Mungler

Not so: 1. further education (full time education) is not now the norm. There's a swing to send 16-18 year olds down the apprenticeship route. But think about it - take the risk and the debt, do a degree like law / accountancy and not basket weaving or sociology, and you will be playing the game well and will be rewarded provided you then chose a sensible career path e.g. if you get a law degree go and work for a law firm and not CAB. And what's the alternative? Moaning that unskilled, unqualified people can't get a good job - that's always been the way and will stay that way unless those people go and get a trade or skilled up somehow, and that means more more education albeit probably on the job. 2. 2 full time wages to cover the rent, depending on where you live, quite possibly. Like you'd need 2 full time wages to cover a mortgage. House prices are what they are. If the government builds a load of social housing, that cost will be passed on - the government has not money of its own, only what it collects in from everyone in tax. 3. Go onto Autotrader and put in +"1 owner" and there's a polo with 42k miles, 1 owner and full service history from a dealer for £650. There's plenty more round this £ figure too. Cheapest brand new PCP is a 4 door Corsa for £1000 down and £150 a month - that's cheap motoring for 22 plate car. 4. BoE base rate is 3% that is still historically ridiculously low. We are nowhere near high interest rates right now. They are coming over the horizon, but right now cannot be considered to be "high" interest rates. 5. There are always people on the housing list. Again, if you want your god or your government to solve your problems, you're in for a nasty shock.

Renting out the spare room and making sure all adult occupiers are chipping in is the place to start - the amount of times we see idle 20 something year olds at home, either not in higher education and playing the X box all day or at work and using the place like a free hotel. Similarly, if you were Indian or Jewish you would see one of the sets of elderly parents selling up and chipping in to come and live with the kids and grand kids. One of the guys who works for me - husband and wife both professionals and in high paying jobs both in full time employment, kids at home with grandparents in a million pound house (with all 3 generations living there). If you are culturally attuned to this it makes so much sense in terms of what everyone gets out of it financially and emotionally. So many of the problems people face are a direct / indirect result of the failure of the family structure; discuss.

There are additional factors. Returning to the Ugandan Indian's as well as embracing education and entrepreneurial spirit they had tight family structures (good for a supply of labour and capital through pooled resources), low divorce rates and multi generational living where grandparents would look after children to free up parents to go to work. From what I can see with my own eyes, if you have parents that actually give a monkeys, and who stay the distance, the children of those people will absolutely have the best start in life. If you have no family, no wider support structure, no education, no portable skills and no money, that's a difficult hole to climb out of for sure. Indeed, fair play to Rupert for his life journey - he managed it.

Not so. If you look at the Ugandan Indians that Idi Amin turfed out on 90 days notice in the 70's most arrived here with the clothes on their back but took advantage of a free education system for their kids and made the sacrifice to work unsociable hours and do the jobs no one else wanted to do in order to make money. As a group they were all extremely successful and their kids are now doctors and surgeons. More recently we used to employ a Bulgarian cleaner. You have never seen anyone work like her - headphones on and that was her off like the Duracell bunny for 4 hours. She said she left Bulgaria for a better life - she was a cleaner and her husband was an odd job builder type. Both her kids passed the 11+ and went to Grammar school. Her commentary was that the English were lazy and English children grew up lazy. She said that one of her kids was finding it difficult to make friends as school (a Grammar school ranked 14th in the whole Country) and her response was "my children go to school to learn, not to make friends or enjoy themselves, and that is so my children don't grow up to be a cleaner or a handy man." We as a nation just don't have that steel in us any more and it's because we have a welfare state, free education, free healthcare and we don't know any different; we take it all for granted as an automatic right and as a nation we "lean in to it" to get the most out for the least put in.

I saw the Panorama documentary. That midwife was living in a large semi (I’d guess 4 bedrooms) and she said she had 2 adult children living at home. 1st question is what do they contribute? Next they said she had a £350k interest only mortgage that was on a tracker rate. 2nd question should she take responsibility for not having a repayment mortgage or a repayment plan? There was always going to be a day of reckoning right? The house she was in, they didn’t say what the sale price was. It was tidy and inside the M25 and I’d guess it booked at £600k, worst case not a penny under £500k. 3rd question could she not get a flat with her earning potential and a repayment mortgage on the net proceeds of sale being somewhere between £150k and £250k? She looked like she was over 55 to me. She was 2 decades into NHS service and will have a pension which she could unlock? I felt sorry for the renters in Bristol but the distance between S21 notice being served and the landlord physically getting possession is more like 6 to 9 months. Also they had 2 incomes and had banged out 4 kids whilst the whole time in rented. I am so pragmatic it hurts. I would have liked more kids than I have but both the wife and I were aware of our financial and time limitations at the time we were popping them out. I digress. Anyhoos, there is a pervading detachment of responsibility and it always ends with someone saying the government should do x, y and z to solve the problem. Waiting on the government or your god to solve your problems is fools game.

