Glittery Hoo Haa

Reading it it's such an awkward mix of HPI cliche, scaremongering (get on that ladder now! Renting is soooo expensive!) and plain untruth it makes me suspect "Charlotte Ross" is as genuine as a 25% house price rise in the next five years. This must be an editorial, written as an attempt to bolster the market by attempting to get anyone not credit-crunched out of it to jump on the sinking ship. The only people you hear coming out with such tripe are deeply invested in HPI and the London Daily Mail's advertising is very geared towards property. They must be worried. As for the claim that London renting is more expensive than a mortgage, that hasn't been true in my experience for years.

I noticed he didn't commit to a direction.

Just did a quick search for all properties for sale in SW4 + 1/4 mile. 1932 Christ.

True. Many GPs who are partners earn great money. But they would have done exceptionally well to both have completed their training years, exams, and then be GP partners in their early 30s. Did it say on the programme?

Pay for Doctors In their early 30s, they would be doing extremely well to be earning £100k a piece. I suspect large inheritance, or dodgy economics.

That's a particular form of undergraduate degree offered by certain Scottish universities. It's not a typical postgraduate Masters degree, so can't be used as a generality. I have a friend who got one of these degrees from Edinburgh - and went on to do a Masters somewhere else.

She did appear to have an astonishing amount of 'stuff' in quite a modest house. All those glass ornaments and fridge magnets and so on. I wonder how much ebay sales are going to drop in the next few years?

I'm a health professional. I would say that there have been gains and losses since 1997. I would say that the period of 1997-2002 was a great time to work for the NHS. There has been considerable improvement in some of the grass root targets - physically hospitals are in much better shape, waiting times etc. are much better, it's far more likely that in any given area you will have the full range of services required and minimum standards of evidence based practice adhered to (some micro management has worked). On a selfish basis, our salaries increased somewhat after many years of freezes and being left behind. If you have certain types of illness, and if you have an acute emergency, I think the NHS delivers a first class service. I would argue that most of the time it still delivers a decent service, mostly due to the efforts of those on the coal-face. One mistake I think many 'civilians' make is to think this has been a period of expansion. Even with increased funding (which goes to the PCT to hand out, not individual trusts) we had to find a 1% CUT each year to break even - this is in the boom times. In my area (I work in inner city mental health) we have actually lost 50 or so beds during that time and bed occupancy now sits at an appalling and untherapeutic 150%. We have also lost vital community services. There are less clinicians working, with higher workloads and more acutely unwell patients - than there were a few years ago - yet of course, no managerial jobs have gone. Getting an acutely ill patient into hospital is a trial. The impact of cuts elsewhere - especially in social housing - has had a real impact on our ability to do our jobs properly and efficiently. Our 'productivity' clinically has certainly gone up (although I'm not sure how it can go up expirentially without reducing quality) and also think health care should be judged on evidence bases rather than pure number crunching. Do I believe in the NHS? Absolutely. Do I believe in privatisation? That would be a disaster for my client group. Do I think things can still be done better? Yes.

The Tories would have ramped up HPI just as much as New Labour did, and will set us up for the next boom and bust just like New Labour would because both parties share the same Thatcherite economic policies. Sure there's minor tinkering around various taxes - which never reduce or increase the average voter's tax burden significantly - and the Tories have to appear more cautious on the NHS (both would privatise it throught the back door) and Labour more tough on crime (both parties are perfectly happy with any old authoritarian crap that plays well in The Mail). The idea that Cameron and co are going to significantly change anything is a joke. Just like the idea Blair was going to do anything that significantly different in 1997. Depressing, but true.

Battersea is a very expensive area. I still think £150k on a share of one of those flats is too much. Far better for the government to work towards a situation where professionals in secure careers earning above average salaries are able to buy without assistance or self certs. What a pile of bigoted, ungrammatical nonsense.

It's not a good comparison. Kensington, London, is the province of the super-rich, international buyer, who is not going to have to mortgage (so no credit crunch). You'd be better comparing with an area of London which average Londoners buy in. If you look at the more 'deprived' areas of London (although these do have pockets of serious affluence) like Tower Hamlets or Hackney you'll see a similar picture in both places.

Actually I was wrong. You get an Indesit washing machine. Sign me up!

I'd also recommend the villages south of Leicester, especially around Market Harborough. It's where the folks live, and has the advantage of being close to Leicester but also very close to M1, M6, A14, is on a main trainline etc. which is good if you'll be travelling to visit friends and family elsewhere. Also bear in mind that you'll be very fortunate to stay in the one area for the whole of your training contract and once you're ST5 level you'll have no chance so you need somewhere with excellent transport links.

