s2r2005

don't worry, prices will drop off a cliff on tuesday. i pick the keys up to the place i just bought on monday afternoon. i bought it at the price it was last sold for in 2004 mind, so i think a fair bit of crashing has been priced in already. tho i suspect more to come in a year or so for family reasons i can't really wait. if you don't have reasons like this hang on, and keep away from shared ownership - still new build slave boxes on the whole, go for a flat in a converted house if you have to buy.

just want to add my support for this, just completed and spent around £300 more than a chain conveyencer would have cost for the work. for this extra money the solicitor walked round the property with a tape measure and some very old deeds checking out a couple of potentially very serious boundary issues. both of which we got the sellers to resolveand looked into some complex watercourse issues to see what liability we had. money well spent.

i'm buying too, pleasant semi. i expect that prices will go down a bit but have 2 kids now and my landlord is selling the flat this year, so it suits us. we are getting it for the price the owners bought it for in summer 2004, with the money i got for selling my place in december 2005, plus a small mortgage on a 5 year fix. i don't think i've done brilliantly financially but i've done alright, and i'm looking forward to a better home for my family. so there will probably be a 50% crash on monday when we exchange.

could we have a link to evidence that people of this or similar surnames are disproportionate BTL speculators please? or is this more ill informed knee jerk brain spasms from someone for whom life has really not worked out as well as they hoped and would like someone foreign looking to blame for it?

+1. i must be getting desensitized because that ill considered stream of hate almost passed me by. thank you for the reminder that it is in fact so far from anything that anyone decent would consider reasonable that the writer ought to get checked by their GP. except they are probably another one of those immigrants and you can't get an appointment for all the forrins in their bleeding our health system dry etc etc

was that before or after him and cherie bought that penthouse apartment in bristol as an investment property i wonder?

i think i have joined the bears turned bulls too.... well not quite as i still expect prices to fall this year but put an offer in on a place for just a little over what was paid for it mid-2004. the sellers don't seem able to accept less due to circumstances and they have made a few decent improvements (double glazing). crazy thing in the few friends in town we have mentioned it to think the house is a serious bargain, rather than a rather fair price that reflects recent falls but does not account for likely later ones as i do. to be honest part of me will be releived to get out of cash and into something a bit less prone to inflation too.

i don't mind paying for these things but child protection round where i live is at a haringey level of crapness according to a recent reporty and the tory councillo in charge is refusing to step down over the scandal. kids have died due to poor social workers in a poor department and i seriously object to paying for them to fail kids for years.

i lived between se5 and se15 for 10 years and though i like it, i don't like it so much i'd pay those crazy prices for an area that outside of a few gilded street is pretty damn rough. rough in an okay way, but still rough. is the hermits still one of the best pubs in london?

we got one of those too A 74-year-old Hebden Bridge benefit cheat could be forced to pay back £1 million after 11 years of fraudulent claims. Brian Sutcliffe, 74, of Thistlebottom, Charlestown, Hebden Bridge, received almost £150,000 in income support and tax rebates while earning £60,000 a year. He used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle of foreign travel, continental timeshares and remortgage payments on his home – which he may now lose. The fraud came to light when investigators discovered Sutcliffe, a company director, held several part-time jobs and had pensions worth £465 a month. A Yorkshire Bank account had mysterious payments amounting to £158,500 made into it while a further £22,000 was invested in Premium Bonds. Now, the Department for Work and Pensions has vowed to pursue the case to retrieve £1 million under the Proceeds of Crime Act. The £1 million will include, not only the £150,000 fraudulently claimed, but also any profit made from investing the illegally received cash. It means just two months after being jailed for three years for false accounting, making a false statement and keeping a wrongful credit Sutcliffe faces losing everything. The fraud began in 1995 when Sutcliffe was freed from prison for theft and possessing illegal tobacco. He continued to claim benefits his wife received while he was inside and then added to the income by also claiming in his own name. He also received mortgage interest payment help despite the property being remortgaged in 1991 to buy N and R Demolitions. Over 10 years he falsely claimed £145,599.77 – about £17,000 a year. Similar charges against wife Judith were dropped because she suffered a brain haemorrhage in March 1995 and allowed her husband to take over the family finances. A confiscation hearing at Bradford Crown Court was adjourned to August 12. Martin Robertshaw, for Sutcliffe, said the claim would be contested. he is in prison right now until he pays the money back and has reduced the price on his house slightly http://www.ryburne.co.uk/beaumonthouse.htm in order to repay the money tho' does not appear to be in a hurry. i like that the EA add says 'keen to sell'. i look forward to seeing lord ashcroft in similar straights when he gets a backdated tax bill.

a shame if he is, i think he has gotten better with age and looks more like a credible leader now than anyone else in the party if there is even a shred of fight and ability left in labour they should nail dave on this though. i suspect they won't.

From The Guardian today: --------------------------- Fresh concerns about Lord Ashcroft emerged tonight when he was accused of "systematic tax avoidance" by exploiting his offshore status to avoid paying VAT on opinion polls he commissioned for the Conservatives. Ashcroft privately ordered what he boasted was the biggest political polling exercise ever conducted in Britain in 2005, in order to aid the Tories as they targeted marginal seats. The cost of the polls, commissioned from YouGov and Populus, is believed to have approached at least £250,000. But sources familiar with the transactions told the Guardian that the bills were paid by one his companies in Belize, meaning he did not pay VAT. Tonight, the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, said: "This is quite serious. We are now not talking just about Ashcroft's non-dom status, but about systematic tax avoidance in funding Conservative party activities such as polling. How far were the Conservatives aware that Ashcroft did not pay VAT, as would have been incurred by any normal polling activity?" The new allegations came amid growing concerns in David Cameron's circle over the handling of the affair by William Hague, his shadow foreign secretary. It emerged earlier today Hague kept Cameron in the dark for at least a month after he learned that Ashcroft had renegotiated the terms of his peerage and acquired non-dom status. Cameron found out the truth about Ashcroft's tax affairs less than a month ago. A party spokesman confirmed that Ashcroft did not even reveal his tax status to Cameron when in December the leader approached him to discuss plans to ban non-doms from parliament, despite the fact that he had already told Hague. ---------------------- It is not looking good for dave and george really, this should have been sorted out months ago if they wanted to look like serious contenders, will this take and edge of their lead i wonder or will ashcroft have to go?

mind you the hours i do it feels like i am working for free sometimes.

i did not mean to imply i was gifting anything to anyone, i work for ther NHS out of a sense of commitment to the ideal of free health care. i was just pointing out that in hard economic terms i am paid less in the public sector than the private as a means of demonstrating that some clinicians provide value for money to taxpayers. or put another way, by reducing someone's debilitating mental illness you are making them more able to contribute economically and as importantly socially. i am no fan of private healthcare btw, just had a spot of financial bother and it made more sense than doing something else to earn the money i needed to get.

sorry for the late answer, no time to browse HPC at work..... i am a clinical psychologist specialising in cognitive behaviour therapy (identified as very cost effective in the layard report a few years ago). 3 years training as an undergrad, 3 doing a doctorate then a considerable amount of post-doc training. is that what you would call a 'clinician'?