Dave Spart
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Posts posted by Dave Spart
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Eric's been busy - he's even had time to edit Wiki.
That Wiki page should ideally be editted to include a link to the Money Programme articles on mortgage fraud.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressrele..._mortgage.shtml
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But I disagree, Why do you think only women make babies?
I think political correctness started with some very good principles (respect for the individual, eg. not judging individual women on the basis of observable trends - why am I not allowed to be more interested in economics than shopping? sort of stuff) and ended up with the bureaucrats that make money out of such principles turning it into an orwellian farce.
My point about women giving birth was to illustrate that there are differences between males and females and no-one should be afraid to point them out for fear of labelled sexist.
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I totally agree with the idea that women want a home etc. I don't think it is sexist, it is an observable reality. Why do we try to pretend that we are all driven by the same things? I am gagging for a home of my own. Boyfriend not so keen. But I am also not jumping in because its just not sensible that a house that would have cost me 60 grand 10 years ago is going to cost me 240 grand now. And in that time (barring the halycon days of IT) I have gone from 24 to 32 grand earnings???
There's another thing political correctness has conditioned men to do : fear accusations of sexism. Well f*ck that.
Men and women and different, full stop. Is it sexist to say women have babies while men don't? Of course not.
Someone on this website has a signature that says something along the lines of 'a country of sheep will produce a government of wolves'. How true.
While saying wholly unreasonable things can land you in prison*, failing to exercise free speech will do the same.
*(think Abu Qatada)
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My response.
To placate the inevitable howls of sexism, let’s start by reminding ourselves that the whole point of this topic is to address the effect women have had on the property market, namely the gender divide. I believe free-men are entitled to free-speech in this country, right? My arguments below don't apply to all women so ladies, don't take offence at what I say. Chances are if you're reading this you'll know and appreciate what I saw below already.Go ask your friendly neighbourhood actuary "What's the accident hump?”
They'll tell you it’s the rise in deaths amongst males in late teenage years caused by their liking for risk relative to their female counterparts.
Blokes, it seems, go through a phase where, for a few years, they behave like dare-devils (climbing on scaffolding while drunk, climbing trees, fighting, motorbike stunts etc). Blokes behave like this for a number of reasons: They do it for the experience - to see what its like, they do it for the thrill or they do it to show off their physical prowess for status and impress the ladies.
Assuming they survive their risky silliness, blokes learn from their experiences and their mistakes, they settle down and behave that bit more responsibly. With the benefit of that experience males learn to appreciate the dangers of risk.
As we've all been told so many times over the last fifteen years, females however claim the high ground, preferring to out-do their male peers in things like exams. Sensible them.
However, female sensibility poses marketing men a major problem. How do you get sensible young women to part with their money? How do you extract most value from each female consumer unit? How can you profit from females the most when their money is tucked away sensibly in a piggy bank - or better - a savings account?
To best understand how the marketing industry has overcome this problem readers would do well to watch Adam Curtis's excellent BBC2 documentary 'Century of the Self' which is free on Google video.
This documentary blows the lid on why we live in the consumer society we do and explains the psychoanalytical techniques used to profit from it. Wikipedia's entry states:
"... The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism . . . . It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality."
Here's the key.
Over the last twenty years these psychoanalytical techniques have been refined to bring us media constructs such as "New Man", "The Sex War", "Girl Power" and "Ladism" and "Ladettes" and much worse.
You might recall that during the mid to late 1990's just about every TV advert portrayed women as outwitting their supposedly weaker male peers. Women were portrayed as being smarter stronger and in control. Men were mocked as pathetic dithering wimps. The worm had turned. Women were being given tacit encouragement from all quarters to undermine their men. Men were to be disregarded.
However, it was not enough for marketers to trivialise men. The next phase of the strategy turned to boosting women's sense of themselves. Phrases like "because you're worth it" sprung up all over the place. Self indulgence and self love was the order of the day. Think of all those semi-erotic chocolate adverts. Women were taught to think highly of themselves regardless of the reality - how many times did we see women photographed nude in adverts. Remember the Marks and Spencer's ads featuring fat naked women? Remember the Women's Institute nude calendar? Having reduced men to quivering jellies in women's minds, the marketers now set about ensuring they could maximise profits from each and every woman by equipping them with an Oedipus complex. Women were conditioned to idolise themselves.
Further backed up by the rise of celebrity culture, the triviality of Hello and OK! magazine culture, the vanity of the cosmetic and fashion industries, and worst of all the viciousness of reality TV , women have been bombarded by subtle messages that its cool to act with a ruthless sense of self-entitlement in order that they spend spend spend in an orgy of selfishness and self-indulgence.
