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norseraider

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Everything posted by norseraider

  1. The penguins in Whipsnade have lovely views and a pool -- one rule for them and another for the rest of us....
  2. Two stories: 1) A pal is trying to sell his (nice) house, because he realises it is worth silly money. He intends to move out further on the London commuter line and buy in a cheaper neighbourhood. However he's just had a buyer pull out. The buyer in question was aiming to BTL the place, but apparently thought better of this once the tax changes came along in the Autumn Statement. 2) A mate in Dartford is having his rental gaff sold out from beneath him, poor chap. Apparently the landlord has decided it's better to cash in now and take the money rather than rental income. Real stories, real people - Stay classy, Kent.
  3. Don't knock it - it's got an "L" shaped living room apparently!
  4. +1 on this. The markets have decided they want to kick the opium of low interest rates. We need higher returns on investment to incentivise proper allocation of resources, to provide an alternative to excessive risk-taking, and to chip away at the cheap credit that has been driving bubbles & volatility for a long time now. In short, this is a sign of strength, not weakness, and that's why the markets have reacted positively.
  5. +1 -- they have suffered enough (I'm 36 but never really grew up)
  6. Anyone who works in Whiteley might find Dubai a bit overwhelming It's a purpose-built commercial estate next to Fareham - my home town, and a very, er, conventional place. I suspect that Middle Eastern food might be a bit too much for them (chickpeas!! what are they?! etc).
  7. An notable injection of sentiment directly into the Square Mile: http://www.cityam.com/227667/bubble-bubble-housing-trouble-londons-property-market-is-scarily-close-to-a-crash
  8. "Number of football pitches parked solid with top of the line Bentleys"
  9. We need to get back to when 1p bought you all the sweets in the shop
  10. We need to help these people! Have you no heart?! Lol. But seriously, read it as "we need to escape before TPTB decide we need to help these idiots".
  11. Was going to say the same -- I didn't blink at this! But I wouldn't buy it
  12. I've had two deposit disputes in the last 5 years, and I can tell you now that this isn't true. The landlord has to make a case to withhold your deposit, and if there is any doubt about it, you will get the money back. I recovered almost all of my deposit in both cases - the letting agents were just chancing their arm and had no appetite for a real fight. Also, if your deposit hasn't been protected then I believe you are entitled to serious compensation, so explore that first!
  13. What you describe is akin to insurance - the spreading of the risk burden amongst many participants to reduce the individual chance of a very large loss. Insurance is a great invention - it allowed individuals to build up the merchant navy without facing individual ruin in the case of storms, etc. Insurance works best when [a] there is no correlation between individual misfortunes (a counter example, a recession can cause many people to lose their jobs - the misfortune is correlated, so the burden is magnified and an insurance scheme may fail to cope), and where people cannot affect the risk exposure (a counter example is moral hazard - for example, "I've got car insurance so I can drive like an idiot"). So, in general, if 1000 tight-rope walkers got together and bought a shared safety net*, then we succeed on condition [a] (it's unlikely that some macro event can make all 1000 of them more likely to fall), but potentially we fail on condition (because it's possible that the safety net will make some of them more reckless). If you ignore the latter effect then your safety net fund is going to end up bust! [*the analogy works best if you imagine the safety net can only be used once before needing replacement - otherwise the amortised cost is zero!] So, yes, some "safety nets" can be used to encourage innovation and risk-taking, via careful use of condition (I would argue that "limited liability" via companies is one such mechanism). However, it's a matter of using the right tool for a given job, and being careful to understand all the consequences!
  14. "loft conversion, 4 beds, three bathrooms, new kitchen and big garden. It was priced at £280k." I'm not a psychic, but we are not talking about London here, are we?
  15. Funnily enough I was thinking about this today. I recently bought a campervan electrical hook-up cable - that's not really relevant, except for the fact that such cables need to be made to certain safety standards, because you are using electricity in potentially wet conditions, etc. Whilst shopping there were essentially two alternatives - dirt cheap and potentially dangerous; OR expensive but (believably) safe. I was quite surprised by the lack of choice and options, the lack of product information, and the wide availability of dubious products. The dubious products are usually implicitly mis-marketed (i.e. they do not carry a warning that they are unsuitable for use in wet weather), and the retailers (inc Amazon, ebay) seem to have little interest in dealing with this. In the end I opted for a decent cable and paid up, because I don't fancy catching on fire
  16. Our rent in London just went up by 8% - we might have been able to argue a bit lower but I think they know we don't want to move!
  17. It's all anecdotal innit, but there have been a couple more "for sale" signs appear on these posh streets in Greenwich - by far the most activity I've seen on them in the last 2 years. They seem to be going "SSTC" fairly swiftly - no more than a couple of months. At least one was on the market and then came off again pretty quickly. My instinct is that people are calling the top of the market and fleeing to the country with a pocket full of dosh. Example: http://www.johnpayne.com/p/4-bedroom-house-in-circus-street-west-greenwich-se10-193264/
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