Worrying poll findings for Truss from YouGov and R&K – politicalbetting.com

Luckyguy1983 said:

...

nico679 said:

If the pound falls below one dollar that would be a huge deal.

For who?

Real people.

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

IET. Hitachi train. Japanese tech.

There's a shining example of our decline.

williamglenn said:

RochdalePioneers said:

tlg86 said:

We need a bingo market for Truss’s conference speech. What odds “the lady’s not for turning”?

I hadn't thought of that. Noel Gallagher wrote Oasis songs by liberating Beatles lyrics. Truss can write her speech by doing the same with Mrs Thatcher.

She could do the dead parrot sketch.

Hopefully better this time out.

SandyRentool said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

IET. Hitachi train. Japanese tech.

There's a shining example of our decline.

It’s not decline. It’s free trade. If the Japanese can make good smart trains at a decent price - great, we can buy them. And then we can sell the stuff we do well back to them. Like, say, education

Or do you think we should still be mainly farming sheep so we can sell the wool to the continent?

SandyRentool said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

IET. Hitachi train. Japanese tech.

There's a shining example of our decline.

On a purchase contract where the manufacturer absolutely reamed the government because the DfT idiots negotiating on behalf of the future franchise bidders just agreed the first number given.

Your daily reminder that as Britain descends into impoverished anarchy, sent by their by its legally elected governing party…

Sweden has just put the far right into office
Italy has just given a quasi fascist party more votes than anyone else
The United States quite recently suffered an attempted coup and is in danger of another, or civil strife
The German economy is expected to shrink by 4% this year….


And so on. And so forth. Get a bloody grip

I get it now. Gareth Southgate is Graham Taylor. Absolutely wedded to *his* stars regardless of whether they are past it, playing badly or at all.

Lets all have a practice.
"Do I not like that"
"Carlton, CARLTON"
"I'm going to lose my job cos of this"

Leon said:

Your daily reminder that as Britain descends into impoverished anarchy, sent by their by its legally elected governing party…

Sweden has just put the far right into office
Italy has just given a quasi fascist party more votes than anyone else
The United States quite recently suffered an attempted coup and is in danger of another, or civil strife
The German economy is expected to shrink by 4% this year….


And so on. And so forth. Get a bloody grip

Well, at least you accept it was an attempted coup.

In any case, 'Other people have it worse' is never going to cut much ice with people suffering here, and why would they? They expect (and are promised by parties) a great deal. It isn't unreasonable to hold them responsible if they dont delivery.

Beibheirli_C said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

FrankBooth said:

PR would be interesting but I fear it won't be well thought through.

Also why is Labour endorsing the 19% basic rate? A national insurance cut would be far more sensible.

This is the issue with Labour

They have endorsed the 19% rate plus the abolition of the NI rise but said they will reinstate the 45% rate and spend it on nurses

The 45% rate produces approx 2 billion, while the other 2 costs 10 times = 20 billion and of course the row today is the 22 billion is all borrowed, so when Reeves said the new nurses were fully funded she was misleading as effectively it is borrowed money and they have also not said how they would recover the other 20 billion

Labour are as much a shambles as the conservatives, and we should all be very concerned about the future stewardship of our economy over the next 5 years or more

Labour are nowhere near the utter shambles of your precious Conservative Party. You may well want them to be bad so as to reduce the contrast effect between an inexperienced govt and the utter fools we currently have in govt.

Wish away. Wishing will not make a difference. This govt is either incompetent or corrupt - or possibly both - as no other interpretation of their behaviour makes any sense.

And if you support them, even tacitly, then you agree with with they are doing.

Possibly both?

rottenborough said:

(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
27m
Imagine in years to come when people actually read in their history books “in the midst of a cost of living crisis, and with interest rates soaring, the British government announced tax cuts for the very richest people in society”. It’s up there with making your horse a senator.

https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1574458922911633409

Thoroughbred punchline from odges?

IshmaelZ said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Even if you are not travelling first, you have today spent comfortably more than a month of Universal Credit on wine, trains and oysters.

Of course I’m in First

Ugh Standard UGH

Nonetheless I have plenty of friends and family in ordinary circs and they are not gnawing rats. And i can see the world around me. Truro looks a bit battered in parts of the town centre but it also has some lovely new shops and busy restaurants

Falmouth the same. And so on

RochdalePioneers said:

williamglenn said:

RochdalePioneers said:

tlg86 said:

We need a bingo market for Truss’s conference speech. What odds “the lady’s not for turning”?

I hadn't thought of that. Noel Gallagher wrote Oasis songs by liberating Beatles lyrics. Truss can write her speech by doing the same with Mrs Thatcher.

She could do the dead parrot sketch.

Hopefully better this time out.

It's a disgrace!

