Rare Bear

I was visiting a couple of old, just under 90, aunts in Derry a couple of months back. They were amazed when I told them that yiu would not see an automatic car wash in this part of London these days. I was quite surprised that I did not have to explain why, it was obvious to them.

The same thing happened me. I was buying a new to me car and I transferred £10 initially. When I knew that the tenner had got to the right account I transferr the first 10,000, that being the limit on my account for a single transfer. Nationwide wre on the phone in very short order to confirm that I had meant to do that, what was it for and had I actually seen the car. Fair play to them. Funny thing was that when I had sold my previous car the guy who bought it coule only £20,000 in one go and he wanted to take it away the next morning. so we went into his bank, got the £20,000 transferred and I got the rest in cash. I walked across the road to Nationwide to deposit the cash. The girl on the counter quizzed about where I had got the cash but there were no questions about the money that had jsut been transferred in.

Everybody talking about a hard border is thinking about the army/police security checkpoints during the troubles. This was nothing to do with the customs border. In fact, when I was pulled in and searched by the army I would often tell them how much cheaper things were in the North.

As heading. Saw the agent showing a family of parents plus 3 children the one bed flat above me. By one bed I mean small one bed. Is it legal?

Yeras ago, possibly as long as 45 years ago I took home a van or somthing to wherever I was living maybe Parson Green. Some council bloke pulled me about leaving a commercial in the street, reckoned it should be in some lorry park.

Looks like Unilever are trying it on in Ireland (Euroland) too.

That is what I menat when I mentioned on some other thread about fining trains operators when things go wrong or indeed any body like say an NHS trust or an airline. No point in fining the body, at the end of tha day the user/customer will pay in some shape or for. Some high up decision making person within that body has to pay personally and heavily for the screw ups.

Thought you meant Powerbuilder when I saw the heading.

I was in the same boat.

I suspect that the bubble may well be in the process of bursting. I sold an interesting car just about a year ago after a few weeks on Pistonheads. At the moment there are two pretty similar ones advertised there at the same sort of price that have been there for a couple of months.

Their food is good. Burgers great although I'm not fussed on the chips.

That's the truth, the billions in Africa, that most people are either totally unaware of or are in total denial of.

Looked at a couple near me and they look as though they may in fact be repos by the Bank of Ireland.

True, lots of wage rises in the 70s. The trouble was that prices rose faster.

In fact there was a little more to it all. Back in the 70s Miras did exist but it was much more common the fill in a tax return and have one's tax code ammended to reflect the interest paid. I forget under what circumstance a Miras mortgage would have been used, I only knew one guy who had one and he is dead now. With Miras, in the 80s, people cottoned on to the fact that not just a couple could claim the £30k but a group of people could. I knew a few people who were trying desperately to get out of such arrangements in the early 90s. Miras itself was phased out gradually in the early 90s. I forget when interest rates came down to bearable levels even though I was paying a mortgage at the time. In our case the mortgage was for £55,500 so we would have had tax relief on £30,000 of that. Again I forget the exact figures but the payments were still scary at the time. Especially as at one point I became unemployed and the DHSS lost my NI payments. Took a year for them to sort it out. The super high %15 interest rate that people talk about was in fact never real. It happened for one afternoon when Lawson was doing his ERM swansong. I was at a wedding in Dublin that day and there was a radio on in the bar. I could hear the interestest rates going up and up. I forget whether it was that evening or the next morning that they dropped and we started to hear how much money had been squandered trying to stay in the ERM.

Yes, I remember in the 70's a penthouse which was going to sell for over £70k went for £47k.

If you go back a couple of decades, automatics on small engines were pretty bad. Most European cars had pretty small engines hence suffered a big penalty when coupled with an automatic. Different story in the land of the V8.

He did some time in North Africa in the early-mid 40s. Does that count?

However, look at the advantage of having all those people who only think of cars as transport in driverless cars. They may have learned how to pass a driving test but they have no interest in becoming drivers.

Neighbour of mine, 96 next week. No children, worked all his life since leaving the army in 1947. Has a bit of private pension and some savings but by no means rich. Was still paying off the mortgage on a tiny one bed flat long after retirement. He is now pretty immobile and is being charged about thirteen quid an hour for a carer. As well as paying tax on his bit of private pension.

Funny thing that even then it was nor guaranteed. I remember a cousin of a guy I went to school with, Phd in something useful like maths/physics and he had great difficulty in getting a job that would support him, wife and child.

I was watching that thing on the box about a family living in differnt periods since the '50s. The episode I watched last night was about the '60s. Apparently 1 in 20 went to uni. Hence a degree was worhth having. Now what is it, 1 in 2 or there abouts.

What a beautiful thought!

I suppose that you really should be comparing lafe expediencies from say the age of 14 or so, to sort of age at which someone could reasonably be expected to be able to fare from themselves. At that sort of age the period of risk from childhood illnesses is over.

I have heard of it happening, a ship with some illegals on board. It got very expensive for the ship owner/operator. I bet the got a lot more serious about checking who was allowed on board afterwards.