SCUMBAG

There was a detailed thread on this a couple months back. It was attributed to a characteristic of a market that is about to suffer a severe fall. I think the gist of it was that the market falls as professional speculators realise the top of the market has been reached, pull out and prices fall causing the first trough. Amateurs then rush in (the amateur BTL crowd) to take their place, there is a boom again as everyone thinks the market is recovering and causes the second peak and then the whole thing freefalls.

I suppose I didn't make it clear. The original poster gets large salary hikes, works for a government contractor, the cost still ends up with the taxpayer. It's an indirect form of overinflated government wage inflation. As a side issue, I have usually observed that the very well paid jobs can be cut easily. So in the long term there is little net gain. So perhaps a well paid government contractor is actually providing value for money for the taxpayer after all?

The fact that I have a final salary pension and a secure job in a very specialised area that won't be cut during the impending recession. I'm not insecure about it. The only reason I signed up to this forum is because public sector workers kept getting a beasting for causing the housing boom because we apparently get paid too much money. I am very happy working where I am and I am not motivated by money.

There are a lot of people that were similarly sold endowment mortgages in the 80s and early 90s. There is a huge gap with many of them. So a similar thing will happen around 2010-2015. Ironically, the last crash may cause the next one. Then of course the interest only may cause the one after this one. Spoke to my financial advisor on Sunday. He wanted to know what I ultimately wanted to do with my capital. I said I originally intended it as a deposit for a house about 5 years ago but got priced out by the housing boom. I said I wanted to tie it up somewhere where the capital would appreciate until houses became affordable again. He said it was very wise because "We had this in the 70s too. Also you have to remember, and this applies to stocks and shares as well as the housing market, that if something is capable of making a lot of money then it is capable of loosing a lot of money too. I think you are very wise and making the right decisions". My boss (a Chartered Nuclear Physicist with a first) says she cannot see house prices coming down much. But then she lives in her own world as far as property goes. She bought her house in 1995 for £40k and paid her mortgage off. She’s only 32.

My mate is a civil servant in Cardiff and he earns £14k. I am a Chartered Engineer with a first in Electrical Electronic Engineering and a Masters in nuclear physics. I am currently a civil servant writing software for the Royal Navy to make sure nuclear submarines do not accidentally destroy Plymouth. We get around 3.5% pay rise a year. I currently am on £24k. I am 31 and have been working since I became an apprentice at the age of 16 doing all my study through night school. We are the evil blood sucking public sector scumbags that are a burden on the taxpayer and do not represent value for money. Willing, can I apply for a job at your place? I would probably walk the interview.

Surely if you are the sort of person that goes to see a financial advisor then you are the sort of person that likes to have their finances in order?

Even if he did lie (and he made a good case for saying he didn't) he'd be a bit silly to admit to commiting a crime on a public internet forum wouldn't he? I don't think lying on self cert mortages is a myth though. Someone at work, a very respectable senior Naval personnel, advised me that this is what he did to get a huge mortagage and advised me to do the same. There was also a programme on it on the BBC a year or so ago called Mortgage Madness. So lying on self certs is a harsh reality I think.

That all seems sensible. It still seems to be that they are only making the situation worse though. I just moved into a BTL place. The landlord is a really nice bloke but seems to have no idea what he is doing. That's odd because he set up and runs his own successful business which is well known throughout Wiltshire. Well it seems to be on the surface anyway. Firstly he has no idea what an inventory is. So he hasn't done one. I don't mind, works in my favour. Secondly he intended to rent the property without a phone line as he assumed people didn't use them any more and everyone used mobiles (conjures up the image of a Loadsamoney landlord in the 80's with a huge Delboy style mobile phone). Not only that but he actually went to the trouble of taking the thing out. So I had to shell out to have the thing put back in again. He was a little miffed at that. Then he installed a new washing machine. He neglected to take the transit bolts out of it so the first time I used it it went ballistic and smashed all the new kitchen units around it. God knows what it's done to the washing machine. The best thing though is his attitude. When I met him he came out with all the clichés. Having been well read on this site I had to bite my lip. I didn't want him to change his mind and sell up leaving me looking for somewhere else to live! He said he had bought the place as an investment, that it was his pension and that he was subsidising the mortgage. Didn't ask if it was interest only. He said that as long as banks were willing to lend the money he was going to borrow it. He said he had gone over budget because he bought it a year ago and had loads of extra work to do to it because of new noise regulations (it's a house converted into 2 flats). He said his next venture was going to be to buy an office block. I REALLY had to bite my tongue from saying 'will you be letting that without phone lines too?’

