peemac

I've spent some time in Belgium, the bureaucracy was crazy. You have to produce your passport and register your stay at the town hall, then expect a man coming round to your house to check you are who you say you are and you are where you said you'd be. Totally mental.

Whilst agree it's disgusting (along with car parking) patients could always use a mobile and read a book instead of TV. It's mainly bull5hit about mobiles interfering with lifesaving equipment (when was the last time you saw any lifesaving equipment on a ward ) if the nurse tries to interfere, just draw your curtain around and carry on. They can't do jack5hit.

I've been burgled and had my car broken into. I'm under no illusions that they're wonderful people, any more than I'm under any illusions that judges deserve a life of grace and favour. The fact is though that tfrontline police are on the bottom rung of their organisation, and just like any other organisation the bottom rung do as they're told, not as they'd like to do. Their hands are tied by the prevailing liberal-left establishment which has destroyed the social fabric of our country over the last 50 years. I'll give you an example: A friend of mine is a bobby in the met. He arrested four joyriders, who were (unusually I'm led to believe) prosecuted. At the magistrates the best defense one of them could offer was peer pressure. That's right, his defence was that his friends were doing something wrong so he did too. The magistrate agreed that this was a valid defense and he was discharged. What chance have the police got in the face of that?

I love your crass generalisations. Have you ever been to Turkey? or Cambodia? Our police are OK, it's the government and Judiciary that are inept/self serving. Stop for a minute to think about the Irony in your views. You're unhappy with the way the government are running things, yet who do you turn your anger on? Police, postmen, students, 'chavs', immigrants, civil servants and McJobbers. You are thinking in exactly the way 'they' want you to think, by turning your anger on people who are in the same situation as you - trying to get on and make a living. Maybe you should read Orwell more carefully. The point is we don't need to be rounded up and shot. There is no fight in us and therefore no threat to those in power. It's amazing really, even the whole nature of the English language has been changed, dumbed down and neutered. Lenny Bruce once said if you take away the right to say fucc you take away the right to say fucc the government. He missed the point that if everyone says fucc all the time then fucc the government doesn't mean anything. That's where we're at.

Interesting point there. I was flicking between channels a few nights ago and happened upon 'street wars' I think it was ITV4. Anyways to cut a long story short one of the pieces focused on 4 police officers sat in a van between 12-2am waiting for the pubs to start emptying. In that 2 hours all they did (remember 4 of the B*stards) was catch 2 lads having a leek against a car park wall. These are the police that are supposedly overstretched and under budget. My ar5e, as Jim Royle would say.

Interesting unit I'm tempted to send that one to the feedback section of New Scientist.

The unelected Lords actually do a decent job of protecting the population against short-termist, opportunist governments. Remember, as they are unelected they have no electorate to pander to and can vote with their beliefs and consciences, unlike the commons. Completely scrapping the system of hereditary peers will be the biggest mistake this country ever makes IMO.

LLoyds have been doing this for ages. There's been a sign in the window of the Alum Rock Road branch in Birmingham about it for at least the last 2 years.

Nothing worse than an indecisive qunt. I mean ar5e. I mean errrrm...

So if we don't see wage inflation, but everything increaeses in price what will happen to your savings? Inflation erodes savings with or without increases in wages. If we do see inflation with wage increases then your savings are also buggered. Without very significant nominal falls you're in a lose/lose situation.

errrmmm..... I'm not. I think nominal falls are possible. I think 10-20% nominal falls are likely, 20-40% nominal falls are unlikely but possible in the event of some unforeseen economic event, 50% nominal falls are a very, very unlikely possibility. In short I'm not losing any sleep over it. At all, especially given that if we do see 50% nominal falls I'd expect it to play out over a timescale of 5-10 years. So in this scenario of real falls due to inflation who loses out more: the person with an asset that he borrowed a nominal amount of money to purchase or someone with £34k in a bank account?

No. Thinking of a typical case where someone would have bought with 10% deposit and paid off some of their mortgage. Say a 100k house in 2004 £90k Mortgage House now 'worth' about £130k Paid off about £3K (this is in fact my own situation) That gives £47k leeway right now, or about 35%. Assume that a 50% correction would occur over about 4-5 years and I'd say I might just get away with a 50% correction, especially if my wages continue to increase (and/or we get sizable wage inflation) and I can increase my overpayments.

I never said it was impossible, merely highly unlikely. And even if we did get 50% nominal falls ayone who bought 2004 or before would probably be just about OK. I don't believe the current situation is sustainable, I'm bearish, definitely bearish. A correction would suit me just fine, sustained real falls over a number of years would suit me even finer. Aside from my mortgage I have very little debt, and a bit in the bank, so I'm just watching from the sidelines as it were. My only interest in this debate is to put across the point that shared ownership schemes are not implicitly flawed, nor are they implicitly evil. In certain cases they provide a suitable, realistic option to those that don't want to rent but can't afford to buy. That's not a bad thing. I don't believe SO is to blame for keeping the market inflated, I blame that on banks allowing people to stretch themselves beyond their reasonable means.

