too soon to buy?

nice try. But how do you pay for people born with long-term conditions? How do you fund A/E and critical care? What about if you are in a RTA, does the ambulance driver shout over to you "where to mate?" The model you describe works for some services, but not all and the trick is, identifying what the costs are to strip out of the NHS, which, when many trusts cross-subsidise their fixed costs across a range of services, aint easy.

didn't get a reply to this one. I'm wondering how you secured the reduction on rent - I could do with doing the same tbf

fair play. Perhaps my simple mind didn't understand your point.

I bet there are a few hundred people in the UK right now, with IOs that are gonna get a huge shock in 25 years time when the "bill" comes through the door. "er love, best cancel that range-rover - you know we thought we'd just made our last mortgage payment? Well the bank says ere that we stiill owe them £250k"

Agree. THe fact is, you can switch to an IO with one phonecall and possibly a form to fill in and you "save" £'00s a month, whereas to rent, it is selling, looking for a new place, packing up, moving etc, it just isn't practical, expecially when money is tight. Which is another oft-forgotten problem with renting "we have the flexibility to move which mortgaged owners don't have" - well from my experience, moving house sucks richard in a big way, renting or buying, not for me thanks.

That's amazing mate. I've never heard of someone offering only 70% of their rent and the landlord agreeing to it. Well done sir! Was that done recently? If so, how did you get him/her to agree?

dude, I say what I see. I see a lot of people in London renting. During the crunch and even more now, there was a lot of demand for rental properties, so a vibrant market from LLs keeping the sales ticking over. What I see much more of these days is houses and flats for sale (at 2007 prices) and now I see people buying these houses with 90% mortgages. 2 lots of demand on one lump of housing stock. only another credit crunch or severe reduction in the rental market is going to change that IMO. Are you seriously telling me that current prices are caused entirely by foreign investment due to devalued pound?

my thought processes are very simple. Aren't yours simple too? - i.e. aren't you saying that it is all driven from non-UK residential demand (i.e. foreign investment / sales)? Nowt wrong with being simple!

Explain why prices in London continue to be above 2007 levels then.

Generally price is a function of supply v demand. For house prices to get lower, supply needs to outstrip demand. In London, demand outstrips supply, so that increases the value of houses. However, whilst people are struggling to get mortgages, one could argue that demand will soon drop in the retail market. HOWEVER, the steady stream of migrant workers in London, all looking for rentals leads to a very vibrant rental market, so people can therefore rent out their houses rather than sell, or sell to LLs - so there is another (upward) force on the price of houses. In short, not many people need to sell houses in London, if they do, they either sell to retail, or sell to BTL / LLs, so there are more people chasing the sales - keeping the prices up. Its not all about retail demand. The market is London has a limited supply and loads of demand, whichever way you cut it.

Wouldn't say they are all stupid, I bet loads of them are, but don't forget, IO offers people with mortgages the flexibility to reduce mortgage payments for whatever reason (either to put capital repayment money into another investment vehicle, or, [more likely at the moment], to release some pressure on the otherwise already overstretched finances) sure, it is barmy to do it for extended periods, and with IR being low, you can argue that it is silly to do this at the moment, but try doing that approach with your landlord when times are tough "soz mate, can I pay 70% of my rent for a year cos I am having trouble paying"] What would be really unfortunate for some, would be if people are IO because they have MEWed to the max and have nowhere else to go!

100% agree. Definitely get the "pret a habite" one - victorian will be better built, probably warmer and the clincher is the bigger garden and fact you spend more time with the kids in the bigger garden. Don't know about you, but I have 101 jobs round the house that I keep meaning to do, but never do. there is always a more urgent thing to spend money on than fixing the floor (esp if just cosmetic). Just check the victorian one for damp and check it has been rewired in last 30 years! (often the downstairs has, but the upstairs has not) good luck!

I would rather own my own home. I know that prices are crazy and, for the same money pcm, you can rent a much nicer house than the one you could afford through mortgage, there is a very different feeling you get from sitting in your "own" home and one you "rent." Take my parents for example, they dilligently spent their working life paying the bills etc (including the mortgage), but now one of them has retired, they have paid off the mortgage and their outgoings are just the gas bill and council tax. They can relax and enjoy their retirement, knowing the job is done. mortgage vs rent. I like the satisfaction that the mortgage will be one day paid and each month takes you a step closer, whereas with rent, someone else is directly getting richer every month you make a payment. Add in the fact we have been absolutley stuffed in the past by landlords chasing an extra buck, we'd much rather have the stability (appropriately) mortgaged 'ownership' brings. Just my view, aint saying it is the view everyone should have or share, but that's my take on the question