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1717507,00.html How can this be happening? Have the banks given up on First Time Buyers and decided that only investors are allowed to enter the market now? If this happens and FTBs are locked out of the market permanently, who will be there in the future to buy the properties further up the chain? Are the banks realising that the market has peaked and are trying to keep the market going? Are they trying to delay the inevitable even further? I thought banks were loosing money by lending through bad debts? Does this action not totally contradict what was written in this reprt http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.j.../24/ixcoms.html This doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

Well we covered it on my degree. Give me a job! My current job is programming missiles for the Royal Navy. If we get that wrong then quite a few innocent people could get killed. So matricies are rather important. People all my life at academic institutions have always said when they are teaching maths 'You'll never use this again. Just get through the exam and forget it all'. Perhaps this is the problem? Perhaps this is what they told the engineer who programmed the cruise missile that went into the Chinese Embassy in Serbia in 1999? Plymouth uni used to be a poly. It was a great poly for doing an engineering degree and now it is a great university for doing an engineering degree. A lot of the lecturers there have been there for years and have very high standards. Can't speak for the rest of the uni though. I hear marine biology there is excellent, what with the National Marine Aquarium being there and all.

Do you read the news? There are factories closing and job losses all over the place! You can't open a paper without seeing XXXX job losses at wherever. Also you don't need double interest rates to cause a crash now. With the huge sums of money borrowed now you only need a small rise in interest rates to cause the same effect as 1989-1996.

How did you see Spotlight if you are in Manchester? At least they are reporting something a little more interesting than usual. It's normally cats stuck in trees and the like. Pete (from Cornwall) Actually how the hell are people affording that anyway? I come from Cornwall and had to leave because there were no decent paid jobs down there for a chartered engineer with a first in electrical engineering. If you don't want to sell ice cream or work in a shop, there isn't a lot else to do.

T*wat. I have a first class honourse degree in electrical/electronic engineering, I am a chartered engineer with the IEE, I have an MSc in Nuclear Physics and I have finance qualifications. I get paid £24,000 a year. Tell me to get a proper job? What job would you like me to do sir. Would you mind bending over so I can sunbathe in the sunlight that comes out of your ****? You condesending, ill educated, narrow minded *****.

I think all those salaries look very reasonable. But then I too am a civil servant so I have a reasonable understanding of the level of skills and expertise required to do those kind of jobs. I worked in the public sector before joining the civil service 5 years ago. I work harder now and get paid less than I ever did in the public sector. You don't get any thanks for it though as this post proves. In my opinion it is not the civil servants that cost the money it is the consultants that the government buys in. Ok let's do things your way. Let's get rid of all the civil servants. Then remember when you see your limbs being torn away from your body on the No. 83 bus on the way to work one morning by an improvised explosive device in someone's ruck sack, that we didn't have the intelligence resources to detect their movements because you got what you wanted. You can scream with your last breath 'I may be about to die, but at least I averted a house price crash because we got rid of all those civil servants'. Oh and there won't be any police, nurses, ambulance crews or fire brigade to scoop you up either. If they get paid a lot, it's because they are worth it. The public sector is one area where you can be sure that people are not overpaid. It is the public's money and it has to stand up to scrutiny.

If that is the case, then I hope for the sake of his tenants that the properties he rents out are more structurally sound than his arguments.

