I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
The Duchess of Sussex no longer has time for your malarkey.
On topic: Trump supporters are rigging rules in some states to give him a better chance to win the nomination. For example: "Donald Trump’s presidential campaign notched a major victory Saturday when members of the California Republican executive committee voted to parcel out convention delegates based on the statewide vote next year — doing away with the state’s longtime system of awarding them by congressional district, which had been perceived as a more level playing field for lower-tiered candidates.
There have been other rule changes that appear intended to help Trump in other states, including Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, and Idaho.
(As almost all of you grasped immediately, these rule changes make estimating the nomination odds, even more difficult, without a state-by-state analysis.)
North Dakota is interesting. AND confirms my strong suspicion, that alleged 2024 candidate for GOP POTUS nomination, ND Gov. Doug Burgum, is just (another) shill pimping for Trump by helping further fractionate the Republican vote.
Which is also the effective role being played by Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy.
And also, ironically (or maybe not) by Mike Pence and Chris Christie.
Which does NOT preclude these "hopefuls" from having other agendas, notably for Scott and Ramaswamy anyway, the traditional prospect of VP pick OR cabinet OR other federal appointment under Trump's Second Cumming.
As for Pence and Christie, methinks that ego is bigger drive than any anti-Trumpism.
> Mike Pence thought (like some PBers) that being Trump's VP would make him the GOP's next-in-line for POTUS nomination; a 3rd-millennium version of Bush the Elder 1988 and Bob Dole 1996, albeit without a hint of the quality or ability of either.
> Chris Christie just likes basking his blimp-sized body AND ego in as much news coverage as he can generate.
Both of these being busted flushes whose achievements can only be discerned using a microscope.
They are - but they’re not the worst of the field.
I see Ramaswamy is already planning to hand over half of Ukraine.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4174713-ramaswamy-unveils-foreign-policy-platform-we-will-be-uncle-sucker-no-more/ .. Ramaswamy said he similarly would plan to visit Moscow as president in 2025 to negotiate terms to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. He said he would “accept” Russian control of the territories that its forces have taken and promise to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO in exchange for Russia ending its military alliance with China. He said he would also end sanctions that have been placed on Russia and return it to the global market….
To call him naive would be overly generous.
Bloody Hell!
He’s gone from being a sensible candidate to a total idiot, in the last fortnight.
Glad to hear you say that. Unfortunately I hadn't really followed him until the last couple of days, so his view on Ukraine was the first thing I saw and an immediate deal-breaker.
He sounds intelligent, and can communicate well, but what he's saying absolutely isn't smart.
Hopefully whoever wins next year is someone that will unambiguously continue to support Ukraine..
The problem is that US politics is now running on the “cost” of supporting Ukraine.
Which is utterly disengenuous on the part of Biden. The objection to Ukraine in the US, is mostly centered around the cost of the war set against domestic priorities.
The problem is that the cost of the war isn’t the cost of the war. Biden’s saying that donating a bunch of missiles that were about to be retired, and cost $100m two decades ago, are now “$5bn in aid to Ukraine”, suggesting that he’s making a choice between spending the $5bn in Ukraine and $5bn domestically. When there’s never anything close to actually $5bn going to Ukraine, the marginal cost is no more than the cost of transport planes between the US and Poland.
That's an excuse for Putin apologists to latch onto.
The difference between the UK and the USA isn't that Biden is saying the value of aid to Ukraine and that Johnson then Sunak haven't.
The difference is that here the Opposition are agreeing that the military aid is the right thing to do, whereas in the USA only some of the Opposition agree (people like Haley) whereas other long-term Putin fans are objecting.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Unfair, I'm actually quite a fan of his work.
Sad to say I am not. I think he can occasionally have some interesting insights - such as his New Chronology fro the late Bronze Age which I think makes sense. But apart from that I think he is a loon and a fraud.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
Sadly. I was talking last week with someone aged 70 whose daughter asked for help with a deposit a few years ago. He refused. So they had a row, he cut her off and is going to leave the house to an animal charity. He didn't seem to think that was at all an overreaction to her "cheek".
I really cannot imagine any parent behaving in such a callous manner against their own daughter
Arguing about inheritances is sadly very common I think. Money + grief makes it a tough subject to handle well I guess.
This one, from the Chancery Division 2022, is a classic. All about wills. Lasted 3 weeks with 49 witnesses. All the really tough stuff happens in families.
Jeez, someone could write a novel based on that case.
Already done in Bleak House. Dickens's finest.
Dickens’ account was somewhat deficient in the dialogue stakes, though.
… His language was rough and, like the rest of the family, laden with expletives, particularly using the c-word incessantly and indiscriminately to describe any person, whether in or outside of the family. The texts and WhatsApp messages that I have seen from other members of the family, (the deceased did not send texts, presumably because of his literacy problems) constantly used that language the whole time. That was the way they conversed...
A relative was involved in settling a will. The person involved has been meticulous. Everything was sold. Everything. Apart from some family photos that were copied, the originals lodged with the family solicitor as a kind of archive. The five children each received exactly the same amount of money - the odd pounds and pennies (as per the Will) were added onto the small bequest to the cleaner/housekeeper.
My relative said that at the distribution of assists, it was definitely as if they wanted to argue. But couldn’t.
If your friend has made a £17k p.a. profit for 3 years after paying herself a wage why on earth is she selling the business for only £35K?
That feels a little too good to be true to me.
A business making 17K profit would be valued at over a billion by Silicon Valley. It's no wonder we're losing out in the UK. And imagine how much the business would be worth if it could lose 17K. Sky's the limit!
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
Sadly. I was talking last week with someone aged 70 whose daughter asked for help with a deposit a few years ago. He refused. So they had a row, he cut her off and is going to leave the house to an animal charity. He didn't seem to think that was at all an overreaction to her "cheek".
I really cannot imagine any parent behaving in such a callous manner against their own daughter
Arguing about inheritances is sadly very common I think. Money + grief makes it a tough subject to handle well I guess.
This one, from the Chancery Division 2022, is a classic. All about wills. Lasted 3 weeks with 49 witnesses. All the really tough stuff happens in families.
Jeez, someone could write a novel based on that case.
Already done in Bleak House. Dickens's finest.
Dickens’ account was somewhat deficient in the dialogue stakes, though.
… His language was rough and, like the rest of the family, laden with expletives, particularly using the c-word incessantly and indiscriminately to describe any person, whether in or outside of the family. The texts and WhatsApp messages that I have seen from other members of the family, (the deceased did not send texts, presumably because of his literacy problems) constantly used that language the whole time. That was the way they conversed...
A relative was involved in settling a will. The person involved has been meticulous. Everything was sold. Everything. Apart from some family photos that were copied, the originals lodged with the family solicitor as a kind of archive. The five children each received exactly the same amount of money - the odd pounds and pennies (as per the Will) were added onto the small bequest to the cleaner/housekeeper.
My relative said that at the distribution of assists, it was definitely as if they wanted to argue. But couldn’t.
I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
I'm afraid Hardy gets it right, and for myself I follow his advice, sometimes with regret:
Not a line of her writing have I Not a thread of her hair, No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture her there; And in vain do I urge my unsight To conceive my lost prize At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light And with laughter her eyes.
What scenes spread around her last days, Sad, shining, or dim? Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways With an aureate nimb? Or did life-light decline from her years, And mischances control Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears Disennoble her soul?
Thus I do but the phantom retain Of the maiden of yore As my relic; yet haply the best of her--fined in my brain It may be the more That no line of her writing have I, Nor a thread of her hair, No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture her there.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
Same here (no help, not gifted a £3m house).
Great sense of satisfaction in knowing our present comfortable life is all through our own endeavours*.
(*Ok, and being born in a wealthy country of opportunities.)
Before buying my first home I spent 5 years living in share houses and not having a car. That helped me save enough to be able to buy with a modest mortgage.
I didn't buy a coffee from Starbucks every morning or eat avocado toast either.
House? You were lucky. We used to dream of sharing those. Best we could manage was sharing tent on t'rubbish tip.