As you say though, your rent is a bargain. It's not your nan's BTL is it? What if you paid market rent, the sums are a little different then. So why the hostility to shared pownership if you're so happy? You sound like you want to buy but are priced out. If you were as happy as ou describe there'd surely be no problem.

Indeed. I think you'll also find that the rental portion on a rented property can amount to as much as a mortgage on a whole place. So your point is what exactly? 1. 50% is not a small share 2. You're benefiting from increases in equity. As always, do your research. These properties are available at slightly BMV in some areas, the good deals are there. Looking beyond the purely financial - how do you put a price on stability for a family? I'm lucky enough to own my own place, I wouldn't like to know my family (with a young child) was at the mercy of a landlord every 6 months. Well bully for you. Do you have a family by the way? You see I think the issue here is that people have fundamentally differing lifestyles, and therefore value different things. I take umbrage at idiots on this site who swan about claiming 'houses are not unnafordable, a couple on £25k each could easily afford an average house' in the same way I take umbrage at people saying 'Shared equity is terrible, you have to pay rent on something you don't own and don't get the fexibility of renting'. Well yes, but what if you don't mind not having the flexibility? What if you don't need it? What if you've done your research thoroughly and found that in your situation the benefits outweigh the negatives? So you pay £540 pcm on something you don't own and never will, simply lining the pockets of a landlord. Bet that gives you a niceglow knowing you're contributing to someones retirement fund. What do you get in return by the way? I know for a fact my friend pays less than that on his shared equity property (£435 pcm, mortgage+rent+service charge) on a nice size flat in an OK area. He's also got about £12k in equuity on his share (not much, granted but better than a poke in the eye with a 5hitty stick). I'd say he's in a considerably better position than you. Yep. And if my aunt had knackers she'd be my uncle. Deal with it.

Yes of course they are

Like I said, do your research. Many rental agreements with housing associations have rents increases capped at inflation. Not ideal, but by no means an out and out disaster - and infinitely preferable to an assured shorthold (is that what you're on by the way?) Houw do you feel knowing your landlord could pull the rug from under you with a months notice?. These deals aren't some kind of conspiracy, it's in everyone's interest to keep the market for them liquid - if a HA suddenly decided to double the rent they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. If the best argument against these deals you can come up with is some extreme, incredibly unlikely scenario then they must be OK.

Don't they? I think you'll find some do. Otherwise how come my mate's had a plumber round 3 times last week and not paid a penny? Don't get this point at all Of course you're worse off than if you'd bought outright. Point is that you can't afford to buy outright. On the other hand at least you do get some benefit of HPI, unlike renters. The market decides. The market may be insane, or may not. If you could afford to buy either full or half share in 2004 and didn't you've missed out. Big time. Anyone sat about waiting for 50% nominal falls is leaving in a dreamworld. I'll tell you what's a REALLY stupid idea. Signing an assured shorthold tennancy. 6 month contract on your home, usually at the mercy of an unscrupulous private landlord. I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad. As opposed to renting, where you pay rent on the whole lot.... which you don't own. As for the rent cxosting as much as a mortgage on the full amount. I very much doubt it, but you know the old saying: Caveat Emptor. It applies to houses as much (if not more) than any other transaction. Do your research and I think you'll find you can bag yourself a nice little deal (as I believe the previous poster on here has done).

I don't get why there's so much hostility towards them.None of the insecurity of renting, some of the benefits of buying (not least the chance to build equity).

Daft git. Why did she bid more than she could really afford in the first place

In this day and age of the internet there is no reason why we couldn't have a more representative parliament. We could have thousands of members of an electronic parliament, chosen at random from a group of volunteers to vote on numerous issues. It would be truly democratic. They could receive policy documents by e-mail, read them, then vote electronically. The votes would count towards a voting block in the house of commons (say 60 votes) which would be split proportionally according to the results of the e-vote. It would have the potential to swing some very contentious policy one way or the other (I suspect this is why it wil never happen )

You're barking up the wrong tree. Let's cap politician's (and councillor's) wage rises at CPI. They'd be riotin' ont streets man. I could just imagine Prescott, Jowell and Balls, on the pickets, clashing with police and getting coshed.

Politicians are an odd breed. I believe in the old adage 'anyone who wants to be a politician should be automatically barred from ever being one'. I was watching the 'Daring raids' programme on the beeb the other night, about a small group of commandos who took out virtually a whole town during WWII. Many of them knew it was almost a suicide mission and that they wouldn't be coming home but I couldn't help thinking how different the world could have been if the ones that did survive had ended up running the country after the war finished. Clever, honest, hard, honourable men. Instead we won the war and ended up betraying every single one of them in one way or another.

No. You said: AFFORDABILITY OF MONTHLY PAYMENTS Not so long ago there were many people who could have afforded monthly payments who were not able to get a mortgage because of stricter lending criteria than now. They were stuck in rented accomodation paying more than they would had they had a mortgage. Therefore the thing that mostly determines houseprices is simply the availability of credit. Affordability has nothing to do with it. In a loose credit environment banks just come up with ever more ingenious ways to make unaffordable credit appear affordable (IO, 50 year mortgages etc.).

Yep. And I imagine it's an EU directive of some description that will ultimately lead to the same thing happening to the PO. With equally ridiculous results.