Thursday, Jun 25, 2009
A sad reflection on modern slavery
BBC: City Diaries
Many a mill stone mortgage keeps people in London jobs they hate and mothers away from their new-born.
"What is holding us back from starting a commune or becoming a teacher? The mortgage."
Only big business and HMRC benefit; funny that.
Posted by doomwatch @ 01:37 PM (532 views) Add Comment
5 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. bystander said...
Why is it that everyone thinks teaching is an easy option? All these clever city boys and girls seem to think it would be easy to step into the classroom after their hectic busy, important lives in the financial services. The real problem is that they would need to show empathy and understanding and be able to work bonusless. A real problem at the moment in the teaching proffession is that there are many teachers who would rather be doing something else, preferably that pays more and few of us who actually choose teaching as a vocation. Temporary teachers from the financial services, who will drop the job and more importantly the students and their families the moment the gravy train is back to full steam will donothingto improve the situation. I understand that I may be being unfair to many who truly want to teach, but students need and deserve truly dedicated proffessionals. It is just about possible to pay a mortgage and teach, you just have to wait a bit longer for the Ferrari and that new Rolex. So thanks Laura(not her real name) for showing just how ignorant some of you financial whizzkids really are.
2. Ride_on said...
"It is all very well increasing the banks' capital requirements but if you do too much you will stifle economic growth which will be bad for everybody"
I think the opposite of this is true. What we 'need' is to stifle economic growth, to make it more difficult so that we get the right type of well managed business, and that will only happen if people really put the effort in and continuously monitor the business and adapt to emerging trend and requirements.
It seem the boom was fuelled on self confidence and ease of growth, as a result we now have too much of the wrong type of industry (eg construction and BTLs). The type of thinking indicated above is exactky what the gov't and bankers think. That they can just 'create' economic growth by creating confidence, and that it doesn't matter what the quality of that growth is.
3. bystander said...
Let me just explain further to my mortgage comment, of course most teachers cannot afford the sort of mortgage Laura(not her real name) probably has and we will all be able to afford a mortage for a proper home if prices are allowed to drop to 'affordable' levels.
4. mdmick said...
I am a bit confused by what people mean by prices dropping by 40 % or whatever.
In 2007, my pound could buy n dollars or g amounts of gold.
If I see a property is on sale for 30% less and my offer is accepted at 40% less then that is all happening in pounds;
but, now, or in 2010, the pound might have a lot less power to buy gold or dollars than it did in 2007.
So, it may be that, pegged against gold or dollars, the house has lost a lot more than 40% of its value.
Also, what would be my wage at such time that houses have dropped their 40% and what can that wage buy for me, once council tax and other standard bills are paid for?
It all seems a bit wishy washy to me.
A headline talking about 40% is to a large extent meaningless without a lot of background context, innit?!
5. Moschops said...
"I am a bit confused by what people mean by prices dropping by 40 % or whatever."
Unless otherwise stated, take it to mean the nominal price in the local currency.
What's that? You're actually not confused and you just wanted to say that if you're pricing houses in gold, they've dropped more? Well then just say that instead of pretending to be thick.