Elizabeth

I bet he won't be ignoring any more summonses

Well that would be right given that as far as I can see, most of Englanders are foreigners to the London City State therefore the National Health Service is in effect international aid to the occupied provinces.

I can take your point, but it was still all very marginalised. There are over 1,000 members on this site and a very lively debate. And yet we managed to have very little effect on the public debate. (apart from Kirsty at one stage wanted to blame to site for any drop in housing prices! - a bit too thick to notice there is a world economy out there). I was confronted with outright hostility at work if I aired even a 10th of my views - so I just stopped airing them - apart from when they decided that they were going to encourage share-buy housing as a solution to housing for people with Learning Disabilities - I was horrified. I made the point that it was the top of the market, there was likely to be a crash, and people could end up in negative equity. I was told in contemptous tones by a rather too confident 29 year old policy officer (who had already cashed in her own let-to-buy, when previously she was going to 'build her pension on housing') that 'its already been decided by the people who know' - know what I ask? but a very frosty response indeed! However the Queen, has, with humility and grace, managed to take these guys down a peg. I just thought it was a superb piece of politics.

It'll never work. Hunt me down. Send in the hun if you will! On the issue of the Queen and her grasp on the economy, it doesn't sound to me like she was out of touch at all. Everyone I knew who wasn't connected to this site was pretty much of the view, perpetrated by these same experts, that the boom would go on forever, and a house would in 20 years time, cost the equivalent of a golden elephant poo. Maybe she mewed Buck Palace and is a bit worried now? (Edit: and perhaps it was just a rhetorical question, to ask, what most ordinary Britains are thinking but nobody else dares to say in this status obsessed land - that's her true role, to raise the challenging questions that others can't (and won't get the airtime for, or even a nod, if they do) in her 'sweet little old lady just naively asking' way)

It occurs to me that if we had a goodly dose of inflation for a couple of years (what the government is desperately trying to avoid), and a flat housing market then we would achieve the 20% cuts that are needed to bring house prices back in line with earnings - if inflation then dropped to about 5 or 6% for another couple, housing would start to be within reach of ordinary people who want to establish their own little castle for the first time. Any thoughts anyone (I know that inflation is suppose to be a bad thing, but in these gurgling flatulent inflated times, inflation on other things has stalled, and I am not unkind to the proposition that reality needs to catch up with the dream)

The surveying profession didn't fail at all. They succeeded brilliantly for 10 years in doing precisely what was needed to fund the miracle economy. They succeeded in staying in a job by giving the valuations that would ensure their fitness for survival within the environment they inhabited. They were part of an international culture, simply one component of a system of ideas and techniques that blew up a bubble. Don't blame them if, in their allotted role in the machine, it blew up!

"the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole, except a bunch of nutters on a little cult site called HousePriceCrash who acurately predicted the whole thing. Of course we didn't take them seriously and we hope that you wouldn't either mam, because they are completely outside our superior knowledge community, they don't work in Whitehall or any really quality environment, and in the rightful order of things, they had no right to be thinking or doing anything other than working with us to blow the balloon up."

I recently saw a chart on tele of interest rates and 'the major difference' between then and now. He argued very strongly that this was a signficantly different scenario, but the chart showed almost identical momentum however interest rates started at a different point. There was no difference! I am not sure whether the commentator was presenting a shakespearian double meaning (visual v verbal) in the newspeak world (he's very well regarded), but it was blindingly obvious that there is going to be a partial recovery followed by more trouble and that it will take a couple of years to sort out. Sorry can't find the chart.

man, that is funny

As an older person (not that old, but old enough to remember operator assisted dialing!) what I find great about the web is the ability to have a discussion with like minded people... and less like minded people from across the globe. that is where the ideas come from, and for me the enjoyment. But I think it is very much of the nature of people will travel where their interest lie. The web is just a hyperreal adventure space. Things like facebook are simply the extension of social chitter chatter for those with a short concentration span and little interest in world events - just world fashion, making friends, hanging out etc. So I don't think it has changed to nature of people, just the potential to share and develop ideas for those who want to. But it does mean that in sharing ideas and ways of thinking those can be available to a much wider audience of fellow travellers to use in their own local space.