A quick glance at today's advertising will confirm this. Just watch the number of TV ads where young women come storming out of the boutiques and salons strutting their stuff, egos burning with newly endowed confidence, dressed to kill, ready to assert themselves on the world with merciless gold-digging ambition. The notion of the selfish, egotistical, assertive power-dressed 'individual' female is THE in vogue stereo-type for young women to follow. Perhaps no-one embodies this phenomena better than Victoria Beckham.
Ask yourself: what - or more pertinently who - are these young women aiming to assert themselves over?
Where has selflessness gone? Where is the love?
While men go through their daredevil phase and come out of it better equipped to deal with danger, do women experience the same? Just how dangerous can it be trying on lip stick and shopping for knickers? Through the bitter experience of broken bones men are better equipped to deal with risk. They learn to appreciate risk just at a time when it really matters - just before adulthood, before they have to take life shaping decisions such as what kind of home they can afford. What the media was mocking so relentlessly during the 1990's was men's sense of cautious wisdom.
What marketers have achieved through it is to ensure women have learned to demand an increasingly vehement say in key life shaping decisions. Conversely men find themselves caught between the reality of their finances and the emotional histrionics of their spouse.
The results are all too painful for society. Marital disharmony, broken relationships, separations, divorce, repossession, bankruptcy, suicide. Not to mention the effect on everyone else around them - most of all the children.
As they say, God will give you what you need but not what you want. The Devil will give you what you want, then take away what you need.
I would hope that having made these points some women might think twice about why they behave the way they do. Their behaviour stems not from Germaine Greer's notion of true female emancipation but from their oh-so subtle yet total enslavement by marketers.
Remember : Watch the Century of the Self. Not because you're worth it - because you NEED it.
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I think we've come up with enough lyrics for an update of Billy Joel's "We didn't start the bubble" sorry "We didn't start the fire".
PS : Another song to crash to : that Heart classic
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"Delightfully appointed"
"Superbly well-equiped throughout"
"Spaciously deceptive"
:angry: :angry: :angry:
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Now we are halfway through the year
and again the forecasts for the year seem to give little indication of what is going to happen,
instead they mimic what has happened,
which rather goes against the spirit of a forecast.
sarccy b'stard!
Not so much forecasts as aftcasts.
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I hope any crackdown in Britain will involve Allsopp, Beeney, Law etc. for confidence tricks
Seconded.
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Very interesting article on the schenanigans in the City that lead to the property bubble and the inevitable credit crunch.
Should be repeated in one hour.
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Anyone for a game of mewsical chairs?
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A nation of Shakespeare, Byron, Churchill, Spitfire Pilots, Wilberforce et al... and now Krusty, alchopops, chavs, City spivs, hoodies, Brown, Darling, Blears, the other clone drone female cabinet ministers! You're right, we're done for!!!
Britain! Britain! Britain!
Opened by The Queen in 1972.
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mind you 'housepricecrashcouk'
anagrams to
'sure up choice shack, or . . . ?.'
'david spart is a tw*t'
anagrams to
'A vast, rapid, sad twit.'
:angry:
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Obama??
'obama barrack us president' anagrams to 'some dark, abrupt braincase'
You saw it on hpc first. Unless you saw it somewhere before.
It'll be in the meeja soon just you watch.
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He who lived by HPI will die by HPC
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That's because people like you keep running to people like him to solve your problems.
That dictators are in charge is the fault of authority driven, permission seeking nitwits like you.
?
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When your punishment exceeds the harm done then you have increased the total amount of harm in the world, which I am sure is the last thing you wanted to do.
I can't see anything that even very shady estate agents might do that would warrant physically overpowering them, kidnapping them etc.
How utterly bizarre. I can only reply by saying:
This is planet Earth.
The year is 2008.
George W Bush is the President.
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You don't need a regulator, you need common law.
You don't need acts, you need facts.
Our whole communist centralised system is doomed to failure because only free markets work. Adding more regulation to a system that is suffering from too much is lunacy. However, I can see that you aren't swayed by facts or evidence and are merely operating from an emotional point of view so I will stop trying to persuade you.
Instead, you cna persuade me. Show me a regulation that has worked. Any will do.
OK. I refer to post #27 on page 2 of this thread.
Do enjoy reading up on falsificationism.
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Oh and it's morally repugnant to threaten and assault people who haven't done anything to harm anyone else.
I agree. But its worst still to fail to prevent or punish dubious behaviour which harms others.
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Coming soon, I fear.