You ‘ad tent? And a rubbish tip? Luxuuuuuury!
{pry bars open a double case of Château de Chasselas}
I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
Oddly enough - a few months ago I was watching a TV show and one of the characters reminded me of an ex ('the one' in fact). Googled her name and found she'd thrown herself off a cliff into a quarry.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
But what you are saying has always been the way with the exception of perhaps a 40 year period post WW2. Most people of my grandparents generation rented and many, if not most, lived in multi-generational households. We moved away from that after WW2 partly because of improving economic circumstances, partly because of the growth of the welfare state and partly, but connectedly, because of social changes. In the process we have become more fractured and relied more and more on the state to do the things that we would have done ourselves only a couple of generations ago.
And I see no professions where it is vital to live in or near London, all the more so with the way we are going with communications.
It is still the case that you can choose to live just over an hour from London and buy a house for half the price of the home counties and probably a third of the price of a simlar house in London itself.
Its true that people used to rent and that improving economic circumstances meant that more people were able to buy. The trend all 20th century was ever more people able to buy their own home, ending in a peak after the low house prices of the 1990s saw more people than ever before in their own home.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
No dreams about old flames, but I regularly have the dream about exams. The annoying thing is, as I get older, the relief of it just being a dream is tempered by the fact I’m getting old and those days are now in the dim and distant past.
No dreams about old flames, but I regularly have the dream about exams. The annoying thing is, as I get older, the relief of it just being a dream is tempered by the fact I’m getting old and those days are now in the dim and distant past.
I used to have that too. Failing Finals. In real terrifying detail. Like a proper night terror.
It was almost worth it just for the blessed relief of waking up and realising that, actually, in real life I'd passed.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
Wigton pub, not Carlisle. BTW his recent memoir on his early life, 'Back in the Day' is a classic, among the finest things he has ever written. Anyone reading it will discern how and why north Cumberland, outside Carlisle and the lake district, is quite special even though it remains almost entirely unknown in the wider world.
Is that Brampton and the western Wall country?
Brampton is 'go to Carlisle and turn right' (St Martin's Brampton has about the best Victorian stained glass set of windows around). Wigton is 'go to Carlisle and turn left'. North Cumberland east of Carlisle is better known because of the wall, with many of the best bits. West of Carlisle is less well known - no wall much to be seen. But God's own country still.
Ah, thanks. Been around the Wall - Birdoswald, the Irthing crossing area, and so on. But Silloth and Maryport and the wall on the coast are places still to tick off.
Silloth and Allonby are still there as really old style holiday destinations, and slightly increasing in popularity. Magaluf they are not, but ice creams can be bought for cash and there is a swing for children. Silloth still has cobbled streets.
I like Maryport, and parts of it have charm. In my experience I am alone in this opinion.
Don't miss the abbey at Abbeytown or Holme Cultram, which must be about the least visited abbey of them all, being the jewel of an unknown region. (But if you go on strawberry tea weekend it's packed out with local people.)
I was in Silloth recently and was quite taken by it. Felt almost American with the wide streets? That part of the coast is beautiful.
I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
Oddly enough - a few months ago I was watching a TV show and one of the characters reminded me of an ex ('the one' in fact). Googled her name and found she'd thrown herself off a cliff into a quarry.
Top tip: don't google for ex's names.
Yes, the alternative was to let bygones be bygones and never contact her again. But I wasn't ok with that.
I mean, she could have just ghosted me entirely, and I did get some sort of a response, so at least that's something and I now know.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
Not the hero we wanted, but the hero we needed?
I thought RCS' intervention on car insurance was timely. Pitchforks down.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
But what you are saying has always been the way with the exception of perhaps a 40 year period post WW2. Most people of my grandparents generation rented and many, if not most, lived in multi-generational households. We moved away from that after WW2 partly because of improving economic circumstances, partly because of the growth of the welfare state and partly, but connectedly, because of social changes. In the process we have become more fractured and relied more and more on the state to do the things that we would have done ourselves only a couple of generations ago.
And I see no professions where it is vital to live in or near London, all the more so with the way we are going with communications.
It is still the case that you can choose to live just over an hour from London and buy a house for half the price of the home counties and probably a third of the price of a simlar house in London itself.
Its true that people used to rent and that improving economic circumstances meant that more people were able to buy. The trend all 20th century was ever more people able to buy their own home, ending in a peak after the low house prices of the 1990s saw more people than ever before in their own home.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
We can't and we never will. The whole system - and the social structure that supported those years - is gone and will never return. Indeed it pretty much ate itself even as it grew. We now have a society based on what the Government can do for us rather than what we can do for ourselves. We look to the State to provide solutions for problems that the expanding State caused in the first place. It is pointless.
All we can do, if we are so minded, is do the right thing by our families and friends and hope that is enough.
None of your clever plans or ideas, whether well founded or not, will make a blind bit of difference because society will still view housing as an asset, primarily to protect against poverty in old age, no matter how many houses we build. The whole house building process - more than that, our whole domestic economy - is now predicated on ever increasing house prices.
I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
Oddly enough - a few months ago I was watching a TV show and one of the characters reminded me of an ex ('the one' in fact). Googled her name and found she'd thrown herself off a cliff into a quarry.
Top tip: don't google for ex's names.
this might peak Leon's interest more than car insurance and light rail networks
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
Wigton pub, not Carlisle. BTW his recent memoir on his early life, 'Back in the Day' is a classic, among the finest things he has ever written. Anyone reading it will discern how and why north Cumberland, outside Carlisle and the lake district, is quite special even though it remains almost entirely unknown in the wider world.
Is that Brampton and the western Wall country?
Brampton is 'go to Carlisle and turn right' (St Martin's Brampton has about the best Victorian stained glass set of windows around). Wigton is 'go to Carlisle and turn left'. North Cumberland east of Carlisle is better known because of the wall, with many of the best bits. West of Carlisle is less well known - no wall much to be seen. But God's own country still.
Ah, thanks. Been around the Wall - Birdoswald, the Irthing crossing area, and so on. But Silloth and Maryport and the wall on the coast are places still to tick off.
Silloth and Allonby are still there as really old style holiday destinations, and slightly increasing in popularity. Magaluf they are not, but ice creams can be bought for cash and there is a swing for children. Silloth still has cobbled streets.
I like Maryport, and parts of it have charm. In my experience I am alone in this opinion.
Don't miss the abbey at Abbeytown or Holme Cultram, which must be about the least visited abbey of them all, being the jewel of an unknown region. (But if you go on strawberry tea weekend it's packed out with local people.)
I was in Silloth recently and was quite taken by it. Felt almost American with the wide streets? That part of the coast is beautiful.
It also has the charm of being a small but still used port. IIRC it was created for Carrs - flour and biscuits in Carlisle - still going strong under newer names and owners. This was briefly in the news when following Carlisle floods there was a world shortage of ginger biscuits.
And yes the Cumbrian coast is fascinating and beautiful. Try St Bees, Ravenglass and the surprise of Seascale.
I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
Oddly enough - a few months ago I was watching a TV show and one of the characters reminded me of an ex ('the one' in fact). Googled her name and found she'd thrown herself off a cliff into a quarry.
Top tip: don't google for ex's names.
Yes, the alternative was to let bygones be bygones and never contact her again. But I wasn't ok with that.
I mean, she could have just ghosted me entirely, and I did get some sort of a response, so at least that's something and I now know.
Depressing story but my younger brother (in his 20s) recently went out on a first date and it went really well, they agreed then to a second date. He then texted her about arrangements for the second date but never heard back, assumed she had changed her mind and she was ghosting him, until he then got a phone call from her father (whom I'm assuming saw the texts) to let him know she'd passed away suddenly. 20s herself, died suddenly from a blood clot.
Horrible what can happen. Life really can be too short sometimes.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
But what you are saying has always been the way with the exception of perhaps a 40 year period post WW2. Most people of my grandparents generation rented and many, if not most, lived in multi-generational households. We moved away from that after WW2 partly because of improving economic circumstances, partly because of the growth of the welfare state and partly, but connectedly, because of social changes. In the process we have become more fractured and relied more and more on the state to do the things that we would have done ourselves only a couple of generations ago.
