Wednesday 28 September 2011

Cool advert


An old one but the best of the bunch.

Tuesday 20 September 2011


I don't really 'get' Google +. I've been a member for a couple of months now and never use it, but I guess that's more to do with the fact about 5 people I know are on there who are already on Facebook. Now it's open for everyone that might change...or not...it's sort of down to you. Add me.

Monday 19 September 2011

"I’ve been out with so many women who’ve set off alarm bells that I could write a book about it. In fact, I’m seriously considering penning such a book, called “Alarm Bells.” I’ll sometimes bring up this book project when I’m on a first date, just to see how the woman reacts. Ironically, sometimes the way a date responds to the idea of a book called “Alarm Bells” sets off those same bells themselves. For example, at Applebee’s once, a human-resources lady I met on MapQuest said she “would never read a book like that.” I was, like, “Check, please!” I don’t think I could ever be with someone who doesn’t like to read."

Thursday 15 September 2011

"Where are you going Fatso?!"


I got asked this by a delightful young woman wheeling her suitcase on my walk home and we got in each others way. I was taken aback by her brusque attack. I wish now I had the quick tongue to call her a cunt and spit in her face.
Off to the Piano Bar in Kensington tomorrow night - hopefully will get the pianist to play this.

Sunday 11 September 2011

"Let me give you my vision: a man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master. These are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend."


- Thatcher, 1987

James Brown - awesome

Monday 5 September 2011

Bagehot on UK Housing Market

THE British have long been told that theirs is a nation of homeowners (and more specifically house-owners). According to conventional wisdom, this made the country an outlier in a wider Europe where people were bafflingly willing to live in flats without gardens and to rent for their whole adult lives.

Today however, the headlines are of a "housing crisis" amid signs of falling levels of home ownership. An umbrella body for providers of social housing, the National Housing Federation, has published research claiming that a whole generation of younger Britons risk being "shut out" of the property market. The credit crunch, it is reported, has made lenders warier of extending home loans unless buyers stump up big deposits, house prices remain high despite recent stagnation or falls in some areas, developers are wary of building new homes amidst a dearth of buyers with access to credit, and so on in a vicious cycle. Last year, the number of new homes built was the lowest in peacetime since 1923, according to today's reports, and the proportion of owner-occupied households could fall below two thirds in the near future.

Would Britain still look like Britain in a future with lower home ownership? Bagehot, who as a roving correspondent has lived in rented housing for the last 14 years or so, has a few predictions, some more serious than others.

On the doomy side of the ledger, the quality of British gardening will take a dive. It is a harsh fact but true, that renting and creating a lovely garden are not compatible. After buying, planting then leaving behind shrubs in someone else's garden a couple of times, Bagehot long ago gave up on long-term horticulture, and now—given some outside space to play with—just about runs to a tub or two of lavender and the odd geranium.

Nor is inter-generational conflict likely to get any better. Not only will young people find themselves renting much longer while older people dominate the ranks of the owner-occupiers. It would also not be astonishing if silver-haired landlords start to dominate a growing private rental sector. The luckier retirees may have savings that they can put into buy-to-let properties (and at the moment, such savings attract almost no interest on deposit, as the Bank of England tries to keep borrowing costs low for struggling British businesses and mortgage-holders). Less fortunate retirees, facing up to ever-measlier pensions, may need to downsize and invest in small rental properties or rent out space in their homes, especially if the powers that be quietly allow inflation to run and eat away at all that scary private and public sector debt.

There will be more pressure on subsidised social housing: even now 1.5m people are already on waiting lists for such accommodation (partly because the council tenants' "right to buy" introduced under Margaret Thatcher took so many state-built homes out of the housing stock, homes that have often not been replaced, despite building by voluntary and non-profit organisations). That shortage of social housing is forecast to lead to higher rents in the private sector, which currently has a pretty bad image (the cliches are all about exploitative landlords and sub-standard housing).

But such changes need not be all doom, surely. There is no automatic reason why private rented housing has to be horrible. An expanding market should, logically, drive innovation and competition. A lot of middle class hostility to renting is actually bound up in memories of a very long housing bubble: for the past few decades getting your foot on the property ladder was seen as tantamount to getting yourself a winning lottery ticket (and was so much less work than saving).

For another thing, it was odd to hear the head of the National Housing Federation complaining on the BBC this morning that: "People need much bigger deposits now, and typically people can only get mortgages of about 75% of the price of the home." Given that 95% mortgages and other risky financial products helped fuel a property bubble and cause the credit crunch, a bit more caution gets Bagehot's vote, not least because the housing market may well have further to fall. I would rather young people were frustrated renters than find themselves trapped in negative equity in a few years.

For another, the idea of Britain as a swashbuckling, Anglo-Saxon outlier when it comes to owner occupation is much too simple. The European Union has several different models of home ownership. Britain's looks a bit like Belgium's, as it happens (though the Belgians are keener on fixed rate mortgages and try to use property sales taxes to flatten out price fluctuations).

Eurostat, the EU statistical service, breaks housing down into four categories: rental at market prices, subsidised rental, ownership with an outstanding mortgage and outright ownership. Britain, with some 28% of the population renting overall, does differ from places such as France (37% renting), or Austria (where some 42% rent). In the ex-communist block or southern Europe, mortgages are much rarer than in Britain. But Britain's share of renters is still on the EU average. Here are some 2009 figures, for some reason, Germany is missing from the data set.

Sunday 4 September 2011

Cool Pic

The Duke of Windsor - undoubtedly one of the best male dressers of the last 100 years.
Today I went to the Chelsea Auto Legends show at the Royal Chelsea Hospital. Snapped a few awesome pictures.