Clarella

Currently half way through- the overwhelming theme/ point that he makes is that the advent of printed advertising and faster media communication has exacerbated the virus eg tv, mags, Internet etc as the visual images advertisers use to spread the 'virus' are so immediate and fast: the virus has always existed (the tulip rush, Greek ideals of body image etc, the NEED to wear huge white wigs to be cool 300 years ago) but it's now harder to avoid the visual bombardment and confusion between needs and wants. Hence I make a home visit to the parent of a pupil I teach who is on incapacity benefits and basically on the bread line and see a hugh flat screen tv, DVD, playststion and laptop (none of which I can afford or need). I later hear via pupil it's all been sent back to the shop and realise it's some god foresaken shop like brighthouse, that feeds and satisfies affluenza viruses and identifies all these things as utter needs in today's society. My pupil couldn't stand one one leg to kick a football or recognise numbers to 20 until he learnt which channel cbeebies was on (27) and I ran a programme of lots of 'physio' (football!).

apologies, will post my questions above somewhere else on this site!

Hi, special needs teacher, no knowledge about economics (other than recent 'running a business' DT topic where we actually made a profit of £100 selling petunias and biscuits!) but attempting to buy first family house together with partner, an architect, finding tricky and priced out of market in most or our more favoured areas. We are both in our early thirties and I am quite surprised at how difficult it is considering our wages. Our experiences of house buying so far are awful. We do really want something that can be done up and developed (him being an architect!) but appear to be battling against investers every step of the way, constantly gazumped, and being used as bait to get investors to raise their offers. Of course they would spend less doing a house up than us so tend to be able to pay more. This has led me to curse sara beeney and all those property shows for creating a Market where the only young professionals who actually can buy at our age are the dentists, doctors, lawers etc. I also firmly belive that school league tables have had a huge impact on house prices in certain areas and is leading to a segregated society, I saw it happening in an innercity school I taught at for 5 years. Interestingly, when it comes to SEN, parents have no choice, thus I teach children from very priveledged and very poor backgrounds. Ironically now, some areas I know do not have the most amazing schools judged by ofsted as some parents would guess, these schools don't have to try as hard as in other areas to engage and motivate! I am trying to persuade my partner of this but not much luck so far! My question is this: have any analysts factored in to their predictions about this recession and house price crash the impact of information technologies, e.g. Websites, zoopla etc, media, this very website? Could having easy access to more info than during the last house price crash and recession in the 90's perhaps keep prices afloat in some areas as we can scan last sold prices etc? Was it information and media technologies that created the rate of the boom in the first place (including property shows)? Will this buffer the housing economy in ways not previously experienced in history? Will it perhaps create a further segregated community off the back of school data, so house prices fall more in less favoured areas but people fight over houses in other more fvoured areas, fuelled by information gleaned from the Internet? If we factor in the hugely increased numbers of buy to let properties in existence today compared to during the last bust, will this keep house prices high due to less supply? Or do the bare facts of the economy and future interst rates compete with any information communication technology's ability to counter house falls? I can't find any reports that factor in the force of the Internet in all this, and my partner says not that many people will scour these sources as we do (especially me with this long holiday!) and so to discount it. Anyone have any thoughts? I reckon would make a nice phd project for someone!