And I see no professions where it is vital to live in or near London, all the more so with the way we are going with communications.
It is still the case that you can choose to live just over an hour from London and buy a house for half the price of the home counties and probably a third of the price of a simlar house in London itself.
Its true that people used to rent and that improving economic circumstances meant that more people were able to buy. The trend all 20th century was ever more people able to buy their own home, ending in a peak after the low house prices of the 1990s saw more people than ever before in their own home.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
That's certainly part of it (being able to save a deposit for a commutable home near Cambridge on a postdoc stipend... bet you can't do that now...) But also a lot of the opportunities to get on an infulential career path depend even more on family riches now than 30-50 years ago. Partly because employers in media/politcs/etc have worked out that they can get people to work for them for peanuts in the name of exposure/experience. Partly because almost everything has moved out of the provinces into London. That tilts the balance between ability and availability in a way that won't be good for us as a nation.
And I'm not a twit. Family legups have always been a thing, always will be. And centre-right politics (which I'd like to return to one day) has always had a tension between ladders of opportunity and wealth cascading down the generations. And yes, there are valid fulfiling career paths that never touch That There London.
That doesn't mean that our current national path will end well for us.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
But what you are saying has always been the way with the exception of perhaps a 40 year period post WW2. Most people of my grandparents generation rented and many, if not most, lived in multi-generational households. We moved away from that after WW2 partly because of improving economic circumstances, partly because of the growth of the welfare state and partly, but connectedly, because of social changes. In the process we have become more fractured and relied more and more on the state to do the things that we would have done ourselves only a couple of generations ago.
And I see no professions where it is vital to live in or near London, all the more so with the way we are going with communications.
It is still the case that you can choose to live just over an hour from London and buy a house for half the price of the home counties and probably a third of the price of a simlar house in London itself.
Its true that people used to rent and that improving economic circumstances meant that more people were able to buy. The trend all 20th century was ever more people able to buy their own home, ending in a peak after the low house prices of the 1990s saw more people than ever before in their own home.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
We can't and we never will. The whole system - and the social structure that supported those years - is gone and will never return. Indeed it pretty much ate itself even as it grew. We now have a society based on what the Government can do for us rather than what we can do for ourselves. We look to the State to provide solutions for problems that the expanding State caused in the first place. It is pointless.
All we can do, if we are so minded, is do the right thing by our families and friends and hope that is enough.
None of your clever plans or ideas, whether well founded or not, will make a blind bit of difference because society will still view housing as an asset, primarily to protect against poverty in old age, no matter how many houses we build. The whole house building process - more than that, our whole domestic economy - is now predicated on ever increasing house prices.
The system is broken and cannot be fixed.
To what extent is it explained by more people being single into their late 20s/30s, and higher divorce rates?
I've dated a few fellow flat owners and it made me feel a bit guilty about all the space we were taking up. Then consider the collective size of the deposits we had put down.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
Sadly. I was talking last week with someone aged 70 whose daughter asked for help with a deposit a few years ago. He refused. So they had a row, he cut her off and is going to leave the house to an animal charity. He didn't seem to think that was at all an overreaction to her "cheek".
I really cannot imagine any parent behaving in such a callous manner against their own daughter
Arguing about inheritances is sadly very common I think. Money + grief makes it a tough subject to handle well I guess.
This one, from the Chancery Division 2022, is a classic. All about wills. Lasted 3 weeks with 49 witnesses. All the really tough stuff happens in families.
Jeez, someone could write a novel based on that case.
Already done in Bleak House. Dickens's finest.
Dickens’ account was somewhat deficient in the dialogue stakes, though.
… His language was rough and, like the rest of the family, laden with expletives, particularly using the c-word incessantly and indiscriminately to describe any person, whether in or outside of the family. The texts and WhatsApp messages that I have seen from other members of the family, (the deceased did not send texts, presumably because of his literacy problems) constantly used that language the whole time. That was the way they conversed...
A relative was involved in settling a will. The person involved has been meticulous. Everything was sold. Everything. Apart from some family photos that were copied, the originals lodged with the family solicitor as a kind of archive. The five children each received exactly the same amount of money - the odd pounds and pennies (as per the Will) were added onto the small bequest to the cleaner/housekeeper.
My relative said that at the distribution of assists, it was definitely as if they wanted to argue. But couldn’t.
As the saying goes:
Where there's a will - there's a family argument.
Got stuck for a moment on "the deceased did not send texts, presumably because of his literacy problems". Understatement of the century, unless Apple have introduced an Iouija model, I was thinking.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
Oddly enough - a few months ago I was watching a TV show and one of the characters reminded me of an ex ('the one' in fact). Googled her name and found she'd thrown herself off a cliff into a quarry.
Top tip: don't google for ex's names.
Yes, the alternative was to let bygones be bygones and never contact her again. But I wasn't ok with that.
I mean, she could have just ghosted me entirely, and I did get some sort of a response, so at least that's something and I now know.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
Wigton pub, not Carlisle. BTW his recent memoir on his early life, 'Back in the Day' is a classic, among the finest things he has ever written. Anyone reading it will discern how and why north Cumberland, outside Carlisle and the lake district, is quite special even though it remains almost entirely unknown in the wider world.
Is that Brampton and the western Wall country?
Brampton is 'go to Carlisle and turn right' (St Martin's Brampton has about the best Victorian stained glass set of windows around). Wigton is 'go to Carlisle and turn left'. North Cumberland east of Carlisle is better known because of the wall, with many of the best bits. West of Carlisle is less well known - no wall much to be seen. But God's own country still.
Ah, thanks. Been around the Wall - Birdoswald, the Irthing crossing area, and so on. But Silloth and Maryport and the wall on the coast are places still to tick off.
Silloth and Allonby are still there as really old style holiday destinations, and slightly increasing in popularity. Magaluf they are not, but ice creams can be bought for cash and there is a swing for children. Silloth still has cobbled streets.
I like Maryport, and parts of it have charm. In my experience I am alone in this opinion.
Don't miss the abbey at Abbeytown or Holme Cultram, which must be about the least visited abbey of them all, being the jewel of an unknown region. (But if you go on strawberry tea weekend it's packed out with local people.)
I was in Silloth recently and was quite taken by it. Felt almost American with the wide streets? That part of the coast is beautiful.
It also has the charm of being a small but still used port. IIRC it was created for Carrs - flour and biscuits in Carlisle - still going strong under newer names and owners. This was briefly in the news when following Carlisle floods there was a world shortage of ginger biscuits.
And yes the Cumbrian coast is fascinating and beautiful. Try St Bees, Ravenglass and the surprise of Seascale.
Been reading the corporate history of Carrs. Very much the Quakers.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
But what you are saying has always been the way with the exception of perhaps a 40 year period post WW2. Most people of my grandparents generation rented and many, if not most, lived in multi-generational households. We moved away from that after WW2 partly because of improving economic circumstances, partly because of the growth of the welfare state and partly, but connectedly, because of social changes. In the process we have become more fractured and relied more and more on the state to do the things that we would have done ourselves only a couple of generations ago.
And I see no professions where it is vital to live in or near London, all the more so with the way we are going with communications.
It is still the case that you can choose to live just over an hour from London and buy a house for half the price of the home counties and probably a third of the price of a simlar house in London itself.
Its true that people used to rent and that improving economic circumstances meant that more people were able to buy. The trend all 20th century was ever more people able to buy their own home, ending in a peak after the low house prices of the 1990s saw more people than ever before in their own home.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
We can't and we never will. The whole system - and the social structure that supported those years - is gone and will never return. Indeed it pretty much ate itself even as it grew. We now have a society based on what the Government can do for us rather than what we can do for ourselves. We look to the State to provide solutions for problems that the expanding State caused in the first place. It is pointless.
All we can do, if we are so minded, is do the right thing by our families and friends and hope that is enough.
