retz

A shame indeed, even more so because our Scientists and Engineers tend to be top notch and highly competent in comparison with other nations (yes, even the Germans). But what can we expect from a culture which puts personal wealth and gratification above all else? You end up with all the money going to the pencil pushers and the people who make stuff get made redundant and left to rot on the scrapheap. This IMO has been one of the major downfalls of British society.

Where I live we have the same thing, they are called "Communal/Private areas" and yes, they are awful. Basically they charge you for a parking space. They are just another way of sucking money out of the people who live there, they basically charge you X amount a month and don't do any work. Speaking to people the Council will only adopt the road up to the point it is no longer tarmacked (Communal areas have those terrible red bricks or whatever), the residents then have to form a group and then appoint a management company to do the work, however on new builds they cannot take ownership of the area UNTIL 2 years after the final house has been built. Also, the management companies which are initially appointed are overpriced and are run by the big builders like Taylor Wimpey, Bovis, etc. This means residents face being squeezed from 2 fronts, I.E. their council tax goes up and so does their communal maintenance charge, so in affect you can be paying £170 council tax a month and another £40 odd maintenance. My advice is to steer well clear.

In an ideal world full privatisation would lead to the scraping of road tax, but having seen how it's done in Britain, we'll get semi-privatisation and the worst of both worlds, road tax and private charges as well.

Actually, this is because a lot of old mortgages are on Halifax's old contract of defaulting to the SVR, new mortgage contracts with the Halifax now default to something called the HR (Homeowner Rate) which is at something like 4%. This is to push people off of the SVR and onto Halifax's fixed rates, nothing more. I know because I'm coming to the end of my Halifax fixed rate and will be going onto the SVR, like many people in my situation it was better than taking up a new fixed rate, as our good friends in the banks now want something like £1000 - £1500 for a 2 year fixed.

Is the taxpayer going to be paying for this? I thought we were skint.

Well as a young man I save around £200 - £300 pcm, sadly I don't live at home anymore. TBH I think someone would need to save around £500+ pcm to get more than pocket money out of it.

Funnily enough I got a letter from The Halifax telling me my fixed rate was almost up and I should switch to another, once that was over I could look forward to going onto their 'Homeowner Variable Rate' of 3.99%. The SVR is currently 3.50%.

I wonder how many people even with the discount can afford it? http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/housing_issues/Improving_social_housing/who_gets_social_housing # economically inactive: 60 per cent of social housing tenants are economically inactive (31 per cent are retired and 29 per cent are otherwise economically inactive) # unemployed: 6 per cent of social housing tenants are unemployed

"He is expected to offer a coalition government, with former Greek central banker Lucas Papademos at the helm."

Don't know, the square footage of the property will be on the energy certificate if that helps at all. That is as probably close as you will get to something which uses the same method for measurement every time.

£54K to study Engineering/Science/IT (don't know why this is separate now) related degrees. Yeah sure.

Will be interesting to see where this goes. But I assume that nothing will come of it. If anything did; what would happen to all the the homes built which are under spec? I mean if the Government brings in legislation to say that homes can't be under a certain square footage, it pretty much makes the current batch of homes illegal and worst of all (for the owners) worthless and probably un-mortgageable. I can smell the claims already... It would be funny seeing the builders having to go back and redo the homes that are too small to bring them up to standard.

Go one Guvna.

Ok, I'll bite. I'm 26 (just turned last Friday), I work in IT as a Test Engineer, programming in various languages (C, C++, Java, C#, etc). I brought a house after living in some right s***holes around Cambridge (had some savings when I worked as a kid and some inheritance), currently on a little over 25k. Have little savings now, so decided to learn how to ride a Motorbike and get a sabatical next year; which I plan to use to do some travelling. Sad thing is, and I'll probably come across as an ungrateful little cuss typing this but I would much prefer to work in Mechanical Engineering (my father was a Engineer) and I didn't really catch the bug when I was younger (he introduced me to computers when I was about 5). Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any entry points for us Computer nerds, apart from going back to University; which I will not do! Once I can ride I'm comtemplating selling the house, packing in the job and f***ing off forever, but I reckon thats just the rebellious single guy in me speaking. Apart from that I'm pretty good to be honest.

The scum are rioting, the rich and the toffs are creaming off the top, and everybody else in the middle gets shafted. Nothing really changes....

So if they sell their Shared Equity loans; what stops the people who buy them, calling the loans in, or changing the terms? Sounds pretty scary IMO. (I don't know much about how this works, so I'm curious).

They are still building where I live. Houses seem to be selling for the markup from what I gather. Although one of the their sales ladies told me they were having trouble shifting the 4/5 bedroom properties.

Always the 'lack of knowledge' crap, more like as they stated in the first sentence - crappy wages and no desire to train the workforce. You reap what you sow.

He who dares, wins Rodders.

They could, but they won't. Like where I live, they stopped giving people front gardens to save space...So instead of a nice front garden you get....a car park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline

What a load of balls.

Executive style? WTF does that mean?

Hehe, they had a balls up at the tax office which told the Students Loans Company I was unemployed. Cue a letter demanding I tell them what I was up to, and the threat of a £150 fine if I didn't respond....

Cannot be built on at the moment... But in the future you never know.