hotblack42

Yes & also many lenders charge a hefty upfront fee & borrowers whose equity evaporates, but can still just about to pay SVR when the initial deal expires, are a smashing little cash cow in a few years. Lovely jubbly. Not sure why these “madness” threads keep popping up when we’ve put the issue to bed previously. Anyway, don’t try to fight the banks, they have over 500 years of experience of winning out over customers & when push comes to shove governments always put them ahead of the electorate. Including Labour.

Fine, whatever. Its not in immediate danger, woo hoo. Its expensive primarily because rich wastes of space want to live with other rich people. For anyone sane a property's value rests on fundamentals and there are thousands and thousands of premium coastal homes with as good or better fundamentals for less than half the price. All they lack is 'Ooh look everyone I live in Sandbanks' bragging rights. Its pathetic. To me 'where's that?' is just as good a reaction to location. In fact its better, much better.

Pop quiz, who gets better off if everyone works harder? Clue: not the people in the lower half of the income distribution. You seem to have bought into the winners & losers world view & so long as you are a winner, the losers are SEP.

Monkey see. Monkey do. Monkey has his ass kicked. This is so predictable. Can I go & buy nearly new RAV4 PHEV for £10K now? Or is it just sad sack blingmobiles with ridiculous running costs that have crashed?

This thread packed with pleased with themselves posts by the demographic for whom EVs make the most sense. What use is this to the rest of us? It must be really getting on the tits of the majority that the lions share of the benefit of energy schemes & emerging tech is going to those who really don’t need a helping hand - if anything they should be paying in more to help the less fortunate benefit. More information on how people without drives, the means or opportunity to fit solar systems & typical household incomes can have their lives revolutionised by EVs would be great. Ta.

Or.. house prices stagnate, deflating in real terms, slowly but relentlessly for more than a decade. By that time only middle aged & older adults will have any memory of house prices booming & will be realising they could be retired or dead by the time that happened again. Younger adults will buy expecting only shelter not ‘profit’. The western world permanently falls out of love with property & realises what a ridiculous diversion of time, money & energy being besotted with it was. This has always been my greatest objection - the fetishisation of houses in the first world. The root of excessive HPI. A man can dream..

Ridiculous even for £522k. Lovely houses with proper flat bedroom ceilings & an attic can be had in that area for similar. Where do you put the unpacked boxes from the 2 previous moves if you’ve no loft?🤣

All the gyms I have belonged to have a massive surge in membership, & then a dramatic fall in attendance, post Christmas. I rely on this behaviour, queuing for machines is unacceptable, ideally there are no more than 5 other people present & I’m talking about the big ones with 30+ machines & large free weight / floor work areas. In hotel gyms I am frequently alone while the weak minded stew, hungover, in their beds just about dragging themselves down for the end of brekkie. If a gym carried on being packed into Spring it’s time to move on. Yes I am fun at parties🤣

I have no idea why public sector project costs are persistently under estimated. Big corporates used to do that but got tired of always paying 2-4x the original estimate & started applying some discipline to the early stages of projects & using past experience rather than optimism. It’s as if there are people in charge of council & govt department projects who are not embarrassed by wasting public money🤔

A couple of points for balance. The public sector projects delivered on time to budget never make the news. I have worked with analysts from consultancies who tried to maintain good project governance while working with self important civil service w*nkers who sabotaged initiatives with constant changes to requirements. I know many on here love to demonise these “parasites”, but looking back some of them were clearly traumatised by the experience of trying to keep government projects on track. I was thinking about this the other day. I’d love to have the authority to walk into a room of ministers & mandarins & tell them yes I will build what you need, but no you are not in charge of the project & no you cannot change your minds or interfere with the development. Only independently verified changes to requirements due to circumstances evolving after project initiation will be permitted. You will have no access to the staff building the solution other than via project office. You set the requirements, I build it. End of.

Pakistan detonating one of their Hiroshima scale weapons in Iran may be the least worst of all possible nuclear escalations. It’s a horrific possibility, but if it provides the wake up call the world needs to put the damn things beyond use then it might just save mankind’s skin. As an aside, surely no one sane would launch a 60-70km range nuclear weapon. You’d put your own safety at risk unless you could immediately fly hundreds of miles away😳

Indeed. Sandbanks house prices make no sense - it would be possible to buy luxury homes in 3 other coastal, riverside or Spa town locations & fund the cost of running, & travelling between them, for the cost of one place in that toxic nest of insecure, narcissistic control freaks. The fact that they are destroying some or all of their family’s wealth by buying a home in a super bubble location that is ultimately unviable tells you all you need to know about their personalities.

