kara gee

Could we utilise prisoners or long-term unemeployed able bodied people in this industry? Just a thought, but we have hundreds of thousands of physically able people doing nothing constructive. The construction industry is highly labour intensive. If in order to recieve your benefits you had to put in 38 hour week on a construction site, it could drive build costs down, whilst providing valuable skills and work ethic to the workers.

But again we hit the vicious circle. We're not ALL lazy, (well, a lot are) but we work obscenely long hours. When would we get the time to build our own house? If we did have the time to build our own where would we get the money from for materials without a job?

Straw Bale? Cob? Earthships? Some of the UKs oldest surviving dwellings are cob. All of the above can be built structurally cheaply, then fitted out to what ever specifiction suits your budget. Also they all have excellent U-values (super-insulating qualities) and the cob and earthships also have amazing thermal mass. Any of these buildings if done properely ie, large south facing windows to maximise on solar gain, small north windows to minimise heat-loss, internall thermal mass walls etc. The best examples of these builds need very little heating through the year.

In the wise words of Peter Andre...."That's INSANIA"

£198k !!!!!!!! For A Terraced house??????? Do you know how barmy that sounds?? If I was you, I would immidiately withdraw your £9k loan and as a previous poster suggests, offer to match her savings. (Which at only £2k are rubbish in comparison to the house asking price). Any equity which has ben realised from her current home will be swiftly eroded once she has bought this new house. You need to sit her down and go through some figures ie. New house £198k + £5k moving and legal = £203k £203k - £9k - £2k = £192k Guessing your daughter earns £30k, her mortgage at 4.5x salary = £135k £192k-£135k = £57k equity fron current property So - Mortgage payments 25 years @ 5% = £9576 pa Or Rent a place £7k pa - equity of £57k into savings account of 4% = £2160 in interest pa = £4840 pa Ok, so this is hypothetical, but with her rent being a lot lower (half) of her mortgage payments, would allow her to really save quite a lot of money. Meanwhile the house she would have bought is just going dow, down, down......... IMO you need cold hard figures to show her, obviously we don;t know the rate of decline, but you don;t need that to prove that buying this house now is a very bad move indeed Good luck

+1 We've a young family, and I'm amazed at the money the government are putting into our bank account. I'm a stay at home mum and OH is a teacher we get another £2k in child benefit and child tax credits!!!! Oh and I've just been given another £190 cash for getting pregnant again!!!!!! WRONG!!! WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!!!! http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/DG_174119 I bloody wouldn;t have kids if we couldn;t afford them! Needless to say ALL of this 'free' money goes straight into a tax-free savings account, because boy oh boy aren;t our kids gonna need it when they're older to pay back to the government.

The obvious HPC answer is to talk her down from it. It would be insane to buy a house at 4.5x single income at this point in time. With further falls ahead, she will be in neg equity before long. However. We don't know enough about her situation to give a more thorough opinion. Ie, Is she single, have kids, want kids, prepared to take lodgers, understand about further house price falls, negative equity. there are so many factors to consider, albeit most of them leading to the same conclusion - Not to do it!

I can see the man sh@gging the kangaroo, but I can't see the monkey singing into the microphone. It's like one of those magic eye pictures.

£130k will disappear pretty qickly if you gave up work and lived off that. You and your family could live on about £12k per year if you cut back on hols etc. In the meantime, savings are dwindling. Your parents could live into their 90's (or more). I'd be worried that once I've spent up my pot, I'd be wishing them dead. I'd agree with a previous poster and say to keep working if you like your job or look for re-training, or education to set yourself off on a different tangent. Do something you really love. I think it's really hard not working (bizarre as that sounds) but after a year of beach/surf life, you probably will want to do something more constructive.

Kara's husband again... I agree with everything you said. I should have mentionrd that six billion is sustainable if we adopt a completely different lifestyle that would necessaseraly involve becomming vegetarian. In the end that aint gonna happen and what will follow hasn't been imagined in the worst of nightmares. despite all this i remain optimistic!