In a few days we should be getting a break from the tanking pound and soaring gilts as, in descending order of likelihood, at least one of the following happens:

1. Hurricane Ian (now quite rapidly intensifying as it heads towards Cuba) brings a big storm surge and bucketloads of rain to Tampa Bay https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/09/hurricane-ian-poses-serious-risks-to-florida-gulf-coast/
2. Ukraine’s troops in Luhansk complete an encirclement and victory in Lyman cutting off Russian troops to the South https://twitter.com/threshedthought/status/1574406408564506628?s=21&t=CZsYZwGNRBLTxBT2qUVyug
3. The anti mobilisation protests in some Russian republics turn into full on rebellion
4. Something similar develops from the Iranian protests

turbotubbs said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Too much time on pb will do that to you. I’m seriously thinking of time away, the relentless tide of doom monger is is starting to get wearisome.
Yes the country is in a tight spot. We are not alone in this. We will get through this.

Quite so. Quite so

It’s like me banging on about aliens only 3000 times more boring

SandyRentool said:

Leon said:

SandyRentool said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

IET. Hitachi train. Japanese tech.

There's a shining example of our decline.

It’s not decline. It’s free trade. If the Japanese can make good smart trains at a decent price - great, we can buy them. And then we can sell the stuff we do well back to them. Like, say, education

Or do you think we should still be mainly farming sheep so we can sell the wool to the continent?

I think we should still be capable of engineering excellence.

An economy based on the financial juggling of a bunch of arrogant spivs who never have to face the consequences of their failures is just one giant Ponzi Scheme. And it looks like the shit is now hitting the fan.

We don't here much on the "march of the makers" or the "Northern Powerhose" from this bunch.

US Federal Reserve’s Rafael Bostic in interview with @washpost

UK crisis “not helping” avoid global recession, reaction to plan is “a real concern” for European and US growth. Fed “watching closely” but Kwarteng tax cuts “are just proposals”.

PeterM said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

The people who've suddenly discovered inflation in the past twelve months who are suddenly concerned would be more credible if they'd had a proper handle on inflation in house prices etc for the past couple of decades.

In house costs the average inflation rate is over 6% compound annual price growth, over decades.

That's no better than CPI 6%.

Asset inflation good
Price inflation bad

One person's asset is another person's price.

Both are equally bad. Expensive houses is no better than expensive gas, or potatoes, or cars.

This is true, but there's a couple of important caveats:

(1) Lots of people owe money secured on their primary properties. Nominal falls in the value of property make it hard for people to move home, because they end up with negative equity. (And, of course, you don't actually need property values to fall below the mortgage total to prevent people from being able to move: stamp duty, solicitors fees, and the requirement for a new deposit all mean that if your property falls below - say - a 15% premium to your mortgage, then you could be in trouble.)

Negative equity matters because it impacts labour mobility. And labour mobility matters because it helps get the right people in the right jobs.

(2) Falling house prices directly affect people's "personal wealth" calculations. If it declines, they compensate by saving more. Now, one can argue (and probably should argue) that Brits should save more. But if Brits start saving more at the same time they're also paying more for their mortgages (higher interest rates) and for their utilities (higher gas and electricity bills), then that's going to squeeze disposable income hard.

property crash in the early 90s led to a booming economy several years later...yes there were many sob stories in the media at the time but no govt can mitigate all risk...if they do we have the obscenity of a housing market we have in the uk today

Yes. Let the heresy be heard: stupidly expensive houses = bad, dirt cheap houses = good. A massive crash would be a moment of national renewal, basically a tsunami of redistribution from old to young, rentiers to renters, the non-productive to the workers. We can but dream of a land where people don't have to spend half their income for fifty years to buy a bog standard three bedroom semi - yet perhaps, just maybe, there is a small glimmer of hope that it may yet come to pass.

If Andrew Bailey jacked the bank rate up by 10% tomorrow he'd be a bloody national hero. That's not happening, but perhaps the unbuckable markets can force him to do it piecemeal? We shall see.

SandyRentool said:

Leon said:

SandyRentool said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

IET. Hitachi train. Japanese tech.

There's a shining example of our decline.

It’s not decline. It’s free trade. If the Japanese can make good smart trains at a decent price - great, we can buy them. And then we can sell the stuff we do well back to them. Like, say, education

Or do you think we should still be mainly farming sheep so we can sell the wool to the continent?

I think we should still be capable of engineering excellence.

An economy based on the financial juggling of a bunch of arrogant spivs who never have to face the consequences of their failures is just one giant Ponzi Scheme. And it looks like the shit is now hitting the fan.

We have plenty of engineering excellence. From Formula 1 to RR

And the idea that we all export is financial services is as delusional as saying all Cornish people are geniuses

As an economy we can do better. We all know that. But we are not some helpless swamp of inadequacy

pigeon said:

PeterM said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

The people who've suddenly discovered inflation in the past twelve months who are suddenly concerned would be more credible if they'd had a proper handle on inflation in house prices etc for the past couple of decades.

In house costs the average inflation rate is over 6% compound annual price growth, over decades.

