restaurants are only visited by regular people 2-3 times a year at best. And the happiness value of those few hours of experience is only marginally higher than attending very good restaurants, sports and arts still available at the Tier 3s.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
I agree with much of this
However there is something in human nature which wants to be “where it’s at” - particularly if you are young - even if that means a demonstrably inferior quality of life
I mentioned the other day the Aussie PR girl I met last week who took a 70% pay cut to move from Tasmania to London and does not regret any of it and loves london “because london is where everybody lives” and she can go anywhere in Europe in 2-3 hours (unlike Hobart)
For the young and ambitious Paris will always be better than Lyon and New York always superior to Boston
Is it inherent in human nature? Or is it just in the personality types that end up in London and you have confirmation bias because you live there and relate to those people? There are plenty of young people who visit Manhattan and think "ugh, this isn't for me."
People who like concrete and are shallow move to these places.
What do people think of 'cozzy livs' as a term for the cost of living crisis?
As in, "there are many challenges facing the Sunak government but perhaps the greatest of them, at least as regards electoral impact, is how to mitigate the cozzy livs."
Or, "the cost of the Coronation might in normal times be something barely worth a mention but these are not normal times - there's a cozzy livs."
I can't decide whether it's excellent or a bit naff.
The "cost of living crisis" is a crap term to start with for what is an inflation crisis, or a poverty crisis, or a supply-shock crisis, depending on what aspect you want to emphasise.
I do wonder who started calling it a "cost of living" crisis in the first place, and what they were trying to achieve by doing so.
They should call it what it i sand be done with it "Brexit stupidity Crisis"
What do people think of 'cozzy livs' as a term for the cost of living crisis?
As in, "there are many challenges facing the Sunak government but perhaps the greatest of them, at least as regards electoral impact, is how to mitigate the cozzy livs."
Or, "the cost of the Coronation might in normal times be something barely worth a mention but these are not normal times - there's a cozzy livs."
I can't decide whether it's excellent or a bit naff.
The "cost of living crisis" is a crap term to start with for what is an inflation crisis, or a poverty crisis, or a supply-shock crisis, depending on what aspect you want to emphasise.
I do wonder who started calling it a "cost of living" crisis in the first place, and what they were trying to achieve by doing so.
They should call it what it i sand be done with it "Brexit stupidity Crisis"
It's just the media like to have a snazzy catchphrase for these things. Back in 2008 it was the "credit crunch" as I recall
On cash, this can cut both ways. A small businesswoman my mother knows doesn't ban card transactions but does hide the machine to perform them unless customers specifically ask to pay by card. She prefers cash because the processing fees are lower.
She's wrong though. Real-world cost of businesses handling and processing cash is demonstrably and provably higher than the (minimal) fees charged on card payments.
Many retailers down here are now wise to this – and have gone completely cashless as a result. It's cheaper. And quicker. And easier.
No, she's provably right. And it has been demonstrated to you many times that your figures are based on incorrect assumptions or, in one case, a deliberately fraudulent article from the card processing industry.
On cash, this can cut both ways. A small businesswoman my mother knows doesn't ban card transactions but does hide the machine to perform them unless customers specifically ask to pay by card. She prefers cash because the processing fees are lower.
She's wrong though. Real-world cost of businesses handling and processing cash is demonstrably and provably higher than the (minimal) fees charged on card payments.
Many retailers down here are now wise to this – and have gone completely cashless as a result. It's cheaper. And quicker. And easier.
No, she's provably right. And it has been demonstrated to you many times that your figures are based on incorrect assumptions or, in one case, a deliberately fraudulent article from the card processing industry.
On cash, this can cut both ways. A small businesswoman my mother knows doesn't ban card transactions but does hide the machine to perform them unless customers specifically ask to pay by card. She prefers cash because the processing fees are lower.
She's wrong though. Real-world cost of businesses handling and processing cash is demonstrably and provably higher than the (minimal) fees charged on card payments.
Many retailers down here are now wise to this – and have gone completely cashless as a result. It's cheaper. And quicker. And easier.
No, she's provably right. And it has been demonstrated to you many times that your figures are based on incorrect assumptions or, in one case, a deliberately fraudulent article from the card processing industry.
