lets get it right

Clearly in Glasgow someone earning 28k has a reasonable chance of buying a house and still having enough money to live. Where I live someone earning 28k couldn't buy a mobile home.

But that is exactly, 100% wrong. Which is why the housing market is so reluctant to go down. As soon as there are 'more sales at lower prices', estate agents advise vendors they can ask higher prices as houses are selling more easily. At that moment - notwithstanding the price and availability of credit which, by definition, is factored in already by virtue of the fact that there are 'more sales at lower prices' - it is a supply and demand situation. As soon as you get 'more sales' you get 'higher prices' not 'lower prices'. In the last crash - 88 on into the mid 90s - house sales were few and far between - and you made daft offers and waited 6 months for the vendor to be desperate enough to take it. This time around, so far, as we all know, there are few desperate vendors and, with interest rates so low, cash buyers have kept the market afloat.

That's because 95% of properties in the UK have no city/mountain/lake/forest/golf/ocean/pool/hot-tub/3 car garage/air conditioning or much else. UK House - a small house in a road of similar houses - possibly with a re-fitted kitchen made primarily from MDF. High spots are off street parking, own garage, conservatories, non-overlooked gardens and how far the house is from schools or shops.

Do you know though, I'm not sure that's true. It ought to be true - and for anyone with a bit of business savvy and life experience - the terms of a lease will put them off unless they are pretty damn certain they are going to make a go of whatever business they are in. (Someone opening their second hairdressers having made a success of their first etc.) No, there seems to be an endless line of people who, through hope or desperation, want to open their own shop. Women are the classic example ... how many women dream of opening a dress shop. I have taken an interest in this area for years - whenever a new shop opens in my local towns, I find myself wondering how much the rent is, how long they've signed up for, how much turnover they'll need to pay the rent and rates etc. In the boom years of 2005/6/7 small (new) units in my local high street (1000 sq ft I guess) were up for 50k a year! Generally they are ground floor units under new blocks of flats. My local high street has been semi rebuilt in the last 10 years with 2 bed flats over shops going for between 225k and 300k and the shops beneath commanding astronomical rents. A couple of them were taken by people selling art - limited edition prints etc. Are they nuts? Simple? How many do you need to sell to pay the rent of a grand a week? Too many it seems, because they have disappeared. Another one was a tile shop. A small retail unit selling nothing but tiles in a secondary position with very limited parking. Another was the ubiquitous estate agent. They moved in in 2006 and out in 2007 to be replaced by a charity shop. I can only assume they let charity shops have the premises on short lets - just to keep something coming in.

Coalition Government causes House Price Fall!

They stand between you and affordable housing.

Dirty bloody boomers?

You can't negotiate down your rent - unless you are about to go broke I guess and the landlord decides he has no chance of either getting the money owed out of you or replacing you with someone who can pay their rent. That's the awful thing about commercial leases - it's all in favour of the landlord. Most have upward only rent reviews and, if you go broke, you still owe the rent every quarter. I've seen so many people during my lifetime who have stupidly signed commercial leases to open things like dress shops and, when the business doesn't make money and they want to pack it in after a year, are surprised they are liable for the rent either until the end of the lease term or until they assign the lease to someone else. Even then, you can only reassign a lease with the landlord's permission. And landlords demand collateral too. The only way I would get involved in retail premises is if I bought the freehold. A pox on landlords.

Okay ... but, most people acknowledge that 'God' and 'Good' are pretty much interchangeable and that someone who says 'For goodness' sake' is actually saying 'For God's sake' in the same way that people say 'cripes' instead of 'Christ' etc. I didn't say I hate people who don't use 'foul' language - I may have said I 'hate' people who disapprove of people who use 'foul' language. (For 'hate' substitute 'irritating') Are you saying I was not well brought up because I use words like f u c k i n g as an adjective? I'd beg to differ there. I was brought up strictly by parents who had a great sense of right and wrong and who imparted those values to me. As for saying you do not object to people swearing in the same sentence as saying you were well brought up - your implication is that people who swear were not well brought up. Patronising nonsense.

Once the downward trend established in 2008 (which was reversed in 2009 but which is now resuming again in 2010) becomes mainstream - once the annual HPI figures go negative - poor old Stewie hasn't got a business left. You can't blame him for endlessly ramping. It's irritating that the media give so much coverage to his musings. But, as we all know, they are all rampers too.

Will JP Morgan make money if you do what they tell you?

I'm looking forward to retiring - because I am going to have fun with some of these people. The thing that bugs me here - and bugs me in lots of adverts - is this 'you must be educated to a Degree level or equivalent'. WHY? That discriminates against a whole raft of people who may well be capable of getting a degree but who, for a variety of reasons such as ... being dyslexic, being in care, being a carer as a child, being too poor etc. etc. .... don't have a degree. It is blatant discrimination - every bit as bad as racial or gender discrimination, but it is so entrenched no-one bats an eyelid. If a job says 'you must have experience of doing this job' that, clearly, is different - but to say you cannot be a competent spacial Planning officer (or whatever it was) is just the purest nonsense. There might be someone working for the council up the road, looking for new job, who has been that council's whatever officer for 20 years - quite happily and competently doing the job without a degree. But they would not even be considered. It's blatant discrimination.

