Slumpmonkey Returns

In 2000 Saddam Hussien proclaimed to the world's media that he was going to abandon the US petro dollar and sell his oil in Euros. Three years later the US invaded his country. I think the only thing stopping Obama doing this in the case of Iran will be Russia (to close for comfort for Medvedev and Putin). Although Obama may be able to bribe Russia and China to abstain like he did in the case of Libya.

I'm not against Scottish independance if that's what Scots want. However, the break up of the Union would mean that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would have to change it's name to the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This would mean the removal of the Scottish saltire from the Union flag and citizens in the remining part of the UK would have to have new passports (how much would this cost?). Also, what is going to happen to all the military bases. Would England be able to keep these bases (as Russia has negotiated to keep it's Black Sea bases in the Crimean peninsuala of the Ukraine?).

I disagree with this. The Scots have much more of a sense of nationhood than the Welsh I was also surprised at how spineless the Welsh were in the welsh Assembly elections last week (Plaid Cymru actually lost four seats!). This is because Wales is a divided Nation with the "Anglo" Welsh in the South and the East of Wales who tend to vote Labour and the Welsh speakers of the West and North who tend to have more of a sense of national identity and vote for Plaid. Until Plaid can make inroads into the Anglo areas of Wales - Wales cannot be compared with Scotland. Furthermore, Scotland and England under the act of settlement in 1707 were two seperate nations with their own legal and education systems who agreed to share power in a union. Wales was swallowed up by Edward the Confessor in the 1200's and it has the same justice system as England. You can't compare apples with oranges!

The kitty has definately bounced and is now on it's trajectory towards the 2009 floor again. We will be back to 2004 prices in a few months. The PTB bankrupted the country in order to get this kitty to bounce in 2009-10. Was it really worth it???

PMSL!!!

Trichet is just another common criminal like King. Being "vigilant" means doing nothing (classic "Mervism"). Merv and co to raise rates? As an American might say - "yeah and monkeys might fly out of my butt!"

Or maybe they know full well that is the price and they are being deliberately disingenious?

Lovely headline!!! This should spook a few thousand greedy vendors who have been "waiting for the market to recover" over the past three years. It's not going to recover you knobs!

What ever happened to hydrogen fuelled cars? I seem to remember watching an episode of Top Gear a couple of years ago when one of the team went to California and drove a hydrogen car. You simply fill it up at a petrol station which has a hydrogen fuel pump and it is much cheaper than petrol.

Shocking! But don't expect the BBC (British Pravda) to report anything that may put the US in a bad light. I agree, RT and Al Jazeera are both excellent channels - I rely solely on these for my world news nowadays.

My problem with the BBC is that they have a heavy pro-American bias and they ignore what is going on in continental countries, and other world powers such as Russia and China for example . Whenever there is an uprising abroad they report what the Downing Street and The White House response is and they ignore the response from the Elysee Palace and the Kremlin for example. You would think that there was only two powers that matter in the world (the US and UK). There reporting of the Russia - Georgia war in 2009 was also a complete disgrace. They painted Russia as the aggressor when it was Sakashvili's Georgia who fired his American weapons on the citizens of South Ossetia (protected by Russian peacekeepers) first. The only way citizens can receive news which actually presents the other side of the argument is to watch channels like Al Jazeera or Russia Today on Freesat. These channels are not scared to investigate the hypocrisy of the Anglo-American-Zionist West. In short the BBC (like the UK as the French Rugby coach stated this week) is an insular institution with a strong Anglo-American bias. Viewers are not given the full picture and are made to swallow huge chunks of pro-Anglo propaganda. That is why the average Brit has such a poor understanding of foreign countries (apart from the US).

+1 Mortgage Fraud is an indictable offence which can result in a long prison sentence. I take it the FSA forwarded their findings onto the Crown Prosecution Service.

It's amazing what these greedy deluded vendors will tell you. I went to view a three bed detached house with Mrs Slumpmonkey in a village outside Coventry in Autumn 2009. It was on for £240,000 - (turns out from nethouseprices that they purchased the property in 2007 at the peak of the market for £200,000!) I asked the vendor if he had anywhere to go to and he said that he was "dying." As you can imagine that was a bit of a conversation stopper and we made our excuses and left. If you go onto Rightmove it is still up for £240,000 18 months later! Either the vendor got better or he was a lying little psychopath and was attempting using emotional blackmail to try to get a sale for a ludicrous price. (Common sense would tell you that he would have been prepared to get any price for the house so he could enjoy his "last days.")

Why are the majority of EA's so stupid? Do they really not want to sell properties?

I'd rather bang my pet cat then bang an EA - however fit she was! EA's are shallow sub-human trash! Might be good research though TMT but make sure you scrub yourself down thoroughly if you do give her one!

Down over 10 per cent since last summer. This is very significant IMO. The Halifax and Nationwide have tried every trick in the book to not reflect this fall in their monthly indeces, (seasoning, revising etc). However, they can't keep this up for ever and the true scale of the falls will have to come out in the wash sooner or later. I predict minus 1-2 per cent falls in the main indeces over the next six months to reflect this.

Doesn't matter if Merv hikes or not - rates for new mortgages are steadily rising which will have the same effect.

He believes the average home remains up to 20 per cent overvalued – and with the mortgage market still tight and unemployment rising, 2011 could bring prices falling back to earth. More like 50 per cent over-valued. Nonetheless, this story would have made a few hundred thousand "home owning" sheeple spit their corn flakes our this morning. Remind me again - what stage of the fear cycle comes after "return to normal" and "denial" ? I'm looking forward to seeing the failure of the spring bounce this year!

PMSL

The disparity in pay between Chief Execs Jobs and the staff at the bottom (in some cases as little as £9,000 pa) is a disgrace. Of course if these overpaid Chiefs all took a pay cut of £100,000 pa then we would not need to cut frontline staff such as nurses and social workers. Obviously this is not going to happen! :angry:

BUMP!

Merv will simply take rents out of the CPI basket if they continue to rise. Voila - inflation problem fixed for another few months.

In a normal market I would agree with you RB. But losing your job nowadays means you will be entitled to SMI and even if you're not the banks are under pressure from the government not to reposses. Therefore, IMO, more unemployment will not have any affect on the housing market.

Saw him on Scottish Newsnight last week up against a RICS Scotland VI spokesman discussing why house prices were still over valued. He used to get quite easily wound up by the VI's but it seems he has calmed down a bit from the days of the first crash and he came across as very knowledgeable. He also rattled many VI's when he was HPC spokesman and we had many disgruntled VI's on these boards attacking him. I think the VI's have had a bit of an easy ride since the government orchastrated dead cat bounce and the fact that we have not had a high profile spokesperson has meant that the momentum we built up in 2007-8 has now been lost. I think there are some very articulate and intelligent posters on here who would be able to do a very good job. Maybe now is the time to consider this again?

In answer to the OP - yes, I believe that if all FTB's banded together then we could crash the markets. However, as other posters have stated the extent of brainwashing amongst FTBers (i.e - we must buy because renting is dead money) will make it difficult to get all potential FTBers on our side of the argument. Nevertheless, the power of the internet should not be dismissed and anything is possible if you have the organisation and, most crucially, the finances to support it (at the moment, unfortuantely, we are up against a multi billion pound VI machine). Maybe we need to elect a new HPC spokesperson. We had some success in the first part of the crash in 2007-8 (before the government intervened to create the dead cat bounce) with Jonathan Davies and he managed to get air time on major TV channels promoting the HPC arguments. I think this will strengthen our cause significantly.