None of your clever plans or ideas, whether well founded or not, will make a blind bit of difference because society will still view housing as an asset, primarily to protect against poverty in old age, no matter how many houses we build. The whole house building process - more than that, our whole domestic economy - is now predicated on ever increasing house prices.
The system is broken and cannot be fixed.
Though it can and has been fixed in other countries.
Switch to zonal developments, so anyone in a construction zone can simply start construction (to standards) without asking for permission first, and then houses can actually be built and house prices can come back down in real terms. As has happened elsewhere.
Housing being a form of income only lasts as long as houses are making you an income, or asset price gains. When houses are a depreciating asset, they get treated accordingly.
The problem is how do we get from here to there, without the people proposing there losing an election. Starmer has an opportunity to do it, and if he does he'll leave a legacy as one of the all time greatest Prime Ministers, but I suspect he's too frit to do it.
Surovikin should be pretty worried right now, even if not from NATO. Meanwhile in Russia: after DNA analysis confirmed Prigozhin's death, propagandists on Vladimir Solovyov show blamed NATO and predicted that Surovikin might be next. They also asserted there will be no negotiations and Ukraine should cease to exist. https://nitter.net/JuliaDavisNews/status/1696199953306075455#m
I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
I'm afraid Hardy gets it right, and for myself I follow his advice, sometimes with regret:
Not a line of her writing have I Not a thread of her hair, No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture her there; And in vain do I urge my unsight To conceive my lost prize At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light And with laughter her eyes.
What scenes spread around her last days, Sad, shining, or dim? Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways With an aureate nimb? Or did life-light decline from her years, And mischances control Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears Disennoble her soul?
Thus I do but the phantom retain Of the maiden of yore As my relic; yet haply the best of her--fined in my brain It may be the more That no line of her writing have I, Nor a thread of her hair, No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture her there.
When I asked her to marry me, she said "Oh what stuff" And told me to drop it, for she'd had quite enough Of my nonsense...
...At the same time, I'd been very kind But to marry a milkman she didn't feel inclined
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
Well you're back now, so loosen up.
You're right though about bicycling, light rail networks, car insurance, and you could also have added ULEZzzzzzzzz - but Mad Nad's strop is a worthy topic for conversation on any day.
Question to the Mods: Why do we allow posters to keep their profile private? What is purpose is that serving when posters are, or can be, anonymous?
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
By all your likes, PB posters must be missing all those photographs of your breakfast. I'll stick with debating car insurance with Rochdale thank you very much.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
What is it with authors doing that? We're lucky we've never had anyone doing that here, like on the subjects of aliens or lab leaks.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Except, it turns out he might be right about Gobekli Tepe, and the Tas Tepeler. There really WAS an ancient, advanced, long-buried civilisation, which seems to have ended around 10,000-9,000 BC - ie at the end of the last Ice Age
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
Well you're back now, so loosen up.
You're right though about bicycling, light rail networks, car insurance, and you could also have added ULEZzzzzzzzz - but Mad Nad's strop is a worthy topic for conversation on any day.
Question to the Mods: Why do we allow posters to keep their profile private? What is purpose is that serving when posters are, or can be, anonymous?
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
But what you are saying has always been the way with the exception of perhaps a 40 year period post WW2. Most people of my grandparents generation rented and many, if not most, lived in multi-generational households. We moved away from that after WW2 partly because of improving economic circumstances, partly because of the growth of the welfare state and partly, but connectedly, because of social changes. In the process we have become more fractured and relied more and more on the state to do the things that we would have done ourselves only a couple of generations ago.
And I see no professions where it is vital to live in or near London, all the more so with the way we are going with communications.
It is still the case that you can choose to live just over an hour from London and buy a house for half the price of the home counties and probably a third of the price of a simlar house in London itself.
Its true that people used to rent and that improving economic circumstances meant that more people were able to buy. The trend all 20th century was ever more people able to buy their own home, ending in a peak after the low house prices of the 1990s saw more people than ever before in their own home.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
We can't and we never will. The whole system - and the social structure that supported those years - is gone and will never return. Indeed it pretty much ate itself even as it grew. We now have a society based on what the Government can do for us rather than what we can do for ourselves. We look to the State to provide solutions for problems that the expanding State caused in the first place. It is pointless.
All we can do, if we are so minded, is do the right thing by our families and friends and hope that is enough.
None of your clever plans or ideas, whether well founded or not, will make a blind bit of difference because society will still view housing as an asset, primarily to protect against poverty in old age, no matter how many houses we build. The whole house building process - more than that, our whole domestic economy - is now predicated on ever increasing house prices.
The system is broken and cannot be fixed.
To what extent is it explained by more people being single into their late 20s/30s, and higher divorce rates?
I've dated a few fellow flat owners and it made me feel a bit guilty about all the space we were taking up. Then consider the collective size of the deposits we had put down.
I think it is far more fundemental than that. Which is why it can't be fixed. No matter how many houses you build, as long as they are seen by society as a whole as an asset rather than a place for people to live there will always be those with the money and the inclination to buy up whatever you can build as an investment. And so much of our domestic economy now depends on rising house prices. It is a fatal flaw that we introduced into the system ourselves.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
It's the dark side of why most of us find home ownership so profitable. If prices go up, you can double, triple your initial deposit in a year, gains beyond the dreams of the city. But if prices go down, even a little bit, new buyers are utterly wiped out.
It would be better if things weren't like that, but we are where we are.
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
By all your likes, PB posters must be missing all those photographs of your breakfast. I'll stick with debating car insurance with Rochdale thank you very much.
It was interesting being away
In all seriousness, I clearly did lurk at times - partly out of sheer, pathetic narcissism. For a while you quite often talked of me, after I went, and who doesn't wanna hear what others say of us?
Then it changed. Commentary seemed to get more fluid, prolix and yet more "sedate" as @TimS described it - you are all more polite than me. Maybe I intimidate, or I simply lower the tone? Or I introduce unwanted discord. Or it has nothing to do with me, and this is just my pitiful narcissism speaking again. Could be
I can say that PB to an outsider has become extremely male and a touch "spectrumy" - endless chats about public transport etc. It is not welcoming or intriguing for a random browser, to my mind. But if that is what makes the pub regulars happy, then who am I to object? I have myself long been a regular
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
But what you are saying has always been the way with the exception of perhaps a 40 year period post WW2. Most people of my grandparents generation rented and many, if not most, lived in multi-generational households. We moved away from that after WW2 partly because of improving economic circumstances, partly because of the growth of the welfare state and partly, but connectedly, because of social changes. In the process we have become more fractured and relied more and more on the state to do the things that we would have done ourselves only a couple of generations ago.
And I see no professions where it is vital to live in or near London, all the more so with the way we are going with communications.
It is still the case that you can choose to live just over an hour from London and buy a house for half the price of the home counties and probably a third of the price of a simlar house in London itself.
Its true that people used to rent and that improving economic circumstances meant that more people were able to buy. The trend all 20th century was ever more people able to buy their own home, ending in a peak after the low house prices of the 1990s saw more people than ever before in their own home.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
We can't and we never will. The whole system - and the social structure that supported those years - is gone and will never return. Indeed it pretty much ate itself even as it grew. We now have a society based on what the Government can do for us rather than what we can do for ourselves. We look to the State to provide solutions for problems that the expanding State caused in the first place. It is pointless.
All we can do, if we are so minded, is do the right thing by our families and friends and hope that is enough.
None of your clever plans or ideas, whether well founded or not, will make a blind bit of difference because society will still view housing as an asset, primarily to protect against poverty in old age, no matter how many houses we build. The whole house building process - more than that, our whole domestic economy - is now predicated on ever increasing house prices.
The system is broken and cannot be fixed.
To what extent is it explained by more people being single into their late 20s/30s, and higher divorce rates?
I've dated a few fellow flat owners and it made me feel a bit guilty about all the space we were taking up. Then consider the collective size of the deposits we had put down.
I think it is far more fundemental than that. Which is why it can't be fixed. No matter how many houses you build, as long as they are seen by society as a whole as an asset rather than a place for people to live there will always be those with the money and the inclination to buy up whatever you can build as an investment. And so much of our domestic economy now depends on rising house prices. It is a fatal flaw that we introduced into the system ourselves.