I enjoy reading these forums but rarely contribute. It's just my way. I like to absorb information and listen to people's opinions. Every time I read one of your posts I wrack my brains trying to figure out if you are just having a laugh on here at other people's expense for fun or if you really are just the biggest tosser I have ever come across. I have yet to see you contribute something credible or sensible.

Is there a graph of Land Registry average house price to average earnings ratio?

I suspect you are probably right then. I think I have heard that used. But I think that zeta is strictly a ratio so our control lecturer always insisted we call it one. Depends if you are an engineer or a mathemetician I suppose. I don't have the confidence to call myself either.

I wish I could. Although this does highlight a good thing about the civil service for me. It may be poo pay but you get the opportunity to develop to your full potential which, besides being satisfying personally, opens up doors for the future to go for the better paid jobs. Another reason I want to stay there is I am convinced that we will enter the crash/recession cycle phase within the next 2-5 years and when that happens there will be job losses and then I will be quite happy to be a modestly paid civil servant with specialist knowledge in a secure job. I thought it would have happened by now but when I sit back and look at all the evidence I can see these sorts of things don't happen overnight, particularly when inflation is so low as to act as a 'damping ratio' (for all you system control engineers out there). I think we are the best personally on many levels. We have a saying in military circles about the Americans - 'All the gear, no idea'. It is so true.

Well I think they were officially descibed as conflicts. I think the ones I mentioned were the only ones where we officially declared war. I would need to seek clarification that I am not talking out of my **** there but I am reasonably confident.

Well the main things that keep me there are a) The pension (I will probably wish I never brought that up) - it's final salary and as long as I don't leave the civil service I should keep it (closed to new entrants though) The security and c) It's a bloody interesting job and the only reason I'd leave for more money would be to buy a house. As for part c there's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said. I was saying it will crash in 2001. I have watched property venomously since 1996. As for the comment about the NHS I can’t speak for them. I only know of defence and intelligence departments and they are very overstretched. Although I did meet someone working for a defence department with a History degree the other day. He was on the fast track scheme. He had a very 'Tony Blair' aura about him. Did you know the government plans/expects a war every 10 years? 1982 – Falklands 1991 – Gulf War One 2002 – Gulf war 2 2007 – No prizes for guessing where that will be

I have been coming on this site for years but never felt the urge to post anything. Finally you came up with a subject to make me bite. First a little bit about me. 30 years old, served an apprenticeship as an electrician with the Royal Navy (civilian), First Class honours degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Chartered Engineer, currently working as a civilian for the military in the Bath/Bristol area. Like many people here I can not afford a house as I went to university when I was 23, graduated at 25, did a graduate training program that moved me around all over the UK and the US and by the time that was done it was 2002 and the boom was well under way. As you can see I am well qualified and, as you might imagine, I am a senior employee in the civil service. Despite having internal qualifications on top of what I already have officially that attracts a retention bonus, I earn 24k. Yet your post seems to suggest that the likes of me are responsible for the property boom? I think not. I am typical of the public sector workers who are continually blamed for costing the country too much money. I can assure you it is not the likes of us that have caused a property boom. We are struggling like the rest of you. We work hard to achieve our objectives for the benefit of the country and get paid an average wage that does not allow us to get on the property ladder without over borrowing. I live in a shared house with teachers and nurses who are in the same position as me. I find it frustrating yet somehow amusing that Gordon Brown keeps getting blamed for having too many of those ‘bloody civil servants’ working for him placing a burden on the country when I am working 10 hour days (with no overtime) to keep up with my workload and desperately need someone else to work with me to keep on top of it all. Yet we will also be the first to be blamed next time several hundred people are blown up on the tube on their way to work because we did not have sufficient resources to process the intelligence. How can we win? I am sure my post will not change your attitude towards us or make any difference to the world but it makes me feel better. In summary, don’t blame us, we are in the same boat as you. However, in the words of the awesome Audioslave “Go on and save yourself, take it out on me”.