The answer for these rural / under populated areas is actually Air BnB. If the argument is about under occupancy / under use then having a different and fresh occupier in with regularity is precisely what the local economy needs. Ah but multiple properties and passive income is catnip for the left.

If you get the fridge / freeze rotation right no one is eating the same thing for 3 days and nights solid 😆 And my last solid gold tip is : https://chefjonwatts.com/recipes/ I saw a Facebook clip for his beef and potato curry - takes no time at all, handful of ingredients, one pot cooking and was out of the park delicious. We’re working our way through his other recipes. https://www.facebook.com/reel/5468290643226385?fs=e&s=TIeQ9V

I’m a big fan of vac pack but got into plastic containers with lids (off Amazon for sauces etc). Then the Mrs found a reusable sealed set of plastic boxes and lids in Costco - £20 a set but worth every penny, robust and reusable. The answer to most family meals is batch cooking. We used to suffer from family dinner being knocked up, there being a couple of portions left at the end and no plan what to do with the left overs and so they would end up festering in the fridge or off to the bin. But at the same time (when we had 3 kids at school) we saw on their dinner money account they (left to their own devices) were eating rubbish - 99% bread or pasta based. The school meal cost was about £40 - £50 a month a head. So the Mrs sacked it off and got each of the kids a ‘food flask’ where the kids would take in reheated left over bolognaise, lasagne, roast dinners every day. The kids mates were all eating crisps and cheese sandwiches but they ate hot proper food everyday and we saved £100+ plus a month on rubbish school dinners. Having typed that out, the answer to eating properly and household management is to marry the right woman 😆

This

This is spot on. I grew up as a child of the 70’s and that’s never really rubbed off. Today, it’s frightening what people consider they should have as of right or as a minimum basic. The gap / disconnection between that perceived right / basic minimum and their own economic reality is bridged by credit which is long term unsustainable because no budgeting has taken place. On the subject of household management, there is much said about education and how people don’t know how to cook or how to manage their finances. That’s depressing because we live in a country where there is free education for all. People fresh off the boat from developing nations must look in wonder at how we get free education (and free healthcare), abuse both and turn out kids that at 16 years of age are thick as mince. It’s not education these people need, it’s better parents.

Hanlon’s Razor : never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. People were messing with ‘stuff’ in a lab somewhere and it got out. We can speculate endlessly about the purpose of any lab based ‘research’ but knowing how warm and friendly the Chinese are I would expect them to have been looking for a way of ironing out their elderly and infirm population as part of cost and resource saving. The reaction around the world to covid has not been coordinated, controlled or staged by a secret cabal of ruling lizard people - it’s people being morons, again. As the pendulum swings back I would like to see more of the tyrannical leaders and experts up against the wall, but that’s not going to happen - we will give them book deals and blank cheques to go on game shows. The depressing bit is that even with what we now know there are people still calling for lockdowns and masks - it just shows you how stupid the masses can be. Anyway, there’s been some interesting studies about the ‘Physiognomy’ of fear. There’s been a study of the physical characteristics of the leaders and experts who refused to lockdown and those who heavily backed lockdowns. The long story short is that those who refused to lockdown and go against the nonsense were all fit, healthy, outgoing Alpha types and those who went big on lockdowns were the more drippy angsty worried well weaselly types.

