LATEST MOAN FROM YOU AND ME - 2022

In 2007 I was going to put down a deposit on a property in Thailand, then rent it out to partially fund the mortgage. The estate agent in Thailand, told me to speak to some expats before making a decision, which I did.

I was budgeting on the current interest and exchange rates, which the expats told me would be a huge mistake. I was told to do some research and see what the average rates were over the previous 25 years and then see what I could afford. Going by the historical exchange and interest charges, the property I was looking at would of been well out of my reach financially if the rates went against me, which they have, sound advice which I took onboard.

Banks have been encouraging people to lend more than they probably wanted to commit to. The banks know with rising house prices they are the ones not taking the financial risk, if you default on your mortgage payments, the banks will still make a profit on any future sales of the property.

 

Good heavens. Are they aiming at corporate people who may be relocated for a year or two, or rich foreigners looking for a holiday home? If the location is right, that might sort of work.

For us mere mortals, no.

I know a lot of foreign people like me who haven't quite made their minds up if they want to buy property in the UK, so end up renting privately. The rents around here are £700 + -ish, which is ok if you can afford it, but it indeed is madness that if I bought this house my mortgage would be about half of that.

...oh wait, that was last week, now with the interests it could be heaven knows what

I'll buy a tent and a decent bottle of plonk instead.

 

It's a quiet cul-de-sac, not near anywhere, no good views, but apparently the local primary school is pretty decent.
I suspect that they may be aiming for people retiring down here, having sold up, they need somewhere for 6 months while they find their retirement home. As it's unfurnished they can save on furniture storage.

 

£41K is a nice retirement package.

 

This is only partly true.

When I bought my house, I was lucky at someone else's expense. I got my house at about 25 grand less than it previously sold for, because it was a repo. In this case, the bank may have actually lost money, depending on how far the previous owner got with their mortgage payments. I imagine not very far, given that they had it last sold about 5 years before I bought it, it had stood empty for a year before I bought it, and you usually have to get about a year behind before the court will allow a repossession order. I have no idea how much deposit the previous people put down, but given the timing, I'm going to guess it was a very small percentage, if any (remember the banks were giving out 100% mortgages back then).

The flip side is I know someone else who got repo'ed, with only a few years left on their mortgage. The bank may have profited in that case, but even then I'm not sure because it was in the 1980s when lots of mortgagees were in negative equity.

I'm not sticking up for the banks, not for one second. They have historically made some pretty reckless decisions with very severe consequences.

As a related aside, remember how in the last house price crash, everyone blamed the banks? Well at the time everyone knew that bankers were reckless. There was plenty of history to demonstrate that, which is probably why the government setup the Financial Services Authority, later rebranded the Financial Conduct Authority. The FSA sat back and watched while banks gave out 125% mortgages without much in the way of credit checking.

 

Dont often praise the French but just watched a video of the police dealing with protesters who have glued themselves to the road.
They wont be doing that again it looked painful, but quick.
Unlike our police that ask them if they would like a drink of water while deciding whether or not to get out the solvent to slowly dissolve the glue.

We have just had two idiots high up in the cables above the Dartford crossing on the M25 and the bridge was closed for 36 or so hours while they sat up there.

Its about time we got tough with these odd balls and put them back in the box they escaped from.

 

Miss Jiff is not happy with me, i've got a bad sulfur proplem

 

I hate what the latest batch of activists are doing. Not because I've been disrupted by any of it myself. They seem to be mostly down south from what I can gather.

I hate them for what they're doing for the causes they claim to represent.

I agree with the ultimate objectives of the likes of Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain. But they way they're going about it they're just teaching people to associate their causes with disruption, anger and hatred. To me, that means anyone that was partially starting to lean towards the need to move towards better home efficiency for example, will now associate that with mass disruption rather than making long term financial savings while helping the planet.

In my life so far, I've attended a grand total of one mass protest. I didn't even care about the cause I just went for the crack. Hundreds of thousands of us marched through London singing silly songs about John Major. We didn't smash anything, paint anything, fasten ourselves to anything. We just marched along a pre planned route, assembled in hide park, listened to someone have a rant, and went home.

 

That's a whole other story, too long to post here, but in a nutshell....

On the coach home, we stopped at various points to pick people up. My friend and I went into kings college student union bar to round up any of our lot, decided to have a quick pint, and got left behind, with our wallets still on the bus.

We got a huge amount of help from the police, got a ride in a police car to try to get us to the next coach pick-up, missed it, had a cup of tea in another police station, while they phoned my local cop shop. My grandad paid for new coach tickets, coppers gave us some paperwork to give to national express, and we eventually arrived back on teesside around 6am the following morning, having met a load of lovely but strange mostly drunk people on the coach home from London. It was great.

 

I have a new latest moan.

When you're a kid, any physical recreational activity you do is just fun.

When you're an adult, apparently it is training.

I've just seen an advert for some cycling accessory that boosts your training. I ride a bike for fun. I'm not training for anything. Ok granted, I know some people do. Some train for races or other competitions, but I think most do what they do for leisure.

I also practice martial arts. I have no intention or desire to fight anybody other than other consenting adults and even then only under strict rules designed to prevent anyone getting actually hurt. I hear younger folks at work talking about their fitness tracking watches, and their training regimen. They don't talk about some epic challenge they're planning to embark on that requires some period of training.

I wish us 'grown ups' could just accept that some things are just fun. Because if every physical leisure activity is 'training', then one wonders, what can we possibly be training for if not some epic challenge or competition? Are we training for old age? Training for death?

Or are we just living our lives, enjoying a bit of harmless escapism in between all our grown up responsibilities?