Shop keepers are subject to very extensive legislation including the Sale of Goods Act.
If you don't feel regulation works then tell the FSA to repeal its regulation of financial advisors and we can soon return to the free for all of the eighties with all its accompanying scandals.
At the moment if you have a complaint against an Estate Agent who do you complain to? Which industry regulator who can you complain to who will investigate and punish rogues? Answer : There isn't one.
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Most of the problems today are due to regulation (government intervention of some description) As some bright spark mentioned in a previous post, the banks are regulated - and just look where that has gotten us!
You're confusing cause and effect.
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Yeah, it probably is too subtle for me. However the difference between law and regulation isn't. Estate Agents, though not subject to regulation, are indeed subject to the law.
Maybe it's just too obvious for you.
In your excitement to point out the difference you've ignored my point.
Where fair, clear rules exist and are enforced with the threat of sufficiently punitive sanctions the majority will obey. Fail to enforce them, change them or remove them altogether and those subject to them will behave accordingly. This clearly went over your head.
I reiterate my point from an earlier post:
After the pensions misselling scandal of the late eighities and early nineties the regulators cracked down heavily on financial salesmen and that worked. The cowboys left the industry or were forced to clean up their acts.In the light of my own experience I simply cannot accept your contention that regulation does not work. I have worked in the financial services industry for nearly twenty years and have seen first hand the change in behaviour as increasingly better regulatory regimes have been introduced. The wildest excesses of financial salesmen during the eighties came to end. The industry has been cleaned up enormously compared to what it used to be. There is much greater transparency, much greater awareness of expect standards and much greater policing of rule breaches. Legal practices such as Norton Rose created departments to specialize in the area.
Regulation has worked in the case of financial advisors because the FSA very much has the balance of power; it regulates a highly competitive industry filled with a large number of small businesses - just like the Estate Agency industry - but in the case of financial advisors each has a great deal to lose if they trangress the rules.
If you don't believe me just ask our very own Jonathan Davies, known as FP.
Doubtless there are still the occassional abuses from time to time by the odd rogue here and there even now, but compared to the lightly regulated days of the eighties the industry is these days much more sober and professional.
I thoroughly agree with you that in some industries -too many for my liking- the efficacy of prevailing regulatory regimes is unsatisfactory but your statement is not true in every instance. If you still wish to contend with your broad-brush assertion that regulation doesn't work - with the implication that any attempt to regulate Estate Agents would fail - I refer you to ExtradryMartini's thread on Falsificationism.
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Same difference.
In practice, regulation doesn't work.
No. They are different. Maybe its just too subtle for you.
And if you don't think regulation works try suspending the laws of the land for a week and see what happens.
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Misleading thread title. We harp on about how misleading the press is so it would be a nice thing not to do the same here, but useful link so thanks.
Anyone who thinks any "regulation" at all makes the slightest difference to the outcome of the way most corporations treat their customers needs to critically examine the history of it. Leaving the disgraceful and obvious example of the FSA aside, almost all regulators are insuffuciently funded, have huge waiting lists of people in their systems, have top heavy managements who have total contempt for the ordinary man and woman whom they consider it beneath their trouble to deal with, and the minions within regulatory bodies have almost no power and all they seem to do is acknowledge letters and e-mails after which there is defeaning silence.
Most regulators (Ofwat, Ofcom, ICSTSI (R.I.P)) have a FAR too cosy relationship with those they are meant to be distanced from and many smaller regulators are no more than industry associations or privately run quangos whose remit is as far removed from helping genuinely disgruntled consumers as it is possible to be.
In short, they are utterly useless.
VP
What you point out is not a failure of regulation, but a failure to implement regulation.
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oh god.
The problem is regulation, we don;t need more of it.
We have these godawful bubbles because we have a regulated money supply, a regulated interest rate, regulated banks and regulated financial services.
The solution isn't handing more power to nitiwts, it's giving them less.
If you're happy to have the fox guard the henhouse, the inmates run the asylum and the gamekeepers play poachers then you need do nothing - cos that's the situation you've got now in the EA business.
After the pensions misselling scandal of the late eighities and early nineties the regulators cracked down heavily on financial salesmen and thay worked. The cowboys left the industry or were forced to clean up their acts.
By the way the Credit Crunch came about as a result of the Banks inventing products like SIVs and moving their activities out of sight of the regulators. Regulation did not cause the credit crunch, greed did.
Editted for typo.
Calling Eric!
in House prices and the economy
Posted · Edited by Dave Spart
While we'reon this topic has anyone else noticed the advertising banner thats been appearing on this website recently?
It asks "Are your finances criminal?"
Video :