Its facinating how these two countries have such a mirror perception of each other. I was brought up with the phraze "whinging poms"! I didn't particularly like the phaze. It was just a "little Australian" prejudice. It has pretty much dissappeared from our shores now. We grew up. I also don't see how being happy is being whinney. I don't see how taking about relative advantages leads to the idea of a whine. I love my 70p shampoo But did I ever say that the British are responsible for everything? In my precise, technical australian mind, born of an education system that concentrated on the 3Rs, I very much differentiate between 'the British' as a group of people, and 'the British ruling class' who are now pretty much as they ever were (just the names, faces and clothes have changed), but in a contracted empire, shitting all over the English rather than the rest of the world. Go ahead, read my posts. I do support the rights of whoever has got to a particular place to participate equally. To engage with the society. If its possible, it adds to the fun and you might just learn something. But you will also see that I am quite defensive of protection and support of the rights and culture of the indigenous people, both here and in your land. I have come a cropper more than once amongst the ruling bureaucrats of your land ('the little London empire' I like to think of them as), by stating that I see nothing wrong with inwardly focused local cultures, that actually manage to look after themselves (as opposed to looking to clever people from London for solutions and wisdom). "They need to open up" is the response. "But if they did, they would be just like the communities that don't bother to look after each other" I say. You can't win, because they have a single closed mind in the name of Liberal thought. But I beg to differ. But then also, I come from a place where we have had lots of trouble getting to the point where we understand that indigenous people need to be able to self-determine. When I first arrived on your shores in 1987, I was at Harwich ferry port, sitting in a huge grey hangar, exhausted from the overnight ferry journey and drinking a cup of tea and partaking of the local Bacon, Eggs and Chips (for which I have developed an enduring fondness), and at the table behind me were people talking in a language I couldn't understand. I tried very hard to work it out where they were from for about 10 minutes (Danish? Dutch? No, Scandinavian of some sort?), until it finally dawned like a light from damascus "ITS ENGLISH but not as I know it . You would never hear that now. The local dialects are gone. Everyone is mutually understandable and thinks from the same book of thoughts that are produced in an airy glass and steel office in London - or at least if the clever people of London have their way, because in the most benign anthropy of thought dictatorships, "we know best", "there is only one British identity". There used to be 100s if not 1,000s of local histories and heritages. Now everybody take planes to spain from light, airy, glass and steel Bristol or Manchester airport. Nobody has to walk out onto the tarmac anymore. The adventure, the effort, the minutae differences are all gone. I regret that. But then by changing those diverse English cultures there are more 2nd holiday homes for Londoners to snap up at the expense of the communities that are left 1/2 empty and unable to make the cost of services add up. I see a lot of the things that have changed in the past 30 years as purely in the cause of the economic interests, either great or small, of the London city state. The Welsh got it right. Just bomb the empty 2nd holiday homes. You will notice that Wales is not infested with them, but the entire coast of England is - because with a short sharp shock, the less pleasant of the Welsh people asserted a local identity, whereas people in England weren't allowed to retain their identity and resent un-integrated intruders from London. But the Londoners don't want to integrate with the nasty smelly locals, they just want to live in glorious seclusion in their holiday homes a couple of times a year and tell their friends about how successful they are, which in turn flows into discouraging integration of other migrants as a policy stance. Its not the fault of migrant's if 'finding common ground' has been replaced by 'respect for diversity'. And yet they have fundamentally failed to extend 'respect for diversity' to the indigenous population because they have been identified as an amorphous 'us'. And the question always comes to me, if we are all equal then how do some of us become an undifferentiated 'us' and some of us become 'other' for this philosophy? The bureaucrats and those in Government in London are fundamentally a small inwardly focused group of racists living in a small community and shutting others out but demanding that the entireity of England is open to them. They just do it under the cover of a differential 'respect for diversity'. I don't blame Britain at all. I defend the diversity of indigenous Britain - what is left of it. Of course the only people who need to be defended are the English, because the Scottish and Welsh are encouraged to value their identities. I blame the London City State. Or is that the same thing now?

You kill me.

