benthebuilder
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Posts posted by benthebuilder
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Seems that 'comedian' Jimmy Carr doesn't know the difference between "Your" and "You're".
Peasant.
I can't stand him now, he's about as funny as genital warts.
Liked him on telly so spent £50 for me and the missus to see him live...painful.
Spent 40 minutes coming back at a heckler with a barrage of "your mum" type jokes. Pathetic, as the guy had only shouted "your jokes are shit", which they were.
Can only be clever editing that makes him look consistently funny on telly.
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Just watching a rerun of Relocation on More4. Phil is telling a couple that buying an investment property is all about the numbers. He finds a studio in Hackney for 150,000, which rents for 750 a month. He then cheerfully tells the couple that if they got an interest only mortgage the flat would give them 6%. The only thing he neglected to tell them was that was GROSS. Good luck in finding a 100% BTL mortgage for much less than 6%. Hope they never plan on doing ANY repairs or ever having a void or non-paying tenant, let alone using an agent to manage the lettings, they'd be subsiding their tenant's rent.
Does everyone who goes on this show sign a waiver agreeing all 'advice' given is for entertainment purposes only (comedy that is!)
Had to leave the room for the tv's sake.
Was ready to hurl the fruit bowl through it.
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As annoying as those ad's are, it's the Lloyds ad's that really get my goat.
Especially the one with the couple out shopping for a pram, where he checks on his mobile phone that he has enough credit limit left on his 4th credit card to buy the stupidly over engineered designer pram for his fugly missus.
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They both look pretty good to me, wouldnt be able to get them at that price here. Are they overvalued for the area?
They were...before the sellers/landlords got realistic.
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RS McColl? There's hunners of them up here!
Think they include all Martins and Forbuoys newsagents.
Was a manager for them years ago.
Total bunch of shysters.
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Since when did stacking shelves at a supermarket require an apprenticeship?
The world has gone mad,these people are demeaning the work of the skilled tradesman by requiring retail workers to do an 'apprenticeship'.
You think many "tradesmen" coming through today have done an apprenticeship?
5 day course from the back of the newspaper is more like it.
I'm sure the supermarkets will be eligible for lots of funding by using the word apprenticeship to describe their basic training procedures.
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I'd run it through an auction house...you'll definitely get the best price for it there.
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Only seen it a couple of times, but it looks like fairly entertaining TV.
Certainly funnier than many "comedies" the BBC churns out.
With little or no scriptwriting to be done, no huge cast of "stars" and no sets to build I would imagine this is an extremely cheap way to fill some primetime TV.
Is it right to give people the gift of a renovated house? I don't know.....is it right to give people the chance to win £250,000 for shouting out numbers and opening boxes on Deal or No Deal?
It's all business.
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Found this on a builder-y forum I occasionally visit.
It is a slow day in a damp little Irish town. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the pub. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit. The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town. No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how the bailout package works.
Sure it's not as simple as that but a quaint way to look at it.
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So the question is who's swimming with the fishes at the bottom of that lake the monks owned?
A few years ago in Crete I asked why all the buildings had flat roofs with steel rods sticking up into the sky. Apparently if a house is still under construction, no tax to pay. Can anyone confirm?
I can't imagine things are much better in Portugal or dare I say, Italy.
I was in Crete two weeks ago and I heard both the "no tax payable" and "to build upwards for future generations" reasons from different taxi drivers.
Both sound like good reasons to me.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!! OOOOOH HO HO HO HO HO HA HA HA HA HA HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HO HO HO HO HO HAAA HAAAA HAAAA!!! Oh my sides!
Bridging loans! - perfect! you can almost see their little feet peddling the air before plummeting Wile-e-coyote style* and creating a comedy dust cloud.
Wasn't bridging finance totally discredited in the 90/91 crash?
Looks like we are finally looking at the big drop folks.
*How come there was always a mile deep canyon for him to fall down? I thought the American deserts with roadrunners in weren't much above sea level..
And the punchline.........he's finance director for a local business.
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Haven't you walked around in the garden in your dressing gown occasionally groping yourself yet?
I viewed a house where the house next door had loads of A4 sheets stuck on the inside of the windows and glass doors telling people to keep away - just felt very threatening and looking at the unkempt gardens and the rusting car in the drive I decided that there must be a reason why the sellers were selling.
The missus says I do that everyday anyway.
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Next door to me is up for sale. Went on the market in 2007 at £220k, which was a pie in the sky figure. Now on at offers over £165k. It's been vacant for 5 months because the couple bought a new bigger place on one of the better roads in the area, with the help of a £180k bridging loan off fellas boss. £15k shortfall and counting.
The man of the house did say to another neighbour that he thought it was our fault that his house wasn't selling because our garden resembled Steptoe's yard. Neighbour said he thought it was because he was asking too much for it. Our garden has since been landscaped and planted up and looks fantastic.