What makes buying into these schemes even more ridiculous is that many housing associations run protected rental schemes for keyworkers. I know because I'm in one (£550 for a one bedroom flat in zone 2). Knowing that schemes like my own exist, and are far more sustainable (I hope eventually to have saved a deposit to buy outright when the market returns to normality, and then someone else will have the opportunity to live in my flat) who falls for this nonsense?

I think these are worse: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-192...se&tr_t=buy £157,000 for a 50% share of a shoebox with a view of a tower block and no garden parked on a tiny lot behind Stockwell tube station. They reckon these desperation traps are worth £315,000, in a market where ground floor flats with some outside space nearby in much better, leafier locations are not selling for £230,000. Having walked past it doesn't look like 75% are inhabited like it says on the blurb, however some poor suckers have moved in. Poor poor bar-stewards.

I'm a terrible avaricious home-grown woman. I must admit I'd find some of your lifestyles too penny-pinching. I like going to live music, travelling, good wine and the theatre too much to be entirely frugal, although I do believe none of that should be financed by credit. I've never been interested in what salary someone earns (as long as they do have an honest living), not interested in flash cars or a big mortgage (I'm on here aren't I) but I am interested in enjoying life, which for me is a balance of spending and saving each month. It's interesting that blokes on here often complain that women only go for the flash guys because my experience is that a/women do want someone who isn't going to leave them high and dry and b/ a lot of men, at least in the London area, go for the designer-clothes-all-bought-on-credit-£200-highlights-fake-nails-wants-a-flash-car-and-pad woman over someone real a depressing amount of the time. Romantic short-termism, maybe?

Mitsubishi Pajero does mean Mitsubishi W****r in Spanish though.

Do you want to live in London, with the nightlife etc. of London, or is your preference for leafy quiet streets, large garden and so on? If it's the latter, Bromley and Chislehurst may be for you but they are much less 'cultural' with not a lot going on evening/weekends. Bromley does have the usual shops if that's your thing. Friends of mine who'd lived in Brixton/Streatham for years moved down that way after having kids and although they love the larger houses they have they are quite bored socially. If you wanted somewhere a bit livelier but still suburban and green, maybe Beckenham?

I have friends who have moved to 2-3 beds in SW19 recently. Nice houses on quiet roads, walking distance from Wimbledon and South Wimbledon stations. Would certainly fit the 1hr commute to the City bill. All have been able to haggle reductions in rents from LLs who wanted to sell but can't. They may be asking for more rent, but I doubt they're achieving it.

Of course this is anecdotal, but from my experience 'rents are going up' is nonsense. I know three groups of friends, all renting large houses in pleasant parts of SW London, who have moved recently. All three groups have 'traded up' in terms of quality, now renting recently done up houses which have either been BTLs trying to jump ship, or people who have bought another house then found it impossible to sell the first. All have managed to negotiate various decreases in rent (in one case really significant - three figures per month) because the landlords so needed to get some money in to cover the mortgage, let alone their recent costs. It seems logical to me that as more property goes to rent, prices will go down.

I don't think it's hard-hearted to point out the lunacy of this woman's lifestyle. Of course it's always a tragedy to lose a parent or spouse. It also is a tragedy that happens to a lot of people. It happened to me (not saying that for sympathy, just fact). It sounds like this lady was left, unlike many people, in a rather secure financial position, which she then squandered by living ludicrously outside her means. No-one needs a BMW X3, no-one needs to spend 90k on a new house, and no-one living in Warwickshire needs to drive 50 miles to private schools everyday. I also happen to think teenage children need to contribute to expensive violin lessons by going out and getting a Saturday job. It's not taking away from any sympathy I may have for this woman's loss to say I think her financial decisions have been wasteful and irresponsible, and that snobbery has probably paid its part in that.

I'm very sorry that this woman was widowed but her lifestyle was entirely unsustainable. Why didn't she invest some of her equity from the previous house sale? Why does she still have a BMW X3? Why did she spend £90k on her new house? Why is she driving 50 miles a day to a private school when she lives in a area with excellent state provision? It's financial lunacy and she may well have come a cropper, albeit smaller in scale, without a house price crash.

A question from the financially naive. I bank with A&L. I have an overdraft which I use every month and my wages are paid into that current account. My savings are all held elsewhere. Should I continue or should I start looking to move? My nightmare would be to be unable to get out my salary at some point or to have my free overdraft taken over and become more expensive. Is this fear ungrounded?