Very nicely put Steve. And as a friend of mine once said, "When humankind finally leave this planet, whether that be through extinction or on a space-ship, the legacy we will leave to this once beautiful place, is a planet that is teflon coated and shrink-wrapped" Edit to add - Going back to the population point. Your post has gien me a lot to think about, thanks for that. I do think we have to look beyond just arrible land for farming though. Imagine if the highways agency planted fruit trees and bushes to proliferation instead of the standard non-edible trees and shrubs. Apple trees down pavements etc. Create an abundence. Also our eating habbits would have to change. There is a popular book by John Seymore on self-sufficiency. He has 5 acres for his family, so that corrilates with the 2 acres pp you mentioned. However, John Seymore also grows animals including including pigs, which means land for the animals and growing food for those animals. If you were veggi, you'd probably need closed to 1/2 acre pp. But I'm being pedantic here. I appreciate the point you were making.

I think there must be a factory near me that makes really really ugly idiots.

I like it!

I refer you to my last post... but i will spell it out for you again. It is cheap 'clean' oil that will start to run out. You yourself said that the oil sands are viable if oil is expensive (2006-7 levels) - which it will be. The problem is that the dirtier methods of oil extraction produce a great deal more carbon dioxide than sweet crude (which itself produces unacceptable levels of CO2). It's not just oil sands. There is a process called coal to liquid which can produce a useable cumbustable liquid fuel. The list goes on. All these methods are massive CO2 emmitters. So combined with what i said earlier there ABSOLUTELY HAS to be a system for first stabalising CO2 emmissions and then driving them down. I recommend you read a book called 'Six Degrees' by Mark Lynas or 'The Last Generation' by Fred Pearce. They are both heavily annotated and reference material from scources NOT funded by the energy giants. You obviously do not understand what we are on the brink of. check this out in the mean time... http://vimeo.com/1709110?pg=embed&sec= The Husband

I actually agree with you about fusion. There are a number of large scale projects (the chinese, europeans and the americans are at it) in the off that will hopefully produce useable fusion within 50 years. However the problem with peak oil is not one of oil depletion but one of carbon emmissions (and of course, demand outstripping supply and forcing oil prices into the stratosphere - a definite possibility though there is an argument that suggests that oil prices will continue to spike but will be curtailed by 'unaffordability' - at which point the oil companies collapse). Oil sands emit 30 to 70 percent more greenhouse gases than the average oil consumed. This is the real issue, as it is with all carbon burning. And as the 'clean' ('clean' coal - i ask you ) oil runs out more carbon heavy methods of oil extraction will proliferate. CCS (carbon capture and storage) is still completely unproven at the commercial level and is at least 10 or even 20 years away from being used in an effective CO2 reducing manner - by which point of course, it will be too late... If we really are at the carbon tipping point (which i (and all the scientists NOT paid by Exxon Mobil) absolutely believe we are), where runnaway global warming and the end of our current civalisation becomes unavoidable. If we really are at this point then we have to stop burning carbon as quickly as possible, use renewables, strive for energy efficiency and hold on in there until nuclear fusion is a reality. kara's husband again

Six billion people are sustainable. People get very confused with this issue. What is NOT sustainable is the consumer society that the developed world 'enjoys' (i say that ironically - because there is more and more research out there to suggest that we in the developed world are unhappier than we have ever been and the misery felt by the rest of the world who make our future rubbish as cheeply as possible). It is consumerisim that is destroying the environment - not the six billion people on it.

I'm not sure you understand what wind energy represents... indeed the whole renewable energy sector represents. We are at a juncture in human history where we either choose to try and live a life and build a society that is built to last or we succum to our own stupidness and greed and destroy our childrens future. I hardly think that digging up thousands upon thousands of hectares of pristeen countryside, in the most ugly of fasions i might add, in order to satisfy short term gains could be classified as sustainable. Gains that are reducing as the price of oil reduces (oil sands are only viable if the price of oil is very high) (you might not be aware of this but Shell who are 'committed to tar sands' have lost 30 million dollars in the first three months of business this year alone. Forgive the pun but oil sand really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. It is a desperate act of a society in the final death throws of an addiction that will be the end of it. Of course turbines disturb the land they are put upon. I'm not sure i agree with them on the large scale on land... they are better of shore where wind levels are more consistant. But that doesn't negate the need for them on land, closer to the point off use (you get rather large losses associated with the transportation of electricity produced this way). they may upset the local environment but at least the source of energy is continuous... unlike digging up oil in alberta... once its dug up and used it will never return. What is sustainable about that then? BTW this is kara's husband!! And i'm quite willing to educate you further if you so wish... i have plenty more where that came from!!