That's no better than CPI 6%.

Asset inflation good
Price inflation bad

One person's asset is another person's price.

Both are equally bad. Expensive houses is no better than expensive gas, or potatoes, or cars.

This is true, but there's a couple of important caveats:

(1) Lots of people owe money secured on their primary properties. Nominal falls in the value of property make it hard for people to move home, because they end up with negative equity. (And, of course, you don't actually need property values to fall below the mortgage total to prevent people from being able to move: stamp duty, solicitors fees, and the requirement for a new deposit all mean that if your property falls below - say - a 15% premium to your mortgage, then you could be in trouble.)

Negative equity matters because it impacts labour mobility. And labour mobility matters because it helps get the right people in the right jobs.

(2) Falling house prices directly affect people's "personal wealth" calculations. If it declines, they compensate by saving more. Now, one can argue (and probably should argue) that Brits should save more. But if Brits start saving more at the same time they're also paying more for their mortgages (higher interest rates) and for their utilities (higher gas and electricity bills), then that's going to squeeze disposable income hard.

property crash in the early 90s led to a booming economy several years later...yes there were many sob stories in the media at the time but no govt can mitigate all risk...if they do we have the obscenity of a housing market we have in the uk today

Yes. Let the heresy be heard: stupidly expensive houses = bad, dirt cheap houses = good. A massive crash would be a moment of national renewal, basically a tsunami of redistribution from old to young, rentiers to renters, the non-productive to the workers. We can but dream of a land where people don't have to spend half their income for fifty years to buy a bog standard three bedroom semi - yet perhaps, just maybe, there is a small glimmer of hope that it may yet come to pass.

If Andrew Bailey jacked the bank rate up by 10% tomorrow he'd be a bloody national hero. That's not happening, but perhaps the unbuckable markets can force him to do it piecemeal? We shall see.

They wouldn't be cheap houses at 10% interest rates, or at least no more affordable to non-cash buyers.

jonny83 said:

Well I think I'm fucked. Had an offer on my first ever house accepted on Friday, just trying to get everything sorted/the ball rolling and I have an appointment with my Mortgage advisor on Wednesday. Was looking for a fixed rate for 5 years and it sounds like all the major lenders Halifax etc are pulling their products.

Going into the meeting on Wednesday with a completely different mindset now and expectation that they will tell me news which means I cannot proceed any further.

I feel completely beaten.

Fixed rates will be back - just more expensive

It sucks.

But you should rerun the calculations on what you can afford with the new rates and then go back to the seller and ask them to share the pain (by cutting their price).

You run the risk they say “no” but I suspect they are scared too. In any event, this isn’t the time to over extend yourself

Good luck!

PM me if you want

rcs1000 said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

RochdalePioneers said:

tlg86 said:

We need a bingo market for Truss’s conference speech. What odds “the lady’s not for turning”?

I hadn't thought of that. Noel Gallagher wrote Oasis songs by liberating Beatles lyrics. Truss can write her speech by doing the same with Mrs Thatcher.

The parallels are not absent. They were writing of 'the failure of the monetarist experiment' in the early 80's too.

I often recommend Nigel Lawson's The View From Number Eleven because, well, because it's very good. (And it starts with the Howe Chancellorship in 1979, when Lawson was his Chief Secretary.)

One of the interesting bits is how different the perception (40 years later) and the reality are.

For example, one of the first things the Thatcher government did was to raise taxes, because the gap between spending and tax receipts had widened. In fact, in both 1980 and 1981, the Conservatives increased the tax take markedly, even as they clamped down on spending.

From Wikipedia:

The budget increased net taxes by £4 billion (in 1981 prices).[3]

A new 20% tax on North Sea oil was introduced.[1]

A one-off windfall tax on certain bank deposits was introduced, in the form of a 2.5% levy on deposits of banking businesses, charged by reference to non-interest bearing sterling deposits in excess of £10 million averaged over the final three months of 1980.[2] The tax was estimated to raise £400 million in total revenues (in 1981 prices).[1]

There was no increase in income tax personal allowances or tax rate thresholds, resulting in a significant real-terms income tax rise as inflation was around 15% per year at the time.[1]

The 25p rate of tax introduced by Labour in 1978 was abolished.[4]

Duties were raised significantly, with duty on petrol increased by 20p per gallon, duty on a packet of 20 cigarettes increased by 13p, duty on beer increased by 4p, duty on spirits increased by 60p, and duty on wine increased by 12p.[1]

I'm not that much older than Truss, but I'm old enough to remember the painful bit before the orgy of tax cutting.

There are legit questions about how much high Thatcherism was gain after the pain, and how much it was getting lucky with flogging off the silver. But Truss is treating it as a get-rich-quick scam.

And they tend not to work.

Some football related stuff I took pics of in Manc last week:

IshmaelZ said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Even if you are not travelling first, you have today spent comfortably more than a month of Universal Credit on wine, trains and oysters.

