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General Discussion

'Metro' today - 'SAFE AS HOUSES ... UNLESS YOU RENT - Tenants are facing the worst eviction crisis in ten years as surging numbers of landlords try to force them from their homes. 'Generation rent' is living on a financial knife-edge, charities warned, after figures showed that 47,220 possession claims were lodged by lamdlords in the first three months of the year. More than a quarter of ...

8 May 2014

- Back in '86/'87 I clearly recall colleagues at work complaining that it was not at all unusual for several 'friends' to club together to afford a property !  In fairness, I think the issue then was that you could 'only' borrow 3x the salary of a singleton or around 2x a maried joint income. - 'Nice Mr Carney', has quite wisely in my opinion, introduced (April) forensic examination of incomes ...

6 May 2014

@Lynne - anything i read in the newspapers i always view very sceptically indeed, with the ft finding me possibly the least sceptical. Nevertheless, I have heard the 80million population quoted quite often so have come to believe in that figure as being perfectly possible. As for the vision of sardines in a can, try the LU anytime of the day or even suburban trains at 9 or 10pm in the ...

6 May 2014

p.s. 'I have a friend' whose niece was born in England ('ethnic English' parents, grand parents, great grand parents etc) moved to France as a child, now a French national, given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Father from ex. African colony.  Does that make said baby black/white, African, French, European, English or all of the above?  Don't ask me, just one example of how the world has become a ...

6 May 2014

@Lynne - sorry, no idea how these things are accurately defined, can probably mean almost anything you want it to.  probably best left to the daily mail or the 'more or less' programme to get 'definitive answers'!! I think the wider point with respect to housing demand is that UK population growth is already 'written on the wall' to hit around 80million by 2050 whether by in-shore 'baby ...

6 May 2014

Ask anyone in the Czech Republic or Slovakia who suffered 44years of Russian occupation and I can promise you that they will tell you it was worse than under the Nazi occupation.  Make no mistake, Putin is out on a self declared mission to wrestle back as much of the ex-USSR as he possibly can.  He doesn't need excuses, though of course seeks to find handy ones.  As wise 'Mutti Merkel' reportedly ...

Yes, yawn, yawn, but tonight's semi on BBC3 at 20.00 is sure to tell you a whole lot more about the temperature in Europe than just it's taste in music. For starters there is Ukraine, Russia, Estonia and Latvia on the same platform (will sparks fly?) and if that's not enough excitment there is always the 'bearded lady' from that classy country Austria to promote tolerance between them.

Mark Twain summed it up very well many years ago with his advice to, 'Buy land, they aren't making it anymore.'

'It was reported that "the Mafia" is made up of a group of children who had also allegedly drawn up a hit list of six teachers they wanted to target. Following the incident a letter was reportedly sent out to parents at the primary school explaining what had happened and telling them that it had been reported to the police. Neither of the two boys is believed to have been arrested ...

6 May 2014

It was on Radio 4 at the weekend - I got the impression that the police were involved but could be wrong. Irrespective - my opinion is that any pupil (or staff!) action with a serious H&S threat must be handled by the police. Dealing with it internally just down plays it's seriousness to other pupils, plus schools have a vested interest to try to 'bury bad news' - which in my day was all too ...

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