But if people buy homes, but other homes can be built, then the people holding empty homes are left paying a mortgage (or down hundreds of thousands) with no tenant to pay their mortgage for them. At which point the rational thing to do, is to stop doing that.
The only reason people can get away with what you're talking about, is because we don't have empty homes. 99% of homes in this country are occupied, the average across the rest of the world is for more than 10% of homes to be empty, which is good thing not a problem as it means people can choose not to live in dilapidated or expensive homes, and people without much money can buy those for cheap and renovate them.
We need about 4 million extra homes in this country today to restore having enough empty homes. Add in population growth and we need circa 700k+ homes per annum getting constructed to resolve this problem within a decade.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
What, for Fox to fiddle the figures? Wouldn't have said it was that interesting, they've been doing it for years.
I was thinking on similar lines. Are US polls as watertight as ours? I know HY's favoured pollster, Trafalgar have unusual or even "interesting" methodologies.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
I've actually met him (ever so briefly!) after a talk he gave at the Logan Hall back in 2019.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
Last time it was 4 years.
Not decades. Good.
So worst case scenario a 20-something can save for a couple of years to get 10% of a much lower multiple, then buy when its not ceased up anymore. Rather than face two decades of renting as is the norm currently.
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
By all your likes, PB posters must be missing all those photographs of your breakfast. I'll stick with debating car insurance with Rochdale thank you very much.
It was interesting being away
In all seriousness, I clearly did lurk at times - partly out of sheer, pathetic narcissism. For a while you quite often talked of me, after I went, and who doesn't wanna hear what others say of us?
Then it changed. Commentary seemed to get more fluid, prolix and yet more "sedate" as @TimS described it - you are all more polite than me. Maybe I intimidate, or I simply lower the tone? Or I introduce unwanted discord. Or it has nothing to do with me, and this is just my pitiful narcissism speaking again. Could be
I can say that PB to an outsider has become extremely male and a touch "spectrumy" - endless chats about public transport etc. It is not welcoming or intriguing for a random browser, to my mind. But if that is what makes the pub regulars happy, then who am I to object? I have myself long been a regular
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
By all your likes, PB posters must be missing all those photographs of your breakfast. I'll stick with debating car insurance with Rochdale thank you very much.
It was interesting being away
In all seriousness, I clearly did lurk at times - partly out of sheer, pathetic narcissism. For a while you quite often talked of me, after I went, and who doesn't wanna hear what others say of us?
Then it changed. Commentary seemed to get more fluid, prolix and yet more "sedate" as @TimS described it - you are all more polite than me. Maybe I intimidate, or I simply lower the tone? Or I introduce unwanted discord. Or it has nothing to do with me, and this is just my pitiful narcissism speaking again. Could be
I can say that PB to an outsider has become extremely male and a touch "spectrumy" - endless chats about public transport etc. It is not welcoming or intriguing for a random browser, to my mind. But if that is what makes the pub regulars happy, then who am I to object? I have myself long been a regular
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Unfair, I'm actually quite a fan of his work.
Sad to say I am not. I think he can occasionally have some interesting insights - such as his New Chronology fro the late Bronze Age which I think makes sense. But apart from that I think he is a loon and a fraud.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Unfair, I'm actually quite a fan of his work.
Sad to say I am not. I think he can occasionally have some interesting insights - such as his New Chronology fro the late Bronze Age which I think makes sense. But apart from that I think he is a loon and a fraud.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
Same here (no help, not gifted a £3m house).
Great sense of satisfaction in knowing our present comfortable life is all through our own endeavours*.
(*Ok, and being born in a wealthy country of opportunities.)
Before buying my first home I spent 5 years living in share houses and not having a car. That helped me save enough to be able to buy with a modest mortgage.
I didn't buy a coffee from Starbucks every morning or eat avocado toast either.
Didn’t most people live in shared houses? I lived in some kind of co-operative squat when I first moved to the UK. If you’d said you’d *lived* in a car, I’d have been impressed.
The coffee and avocado stuff is silly sneering.
Sandy often ruins otherwise interesting insights by sneering at wine drinkers/handwringers/avocadoeaters/Londoners (delete as appropriate)
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Except, it turns out he might be right about Gobekli Tepe, and the Tas Tepeler. There really WAS an ancient, advanced, long-buried civilisation, which seems to have ended around 10,000-9,000 BC - ie at the end of the last Ice Age
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
He was not 'right' about either Gobekli Tepe or Tas Tepler. He never even dreamed they were there and they certainly don't display any of the features or technology that he has predicted. There was no ancient civilisation. There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one.
So your 'civilisation' still consisted entirely of Hunter Gatherers who had not even learned to breed a cow or a sheep.
If all you are bringing back to the site are your weird alien fantasies then you might as well fuck off again because you and your arguments are pointless.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
But what you are saying has always been the way with the exception of perhaps a 40 year period post WW2. Most people of my grandparents generation rented and many, if not most, lived in multi-generational households. We moved away from that after WW2 partly because of improving economic circumstances, partly because of the growth of the welfare state and partly, but connectedly, because of social changes. In the process we have become more fractured and relied more and more on the state to do the things that we would have done ourselves only a couple of generations ago.
And I see no professions where it is vital to live in or near London, all the more so with the way we are going with communications.
It is still the case that you can choose to live just over an hour from London and buy a house for half the price of the home counties and probably a third of the price of a simlar house in London itself.
Its true that people used to rent and that improving economic circumstances meant that more people were able to buy. The trend all 20th century was ever more people able to buy their own home, ending in a peak after the low house prices of the 1990s saw more people than ever before in their own home.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
We can't and we never will. The whole system - and the social structure that supported those years - is gone and will never return. Indeed it pretty much ate itself even as it grew. We now have a society based on what the Government can do for us rather than what we can do for ourselves. We look to the State to provide solutions for problems that the expanding State caused in the first place. It is pointless.
All we can do, if we are so minded, is do the right thing by our families and friends and hope that is enough.
None of your clever plans or ideas, whether well founded or not, will make a blind bit of difference because society will still view housing as an asset, primarily to protect against poverty in old age, no matter how many houses we build. The whole house building process - more than that, our whole domestic economy - is now predicated on ever increasing house prices.
The system is broken and cannot be fixed.
To what extent is it explained by more people being single into their late 20s/30s, and higher divorce rates?
I've dated a few fellow flat owners and it made me feel a bit guilty about all the space we were taking up. Then consider the collective size of the deposits we had put down.
8 million fewer properties than France, similar sized population.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Except, it turns out he might be right about Gobekli Tepe, and the Tas Tepeler. There really WAS an ancient, advanced, long-buried civilisation, which seems to have ended around 10,000-9,000 BC - ie at the end of the last Ice Age
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
Also bear in mind the HUGE losses of land when the glaciers melted at the end of the Ice Age. Destroying any evidence of human activity on the areas inundated. My money (um, if I had any!) is on Sundaland being somewhere special. Slap bang on the equator, it would have been an ideal Ice Age refugium. I can't believe this essay is 20 years old!
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
Last time it was 4 years.
Not decades. Good.
So worst case scenario a 20-something can save for a couple of years to get 10% of a much lower multiple, then buy when its not ceased up anymore. Rather than face two decades of renting as is the norm currently.
What's the objection to that?
The 350,000 buyers who just did that and then lost it all.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Except, it turns out he might be right about Gobekli Tepe, and the Tas Tepeler. There really WAS an ancient, advanced, long-buried civilisation, which seems to have ended around 10,000-9,000 BC - ie at the end of the last Ice Age
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
Also bear in mind the HUGE losses of land when the glaciers melted at the end of the Ice Age. Destroying any evidence of human activity on the areas inundated. My money (um, if I had any!) is on Sundaland being somewhere special. Slap bang on the equator, it would have been an ideal Ice Age refugium. I can't believe this essay is 20 years old!
