AgeingBabyBoomer

Establish that you have no liability for your landlods debt whatsoever. If he has just been pocketingthe rent, he may have been pulling some other scam. BTW Commiserations - so much for the Shorthold Assured Tenancy, only Assured so long as the landlord stays solent. ABB

I think it is time we brought back the usury laws. ABB

deus ex machina, You have it all wrong. The problem is that British children have elected to remove themselves form the labour market and instead are spoiling themselves with 'free at the point of use' education. Back in the day, when 'Britain really was Great', they used to do a lot of the jobs that the adults didn't want to do. (e.g.Coal mining, chimney sweep, picking over the rubbish dumps etc) I think the only way to fix it is to ban education fo rchildren and force them to work for their pocket money - let's see the Eastern Blockers undercut that! ABB

Ironically, the US pundits I have seen on CNBC point to the UK for reasssurance, saying 'they have a property bubble, but had a soft landing in 2005' Go figure Yikes ABB

I would tend to concur with padders - a crash in the US will have an effect on the percieved risk of securitised debt. Since both the UK and US markets are relying on this, the the UK will also be affected by the contagion. ABB

Oh, my mistake - though I am horrified that taper relief is available to the other properties - no wonder there is such a great hole in public finances. Hopefully Mr Brown will close up this haemorrage in the tax system pretty soon. ABB

Isn't a part of the BTL free money scam involve claiming it as PPR, so that taper relief applies? Let's face it , if they are prepared to lie about incomes on a self-cert mortgage, lie about the buying price to keep the headline figures looking peachy (whilst being 'gifted' the deposit from their mortgage lender), then a few porkies to the IR is probably a walk in the park. I expect without this tax dodge the figures for BTL failed to stack up a long time ago - even if there were capital gains to be had. ABB

So, that'll be £200K then ABB PS Hahahahahahaha

Commiserations - however, 17 years of marriage down the pan because all her friends and acquaintances buoght and you didn't? Seems fairly lame grounds for divorce - many women suffer a lot worse than that before even thinking about divorce. Not sure what the solution is - call of bluff..? (may backfire vey nastily, especialy with kids involved, but if she is serious, you will soon find out) Best of luck ABB

"Yeah, yeah - I was wrong - there will be an extra 1.36 billion muslims by 2025. " I find the tone of that comment offensive. Are you saying that other religions have more right to reproduce, you don't resent the extra Chinese or Indians, just the extra muslims? Maybe you should fly out there with a catering pack of HPC condoms, may work out to be a saving when you finally buy a house.... ABB

Hmmm, 'You could get an awful lot of torches for £30k' Yes, but not too many houses - one assumes these guys also need somewhere to live, close enough to London to be able to get to work. 'Could each station not have one dedicated torch carrier?' They probably already do - bear in mind it can be over a mile between stations on certain parts of the Underground. If you were stuck down there in the dark, smoke filled tunnel - would 30k seem that excessive to avoid the wait..? 'You could give people a free torch when they buy their oyster card.' I'm sure that would bring the frightened public flocking back to public transport. 'Are you suggesting that if train drivers were not otherwise needed they should still be employed at 30K a year in case they are needed to carry a torch in the event of a terrorist attack?' YES, amongst other things. Are you assuming that their only function is to sit in the cab doing sod all for a full shift? Ditto for bus conductors - enough people here are up in arms when somebody gets stabbed on a bus, didn't used to happen back in the day - in fact attacks on bus drviers only started once the conductors had been got rid of. The same mentality would say we have Gatsos now, so we don't need any police.... ABB

^^ Yes, they have the EU laminate mountain to work away Seriously I suspect it is probably the cheapest cladding available. Perhaps this tells us something about the intended lifespan of these units - i.e. as long as it takes to flip. (though even that might be to long) ABB

As I remember it, in the anecdotals from the survivors. most who were groping there way along the darkened smoke filled tunnels were extremely pleased when they met the driver coming the other way with a torch to help them to safety. Would not have happened with a driverless train....perceptions of the usefulness and value of human operatives change wildly when there is a disaster... ABB

'We don't need them' - until a bomb goes off -then we give them an OBE ABB

I agree - but I don't think the lottery is the way for Joe Ordinary to get rich. Unfortunately, Joe Ordinary does think that.. And don't get me going about the good causes - you might hve thought that there have been enough outcries over them that it might afect sales - no such hope. Branson bid for the franchise last time around, and wanted to pay out many more, smaller wins - at least improving the odds. Somehow, despite thier hapless record, Camelot managed to hang on to their monopoly. As for NuLab - I knew Socialism had disappeared from the agenda when I saw Paul Boateng on the news around 1998, talking aout tobacco smuggling. That firebrand lefty socialist (of 'Today Brent East, tomorrow Westminster" fame), uttered on National TV: "Tobacco duty is part of the nation's revenue stream" - so it kills people, but that's OK so long as all the taxes are paid.... ABB (Apologies for drifting off topic)