A day to look back and remember and a day to look forward and remember elsewhere 😉

👍

The Brexit will make you poorer line is interesting because there is truth to that assertion but…. 1. Measured / compared to what (and adopting what baseline) and 2. over what period of time? We are seeing the economic baseline trashed because of covid and making comparisons pointless : ‘oh look brexit will make you one billion pounds poorer, but oh look, covid has just made you a trillion pounds poorer and we have inflation running at North of 10%’ Then we have the ‘comparator’ of Europe, and which collectively is far deeper into the toilet than us. I remember not that long ago being directed to the economic wonders of Germany and then came along Ukraine. Oh and I was also directed to the better economic productivity of Ireland - anyone seen the news recently about all the Irish economic issues coming to a head? Again, in the same ‘toilet’. And this brings me onto the time line. Right here and now, everything is in the toilet and everywhere but nothing stays the same. The remainers really do need to let Brexit go. That ship has long sailed and in the meantime we’ve had two Titanics in covid and Ukraine. Why aren’t people getting as angry about the economic catastrophe that was covid as they have done about Brexit? Answer me that…

If that’s not a solid gold reason to vote remain and commit the UK to Eu rule then I just don’t know what is 😆

You have to laugh. When it boils down to it 99% of times the remainer complaint is something peripheral and convenience related - like the extra queues at passport control to get to the holiday home in France, Portugal or Italy. Or the problems with driving licenses when motoring across the continent. Or how an E111 card might work. Now it's pet passports. I get it and we're all only human, but it's not the high level big stuff that sits behind this, like national sovereignty, European army or a centralized currency is it - it's all about personal inconvenience.

Ah, but that’s now. The mask slipped and we all caught a glimpse of the level of assistance the Germans were initially prepared to offer in the war against their country’s primary energy provider despite what their EU compadres wanted. If you ask me who blew the pipelines up I’d say it was the Yanks to force the Germans over this side of the line - it’s what I would do. But hey, let’s not open *that* thread again. All we need to know is that when the brown stuff hits the fan we absolutely can’t count on support from our EU partners - it’s every country for itself. Indeed, I have advocated that any UK citizen that relies on the government to dig them out of a hole will end up buried in the very hole they are standing and waiting in. The same applies for these groupings of countries and communities - all window dressed nonsense.

I believe what I read in the FT. And your answer isn’t an answer.

You are joking right? The Ukraine war with Russia has shown how little support Germany will lend when it doesn’t suit domestic interests, despite purportedly mandated EU direction. We’ve had our eyes opened to the importance of energy, military and food independence- let’s hope our moronic leaders are paying attention though.

Self determination and independent currency so we don’t get sucked down the EU vortex when that pack of cards collapses. All Brexit plans got washed away with Covid. Mind you, if we’d have stayed in the EU we’d be asking ‘so how has staying in benefitted us’ as we then are told what vaccines to use by the EU, when we can turn the gas on / off and Macron decides the UK’s military spending as head of the new European army we are then mandated to join.

It’s funny how the remainers still to this day go on and on about Brexit. But Brexit is but a single drop in the brimming bucket of economic poo that has been covid. And yet we don’t see the same bile and vitriol for the lovers of masks and lockdowns when compared to those who wanted national sovereignty and independence from the EU.

It's more like a 14% drop. But it's impossible to assess the economic impact of Brexit as a stand alone when it's since been dwarfed with the economic catastrophe that was Covid and the contemporaneous energy and food crisis that is Ukraine. In short, the base line is in the toilet. Everything is now in the toilet including the toilet.

Not really. Post covid and post Ukraine the EU and mainland Europe have bigger fish to fry and which are likely to sink the EU. Indeed, the Eurozone economies are suffering far worse than the UK albeit that is massively under reported. Let's see where the first energy blackouts are...

Paying £6 for a cup of coffee is off the chart mental. I love to waste money but I have to draw the line somewhere 😆

And this is why economics should be a mandatory GCSE subject. My first economics lesson was that everything has to be paid for and nothing is free. Next is the realisation that government has no money, and that the money it has it collects from us through taxation. The bill for the pandemic and other fiscally reckless events is now coming over the horizon and it’s going to be a miserable 10 years for most and everything is going to cost more. Inside the M25 you can’t rent a basic 2 bed 1 box room family house for less than £1500 a month and so buying is still cheaper than renting. One of the interesting conundrums about inflation is that where interest rates are high but still under the rate of inflation, anyone with a bricks and mortar capital asset is still likely to be winning as the value of the capital asset accelerates at a faster rate than the real value of the money mortgage debt. There’s a generation that have never seen a recession and I don’t think they know what it’s going to be like because everyone has got used to having pretty much everything (wrapped in a monthly payment). I’ve always said that anyone who has lived through a recession are the first to refuse to pay £6 for a coffee from the likes of Starbucks - that to my mind is just beyond mental.