Comments
They also seem to understand even how to get hold of the best British and local-made and home-grown products, rather than pitting out awkward crap of own-brand quality, under their own name.
The 100-year difference completely changes the correct answer to the question. Sydenham's discovery did not have impact in this time period and his ideas were not accepted until long after his death, in fact he was ridiculed while he was alive.
"The mistake in the question led me and other students to question our own knowledge and threw us completely off."
And I can see her problem - 1 fundamental error like that where you thought you knew the answer will lead you to question all your knowledge.
It's like the reason I don't read the economist. - it published 1 article on something I fully understood that was so wrong on 80% of the basic facts (twas an internet article back in the mid 90s) that I've doubted the quality of all it's journalism ever since.
However, they do use the headroom this creates to have a wide range of different products - things like kangaroo and ostrich steaks - though the more unusual items tend to be available only for a limited period at a time, on rotation with others.
So you can say that they have a wide range of different products, but they also have a narrow range of different brands of the same product, and so a smaller number of stock items overall.
It also means that you can't guarantee they will have a specific non-core product in stock at a specific time - such as venison for your woke dinner party. You might say that, "Lidl is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get."
You’ll never complain about Tesco or Sainsbury’s again if you’ve tried to do a shop in central Milan or Rome
Crap supermarkets
The very best supermarkets in the world are probably an upmarket El Corte Ingles in a rich bit of Spain or a Carrefour in a rich bit of France
Tho even there the British equivalents will offer more variety in areas like wine or world cheese. They are better at bread and fresh stuff tho
It’s not the General Theory of Relativity, is it?
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, you get a bigger house, a shorter commute, a seat on the train, more enjoyable green spaces, parking right outside the place you are going to, easier access to the countryside and more community. And you actually get to attend sports and arts and restaurants more because it is easier to do so. The net happiness value is clearly in favor of the Tier 2s and 3s. This is something well documented in the scientific research.
But now I'm boring myself.
But Wholefoods in the US and the UK are also great, frankly.
So we have Waitrose and M&S for the broadsheet readers, Tesco for the mass middle class, ASDA for the lower middle, and Iceland etc for the working class, with Sainsbury’s being the only UK supermarket with any claim to cut across class divides.
That’s why Aldi and Lidl are so refreshing. They are classless and open access because they are foreign, as for example are shops like “Cyprus Food Market” near me.
In France by contrast it’s pretty difficult to work out which is more or less posh out of the big chains Carrefour, E Leclerc, Auchan and Intermarché. They vary between stores more than between chains.
Not vice-versa
However there is something in human nature which wants to be “where it’s at” - particularly if you are young - even if that means a demonstrably inferior quality of life
I mentioned the other day the Aussie PR girl I met last week who took a 70% pay cut to move from Tasmania to London and does not regret any of it and loves london “because london is where everybody lives” and she can go anywhere in Europe in 2-3 hours (unlike Hobart)
For the young and ambitious Paris will always be better than Lyon and New York always superior to Boston
Waitrose remain
Whole foods remain
M&S marginal
Tesco Brexit
Sainsbury’s remain
Asda Brexit
Morrisons (forgot them) Brexit
Iceland brexit
Lidl/Aldi remain
https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunak-and-his-wife-lost-500k-a-day-last-year-as-sunday-times-rich-list-reveals-uks-wealthiest-people-12884161
Beth Rigby should ask him how he feels to be a loser again…
As in, "there are many challenges facing the Sunak government but perhaps the greatest of them, at least as regards electoral impact, is how to mitigate the cozzy livs."
Or, "the cost of the Coronation might in normal times be something barely worth a mention but these are not normal times - there's a cozzy livs."
I can't decide whether it's excellent or a bit naff.
The best smoked salmon can be found in Greenlandic supermarkets. No joke. It’s sensational and ridiculously cheap (because it is usually landed and smoked in a big warehouse next door)
Still leaves around a dozen (plus the dozen to be sold for US training purposes).
There are also a number between Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland. While it's unlikely that any of those want to deplete their current fleets while the conflict is ongoing, for obvious reasons, it does provide routes for the US to supply surplus airframes indirectly.