It must be hard for FTB - you've saved a deposit of £30k, the prices of houses momentarily crash to almost top-end of realistic, but then you can't get a mortgage.... Let's not forget, the price of everything else is going up, so the "disposable" part of the income is being squashed meaning less is available to be saved away and also, the affordability ratio that the banks impose now means many FTBs cannot technically "afford" the mortgage. Prices will keep going up (I'm talking London here) because immigrants need rentals and those who have houses can rent them out rather than sell.

absolutely agree. thats what I'm seeing... deckchairs on the titanic....

not only that, but when people MEW, they take out £30,000 or so - to put down a large deposit on a Range Rover, go on holiday to the maldives and then clear some of the credit card debt. When they overpay, they overpay, what? £200 - £500 per month??!! Hardly putting back in what they take out?! It must therefore mainly be the higher deposit ratio going in that has the main effect, plus the lack of MEW coming out, although having said that, I overpay and have never MEWed, so it only needs 10 people like me to qucikly rack up an equal and opposit payment to the "jones'" next door with the nice car with no petrol and holes in their shoes and malnourished kids...

are you and yours going to risk getting struck off if you make inappropiate commissioning decisions or would you prefer to stick what you do best, which is the noble job of making people better? Ae you going to give up your time normally spent treating patients to sit in commisisonig / contract meetings all day? If the answer to either question is "no" then how on earth will this system work? Especially without PCTs and SHAs (which I agree are largely a waste) Andrew Lansleys wife is a GP btw

The NHS budget needs to be cut, and hard. However the right way to do it is by good management and strict budgeting, not abdicating responsibility to 'market forces' which work well for groceries but have a very poor track record in healthcare. "cut the NHS Budget hard" so, to achieve this do you advocate a reduction in the number of healthcare providers and an increase in waiting lists then? or perhaps a "streamlining" of the number of service offered for free at the point of delivery? I think there is a little bit of mileage in the latter point, but pointless going for the first

The model of commissioning in the US is the way we are going, where you choose your "commissioner" (aka GP) and they commissinon the servies they think you need. If you don#'t like what they commission, you take yourself (and funding associated with you as a member of the population) with you. If you don't like the US model, look at sweden then, look at Gernany. The point is, there are ways to bring marketisation principles into healthcare. What we need is competition between providers of healthcare services, but the best way to implement this probably aint via GP commisisoning.

but corruption will happen when gps do the commissioning at a local level. It happens now anyway...

look at the US for examples of how this can work (and where we are heading)

+1 don't forget as well that the VAST majority of GPs are self-employed independant contractors with access to the nice juicy NHS pension scheme. regarding GPs "doing commissioning" I think we can see this going as follows 1) the "good" ones, who have patients at their heart, will want to / and will be needed to focus on, erm, healthcare for patients 2) the "greedy" ones who are in it for the money will make decisions influeced by kick-backs 3) the "crap" ones who neither care for, or care about the patient are not the ones you want to be making commissioning decisions so why make them commissioners? are there any other types of GP that people know about? Mine is a combo of 2 and 3 and he is far too lazy AND too overbooked to go to boring meetings

a lot of what you say is true, 152 PCTs = 152 Finance Depts, HR depts etc, a lot of that stuff could be outsourced

I agree with you goat. In his mind, Byrne probably thought it was funny, but the point it, it is so bad it can never be funny. If this was a note about the Chief Secretary's office party / drinks account, then, yep, funny ha ha, (and 2 fingers up to you tory scum etc etc) but when it is a note about the UK, population of 50-odd million, then it aint funny at all. we elect MPs to exercise judgements on our behalf, this is an example of poor judgement from the outgoing adminsitration

**Obvious statement alert*** The fact is, now IS a good time to buy IF house prices keep going up BUT!!!!!! HOW HOW (bl**dy) HOW Can prices keep going up???!!? I know people with EXCELLENT Jobs, in their 30's, married etc and with joint incomes approacing £100k and they cannot afford to buy (admittedly in London) because the deposit needed is somewhere around £50-£70k for a FLAT!!. If prices go much further, then I just don't know who can afford to buy a house. Sorry for being obvious, but sometimes one has to take a step back and just think, apart from a herd mentality, now is not a good time to buy, but then again, what if it is!!??! It is like searching for a deckchair on the titanic. You might feel better that you have got one, but dude, tomorrow it is all at the bottom of the ocean, so what is the point?!!!