Saturday 25 January 2014

Battle Lines

The rich elite, and their aspirant hoping to join them politicians, continue to enjoy the products of the financial squeeze on all the rest of us. A squeeze that is due to tighten even further, as our government, elected to promote and protect our interests, draws up plans to combat the anticipate civil unrest! Officials are actively looking into the purchase, the deployment and how best to utilise water cannon  to be used against their own citizens. This would seem to be a perfectly okay, matter-of-fact and reasonable step to consider. Obviously if your citizens are rioting, you need to be able to control them, perfectly logical and commendable, maintaining law and order is surely a prime purpose of government.

Pause for one moment and ask why the government anticipate their own citizens might rise up and riot? The government policy of squeezing ever harder the lower income groups, slashing essential benefit, castigating all those that fail to endure their imposed restrictions as cheats, fraudster, idle and lazy, is central to this growing unrest. The government with head in the sand pursues the 'proven' past practices of avoiding recession by encouraging consumer spending, by taking out more loans which inflate house prices even further. Their only other action is to frenetically cut their own spending on the easy targets, why of course, all  those wilful people who refuse to get jobs and look to the State for support. Cut back on all those wasteful and unnecessary social support measures. If only those people got off their backsides and worked they would get along just fine. Mean while the government must encourage consumer spending, what better way then ensuring those successful people with money to spend are shielded from the economic savings being made else where, so they can get on and spend even more.

People will put up with hardship and endure intolerable conditions providing it is fair and equitable, we are all in it together, each taking their own share of the burden. Clearly this is not happening. You only have to lift you head a fraction to see all the evidence that we are in an ever growing unequal society. Never has the gap between those that have and those who cannot survive been so large. The government, instead of rushing to halt this growing gap, is intent on ensuring its increase, because, in their view, that is the only route to economic recovery. Hence a growing ground swell of intense dissatisfaction with an unequal society on one hand and the government taking steps to contain civil disorder on the other. Use Water Cannon on your own citizens to prove you are right. So Vote to support or Revolt to find a better solution.

Monday 20 January 2014

Takes Two to Tango, or not

There are two sides to a partnership, so it is really annoying me that the Scots seem to consider it is solely up to them whether they leave the Union or not. No, we too are part of the Union and we too have opinions on whether it is a good thing or not. Our future as England is going to be radically changed so we too should be asked, is this something we welcome? The weight of our views on keeping the Great Britain together is just as relevant as the Scots desire to split apart. Sure if a partnership is under stress, is tearing itself apart, separating might be the only possible outcome but before that, when you have hundreds of years invested in a Union, it might be worth both sides pausing and seeing if the differences can be reconciled. Not the one side walking off in a huff. Beside there is so much invested estate to disentangle, at the least both sides could think about how they might sunder that estate before stepping over the line.

For me we have so much to gain if the Scots leave. Just think, at last we would no longer have to fund a 'National' postal services to all those remote sparsely populated regions, pretending the Outer Hebrides had anything to do with us! Not just Post, but Rail, Telephone, Broadband, suddenly the economics look so much better when you dont have to factor in a hostile terrain, distance and low population per square mile. I have no doubt that many other organisations from such as national chains like supermarkets to airlines would all benefit from not having to be seen to cater for a 'National' area and could just concentrate of the profitable densely populated south. Of course it is not all win, Scotland does have the upper hand in hydro-electric, deep sea harbours, with the off-shore oil fields still proving a useful stream and, no doubt many other things. But as we thrust pros and cons lists back an forth, all it serves to prove is that our United Kingdom is far greater than just the sum of each individual part.

 It would be great shame if some short-termism led to our Nations splitting up out an of egoistical pique. Our past proves our united strengths, each benefiting from the individualism of the other component nations. I hope we can continue to stand together, face up to the EU as a Great Britain and help it to move towards a better place.


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Thursday 16 January 2014

My House is my fortune

Once my house was my castle, the bastion of security and stability. The solid core binding the family together and the fortress to repel all invaders or those seeking to undermine our chosen way of life.
No longer.

My house is my fortune. Just an asset to be exploited, a transitory thing with no emotional ties to be dumped when the next opportunity presents itself. No point spending time or effort, investing in the properties future, unless it can be shown to produce an immediate return increase. So quick-fix, eye candy, on trend solutions, never mind getting to the bottom of the rot or decay. Several problems emerge out of this differing attitude. For a start house are not short-lived consumer goods to be re-cycled at the next fashion of technology change. They will outlive us by hundreds of years, we do need to keep them in good shape and relevant to the society of the time. That may require more than a quick immediate return, someone might have to invest in a longer term outcome.

A house is also a home, a home to a family. Family ties are not just those between each member of the family but with the wider community. If we are all doomed to be rootless, migrants, always on the move, never having the time or inclination for other than shallow superficial connections with our neighbours, what sort of sustainable society is that? We have to root ourselves and engage and care about the community that we live within. It is that community that shapes and defines us. It is what makes our family a family, the network of connections to those around us and the environment within which it is set.

So why this urgent need to move on, to move up the property ladder, to get to the next plateau of possibilities? It is fear, the fear of missing out of the ever remorseless spiralling upward of house prices. Fear of being left behind, fear of falling off and not being able to get back on. A fear generated and inflated by all the media, ever harping on about the latest price rises and easy sales to made. But houses are not consumer goods.Their price rise has nothing (or at least very little direct connection to) to do with the cost of land or the floor area or the actual cost of construction. Remember house prices are established by some bloke with a clipboard walking up and down a street, comparing this one to the others and to the prices similar houses have sold for. The price of a house is not its cost, but a reflective valuation of something deemed to be everlasting, someone's guess as to what it might sell for. So long as someone is prepared to pay that price then that is its worth. And why not when we are constantly reassured house prices can only go up. In this present very uncertain economic world where else can you put money that will grow? Houses are the only assured place because their value just goes on going up and up. The bubble just gets bigger and bigger, what is not to lose? Well for one thing, the bubble is so large it has cut off its renewal source. No new players can afford to come into the bottom of the market to sustain the chain. Second thing those player that do manage to join take on debts well beyond a sensible ratio to their income. Thirdly there is a rapidly diminishing pool of punters able to buy at the top end. Fourthly the only thing keeping the bubble growing is confidence, the expectation that the price will rise tomorrow and all the tomorrows.


I cannot think of any clearer indicators that the bubble is poised to burst. All such seemingly unstoppable bubbles have always burst in the past, there is no reason to believe this bubble is going to be any different. The fact that the world economies are dependant on the bubble continuing, their 'growth' coming from the increase in house loans, will not stop it happening despite various governments desperate attempts to shore it up. Their concern at the financial mess it will cause is not sufficient rationale to stop the burst, but just makes it louder and messier. When the inevitable burst comes and we somehow claw out of the ensuing mess perhaps we can once again get back to our house being our home and castle, a place of permanence and security.