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Except, it turns out he might be right about Gobekli Tepe, and the Tas Tepeler. There really WAS an ancient, advanced, long-buried civilisation, which seems to have ended around 10,000-9,000 BC - ie at the end of the last Ice Age
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
He was not 'right' about either Gobekli Tepe or Tas Tepler. He never even dreamed they were there and they certainly don't display any of the features or technology that he has predicted. There was no ancient civilisation. There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one.
So your 'civilisation' still consisted entirely of Hunter Gatherers who had not even learned to breed a cow or a sheep.
If all you are bringing back to the site are your weird alien fantasies then you might as well fuck off again because you and your arguments are pointless.
Do you know anything about the claims of 'homo naledi' burying their dead in the rising star cave in South Africa approximately 250,000 years ago?
Saw a documentary recently on Netflix about this, and the documentary was basically claiming it was proof that they were an early hominid species with something akin to religion and religious burials 250,000 years ago. Though I see others are disputing such claims. Do you have any thoughts?
I facebooked, via an old school acquaintance, my very first girlfriend who I haven't spoken to in over 20+ years. Long story, but she popped up in a vivid dream a week ago, which bothered me, and I recalled I didn't know what happened to her. If she was alive or dead. She disappeared off the face of earth about 2005 and I was worried and not ok with it. We used to be besties and I thought I'd take a chance and reach out, once I found out her name had changed. We went through a lot together.
My message on Friday was warm. Her response two days later was polite, but content-light, guarded and slightly icy. After a very brief exchange she basically told me to get lost in the politest way possible and she was slightly suspicious about why I'd suddenly reached out - that I was a fond childhood memory, and that's where she preferred to leave it.
Ouch. I said I respected that but I can't say I wasn't disappointed. Life's too short for sentiment like that, in my view.
At least I know she's ok though.
Oddly enough - a few months ago I was watching a TV show and one of the characters reminded me of an ex ('the one' in fact). Googled her name and found she'd thrown herself off a cliff into a quarry.
Top tip: don't google for ex's names.
Yes, the alternative was to let bygones be bygones and never contact her again. But I wasn't ok with that.
I mean, she could have just ghosted me entirely, and I did get some sort of a response, so at least that's something and I now know.
Depressing story but my younger brother (in his 20s) recently went out on a first date and it went really well, they agreed then to a second date. He then texted her about arrangements for the second date but never heard back, assumed she had changed her mind and she was ghosting him, until he then got a phone call from her father (whom I'm assuming saw the texts) to let him know she'd passed away suddenly. 20s herself, died suddenly from a blood clot.
Horrible what can happen. Life really can be too short sometimes.
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Except, it turns out he might be right about Gobekli Tepe, and the Tas Tepeler. There really WAS an ancient, advanced, long-buried civilisation, which seems to have ended around 10,000-9,000 BC - ie at the end of the last Ice Age
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
He was not 'right' about either Gobekli Tepe or Tas Tepler. He never even dreamed they were there and they certainly don't display any of the features or technology that he has predicted. There was no ancient civilisation. There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one.
So your 'civilisation' still consisted entirely of Hunter Gatherers who had not even learned to breed a cow or a sheep.
If all you are bringing back to the site are your weird alien fantasies then you might as well fuck off again because you and your arguments are pointless.
This is so bizarrely, witlessly wrong, it is outwith rebuttal. So I shall pretend you never said it
Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Except, it turns out he might be right about Gobekli Tepe, and the Tas Tepeler. There really WAS an ancient, advanced, long-buried civilisation, which seems to have ended around 10,000-9,000 BC - ie at the end of the last Ice Age
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
He was not 'right' about either Gobekli Tepe or Tas Tepler. He never even dreamed they were there and they certainly don't display any of the features or technology that he has predicted. There was no ancient civilisation. There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one.
So your 'civilisation' still consisted entirely of Hunter Gatherers who had not even learned to breed a cow or a sheep.
If all you are bringing back to the site are your weird alien fantasies then you might as well fuck off again because you and your arguments are pointless.
Do you know anything about the claims of 'homo naledi' burying their dead in the rising star cave in South Africa approximately 250,000 years ago?
Saw a documentary recently on Netflix about this, and the documentary was basically claiming it was proof that they were an early hominid species with something akin to religion and religious burials 250,000 years ago. Though I see others are disputing such claims. Do you have any thoughts?
Not seen it but I would not disregard it. I don't get the idea that Intelligence and society suddenly sprung up overnight. Hominids have been around for a good few million years and I see no issue at all with the idea they had religious beliefs 250,000 years ago.
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
By all your likes, PB posters must be missing all those photographs of your breakfast. I'll stick with debating car insurance with Rochdale thank you very much.
It was interesting being away
In all seriousness, I clearly did lurk at times - partly out of sheer, pathetic narcissism. For a while you quite often talked of me, after I went, and who doesn't wanna hear what others say of us?
Then it changed. Commentary seemed to get more fluid, prolix and yet more "sedate" as @TimS described it - you are all more polite than me. Maybe I intimidate, or I simply lower the tone? Or I introduce unwanted discord. Or it has nothing to do with me, and this is just my pitiful narcissism speaking again. Could be
I can say that PB to an outsider has become extremely male and a touch "spectrumy" - endless chats about public transport etc. It is not welcoming or intriguing for a random browser, to my mind. But if that is what makes the pub regulars happy, then who am I to object? I have myself long been a regular
A touch? Pah. A very big touch...
The issue in the last week or two has been too little diversity of conversation topics. Too much cycling and LTNs, just seasoned with a bit of poll-moonrabbiting and some periodic revisiting of Brexit. Not even much Ukraine action.
It is politically quiet currently. Not much drama happening. I fear that may be the case until next Autumn when the US starts threatening to elect a criminal and we go about our own little change election.
This is, I think it’s fair to say, what @Leon has been good at in politically quiet periods: introducing, unprompted, something completely unrelated to the (typically 2) topics of conversation that overlap during a thread. An authorial instinct to keep the plot turning.
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
By all your likes, PB posters must be missing all those photographs of your breakfast. I'll stick with debating car insurance with Rochdale thank you very much.
It was interesting being away
In all seriousness, I clearly did lurk at times - partly out of sheer, pathetic narcissism. For a while you quite often talked of me, after I went, and who doesn't wanna hear what others say of us?
Then it changed. Commentary seemed to get more fluid, prolix and yet more "sedate" as @TimS described it - you are all more polite than me. Maybe I intimidate, or I simply lower the tone? Or I introduce unwanted discord. Or it has nothing to do with me, and this is just my pitiful narcissism speaking again. Could be
I can say that PB to an outsider has become extremely male and a touch "spectrumy" - endless chats about public transport etc. It is not welcoming or intriguing for a random browser, to my mind. But if that is what makes the pub regulars happy, then who am I to object? I have myself long been a regular
A touch? Pah. A very big touch...
The issue in the last week or two has been too little diversity of conversation topics. Too much cycling and LTNs, just seasoned with a bit of poll-moonrabbiting and some periodic revisiting of Brexit. Not even much Ukraine action.
It is politically quiet currently. Not much drama happening. I fear that may be the case until next Autumn when the US starts threatening to elect a criminal and we go about our own little change election.
This is, I think it’s fair to say, what @Leon has been good at in politically quiet periods: introducing, unprompted, something completely unrelated to the (typically 2) topics of conversation that overlap during a thread. An authorial instinct to keep the plot turning.
Or, he simply hijacks every thread with his old b*ll*cks. Which if that floats one's boat, is fine.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
Wigton pub, not Carlisle. BTW his recent memoir on his early life, 'Back in the Day' is a classic, among the finest things he has ever written. Anyone reading it will discern how and why north Cumberland, outside Carlisle and the lake district, is quite special even though it remains almost entirely unknown in the wider world.
Is that Brampton and the western Wall country?
Brampton is 'go to Carlisle and turn right' (St Martin's Brampton has about the best Victorian stained glass set of windows around). Wigton is 'go to Carlisle and turn left'. North Cumberland east of Carlisle is better known because of the wall, with many of the best bits. West of Carlisle is less well known - no wall much to be seen. But God's own country still.