Actually not true. I just checked. Universal Credit is £334 a month for a single claimant aged 25 or over

My outgoings today are

£10 return train Truro-Falmouth (a charming little journey)
Chats with family: free
£82 on lunch - half a dozen porthilly oysters and one dressed Cornish crab, plus bottle of excellent kiwi Sauvignon blanc
£112 single first class train Truro Paddington
£19 bottle of chat du pape from Tesco finest range
The fruit cake is free in first
£15 taxI ride (I estimate) Paddington Camden at the end (maybe less)

So that’s £238. Quite a lot less than £334

I’m not denying I’m affluent. But your maths is wrong

Luckyguy1983 said:

nico679 said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

...

nico679 said:

If the pound falls below one dollar that would be a huge deal.

For who?

That line has never been crossed before and would be the nail in the coffin for the governments fiscal credibility . The BOE would have to step in and at that point the next time the Tories have the cheek to attack Labours plans they would get the derision they deserve .

No it wouldn't. No they wouldn't. And perhaps - that's politics.

The economics of below 0.99 are not that much different from 1.02. However going and staying below parity would be a political humiliation that would probably kill any chance of a Tory recovery.

StillWaters said:

jonny83 said:

Well I think I'm fucked. Had an offer on my first ever house accepted on Friday, just trying to get everything sorted/the ball rolling and I have an appointment with my Mortgage advisor on Wednesday. Was looking for a fixed rate for 5 years and it sounds like all the major lenders Halifax etc are pulling their products.

Going into the meeting on Wednesday with a completely different mindset now and expectation that they will tell me news which means I cannot proceed any further.

I feel completely beaten.

Fixed rates will be back - just more expensive

It sucks.

But you should rerun the calculations on what you can afford with the new rates and then go back to the seller and ask them to share the pain (by cutting their price).

You run the risk they say “no” but I suspect they are scared too. In any event, this isn’t the time to over extend yourself

Good luck!

PM me if you want

That calculation will be repeated in transactions across the land - lower affordability of mortgage payments means lower house prices.

Lower house prices means unhappy pensioners / boomers / other rich people who have enjoyed the extraordinary boom in house prices over the last two decades or so.

Assuming asset-rich homeowners disproportionately vote Conservative, how will they feel about the value of their primary asset tanking? How will they vote?

There's a reason the Conservatives have done so much over the last decade to keep the house price ponzi going, from stamp duty relief to "help" to buy (really help to inflate prices).

Looks like the party is over, there is going to be one hell of a hangover.

Cicero said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

nico679 said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

...

nico679 said:

If the pound falls below one dollar that would be a huge deal.

For who?

That line has never been crossed before and would be the nail in the coffin for the governments fiscal credibility . The BOE would have to step in and at that point the next time the Tories have the cheek to attack Labours plans they would get the derision they deserve .

No it wouldn't. No they wouldn't. And perhaps - that's politics.

The economics of below 0.99 are not that much different from 1.02. However going and staying below parity would be a political humiliation that would probably kill any chance of a Tory recovery.

I rarely agree with you. Except on defence, sometimes

But I agree dollar parity would be a large
psychological blow and would deeply damage Kwarteng and Truss

It doesn’t really matter. But the symbolism is dire and the tarnish would be long lasting

I have not watched an England football match outside of a major tournament for ages so I decided to turn it on and my first sight was that it appears that a large tropical bird has gorged on a giant plate full of fruits of the Forrest pudding and shat on Reece James’ head. Maybe it will be lucky for him.

Cost of living: Families bringing boarded-up fires back into use

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-62984561

Oh look, not only are living standards being blasted back to the 1950s*, it looks like we're going to have smog to go with it. Lovely.

*Except for Tory MPs, party donors, and other bulk consumers of foie gras

PeterM said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Even if you are not travelling first, you have today spent comfortably more than a month of Universal Credit on wine, trains and oysters.

Actually not true. I just checked. Universal Credit is £334 a month for a single claimant aged 25 or over

My outgoings today are

£10 return train Truro-Falmouth (a charming little journey)
Chats with family: free
£82 on lunch - half a dozen porthilly oysters and one dressed Cornish crab, plus bottle of excellent kiwi Sauvignon blanc
£112 single first class train Truro Paddington
£19 bottle of chat du pape from Tesco finest range
The fruit cake is free in first
£15 taxI ride (I estimate) Paddington Camden at the end (maybe less)

So that’s £238. Quite a lot less than £334

I’m not denying I’m affluent. But your maths is wrong

Leon i imagine you come from a good english family with inherited wealth....dont think its just your travel writing from which you draw income...a nice trust fund perchance

Nope. Wrong

Leon said:

PeterM said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Even if you are not travelling first, you have today spent comfortably more than a month of Universal Credit on wine, trains and oysters.