To me the lottery is a tacit admission that we live in a poorly rewarded, wage slave society - where Joe Ordinary's only chance of escaping is by buying a lottery ticket and winning. ABB

'They' can do this already - withput GPS. Traffic master systems use roadside detectors to monitor traffic. Ever notice those little box thingies dangling from motorway bridges - they are not speed traps - nor, as I once thought, fog detectors, but traffic sensors mainly desgined to detect queues of traffic. They have been around since the early nineties (I think). ABB PS IF you think it is bad here - on certain busy sections of the Toll motorways in France, you are timed on entry to the system, and at exit. If your aveage speed is over the limit you get to pay afine as well as the tolls . Private enterprise eh!

Sorry brainclamp - that assertion is plain false During the 18th Century there was a net outflow of bodies from the UK to the US. Ireland saw a net emigration outflow for nearly 200 years, until they joined the EU. (though I think it is still true that more Irish nationals live outside Eire than in it) I have to agree with the other posters that your obsession with immigration seems to be just that - an obsession. I'm not saying your are racist - but maybe xenophobic. Also, economic migration is a two way street - proof: 'Auf Wiedersehen Pet' I do believe immigration is occurring to an extent, but don't see the link to high land/property prices. I would like to see you start your own threads where you present some real numbers to back your arguments, rather than some vague impression gleaned from reading the Express or Mail - with which you then hijack somebody else's post. ABB

Nothing new about the data gathering - I suspect the charge was lead by the bigcorps long before the govt wised up. I suspect also that our curent awareness of theextent of data gathering is due in part to the Data Protection Act - until then, nobody had any idea what or how much data was being harvested from them. Oh, and those questions to 'protect your privacy' are really to stop any old hoodie with a mobile ringing up and empyting your account. Apparently, the 'bank' person has access to each and every bit of authentication info you provided - a very fallible system, particularly if the operative on the line is outside British jurusdiction. As regards secretive data gathering - the digibox in your living room is probably the worst culprit, especially if you start using 'interactive' features. ABB

Let us remember that 8 million withdrawn from a UK bank`s reserves means that`s a 100 million they will then be unable to lend. Very astute observation CTT - so FRB is basically as badly geared as the average BTL, and works in avery nasty way in reverse..... scary ABB

The taxman has had this right since taxmen were invented - it is not a NuLab invention. However, I might agree with the byline for this thread, iff David Cameron stands up and declares that he would repeal any laws that woudl allow the above to happen (not holding my breath there - after all the Poll Tax and its hated brother the Council Tax were his own ideologues' creation in the first place) ABB

Hmmmmm, Blah blah blah You shold not be so quick with the tongue if you don't know the facts. The value gain has bot been earned by yoursefl and your labours, your value gain is due to the nearby 'good' school. In an ideal world, the school should get a slice of your gain, since it has only arisen due to the generosity of the community in providing the facility that upped your land value in the first place. (if it is a state school , it was provided from my taxes) How would you feel about giving all your profit to the school? After all, its only money - right? ABB

'Does anything eat wasps' is supposed to bequite good. January sales are a great time for picking up cheap books! ABB

So which is it, hard work or good luck? Suppose you bought in 1991, worked equally hard, and watched the value of your property collapse? Hard work or bad luck? ABB

Probably slightly off-topic, buthaving read two books over the last few days, I feel they sould be recommended: 1) 'Is it just me, or is everything shit?' - Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur. Not really about HPC, more a glossary of terms for people with Grumpy Old Man Syndrome (yup, that's me:)) On the property ladder, they have this to say: 'A marvellous system that separates society into two camps: the smug and the damned' Lots of the rants here on HPC can be found in this book - very funny... 2) 'Boom bust 2010' - Fred Harrison A real eye opener - explains why we have property booms (nothing to do with property, but due to land value inflation), even propses an economic solution - one which our governments know about and have tried and failed to implement twice this cehntury. Scarily accurate sequence of events unfolding according to his predictions, though 2010 seems distant and a long time to wait, his analyisis of previous cycles is very convincing, and the 18 year business cycle seems impervious to external perturbations (like ecnomic intervention). Never has the syying 'don't judge a book by its cover' been true (why do they need to make the dust jackets no these things so naff?) - really worth a read. ABB