Oh dear me. You really have got your knickers in a twist. Now Peter old son, you will note that I have been on this site (while living through shitty shared housing during the rental crisis in London and the housing price rise crisis accross the UK) since 2004. I found it in 2004 because I was completely depressed about my prospects of never having a home of my own and felt like I was the only one in the world that thought there had to be a crash. So I was sitting in an internet cafe near London Bridge and in a moment of abject despondency typed "house price crash" into the navigation bar. The rest is a 5 year history of making comments and jokes and generally exchanging ideas on this site. It has been great. So you will see I am a veteran of this site, and a UK veteran at that. Where better to talk about 70p shampoo? I am also quite well known here, having spat my dummy on more than one occassion, and a lot of people know a lot more about me than you, and probably have a lot more to be offended about, but haven't taken offence. They are the beauty and joy of Britain. I will note that you are a bit of a Johnny come lately, only having joined when the shite started hitting the fan in 2008. And for a relative newbie I feel you are judging me harshly. Not everyone gets upset when I say things like 'I really like my life and where I am at the moment'. But then most of the regulars know that life wasn't nearly so nice until about 3 months ago, and they can generally take good cheer in my success, as I would take good cheer in the happiness of anyone else who reached out and got the things that they want. I look forward to the day when all of us housing bears are saying 'I just bought my house... and I can afford it on a 3.5x my income morgage'. I reckon that is the thing that sets some human beings apart as special. Being able to cheer that other people are cheerful rather than feeling resentful and angry because they have failed in the cheerfulness competition. You will also notice that there are posters from all over the place as well. It truly is an international site. And given its changes, the team, the mods that run it, and the long time posters need to be congratulated. We put up with an awful phaze where every second posting was made by a housing boom cheerleading Troll. We had a phaze where the membership was being poached by a competitor site that was angry and wanted their own site. But it has prevailed, even into the bust when HousePriceCrash is no longer a marginal view. It has been an inspiration to me and I love the people that have offered me insight on a huge range of issues from science, to economics to some of the funniest commentaries on life I have ever seen. And while amusing and entertaining, it also saved my pretty (not so) little bottom from the UK housing market over the past 5 years. On what seems to have evolved into an intense personal disagreement , not everyone is so strung up with Britain v Australia v the Black Sea. I am not. I quite like the world. For living in, I like Sydney best, but that is mostly because I generally don't have to bother to talk to people from Melbourne... in fact bizarrely this is starting to sound like a Melbourne v Sydney gripe where the Melbournians get all upset because Sydney people don't really care whether Melbourne is better (or for that matter the Prague with its monuments, Paris with its elegance (I almost got mugged in Paris, so I am not real sure about that place) or for that matter the Black Sea with its horrific job prospects and language barrier for 25 grand) ... and for heavens sake have a good laugh. Get a sense of humour mate. You really need one.

God how boring. If they had aired this in 2004 then it would have been innovative television. But it is hardly news.

The downside is in the valuation and selling processes. As anyone who has watched this housing madness would be aware, surveyors give the prices that will keep them in the job (and some have even openly admitted it both on tele and in other places including this board). I have no doubt at all that what worked in the boom will work equally as efficiently in the bust. The Housing Association 'partner-owner'(???) employs the surveyors and the housing association has an interest in a higher valuation ergo, the valuation is likely to be generous. Given the variation in house prices it is unlikely to be outside of a range that would be enough to indicate a corruption, just high in the range, but high enough to thwart a house sale. The individual picks up the difference if they need for any reason to get a quick sale. The Housing Association also keep an exclusive right to the marketing of the house in the first instance, so your house could be sitting on the market for however many months is in the contract because a 'qualified buyer' with the right amount of money for the housing association hasn't turned up. After that share-owners have the right to make their own arrangements for marketing, but they still need to attract a 'qualified buyer' (with conditions about how long the prospective buyer has lived in the area - I think it takes about a year before that condition is lifted, and the share-owner still needs to stump up if the offer is unacceptable to the Housing Association partner. This will be based on the valuation - see paragraph above. The Housing Association is under no pressure since, they don't really care if the house is occupied by a) or or for that matter whether a) has a pressing need to go somewhere else, and as such it will simply devalue their books to accept a lower offer. Its a big effing trap and one that I am incredibly glad I steared clear of (working in a housing department there was a lot of pressure to get on board with it - I mean to say, if the staff in housing wouldn't touch it, it didn't look good for the programme!) But for this reason too I saw a number of houses being advertised in the local area that were well below the cost of other houses, and that I would have been able to afford - a little thrill ran through me - but whenever I looked I would need to have been a resident for 3 years in the local authority.

Are we talking about private equity deals, in which case you have a loan for the other 50% with the developer rather than a morgage company - no walking away. If we are talking about share-ownership british public sector style, the Housing Association owns and gets 50% of the sale price - if its over the 'market value' they get their proportion of the equity. If its under their own 'market value' the person coughs up to make up their losses. In the meantime they 'rent' the other half but without the obligation for repairs and maintenance. There is no walking away. You still have to pay the morgage on your share, and if you do walk away they may well get to keep the money you paid to them with that morgage.

Actually hasn't this problem been deferred for a couple of years by the depression? With all those unemployed people and factories not at full production and less cars to work, and a reduction of consumption of goods made just the same on the other side of the world, I think that the air will be a lot cleaner for the next couple of years. That and a variant swine flu and the planet will survive quite nicely for another 10,000 years.