Ah, thanks. Been around the Wall - Birdoswald, the Irthing crossing area, and so on. But Silloth and Maryport and the wall on the coast are places still to tick off.
Silloth and Allonby are still there as really old style holiday destinations, and slightly increasing in popularity. Magaluf they are not, but ice creams can be bought for cash and there is a swing for children. Silloth still has cobbled streets.
I like Maryport, and parts of it have charm. In my experience I am alone in this opinion.
Don't miss the abbey at Abbeytown or Holme Cultram, which must be about the least visited abbey of them all, being the jewel of an unknown region. (But if you go on strawberry tea weekend it's packed out with local people.)
I like Maryport and all that coast really: Whitehaven and Cockermouth too. I was at the latter's agricultural show a couple of weekends back - I love these! - where I met the local MP, Mark Jenkinson, and bent his ear about the Post Office.
This weekend we had our local agricultural show: it was the most glorious day so we spent it lolling about on the grass, picknicking and drinking until late in the evening and having a very jolly dejeuner sur l'herbe sort of day. Then walking back through the woods and fields to Broughton to continue the merriment.
Although... what's with the private profile? How are we meant to remind ourselves of the incredible accuracy of your predictions if we can't see your past comments?
i didn't want anyone to see how much I was lurking
Jesus, the fucking boring coversations about bicycling, Nadine Dorries and "light rail networks". When I saw that you had all moved on to "car insurance" this afternoon I could not stand idly by, any longer. So I made an intervention
By all your likes, PB posters must be missing all those photographs of your breakfast. I'll stick with debating car insurance with Rochdale thank you very much.
It was interesting being away
In all seriousness, I clearly did lurk at times - partly out of sheer, pathetic narcissism. For a while you quite often talked of me, after I went, and who doesn't wanna hear what others say of us?
Then it changed. Commentary seemed to get more fluid, prolix and yet more "sedate" as @TimS described it - you are all more polite than me. Maybe I intimidate, or I simply lower the tone? Or I introduce unwanted discord. Or it has nothing to do with me, and this is just my pitiful narcissism speaking again. Could be
I can say that PB to an outsider has become extremely male and a touch "spectrumy" - endless chats about public transport etc. It is not welcoming or intriguing for a random browser, to my mind. But if that is what makes the pub regulars happy, then who am I to object? I have myself long been a regular
A touch? Pah. A very big touch...
The issue in the last week or two has been too little diversity of conversation topics. Too much cycling and LTNs, just seasoned with a bit of poll-moonrabbiting and some periodic revisiting of Brexit. Not even much Ukraine action.
It is politically quiet currently. Not much drama happening. I fear that may be the case until next Autumn when the US starts threatening to elect a criminal and we go about our own little change election.
This is, I think it’s fair to say, what @Leon has been good at in politically quiet periods: introducing, unprompted, something completely unrelated to the (typically 2) topics of conversation that overlap during a thread. An authorial instinct to keep the plot turning.
90% of the tedium would be eliminated if one poster stopped posting...
It is politically quiet currently. Not much drama happening. I fear that may be the case until next Autumn when the US starts threatening to elect a criminal and we go about our own little change election.
A British GE on the Thursday before the Tuesday of the 2024 Presidential would be an exciting week.
In other news from the intersection of transport, culture wars and free speech absolutism I have been banned from Gran Turismo.
I was racking up wins in my TVR Tuscan "Leavermobile" with its custom Greggs livery in which I replaced the Gregg's positioning statement of "Always Fresh, Always Tasty" with "Selling Shit to Scum". Some arsehole complained and my account is suspended.
Parents and grandparents are facing a retirement cash crunch as they prepare to contribute a record £8.1bn towards younger buyers’ house purchases this year, a report has warned.
Money from relatives will help fund close to half of all purchases by under-55s in 2023, according to research by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).
It is a significant jump from 35pc in 2020, when the research was last carried out. For under-35s, the share is expected to jump from just under half in 2020 to 57pc this year as rising interest rates push up mortgage payments.
The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 consecutive times since December 2021 to 5.25pc, wiping tens of thousands of pounds off what the average borrower can afford.
The average amount of financial support from relatives is expected to hit £25,600 this year, L&G’s research found.
Bernie Hickman, chief executive of Legal & General Retail, which has 12 million policyholders, warned the record sums put many older people at risk of running out of money later in life.
He said: “Our research clearly shows that gifting or lending money to loved ones to get on the property ladder has noticeably impacted [the givers’] finances.
Well it helped you get on the property ladder and me
I repaid my parents their deposit and other support within 5 years.
The reality was their intervention allowed me to get on the property aged 21 before I had even started work.
I'm an only child, what do parents do if they have more than one child.
Save.
The moment my daughter was born I started putting away £100 a month in an ISA with Skandia (later Old Mutual) . When she turned 18 we gave her the choice of using it for paying her University fees or having it for a deposit on a house. In the end she took out the student loan for the tuition fees but nothing for the additional support/living loan. It means she still has a good deposit on a house left over.
We have done the same with my son who is 7 years younger. To pay for it we simply didn't have or do a lot of the things other people do. No fancy holidays, always had second hand cars, no expensive habits.
That's splendid, if you can do that.
What about people whose parents don't have £100 a month to spare?
Then they don't do it. Or they do a lesser amount.
The trouble is that having kids is about making sacrifices and whilst there are many people who are genuinely unable to do that there are also many more who are not willing. They would not sacrifice their holiday in the sun each year or their new car every two years simply to ensure their kids had some support to start them in adult life. And too often these have been people of my age and my 'class' who had all the benefits and are now unwilling to pass them on.
As I say this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, or perhaps even the majority. But if you can afford a foreign holiday every year then you can afford to put something by for your kids' future.
In terms of actions, I'm fully with you.
But.
We're heading for a country where access to family wealth basically decides whether you can begin to buy a home in parts of the country. And without a place to live near London, you can forget a career in some of the more interesting and powerful professions.
I caught a bit of an interview with Melvin Bragg on Saturday. Could someone have his life path (Carlisle pub to Oxford to the BBC) now? I'm pretty sure that it would be much less likely, and Britain in 2050 will be worse for that.
Wigton pub, not Carlisle. BTW his recent memoir on his early life, 'Back in the Day' is a classic, among the finest things he has ever written. Anyone reading it will discern how and why north Cumberland, outside Carlisle and the lake district, is quite special even though it remains almost entirely unknown in the wider world.
Is that Brampton and the western Wall country?
Brampton is 'go to Carlisle and turn right' (St Martin's Brampton has about the best Victorian stained glass set of windows around). Wigton is 'go to Carlisle and turn left'. North Cumberland east of Carlisle is better known because of the wall, with many of the best bits. West of Carlisle is less well known - no wall much to be seen. But God's own country still.
Ah, thanks. Been around the Wall - Birdoswald, the Irthing crossing area, and so on. But Silloth and Maryport and the wall on the coast are places still to tick off.
Silloth and Allonby are still there as really old style holiday destinations, and slightly increasing in popularity. Magaluf they are not, but ice creams can be bought for cash and there is a swing for children. Silloth still has cobbled streets.
I like Maryport, and parts of it have charm. In my experience I am alone in this opinion.
Don't miss the abbey at Abbeytown or Holme Cultram, which must be about the least visited abbey of them all, being the jewel of an unknown region. (But if you go on strawberry tea weekend it's packed out with local people.)
I like Maryport and all that coast really: Whitehaven and Cockermouth too. I was at the latter's agricultural show a couple of weekends back - I love these! - where I met the local MP, Mark Jenkinson, and bent his ear about the Post Office.
This weekend we had our local agricultural show: it was the most glorious day so we spent it lolling about on the grass, picknicking and drinking until late in the evening and having a very jolly dejeuner sur l'herbe sort of day. Then walking back through the woods and fields to Broughton to continue the merriment.
I very nearly brought one of these home.
Evening view -
Good job you didn't, your garden would have been fully eaten within a week...