Look we’ve had a brief purple patch of near real returns on zero risk. It was never going to last. Moving on..

I don’t care if he wins. I’ll just switch or ffwd if I hear him on the media until he dies. It will be soon enough. Good riddance. I won’t bother with the coverage of his funeral either. For context I have family in the USA. That’s how little I think of this self absorbed weirdo chancer.

10%? looks like you’ve managed to avoid the public sector, & in particular, education. I read a report about 5 years ago that 10% set out to actively sabotage their employer’s business initiatives & established processes. USA IIRC - a nation of winners & losers. 10% sounds high, but there are regular murders carried out by sacked & wronged employees.. 🤔😳

The numbers don’t lie. Beating a historic record by such a margin is deeply impressive irrespective of Boeing’s woes. Refreshing to see a firm forge ahead like this - no merger, no special situation, just huge organic growth. Side issue: doesn’t signal weaning off fossil fuels by the 2030s. Don’t these crates fly millions of miles over 30 years or so? That’s mid 2050s 🤔

Some of the anti WFH on here appear to like the office, want to impose that on colleagues & like employers to hold the whip hand. Weird.

He’s a mug. Wife wants him to hand 24x7. 2x55 min commute 3x a week too much for bobba? Aw Diddums. He needs to man up. Set boundaries with wife & agree a sensible balance between working with her to raise the kids & delivering for his employer. Also needs to have a candid conversation with employer - family equally important so the 3 days needs to be a contractual maximum, ideally 12 days pcm with flexibility on his side only. If he’s not in a position to negotiate then upskill and/or leave. My arrangement is 6 days pcm. 2x2hrs commute with 2x1hr work done on train. I am always able to get a table seat. Costs about £170pcm. Everyone is happy.

Well that’s an interesting anecdotal & I’m fully prepared to believe that it will be borne out as ownership grows. Eventually though, Wayne will get hold of an old, fast EV & you can be sure that he will rag & abuse it until it goes bang. As for my bike, yes it is a very fast race replica. It would pull viciously hard until well over 150mph in the hands of a pro racer. I treat it with huge respect, occasionally using its capabilities, but only about 80%. Any more beans & holding on becomes rather physical & inputs trickier. 80% is about comparable to an R8 V10 RWD, full chat. It’s much easier to make a fast bike than a fast car.

Demand. We now live 15min walk from the sea. Not being prepared to go ‘all in’ made life very difficult - had to buy a wreck & spend 2 years renovating it. IIRC only about a million people are walking distance from the sea in the UK. Judging from our experience It seems about half the population would like to be.

Simple, don’t watch them. Ignore anyone who witters on having doom scrolled this stuff. Jettison them if necessary, they add no value. Brief fact checked daily bulletins are enough for people with things to do.

You’re right. However, either way the UK is lumbered with of a plethora of fat f*cks. Yes it is extremely tough for them to eat well & exercise. A minority literally can’t afford to eat healthily, they need assistance which must be targeted. The rest need to face the fear, discomfort & boredom & do it anyway.

https://amp.dw.com/en/red-sea-attacks-halt-tesla-production-at-german-plant/a-67959260 I don’t wish Tesla ill, it’s a small part of my pension, but the sooner it settles down to become just another vehicle manufacturer with good & bad years, occasional production problems & all the issues well established firms have to deal with, including close competition, the better. This will commodify their products, driving the prices down & encouraging a shift to cheaper to own models without unnecessary & unsafe high performance capabilities. High performance cars are great fun until a collision, or something breaks very expensively.

Or somewhere in between? That could still involve 100s of thousands of households with decent income but no equity locked into painful SVRs for years on end. Think about how profitable that is. Business is business. Personally I’ll be looking to gradually accumulate more bank shares on the dips. I’m not convinced by the bank doom on here. The tone suggests that these posts are driven by dislike of bankers, materialism & the Tories, rather than objective analysis of past performance, prevailing economics & financial risk. Too much in UK banks’ favour - vast relative to customers, even wealthy ones, & all but far left politicians ultimately have their back in a crisis. IMHO.

Always distressing for those left behind, however old the departed. It’s an ill wind though.. often frees up a family home & their, often considerable, carbon footprint suddenly drops to zero.