Fair enough. I guess the equivalent these days is writing a game when you're 14.

I don't know why you keep going on about chucking bricks and creating wealth. The relationship I was talking about was chucking bricks and changing society. Peasants revolt, Tolpuddle Martyrs, poll tax riots, suffragettes - social change didn't just happen - it happened because people took action to stand up for themselves. Anyone who bought a house in the last x years - since they have gone up by a factor of 3, 4, 5 or 6 (depending where in the country you live) - when they look at their mortgage statements they will observe that they owe the mortgagor a lot of money. Most people call owing money being in debt. 40 years ago if they had tried to abolish grants and introduce student loans in their place, students would have burnt the universities down. Which might have been a little counter productive but the reason the powers that be did not dare to charge for university is they knew the reaction they would get. Now what reaction do they get? Is there even a National Union of Students any more? What do they do now - advise you how best to pay your boomer landlord?

If you're not prepared to try to change what you don't like, there's no point moaning about it. There's a lot of moaning about the dirty boomers, but no action. Personally I'd rather live in the world we live in now where, for example, kids don't go up chimneys, sweat shops have been removed from the East End to the Far East, 35 year old men don't wear check shirts, short sleeve pullovers and brown trousers, millions of young men can't be whistled up to be used as cannon fodder and we don't live in a stultifying atmosphere of repression and conformity. I'm not saying everything in the garden is rosy now, far from it, but it's a hell of a lot better for most people than it used to be and you can thank the previous generations who chucked bricks, rioted and campaigned, fought for, and used, the vote for that. I have no such idea. I'd like your generation to be arsey about going into debt.

How can I join this band of 'boomers'? They sound very machiavellian and interesting. You say they had a youth of decadence and revolt - but then nicked all the money and power for themselves and preyed on their own children. Where do I sign up?

You'd rather blaspheme than 'swear'? Oh how I hate people who object to other people swearing. They are only words - they're just more fun than 'flip' or 'gosh'.

What a load of balls. Rioting has always been illegal. One march like the Poll Tax march of 1993(?) - with a million kids in London with placards saying 'F U C K your house prices, we won't pay them!' and 'F U C K your student fees, we WON'T pay them!' and 'F U C K your pensions, we WON'T pay them!' and 'F U C K the bankers, we WON'T be slaves fro them' .... just one teesy-weensy march with a bit of rebellious behaviour - and you'd change the game in one easy go. But you lot don't seem to have the stomach for it. I wonder if it's something we dirty boomers have put in the water. As for 'boomers have a VI in impoverishing everyone else' ... PERLEASE! I'm poor because I spend all my money on my kids. I'm going to live in tiny box when I'm older so I can give them the money to get a start (I know, I know - but I can't fix the world but I can help my kids). If you don't want to be impoverished - start shouting the odds so all your generation gets it.

Whilst I agree with your sentiment (education versus pensions etc.) I do wonder at this obsession with education. The only reason education is an obligation of the state is because sometime in the past a law was passed to make it an obligation. I imagine it would be very easy to repeal whatever Education Act it was that made schooling compulsory. Why can't the little darlings sit at home playing XBox live all day? They learn feck all at school anyway. What my sons learnt at school could have been imparted in an intensive year when they were say 12 years old. Whereas, trying to wriggle out of pension liabilities built up over decates would be much harder.

I have every confidence in the UK housing market. I am confident it will go down.

In an emergency executive Presidential order today it has been decreed: The USA is erecting a complete trade barrier. From 12.00 on 1st October 2010 no imports or exports of goods from, or to, the USA will be allowed. In the accompanying press release the President said; 'We are a vast country with massive natural resources. We don't need anyone else and, I believe, they don't need us. First we must look after our own. We must turn to agriculture to provide employment so we all going down South to pick cotton. and grow peas.'

I reckon now could be the time to be fully invested or fully in cash. A cloud went past a while ago that looked a bit like an arrow pointing down, on the other hand I'm sure I saw the word 'Buy' in my porage oats when I poured them into the water this morning. What's the difference between someone who thinks they are going to live forever and someone who thinks they can predict the stock market? I think the Jehovah's witnesses who regularly visit me talk more sense than stock market pundits.

It's completely appropriate. This generation has not been taught by my generation where the apostrophe should go. My children are not stupid. I have told them where apostrophes should go and they understand it. Unfortunately, none of their various English teachers has seen fit to tell them.

So they're all back in profit because they have re-valued their assets. Easy innit?

I love the OP's tag line - 'keep calm' NOT easy! Right, need to get my head down and work, so I can pay my next big wodge of tax in January - so more feckless idiots can be bailed out.