Actually not true. I just checked. Universal Credit is £334 a month for a single claimant aged 25 or over

My outgoings today are

£10 return train Truro-Falmouth (a charming little journey)
Chats with family: free
£82 on lunch - half a dozen porthilly oysters and one dressed Cornish crab, plus bottle of excellent kiwi Sauvignon blanc
£112 single first class train Truro Paddington
£19 bottle of chat du pape from Tesco finest range
The fruit cake is free in first
£15 taxI ride (I estimate) Paddington Camden at the end (maybe less)

So that’s £238. Quite a lot less than £334

I’m not denying I’m affluent. But your maths is wrong

Leon i imagine you come from a good english family with inherited wealth....dont think its just your travel writing from which you draw income...a nice trust fund perchance

Nope. Wrong

OK: do you come from a bad English family with inherited wealth, like the Malfoys?

Casino_Royale said:

Won't someone think of the social and professional embarrassment such lunacy causes us poor Tory members?

Hmmmm, social embarrassment versus half the country suffering heat or eat dilemmas - if they can afford to do either, of course.

No. Precious feelings of small minority of Tory members who give a flying fuck about the country and its people not really a priority at the moment.

IshmaelZ said:

PeterM said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Even if you are not travelling first, you have today spent comfortably more than a month of Universal Credit on wine, trains and oysters.

Actually not true. I just checked. Universal Credit is £334 a month for a single claimant aged 25 or over

My outgoings today are

£10 return train Truro-Falmouth (a charming little journey)
Chats with family: free
£82 on lunch - half a dozen porthilly oysters and one dressed Cornish crab, plus bottle of excellent kiwi Sauvignon blanc
£112 single first class train Truro Paddington
£19 bottle of chat du pape from Tesco finest range
The fruit cake is free in first
£15 taxI ride (I estimate) Paddington Camden at the end (maybe less)

So that’s £238. Quite a lot less than £334

I’m not denying I’m affluent. But your maths is wrong

Leon i imagine you come from a good english family with inherited wealth....dont think its just your travel writing from which you draw income...a nice trust fund perchance

Absolutely not the case AFAIK (but Leon dislikes discussion of his IRL identity).

We've established it is from artisanal flint knapping rather than inherited wealth.

TimS said:

In a few days we should be getting a break from the tanking pound and soaring gilts as, in descending order of likelihood, at least one of the following happens:

1. Hurricane Ian (now quite rapidly intensifying as it heads towards Cuba) brings a big storm surge and bucketloads of rain to Tampa Bay https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/09/hurricane-ian-poses-serious-risks-to-florida-gulf-coast/
2. Ukraine’s troops in Luhansk complete an encirclement and victory in Lyman cutting off Russian troops to the South https://twitter.com/threshedthought/status/1574406408564506628?s=21&t=CZsYZwGNRBLTxBT2qUVyug
3. The anti mobilisation protests in some Russian republics turn into full on rebellion
4. Something similar develops from the Iranian protests

Did you see this story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/26/mobilization-putin-russia-war-ukraine/

A young man shot and wounded the chief recruitment officer at a military enlistment station in Russia’s Irkutsk region on Monday

When people think it's safer to shoot up the recruiting center than to join the army, it's a sign things aren't going well

kyf_100 said:

StillWaters said:

jonny83 said:

Well I think I'm fucked. Had an offer on my first ever house accepted on Friday, just trying to get everything sorted/the ball rolling and I have an appointment with my Mortgage advisor on Wednesday. Was looking for a fixed rate for 5 years and it sounds like all the major lenders Halifax etc are pulling their products.

Going into the meeting on Wednesday with a completely different mindset now and expectation that they will tell me news which means I cannot proceed any further.

I feel completely beaten.

Fixed rates will be back - just more expensive

It sucks.

But you should rerun the calculations on what you can afford with the new rates and then go back to the seller and ask them to share the pain (by cutting their price).

You run the risk they say “no” but I suspect they are scared too. In any event, this isn’t the time to over extend yourself

Good luck!

PM me if you want

That calculation will be repeated in transactions across the land - lower affordability of mortgage payments means lower house prices.

Lower house prices means unhappy pensioners / boomers / other rich people who have enjoyed the extraordinary boom in house prices over the last two decades or so.

Assuming asset-rich homeowners disproportionately vote Conservative, how will they feel about the value of their primary asset tanking? How will they vote?

There's a reason the Conservatives have done so much over the last decade to keep the house price ponzi going, from stamp duty relief to "help" to buy (really help to inflate prices).

Looks like the party is over, there is going to be one hell of a hangover.

Millennials who have just managed to claw their way onto the property ladder in the last 5 years are fucked again.

Cursed generation.

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

Foxy said:

pigeon said:

PeterM said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

The people who've suddenly discovered inflation in the past twelve months who are suddenly concerned would be more credible if they'd had a proper handle on inflation in house prices etc for the past couple of decades.

In house costs the average inflation rate is over 6% compound annual price growth, over decades.