I don't think anyone on this site said they were. Of course what I am getting is 'rats deserting a sinking (or shrinking) ship.' All of those commentators so wise in retrospect, and not a bloody apology between them. Are people genuinely so thick and so short of memory cells? (no answer required)

Very likely. the problem has been a bloat. Governments all over the shop have tried to tinker to keep it bloated through imaginary resources, causing ultimately, inflation, which will sort out the flatulence well and truly. However, they will also come to the end of being able to extend their imaginary resources since the fallible will have had their imaginations stretched just a little too far. At which point a genuine, market driven cycle of readjustment will occur and they will, when facing the mirror, discover that they are human and tatty round the edges, not, as they had thought, glowing balls of light. It will be a bad shock but they will blame the mirror.

Why don't you guys go and get a room? (no offence, your both great posters, but the sexual tension in this exchange is killing me )

I didn't know there were 100. I knew there were 100 great australians... but there are some people on this site that would find that offensive

I'm sorry. I can't work out whether you are taking the p!ss or whether you have just never been really fecking poor? 25-50% of massive consumption is a full belly and a roof over your head, if not by any other means then through the Council and it would hurt to loose the car but you probably won't lose it because there will be so many cars to be repo'd that all you will need to do is park it around the corner and the repo man will be off to the next job before checking too madly, and quite frankly a full belly and a roof over your head, and beating the repo man are the most important things to your survival. IPods are irrelevant to your relative chances of surviving. Or am I being completly obtuse?

Actually rather than being nostalgia, it was pretty much the fact. Do you think the ruling class gave it all away just to be nice? Do you think they woke up one day and over their fine breakfast cutlery discussed how horrid it was for working class people who couldn't afford a doctor? Now they have clawed it back and it is just as it ever was, except that we have access to medicine so that we can spend time in the waiting room and they realise that the old opiate of religion is was a redundant medicine and research has shown that consuming stuff is a far better medicine, so they keep the proletariate on benefits and clawing between themselves for crumbs, and fighting in pubs and such to make sure that the minds they don't control stay in their place, and the minds they do control stay fearful and don't go out at night least they don't get up in the morning.

So the government manipulates the market so that a man on almost double the average salary can afford to put a roof over his head? How kind of them. What was Injun saying about benevolence and state control? The government don't want house prices to drop, but why-oh-why? Something said to me today. The good thing about the american response to economic collapses in the past is that as a capitalist state it let the companies fall. It walked away. While this was hard and painful it meant the problem was over in a couple of years. This time (and remembering that it was Bush not Obama that gave the money away) they have got themselves in the ring with long term economic pain... all for the sake of desperate politics. There is only one way that things sort themselves out. Let the market decide - The market would have decided long ago around house prices if we had not had a major social control tinkering ( significant housing benefits and low discretionary benefits, so that people could not make cheaper housing options a means of increasing discretionary spending share-buys, social housing for the most desperate, so that we didn't see homeless people on the streets, but a minute private rental market and minute social housing turnover, so that the manipulated market for the private rental sector involved a squeezed supply side that pushed up demand competition artificially and therefore could support higher morgages no tax for the first 6 months on 'empty homes'. Local Government tracking down at great expense and then paying exhorbitant headlease agreements to 'empty home' owners (rather than legally repurchasing the abandoned houses, as the law allows) Reduced council tax for 2nd home owners. Liverpool council leaving entire suburbs vacant in favour of new developments that were sold at a newbuild premium It would have been short and painful, particularly for people selling deceased estates, and people that had 'forgotten' they owned a property, but it would have brought about new economic conditions. My take on a mixed economy is - Give a safety net to the victims if their life is at risk based on the first 2 layers of the Maslow Heirachy, simply because we are human, but make it a safety net, not an alternative way of life.

Agreed socialism = state control, no matter how benevolent. Socialism at a state level does, but social collectives at a local level can do a power of good because they are directly connected to the issues they address. However I wouldn't want to join one because it is generally the authoritarians that take control. Free Market - well the really free markets are in Russia and the Ukraine where the gangs run riot and murder is as common as horse poo. It is the phaze before full corporate control and state/corporate partnership to control the population. Freedom (from the requirement of individuals to consider anything outside its own parameter of values, interests and emotional attachments) is not without its pitfalls. Controlled and regulated markets = Advanced Capitalism which while it offers greater entry opportunities to those with the right knowledge, is so tied up in corporatism that there is not much freedom there either and it is carefully managed through state control of our obsessions so that everyone doesn't work out how to do it. Effectively it is simply another heirachy of bureaucratic and resource control through a network. Generally it works hand in hand with government, although it is only in the recent months that this has moved from covert to naked. Not trying to be difficult here, but I really think that people have to identify their lives and their freedoms outside of economic market styles, since all of them are pretty much the brothers of an authoritarian family, and I am not their sibling.