Comments
Every single country in the West that has been giving support has been saying the value of it. Boris Johnson was quite unabashed of whenever he was announcing support to Ukraine and the value of it:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uk-provide-13-billion-pounds-further-military-support-ukraine-2022-05-07/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-further-1-billion-in-military-support-to-ukraine
There are websites tracking the data and league tables of who is giving the most support: https://www.statista.com/chart/27278/military-aid-to-ukraine-by-country/
The difference between the UK and the USA isn't that Biden is saying the value of aid to Ukraine and that Johnson then Sunak haven't.
The difference is that here the Opposition are agreeing that the military aid is the right thing to do, whereas in the USA only some of the Opposition agree (people like Haley) whereas other long-term Putin fans are objecting.
My relative said that at the distribution of assists, it was definitely as if they wanted to argue. But couldn’t.
Where there's a will - there's a family argument.
Not a line of her writing have I
Not a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there;
And in vain do I urge my unsight
To conceive my lost prize
At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light
And with laughter her eyes.
What scenes spread around her last days,
Sad, shining, or dim?
Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways
With an aureate nimb?
Or did life-light decline from her years,
And mischances control
Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears
Disennoble her soul?
Thus I do but the phantom retain
Of the maiden of yore
As my relic; yet haply the best of her--fined in my brain
It may be the more
That no line of her writing have I,
Nor a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there.
{pry bars open a double case of Château de Chasselas}
We would ‘ave killed for ‘rubbish tip…
Top tip: don't google for ex's names.
So why has that trend reversed throughout the 21st century? Why are we having deteriorating economic circumstances, rather than improving ones?
Saving for a deposit of 0.2x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 2x your income, as in the early 90s) is completely different to saving for a deposit of 0.8x your annual income (ie 10% of a house 8x your income, as can be common lately).
People who bought their homes when they were affordable and cost barely double their income saying how bad problems were back then need to put away their Château de Chasselas and think about how we can return to improving economic circumstances and affordable housing. Novel suggestion, but improving supply relative to demand might be a start.
It was almost worth it just for the blessed relief of waking up and realising that, actually, in real life I'd passed.
I mean, she could have just ghosted me entirely, and I did get some sort of a response, so at least that's something and I now know.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
All we can do, if we are so minded, is do the right thing by our families and friends and hope that is enough.
None of your clever plans or ideas, whether well founded or not, will make a blind bit of difference because society will still view housing as an asset, primarily to protect against poverty in old age, no matter how many houses we build. The whole house building process - more than that, our whole domestic economy - is now predicated on ever increasing house prices.
The system is broken and cannot be fixed.
And yes the Cumbrian coast is fascinating and beautiful. Try St Bees, Ravenglass and the surprise of Seascale.
Horrible what can happen. Life really can be too short sometimes.
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
And I'm not a twit. Family legups have always been a thing, always will be. And centre-right politics (which I'd like to return to one day) has always had a tension between ladders of opportunity and wealth cascading down the generations. And yes, there are valid fulfiling career paths that never touch That There London.
That doesn't mean that our current national path will end well for us.
I've dated a few fellow flat owners and it made me feel a bit guilty about all the space we were taking up. Then consider the collective size of the deposits we had put down.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Switch to zonal developments, so anyone in a construction zone can simply start construction (to standards) without asking for permission first, and then houses can actually be built and house prices can come back down in real terms. As has happened elsewhere.
Housing being a form of income only lasts as long as houses are making you an income, or asset price gains. When houses are a depreciating asset, they get treated accordingly.
The problem is how do we get from here to there, without the people proposing there losing an election. Starmer has an opportunity to do it, and if he does he'll leave a legacy as one of the all time greatest Prime Ministers, but I suspect he's too frit to do it.
Meanwhile in Russia: after DNA analysis confirmed Prigozhin's death, propagandists on Vladimir Solovyov show blamed NATO and predicted that Surovikin might be next. They also asserted there will be no negotiations and Ukraine should cease to exist.
https://nitter.net/JuliaDavisNews/status/1696199953306075455#m
And told me to drop it, for she'd had quite enough
Of my nonsense...
...At the same time, I'd been very kind
But to marry a milkman she didn't feel inclined
She was as beautiful as a butterfly and proud as a Queen
Was pretty little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fttPV0auKY
"Don't look back, you can never look back" as a wise man once wisely, and beautifully, sung
https://youtu.be/6RUIeX6UCT8?si=bLUn17TPrmNuNWe8
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
You're right though about bicycling, light rail networks, car insurance, and you could also have added ULEZzzzzzzzz - but Mad Nad's strop is a worthy topic for conversation on any day.
Question to the Mods: Why do we allow posters to keep their profile private? What is purpose is that serving when posters are, or can be, anonymous?
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
On the substantive point [looks across to Mrs Romford], hard disagree, but I'm peculiar.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/most-read-2022-is-an-unknown-extraordinarily-ancient-civilisation-buried-under-eastern-turkeymost-read-2022/
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
It would be better if things weren't like that, but we are where we are.
In all seriousness, I clearly did lurk at times - partly out of sheer, pathetic narcissism. For a while you quite often talked of me, after I went, and who doesn't wanna hear what others say of us?
Then it changed. Commentary seemed to get more fluid, prolix and yet more "sedate" as @TimS described it - you are all more polite than me. Maybe I intimidate, or I simply lower the tone? Or I introduce unwanted discord. Or it has nothing to do with me, and this is just my pitiful narcissism speaking again. Could be
I can say that PB to an outsider has become extremely male and a touch "spectrumy" - endless chats about public transport etc. It is not welcoming or intriguing for a random browser, to my mind. But if that is what makes the pub regulars happy, then who am I to object? I have myself long been a regular
The only reason people can get away with what you're talking about, is because we don't have empty homes. 99% of homes in this country are occupied, the average across the rest of the world is for more than 10% of homes to be empty, which is good thing not a problem as it means people can choose not to live in dilapidated or expensive homes, and people without much money can buy those for cheap and renovate them.
We need about 4 million extra homes in this country today to restore having enough empty homes. Add in population growth and we need circa 700k+ homes per annum getting constructed to resolve this problem within a decade.
Do that, any houses will cease to be "assets".
So worst case scenario a 20-something can save for a couple of years to get 10% of a much lower multiple, then buy when its not ceased up anymore. Rather than face two decades of renting as is the norm currently.
What's the objection to that?
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/18ox1hne2s/econTabReport.pdf
Among black voters:
Biden: 54%
Trump: 17%
Other/Not Sure/Would not vote: 29%
So your 'civilisation' still consisted entirely of Hunter Gatherers who had not even learned to breed a cow or a sheep.
If all you are bringing back to the site are your weird alien fantasies then you might as well fuck off again because you and your arguments are pointless.
It’s still a surprise though to see 20% supporting Trump .
We live in strange times. Biden is getting no credit at all for the economy and several good wins in terms of infrastructure and the IRA.
Trump is the most corrupt former President in US history . And could win again .
https://grahamhancock.com/drsunilatlantis/
Old Thread grounded due to ATC failure!
Saw a documentary recently on Netflix about this, and the documentary was basically claiming it was proof that they were an early hominid species with something akin to religion and religious burials 250,000 years ago. Though I see others are disputing such claims. Do you have any thoughts?
He must have been shaken. Terrible.
It is politically quiet currently. Not much drama happening. I fear that may be the case until next Autumn when the US starts threatening to elect a criminal and we go about our own little change election.
This is, I think it’s fair to say, what @Leon has been good at in politically quiet periods: introducing, unprompted, something completely unrelated to the (typically 2) topics of conversation that overlap during a thread. An authorial instinct to keep the plot turning.
This weekend we had our local agricultural show: it was the most glorious day so we spent it lolling about on the grass, picknicking and drinking until late in the evening and having a very jolly dejeuner sur l'herbe sort of day. Then walking back through the woods and fields to Broughton to continue the merriment.
I very nearly brought one of these home.
Evening view -
I was racking up wins in my TVR Tuscan "Leavermobile" with its custom Greggs livery in which I replaced the Gregg's positioning statement of "Always Fresh, Always Tasty" with "Selling Shit to Scum". Some arsehole complained and my account is suspended.