That's no better than CPI 6%.

Asset inflation good
Price inflation bad

One person's asset is another person's price.

Both are equally bad. Expensive houses is no better than expensive gas, or potatoes, or cars.

This is true, but there's a couple of important caveats:

(1) Lots of people owe money secured on their primary properties. Nominal falls in the value of property make it hard for people to move home, because they end up with negative equity. (And, of course, you don't actually need property values to fall below the mortgage total to prevent people from being able to move: stamp duty, solicitors fees, and the requirement for a new deposit all mean that if your property falls below - say - a 15% premium to your mortgage, then you could be in trouble.)

Negative equity matters because it impacts labour mobility. And labour mobility matters because it helps get the right people in the right jobs.

(2) Falling house prices directly affect people's "personal wealth" calculations. If it declines, they compensate by saving more. Now, one can argue (and probably should argue) that Brits should save more. But if Brits start saving more at the same time they're also paying more for their mortgages (higher interest rates) and for their utilities (higher gas and electricity bills), then that's going to squeeze disposable income hard.

property crash in the early 90s led to a booming economy several years later...yes there were many sob stories in the media at the time but no govt can mitigate all risk...if they do we have the obscenity of a housing market we have in the uk today

Yes. Let the heresy be heard: stupidly expensive houses = bad, dirt cheap houses = good. A massive crash would be a moment of national renewal, basically a tsunami of redistribution from old to young, rentiers to renters, the non-productive to the workers. We can but dream of a land where people don't have to spend half their income for fifty years to buy a bog standard three bedroom semi - yet perhaps, just maybe, there is a small glimmer of hope that it may yet come to pass.

If Andrew Bailey jacked the bank rate up by 10% tomorrow he'd be a bloody national hero. That's not happening, but perhaps the unbuckable markets can force him to do it piecemeal? We shall see.

They wouldn't be cheap houses at 10% interest rates, or at least no more affordable to non-cash buyers.

Assuming you take out the biggest mortgage you can afford, you are better off in a scenario where the interest rate is 10% than if the interest rate is 2%, because:

a) the principal is smaller so you get more bang for your buck on any overpayments
b) general inflation works in your favour
c) interest rate risk is more likely to be in your favour

Fundamentally, high interest rates because of high inflation mean that consumers are entering into accelerated (real terms) paydowns of their mortgages.

However, while you are probably in a decent position if you took your mortgage out when rates were 10%, that isn't the case if you took it out when rates were 3%. In the latter scenario, you are entering into an accelerated (real terms) mortgage payback at the same time that your disposible income is being squeezed by rising commodities prices.

Yes, but if you took out a mortgage at 3%, you should probably have considered that such rates were historically anomalous.

You should indeed:

And yet pretty much every parent in the land urged their children to "get on the property ladder".

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

Foxy said:

pigeon said:

PeterM said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

The people who've suddenly discovered inflation in the past twelve months who are suddenly concerned would be more credible if they'd had a proper handle on inflation in house prices etc for the past couple of decades.

In house costs the average inflation rate is over 6% compound annual price growth, over decades.

That's no better than CPI 6%.

Asset inflation good
Price inflation bad

One person's asset is another person's price.

Both are equally bad. Expensive houses is no better than expensive gas, or potatoes, or cars.

This is true, but there's a couple of important caveats:

(1) Lots of people owe money secured on their primary properties. Nominal falls in the value of property make it hard for people to move home, because they end up with negative equity. (And, of course, you don't actually need property values to fall below the mortgage total to prevent people from being able to move: stamp duty, solicitors fees, and the requirement for a new deposit all mean that if your property falls below - say - a 15% premium to your mortgage, then you could be in trouble.)

Negative equity matters because it impacts labour mobility. And labour mobility matters because it helps get the right people in the right jobs.

(2) Falling house prices directly affect people's "personal wealth" calculations. If it declines, they compensate by saving more. Now, one can argue (and probably should argue) that Brits should save more. But if Brits start saving more at the same time they're also paying more for their mortgages (higher interest rates) and for their utilities (higher gas and electricity bills), then that's going to squeeze disposable income hard.

property crash in the early 90s led to a booming economy several years later...yes there were many sob stories in the media at the time but no govt can mitigate all risk...if they do we have the obscenity of a housing market we have in the uk today

Yes. Let the heresy be heard: stupidly expensive houses = bad, dirt cheap houses = good. A massive crash would be a moment of national renewal, basically a tsunami of redistribution from old to young, rentiers to renters, the non-productive to the workers. We can but dream of a land where people don't have to spend half their income for fifty years to buy a bog standard three bedroom semi - yet perhaps, just maybe, there is a small glimmer of hope that it may yet come to pass.

If Andrew Bailey jacked the bank rate up by 10% tomorrow he'd be a bloody national hero. That's not happening, but perhaps the unbuckable markets can force him to do it piecemeal? We shall see.

