thirdwave

Would that be property tax? I know that many states charge you a percentage of the property's value as tax every year but 22800 pa still sounds pretty steep...

A friend who works in a town in the South East with a large Polish immigrant population has been telling me how 5 Polish women, all in the 20s & 30s, had already approached him the in the last 3 months looking to claim long term sickness benefits..

Being in the same line of work, I have to admit I sometimes find the attitude of some GPs appalling....The way in which practices are run currently allow GPs to keep any money left in the budget at the end of the year for themselves & this has led to some highly dubious 'cost cutting' measures which routinely put patient lives at risk. Some of these practices are highly unethical & border on negligence...I sometimes wonder how they get away with such callousness. More often than not the hospital doctors are left to pick up the pieces but I can`t help but think that the whole system is a disaster waiting to happen...

a whole lot of 'bull'

Some chap from Barclays has been desperately trying to talk me into signing up for their premier account or something all week, offering all sorts of sops in return...Its all becoming clear now

hope they start panic selling houses too

I'd say Bank of Mom & Dad..I usually use them as the lender of last resort but I gather they operate an extended credit facility for all occasions, are open 24/7 & are immune to any credit crunch...I`m not sure if I`d want to deposit any money in it though

Thanks for pointing that out..Having looked at the map I`ve realised that the house probably backs onto that estate (can`t remember what its called) which houses all the Whitehawk rejects.If that is the case I would expect a few zeroes to drop off the asking price in the near future

Home repossessions down 1% according to Sky News..

Nasal hair trimmers...

Balanced reporting???Yeah right!!The 1st episode focussed on a couple braving high seas to get a barge over here from Holland to live in, all 'cause they were so 'desperate' to get on to the housing ladder. The 2nd episode was mostly about Stavros and his ill gotten half a mil. The 3rd episode featured a 40 year old living at home & some broad who converted her pig sty/stable into a 'family home', all due to rocketing house prices & chronic undersupply of 'affordable' homes, council do gooders agonising over planning rules, the odd anti EU rant thrown in etc etc... Maybe its just me but I just can`t see how any of this could be construed as realistic, bearish or balanced? I think Andy Verity did a good job..of pretending to be a bear when he's clearly not one.. I particularly liked the van he was driving around in..the subtle message to the sheeple being ' I was a mug to STR too soon & now I`m driving around in this'. Pile on to the ladder and soon you`ll be driving around in a TT, like that MEW chap from the 1st program'

All hopes now pinned on Dispatches, Channel 4 5/11/07 at 8 pm...Atleast they were mentioning housing being a 'classic speculative bubble' in the promos..

The program has now degenerated into shameless property porn, albeit of a more subtle kind..I guess this is the sort of covert propoganda that the Nazis used to keep the masses brainwashed during the 30s..

The presenter sounds like a closet bull..

Would the VIs not be shooting themselves in the foot if they continue to spin the figures to show HPI when infact prices are falling, as it would probably hold the BoE back from cutting rates?

I can tell you that's far from the case..A lot of junior doctors are being laid off & I have even seen some redundancies among senior medical staff(something perviously unheard of) in recent months...Everyone is feeling the pinch, with the exception of managers in the NHS perhaps

Fionnuala Earley Chief Economist Tel: 01793 656370 Mobile: 079 8592 8029 I bet her mobile's switched off after this...

Where's RB????? This has been the stuff of his dreams for many years now

I`ve been watching this one for the last 2 weeks to get a sense of where the market is heading. I don`t know how long its been on the market for(my guess is < 4 weeks) but its been reduced by 10k already..Not a significant reduction but it still gives me hope.. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-893...=2&tr_t=buy What's interesting is that properties on the street were selling at around 350k in 2004-2005 so this one has seen 0% HPI in the last couple of years..I would like to imagine that this house is being marketed at a nominal loss

I can assure you its absolutely true.She probably does not give a fig about her carbon footprint & she most likely waits tables along the La Ramblas on weekends I've also met many people during my stint in West Sussex who own multiple properdees in Spain & make the trip backwards & forwards atleast twice a month...

Looks like the Times has firmly shifted to the bear camp.. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle2759795.ece

Well, I know this physio at Barts Hospital who commutes to work from Barcelona every week. She flies in on Monday night & out again on Thursday night. Apparently its only marginally more expensive than commuting from her original home in Worthing. She was paying only around £ 16 pounds return on Ryanair to Girona last year (must have gone up after the hike in passenger duty earlier this year)....

Are you sure its doable?If so, I might actually try it myself

I did a quick search of properties between 200k-300k added within the last 2 weeks to get a sense of the market..of the 204 proprties listed, 6 are under offer & 7 are sold STC, all but one in the sub 250k price bracket..Does anyone know how it compares with past volumes?I know its very crude but does this suggest a significant slowdown?

Looking at the ground floor, do the flats come with allocated torture chambers/padded cells?