I didn’t know that it too has insane property prices
It’s also sad - terribly sad - that we have to take Hong Kong OFF the world city list. But we do. Because
Besides I’m not sure we are arguing. There are some people who are much happier in Lyon and there are some people who will always want Paris and suffer terrible FOMO if they end up in Lyon
A massively underrated musician. The Smiths owe more to Rourke than is every really acknowledged.
Also : better cakes. Lidl also seem to be about the only UK supermarket that can make nearly-correct U.S chocolate Brownies, or Portugese Natas, for instance. Just some sort of attention to detail, and good value, that isn't there with some of the other mid-range and cheaper British supermarkets. You won't find that kind of quality in your local Asda in Neasden, that much can be said for sure.
They also despised Ninja as a bunch of cowardly back stabbing scum.
And Richmond park is vastly bigger still
Cash is just a complete waste of valuable time.
Barmaids/barmen are more gainfully employed chatting to punters and keeping an eye on orders than faffing around with a load of worthless shrapnel all day.
As previously discussed, this is only going one way.
But anyway, I think you're broadly right. Clearly many people would rather live in London.
If money were of no object, I think it would be a fantastic place to live. Just the sheer relentless awesomeness of it. The main downside, of course, is that it's so bloody expensive that you can only afford three square feet of a HOMO in Zone 17 for the price of a mansion in Didsbury or Gosforth or Headingley or Edgbaston or Broomhill or Clifton.
Many retailers down here are now wise to this – and have gone completely cashless as a result. It's cheaper. And quicker. And easier.
https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1659514249528393728
asked Ukraine Defense Minister Reznikov in Kyiv about Zelensky’s G7 visit. He said a “top priority” is to discuss “aerial support” — jets. But he said more of everything is needed. Asked if he’d confirm reported Patriot shoot-down of a Russian jet, he said “no,” with a grin.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1659512056465203200
In defence of Britain a really good Marks and Sparks food supermarket is right up there with the global best
Yes they're "European" companies, but that doesn't mean their customers are. Indeed if you were to go by how they dress themselves, Aldi and Lidl seems to be the most overtly "British" out of all the supermarkets.
Their HQ may not be in Britain, but Aldi sponsor Team GB and they and Lidl seem to embrace wall-to-wall Union Flags and show off Britishness more than any other supermarket by far. My local Lidl has enough Union Flags it would send @Theuniondivvie into a fit of rage.
This thread has joined the Snowbirds and retired to Florida
Since when was he a 'national security expert' (apart from in his own mind*) ?
NYTimes publishes a (paid) letter by 14 US national security experts. Jeffrey Sachs among the signees.
It calls for peace by stopping to support Ukraine.
Every claim it makes is misguided and uninformed. The arguments in the letter are embarrassingly weak. 1/
https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1659319058351702016
For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs
...Sachs is a "long-time advocate of dismantling American hegemony (sic) and embracing the rise of China." He believes the term “genocide” is mistaken in relation to the repression of the Uyghurs in China...
The supermarkets here seem to go through odd phases of Scottish and British branding but in Glasgow they're a bit more reticent. On an unscientific basis I'd say Morrisons is the worst for UJ shagging.
I just think it's pointless, slow and a massive faff.
I never use it for anything at all, and if a shop insists on it I assume they are on the dodge and don't visit them again. Why people persist in it is beyond me – it is, as far as I can ascertain, an utter waste of time and resources.
(I recall on this site when some royal-botherer was frapping on about the new King Charles 50p coin – he asked whether I'd see it. I said no I hadn't, but then I hadn't see any 50p coin of any design or era for about ten years...)
See also people who found metric "impossible"; decimalisation "impossible" and automatic cars "impossible".
In fact, it's far easier to budget electronically – because most bank apps now give real-time information.
Toulouse was a revelation to me, small city, great character.
Melbourne has a lot of charm, culture and gastronomy too but I hear property prices are insane.
But you got there first and were more measured and polite, so thank you.
Most of those countries with F16s can't afford - and might not be allowed - the F35 anyway (though the unit price is falling surprisingly fast.)
I do wonder who started calling it a "cost of living" crisis in the first place, and what they were trying to achieve by doing so.
It had great nightlife too, though I've not been for 15 years so no idea on the scene these days.
Imagine the ground staff , etc might take a bit as well though.