They wouldn't be cheap houses at 10% interest rates, or at least no more affordable to non-cash buyers.

Assuming you take out the biggest mortgage you can afford, you are better off in a scenario where the interest rate is 10% than if the interest rate is 2%, because:

a) the principal is smaller so you get more bang for your buck on any overpayments
b) general inflation works in your favour
c) interest rate risk is more likely to be in your favour

Fundamentally, high interest rates because of high inflation mean that consumers are entering into accelerated (real terms) paydowns of their mortgages.

However, while you are probably in a decent position if you took your mortgage out when rates were 10%, that isn't the case if you took it out when rates were 3%. In the latter scenario, you are entering into an accelerated (real terms) mortgage payback at the same time that your disposible income is being squeezed by rising commodities prices.

Yes, but if you took out a mortgage at 3%, you should probably have considered that such rates were historically anomalous.

You should indeed:

And yet pretty much every parent in the land urged their children to "get on the property ladder".

Their experience of the property market was usually from buying in a high-inflation, high-interest rate environment where the ladder effect was real.

Leon said:

Cicero said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

nico679 said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

...

nico679 said:

If the pound falls below one dollar that would be a huge deal.

For who?

That line has never been crossed before and would be the nail in the coffin for the governments fiscal credibility . The BOE would have to step in and at that point the next time the Tories have the cheek to attack Labours plans they would get the derision they deserve .

No it wouldn't. No they wouldn't. And perhaps - that's politics.

The economics of below 0.99 are not that much different from 1.02. However going and staying below parity would be a political humiliation that would probably kill any chance of a Tory recovery.

I rarely agree with you. Except on defence, sometimes

But I agree dollar parity would be a large
psychological blow and would deeply damage Kwarteng and Truss

It doesn’t really matter. But the symbolism is dire and the tarnish would be long lasting

The Labour adverts are writing themselves faster than their strategists can take notes.

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

PeterM said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Even if you are not travelling first, you have today spent comfortably more than a month of Universal Credit on wine, trains and oysters.

Actually not true. I just checked. Universal Credit is £334 a month for a single claimant aged 25 or over

My outgoings today are

£10 return train Truro-Falmouth (a charming little journey)
Chats with family: free
£82 on lunch - half a dozen porthilly oysters and one dressed Cornish crab, plus bottle of excellent kiwi Sa yell come uvignon blanc
£112 single first class train Truro Paddington
£19 bottle of chat du pape from Tesco finest range
The fruit cake is free in first
£15 taxI ride (I estimate) Paddington Camden at the end (maybe less)

So that’s £238. Quite a lot less than £334

I’m not denying I’m affluent. But your maths is wrong

Leon i imagine you come from a good english family with inherited wealth....dont think its just your travel writing from which you draw income...a nice trust fund perchance

Nope. Wrong

OK: do you come from a bad English family with inherited wealth, like the Malfoys?

I come from a completely fucked up Cornish family which - despite some very posh antecedents in the far distant past - was so poor in recent times that my maternal granny worked in a mine aged 9 and my paternal great grandfather mined tin under the sea at Botallack and died at about 35

Any new funds have been generated by the latest generations. Put it that way

IshmaelZ said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

Foxy said:

pigeon said:

PeterM said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

The people who've suddenly discovered inflation in the past twelve months who are suddenly concerned would be more credible if they'd had a proper handle on inflation in house prices etc for the past couple of decades.

In house costs the average inflation rate is over 6% compound annual price growth, over decades.

That's no better than CPI 6%.

Asset inflation good
Price inflation bad

One person's asset is another person's price.

Both are equally bad. Expensive houses is no better than expensive gas, or potatoes, or cars.

This is true, but there's a couple of important caveats:

(1) Lots of people owe money secured on their primary properties. Nominal falls in the value of property make it hard for people to move home, because they end up with negative equity. (And, of course, you don't actually need property values to fall below the mortgage total to prevent people from being able to move: stamp duty, solicitors fees, and the requirement for a new deposit all mean that if your property falls below - say - a 15% premium to your mortgage, then you could be in trouble.)

Negative equity matters because it impacts labour mobility. And labour mobility matters because it helps get the right people in the right jobs.

(2) Falling house prices directly affect people's "personal wealth" calculations. If it declines, they compensate by saving more. Now, one can argue (and probably should argue) that Brits should save more. But if Brits start saving more at the same time they're also paying more for their mortgages (higher interest rates) and for their utilities (higher gas and electricity bills), then that's going to squeeze disposable income hard.

property crash in the early 90s led to a booming economy several years later...yes there were many sob stories in the media at the time but no govt can mitigate all risk...if they do we have the obscenity of a housing market we have in the uk today

Yes. Let the heresy be heard: stupidly expensive houses = bad, dirt cheap houses = good. A massive crash would be a moment of national renewal, basically a tsunami of redistribution from old to young, rentiers to renters, the non-productive to the workers. We can but dream of a land where people don't have to spend half their income for fifty years to buy a bog standard three bedroom semi - yet perhaps, just maybe, there is a small glimmer of hope that it may yet come to pass.