It IS being extracted!!!! Also the implications of mining for tar sands are huge. 2 tons of sand to be extracted to produce just one barrel of oil, causing mass environmental destruction as this has to be strip mined. tar.bmp tar.bmp

+1 ALWAYS check your sources. The Manhatton Institute looks like a lobbying machine. Here's a quote from their site for anyone wanting to donate (I've highlighted the obvious bits. "For over 30 years, the Manhattan Institute has been turning intellect into influence. But our work would be impossible without the generosity of people like you. Please join us. The Manhattan Institute has always been a source of fresh, market oriented ideas that guide policymakers and inform the public debate. Our senior fellows are key participants in the most crucial policy arenas; policing, counterterrorism, healthcare, welfare, race, education, energy, and tort reform. Our quarterly City Journal is widely regarded as the nation's premier magazine about urban governance and civic life. And intelligent marketing ensures that our influence well exceeds our resources. As a Sponsor, you will ensure that our message continues to be heard, and that our publications continue to land in the right hands. But much more importantly, you'll become a part of our community-receiving selected publications and invitations to our luncheon forums, conferences, and events. We'll put you in direct contact with some of today's most exciting ideas and revolutionary thinkers. I welcome you to join us. Your tax-deductible gift will help us build a country where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.

Are you going to be growing food in your garden, or is it just ornamental?

So at this point in time, would you say that: 'Further house price falls plus stable or increased interest on savings but paying rent' outweighs the risk of hyperinflation and loss of all savings and ending up with no home and no cash? Only I've nearly broken out in a sweat several times when reading the likes of Daddybear's posts about 'Getting out of cash' etc. So just wondering if anyone else at this point in time had these concerns too.

Ooooo......if I didn't have little 'uns I'd be all over that idea.

I know this has been covered in one form or another several times before but..... If you had the cash to buy a property outright now, so no mortgage and no rent, would you? and why/why not? Thanks KG Edit to say - To buy a house to live in rather than rent

Renting - The house I rent I pay £585pm, £7,020 pa rent. 25 years = £175,500 Current values of similar properties are about £125k (about 25% off peak sold) Mortgage of £125k @100% over 25 years @5.5% = £777pm or £9324 per year or £233,100 over 25 years However ....... Buying - With a £25k deposit and a £100k mortgage (5% 25 years) = £7,092 pa repayment. 25 years = £177,300 A £25k savings pot at 4% =£1000pa. Savings pot after 25 years =£66,645 I think the rental prices V's house prices near me are getting closer.

I'm running the risk of being totally shot down here, but I'm going to be a bit controversial now and agree with Hamish - (But only in relation to the house I rent may I add) Renting - The house I rent I pay £7,020 pa rent. 25 years = £175,500 Current values of similar properties are about £125k (about 25% off peak sold) £25k in bank earning 4% =£1000pa. Savings pot after 25 years =£66,645 Buying - With a £25k deposit and a £100k mortgage (5% 25 years) = £7,092 pa repayment. 25 years = £177,300 So I guess what I am saying here, is in this case, is after the 25 years, the renter has a savings pot, but still has to pay rent, where as, the buyer, has no savings pot but no longer needs to pay anything for their mortgage. I also see that to achieve these benefits of buying over renting, the mortgage payments and rental payments have to be in line. I am aware that most places in the country are NOT in line and often mortgage payments would be double that of renting. Obviously we could all do a similar calculation for our own area/house, and have completely different results. So why don't I buy rather than rent if the ratios are so good in my area? My str fund interest just about covers our rental costs, which allows us to break even. This also allows us to save pretty heavily too. Also I don't want to buy a house, I want to buy land to self-build. I also strongly believe that house/land prices have a lot further to go over the next couple of years so I'm happy to sit back a while longer yet.