Fed Up

She clearly doesn't understand that the money will come from more government borrowing which will devalue Sterling further which will push up inflation. Hey presto! Of course the public sector could get pay rises above inflation if the BoE hiked interest rates to strengthen Sterling and bring inflation back down again.

Here in Kovenski, there are still plenty: http://www.mojecoventry.pl/ Ugly architecture and bombed to feck during the war, they obviously feel at home. I have to say I haven't noticed any decline in the amount of Polish / other Eastern European languages I hear spoken when I'm in town. I've recently seen cars with Bulgarian and Latvian number plates here as well.

lending has (believe it or not) been more cautious here than it was across the pond. What????!!!!! With loans of 6 to 7 times salary! If she can quote Private Fraser, I'll quote Victor Meldrew: I don't believe it!

By whom? We've already seen that Field is an @rse-licking creepy stooge. And who will replace Gordo? Millibland?

It's such a shame that what was a good building society was ruined by demutualisation. I had an account with the B&BBS many moons ago.

Walking past the Halifax yesterday evening there were quite a few houses advertised as NEW PRICE - no doubt reduced from the extra bit that has been added on to begin with. In this evening's free rag there are a quite a few with the same thing. I am waiting for my favourite EAspeak: Realistically priced for quick sale to appear. There should be plenty in the coming months.

Thought that this may be of interest: http://www.westbrom.co.uk/westbrom/home I already have one I opened four months ago at 6.4% (when the base rate was 5.5%), so I was surprised to see this bond paying a little bit more.

My sentiments exactly. Good riddance to them, bunch of spivs.

Yes, correct. Don't know about Essex, but in the post-industrial West Midlands an extra bedroom would have cost about an extra £20K a decade ago instead of £50K now. Except for speculators and downsizers, falling prices benefit everyone, as the rungs in the property ladder get closer together.

Agreed and if the government is buying at cost price then this is not at the peak. The very fact that these properties will be designated for social housing will send their value plummeting leading to BTLs wanting to offload even quicker.

They could even fall right down to cost price, about £30 - £40k per apartment, then the housing associations could pick them up for a song. Bulk purchase, buy one get one free. A PFI where the private sector (BTL brigade) has financed the state sector, not the other way round. Adding to the above, if these presently empty new-build apartments are filled with council or housing association tenants, it reduces the demand for privately rented housing, so rents will come down, BTLs will have falling yields and more will go bust.

Indeed: http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0502/houses.html

That's the local conspiracy theory http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventr...ire/7282424.stm and by coincidence while the aforementioned play was on, a World War 2 bomb was found behind the theatre. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventr...ire/7293488.stm Anyway, back to the main topic, I believe that the global economy is controlled by the Bilderberg Group, something that the PNAC loonies who want the USA to control the world don't appreciate. Bilderberg is multinational.

Agree with your first sentence, but I think you are failing to realise that prior to the Thatcher government selling off so much of the council stock over 50% of the population (including myself, my sister and my parents) lived in council housing. The vast majority of council households had one or more working parents, back when there was still work to be had for the working class; when this country still had a large industrial base. My father was an average earner in a skilled job, not a 'scrounger'. By your statement about 'means testing' you clearly don't understand that council housing was meant for skilled, employed, working-class people, not just as a safety net for those without work. Most council estates were not 'sink estates' 30 years ago, most had a good sense of community and council houses were considered homes for life.

He's the stooge who makes it look like Labour has a conscience.

Lot 39 is in quite a decent area of Coventry (with easy commuter access to the NEC and Brum). I reckon at Y2K prices it would have been about £80k. If I had that in cash, I'd put in an offer (depending on the state of it of course).

The account terms will probably allow a closure with loss of 90-days interest, or something like that. As banks go Lloyds TSB is reasonably safe.

Some voters may well do sadly. Personally I think a good way to save £2.7billion would be a cut-and-run policy from Iraq. The saving would be made within a year.

Who says that the restriction on the availability of debt is 'short-term'? It could last a decade as there is already so much accumulated debt to pay off. It may be that in the longer term houses will sell at much lower profit margins as builders choose between no income or reduced income. I believe that house prices will go lower than 4 x average earnings.

Connell's was prosecuted for this sometime back in the mid-1990s.

I thought that the hypothesis was supposed to be the other way round. Mini-skirts went out of fashion in the early 70's, at just about the same time as the gold standard was dropped, oil prices went sky high during the oil embargo and hyperinflation reigned.

Only the media spinmeisters who have perpetuated the myth that house price inflation is a good thing should be 'surprised' by this. Most homeowners would like price falls across the board because it then becomes less expensive to trade up. Also if they have children, those children should be able to afford a deposit without having to rely on parental mortgage equity withdrawl. Price falls bring economic benefits not just to first-time buyers but to any homeowner who wants to trade up to a larger or more valuable property. Edited just to add that quote.

Halligan has been castigated on here before for saying that we are 'a long way from recession'. However, he has most of the time been opposed to rate cuts and therefore should be considered an ally not an enemy. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm...6/ccliam206.xml

Rawnsley is one of the biggest NuLab @rse-lickers going. Guess he preferred Tone's squeaky clean crack to Gordo's brown one.

Sellers are being led to believe, by the media, estate agents and so on, that the 'credit crunch' will come to an end soon and then it will be 'business as usual' with the banks and building societies lending just as 'liberally' (ie recklessly) as they have been since the turn of the millennium. So yes, most sellers are in denial for that very reason. Having said that, if you were trying to sell and you took the approach of dropping the asking price by 20% - 25% to cut your losses, the first thing you'd find is that most prospective buyers would assume that there is something wrong with the property. So you may not have any more luck finding a buyer