If Andrew Bailey jacked the bank rate up by 10% tomorrow he'd be a bloody national hero. That's not happening, but perhaps the unbuckable markets can force him to do it piecemeal? We shall see.

They wouldn't be cheap houses at 10% interest rates, or at least no more affordable to non-cash buyers.

Assuming you take out the biggest mortgage you can afford, you are better off in a scenario where the interest rate is 10% than if the interest rate is 2%, because:

a) the principal is smaller so you get more bang for your buck on any overpayments
b) general inflation works in your favour
c) interest rate risk is more likely to be in your favour

Fundamentally, high interest rates because of high inflation mean that consumers are entering into accelerated (real terms) paydowns of their mortgages.

However, while you are probably in a decent position if you took your mortgage out when rates were 10%, that isn't the case if you took it out when rates were 3%. In the latter scenario, you are entering into an accelerated (real terms) mortgage payback at the same time that your disposible income is being squeezed by rising commodities prices.

Yes, but if you took out a mortgage at 3%, you should probably have considered that such rates were historically anomalous.

You should indeed:

And yet pretty much every parent in the land urged their children to "get on the property ladder".

Well, yes, but 2008-23 is verging on the long run, and what are we all dead in? I mean, renting sucks, so should someone who could afford to buy in 2009 have been renting since then because, Mark my words, boy, what goes down must come up?

That's what was so evil about all the policies, monetary and otherwise, designed to keep the property bubble inflated.

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

PeterM said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Leon said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

Don’t see what the problem is. Scooting along the GWR line between Dawlish and the sea, guzzling an excellent chateauneuf du pape, eating a nice piece of free fruit cake, and watching Vikings Valhalla

And most of my earnings are in dollars and euro. The Tories have just given me an overnight 5% pay rise

They get my vote!

Give my regards to the atmospheric pumpiong house at Starcross.

GWR have really comfortable, clean, sleek new trains (I haven’t done this journey by rail in ages)

They are punctual and gleaming. Well staffed. They go from Paddington to Truro in 4 hrs 32 mins. They are as good as anything on the continent, if not quite as fast and maybe pricier (or maybe not)

I sometimes - genuinely - don’t recognise the PB portrait of the UK as this toilet of decline and despair

Even if you are not travelling first, you have today spent comfortably more than a month of Universal Credit on wine, trains and oysters.

Actually not true. I just checked. Universal Credit is £334 a month for a single claimant aged 25 or over

My outgoings today are

£10 return train Truro-Falmouth (a charming little journey)
Chats with family: free
£82 on lunch - half a dozen porthilly oysters and one dressed Cornish crab, plus bottle of excellent kiwi Sa yell come uvignon blanc
£112 single first class train Truro Paddington
£19 bottle of chat du pape from Tesco finest range
The fruit cake is free in first
£15 taxI ride (I estimate) Paddington Camden at the end (maybe less)

So that’s £238. Quite a lot less than £334

I’m not denying I’m affluent. But your maths is wrong

Leon i imagine you come from a good english family with inherited wealth....dont think its just your travel writing from which you draw income...a nice trust fund perchance

Nope. Wrong

OK: do you come from a bad English family with inherited wealth, like the Malfoys?

I come from a completely fucked up Cornish family which - despite some very posh antecedents in the far distant past - was so poor in recent times that my maternal granny worked in a mine aged 9 and my paternal great grandfather mined tin under the sea at Botallack and died at about 35

Any new funds have been generated by the latest generations. Put it that way

It's none of their effing business, Leon. This isn't PoliticalBareyoursoul.com

Anyone who thinks that there is a forthcoming house price crash needs to answer the 'build cost problem' that I keep repeating, because no one has ever come back to me with any meaningful response.

The cost of building a house is about £2500 per square metre, so a small family home (100sqm) costs £250,000 just to build, because of rapid recent inflation in the cost of materials and labour, and recent expensive regulation.

A house price crash at the levels people envisage will lead to a shutdown of the third biggest industry in the UK (the real estate and development industry). No new build can ever happen because the cheapest these houses can be built and sold for (about £300k) cannot work for buyers. Even if you have a 75k deposit, the cost of servicing the debt on a £225k mortgage is about £15,750 per year (at 7%)- or £24750 if you are in a 25 year repayment mortgage. That is over £2k per month just in mortgage repayments before any other expenses - so double what they might be paying now with rates at 2%.

This means that very little or no housebuilding will take place because housing is unaffordable for people on average incomes, but demand will keep rising anyway due to immigration and new household formation. So rents associated with the existing housing stock will will just increase, and the housing market will be driven by investors exploiting this for good, stable returns.

It is not much to celebrate, just a catastrophe. @pigeon @kyf_100