It may now be my fault it doesn't sell because I let the dogs out to bark at viewers in the back garden and crank the hi-fi up a few notches.
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*gulp*
I'm scheduled to spend a fortnight in Greece towards the end of the summer...
Me too......off to Crete in a fortnight.
Present from the father-in law....was bound to go tits up with his involvement.
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100% Nice one.
That limestone mix that doesn't go off reminds me of cold mix. I used to work on the roads and we would use cold mix for emergencies it never went off and was eventually replaced with hot mix.
Cold lay tar is a waste of time. It really doesn't ever set properly.
Is ok for tiny patching jobs but beyond that...pointless.
Says on the bags that you can use it to lay driveways.....probably be better off using pikeys favourite tarmac......road planings mixed with diesel.
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What kind of profit margin do you put on ?
Has she paid for the job yet ?
I put 100% on it but I got it at mates rates so it wasn't like they got ripped off. Worked out around £18 a metre to them, which for granite bitmac aint bad. Pikeys use the cheaper limestone bitmac which shows through white with wearing whereas the granite stays darker.
Problem is in the "pen oil" that is used to make bitmac easier to use when hand laying rather than paving machine laying. It "can" have a tendency to reactivate in hot weather anything up to two years after laying, making the surface slightly soft.
This explanation was rejected.
I got paid last year.
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Please don't come here with tarmac talk.
Been involved in heated discussions re tarmac this week.
Had subbed a tarmac drive overlay to a mates surfacing firm.
They did a good job.
During last weeks hot weather there was a slight scuffing of the surface due to the lady of the house giving it plenty of power steering to reverse off the drive.
Now they are kicking off saying that I got pikeys to do it on the cheap whilst charging them top whack. I did load the price plenty but nothing like they're insinuating.
Spending my day explaining the technical details regarding bitmac compostition has not been pleasant. Told em I'd sort it next week. I'll just ignore their phone number from now on.
Told em to have block paving at the time.....cheap muthafookers.
This reply could also go in the "Things that shouldn't be stressful" thread.
Edited to add.....the lady in question told me, when my van didn't start, that all of lifes troubles could easily be fixed by praying. I said I hadn't got time and would be ringing the AA not God. Our relationship soured at that point.
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Would say part time by choice.
Though many weeks are full time...this week, for example started on Wednesday.
Only did two and a half days last week and was in The Lake District the week before that.
Got pi55ed off with quotes being rejected and people saying "We want you to do the job because you come recommended. However, we're not going to pay you that....how about this much?". On top of that the lads were moaning cos they hadn't had a rise for over a year...so I laid em off. Realised I was busting a gut to keep them in work while my margins were getting trashed. Just do small jobs on my own now. Can cherry pick the work. Don't need to spend fortunes on vehicles, advertising, insurance etc. Don't need to spend my weekends and evenings driving all over North West to price work.
No. I'm not earning what I was before, but with some small economies, what I earn goes that bit further. I have however reduced my stress load and my waist measurement being a "one man band". Sure it will soon lose its novelty and I'll go back to getting some grunts in to do the sweating, but for the time being, I'm happy in my work.
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There was a story line in the West Wing, where President Bartlett pretended not to notice that the camera was still live whilst rubbishing his opponent in the upcoming elections. In that instance it actrually helped his campaign.
I feel Gordo's open mike incident may have a different outcome.
I was having a sh1tty day until this happened.
What a fooking buffoon.
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Yes, I think that will be a likely response.. though taking my rather cute looking 2 year old daughter and my wife will help, we are a family, looking for a family home, at an affordable price.
Wow....what childhood memories your daughter will have. Being driven round a load of houses you can't afford and watching you "educate" the vendors.
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I read the papers and listen to the news.
HPC? Will most likely still happen but I've stopped listening. The fundamentals are still awful so prices can't be supported much longer (if indeed they ever were).
Why do I still come on here?
To wind up the mental Tories who inhabit this place.
No other reason.
Funny....always seems to be you and your pal boom boom getting wound up by the mental Tories.
You take the bait every time, like a prize carp.
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Doesn't this only apply if they have kiddies?
God knows....was a joke really
Don't want to look into Browns Benefits on offer thanks....I'm fairly chilled and it will only ruin my day.
Uk Construction. 85% Of Contractors Have Seen A Supplier Go Bust In 2015.
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Too many "main contractors" are now little more than a bloke with a phone, fancy website/good contacts and the ability to screw subbies into the ground on price and create havoc for their cash flow. There can be many links like this til you get down to the guys doing the job. Any "profit" has long since gone out of the job before they get any.
This is the reason for terrible standards in construction too. A lot of my work is repair work on govt infrastructure and some of it is very recently completed work. I've just made repairs to a car park and the only thing holding a long length on kerbs in place was the compost and bark of the flower bed behind. The "big national contractors" were "finding it difficult" to work out who's work it was that had failed and in the end the college said it was easier to just pay someone else for repairs. The building was 18 months old.