mitchbux

We are in that situation, however... We only manage it because Mr MB bought his first place when the market bottomed out in the 90's, upgraded a bit in the late 90's, upgraded again part way through HPI (after a sizeable 'productivity bonus' from my IL's) and then relocated to a cheaper area where a small bit extra on the mortgage got us a 4-bed (two of which you can barely call bedrooms) detached. Mr MB is also a higher rate taxpayer. Our mortgage is only 1.2 times MrMB's gross. If we'd borrowed the full amount on his single income, whilst we might have been able to get a place with four decent sized bedrooms we would barely be able to put fuel in his company car, let alone actually own and run one of our own on top Boils my pee when I hear members of the older generations say that the young 'uns just need to stop buying gadgets, have no life and work hard., only have kids if they can afford them, and when they do they should stop at home and bring their kids up properly... These are the same people, no doubt, that treat me and my kids like scum when we are out in public without their Dad. One mate was having lunch in a cafe with her sister, both of them are stop at homes, both of them wives of high earners. One old dear had the cheek to walk past them saying very loudly 'Don't these young mothers have jobs to go to these days'. I'd have gone ballistic if I'd finally heard one of them say what they are so obviously thinking whilst I'm out with my kids.

Don't know if mine would take it to bits, work out how to get it going beserk, or just dress it up. One thing is for sure it wouldn't be in the state you left it in.

How many of those 300 lasted long enough for it to have been worth all the money the government paid A4e to get them back to work?

You don't need as many paid employees if you can have a steady flow of them for free.

They need to add to that list a boycott of all the beers brewed by Thornbridge Brewery. Sorry to disappoint all the Jaipur lovers, but it's brewed by Emma Harrison's husband on the estate she bought with her A4e earnings. I've no proof, but I'd be amazed, given she's trougher, if she wasn't putting some of her estate running expenses through the books of the brewery to reduce the tax bill.

Hasn't it already been changed so that any household with a combined income of £40K or more doesn't even get the family element? There also used to be a graduated cut-off for the family element. If you earned over something like £55/60K gross you lost it completely.

+1 Thankfully our neighbours were the tenants, and eventually the landlord needed his house back. Same advice as everyone else. Move.

Known as clinical governance, and I agree. Need to add to that, taking away personal responsibilty for health. Paying mothers to be to give up smoking during pregnancy, surely the money saved of fags and the health of your child should be enough incentive. Gastric bands, which long term I suspect are going to cause as many health problems as they solve. Paying GP's to get people diagnosed and stabilised for cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure etc, which is then leading to then being far too quick with the prescription pad rather than supporting patients to try lifestyle changes first.. All this pill popping has side effects to both the patients and budgets.

I know YOU were only taking the P, but TPTB can't seem to get their head around it. They prefer to blame patient attitude and carry on with a 'wagging finger' or 'wait and medicate' approach. The cost of which is getting out of hand, and only going to get worse.

We built in extra capacity, so we don't have a problem running more than one hot tap, and got a radiator installed in the utility room to compensate for the lack of heat loss from the new bolier (which has the condensate pipe running inside the house...). Our hot tank was already in the loft, so I had no airing cupboard to miss. We'll not be ripping out our combi anytime soon.

+1 It you only need a small quantity of hot water have you thought about storing some in a Thermos instead.

Easy to pop some prescribed Vit D3.

Millions seem happy to pop statins on say so of their GP.

It still amazes me that prevention doesn't mean testing vitamin and mineral levels regularly and supplementing/changing diet accordingly. Watching the Channel 4 programme 'The Food Hospital' confirmed to me that this is how we should be approaching prevention/treatment, but like you say it's all about money. Vit D3 levels are well below recommended in a large percentage of the population, and just fixing that alone could probably save the NHS a fortune.

Last time I had the misfortune to be in, I was off having tests or on nil by mouth for an operation that keeped getting pushed back. When I was finally given the OK to eat,a couple of slices of toast was the best they could offer me. They only let Mr MB bring in something for me because I was in a side room and ' the smell won't get to the other patients'. The only place that was open that would still give a chance of the food being vaguely warm was a Maccy D drive thru. You know you're hungry when a lukewarm Big Mac tastes like heaven.

Steady on, you might solve their infection control problems and do someone else out of a job!

I never understood why the NHS spends taxpayers money feeding patients. They'd have to pay for their own food if they were at home! I know making sure a patient is fed properly aids recovery, but the stuff they are serving up in a lot of hospitals doesn't constitute being fed properly.

You forgot to mention that they don't pay NI either.

No excuse for not insulating. It's a one off job and it the case of loft insulation a damn cheap one. We can't believe how many of our neighbours, who have owned these houses for decades, have only just got the cavity wall done. Seems they were happy to waste money heating the street until energy prices went up.

Spot on.

Interesting, I've just been shown the stats on empty shop units locally. The article quotes the national average as 14.5%, Chesterfield is running at 7.1%, of which quite a few were empty during the boom years, mainly due to the condition of the building.

We are open plan through our lounge/dining/open staircase (it's just cost us £2K to carpet it in good quality stuff) We must have loads of the heat disappearing up into the high ceiling area above the stairs, yet we don't seem to have trouble heating the place, and the bills aren't horrendous. My parents are rattling around in a 1916 stone built 4-bed semi, high ceilings everywhere, huge amounts of loft insulation, double glazing, they wear extra layers in the house and keep the thermostat down low. They are paying 3 times as much as us. Big older houses might be desirable now, but I think they'll start to plummet in value relative to other housing in years to come.

When we bought this place we thought our water bills would be higher because of the meter. Wrong, within six months of paying the equivalent of the old RV charge on our previous house, a 3-bed semi, we were 18 months in credit!!

I agree, we are a family of four living in a 70's 4-bed detached.. We have a leccy hungry shower, a tumble dryer that dries pretty much every load of washing from October to March. I don't work more than a few hours a month outside of the house, so on the really cold days the heating is on. The place is double glazed, the loft is heavily insulated, the cavity wall is done, we have heavy or thermal-lined curtains in pretty much every room, and a decent boiler. We need to pay a bit more on our leccy, because we went from a gas to a leccy oven when we refitted the kitchen, but at the moment we are paying £100 a month on DD for both.