Economic reality bites in Blighty

[Mega]

Economic reality bites in Blighty

For some years now Mega’s life has not been a happy one. He had to watch some of the most undeserving scum in British society get given….EVERYTHING.

Want a car? hey no worries the bank will sort you a line of credit & off that you can lease hire a BMW 3 series or Audi Q7……what can’t afford the fuel, we do you an overdraft for that as well.

Can’t think up a good productive business?.......just nip down to Bank & ask for a BUY TO LET loan………buy a few houses & rent them……..can’t find good tenants?....Well your lovely Labour government has upped & upped housing welfare….just find ANY inn-city scum whom have NEVER worked & place them into a nice low crime (not for long) estate…………..just watch the “Joy” on the faces of those whom worked & saved hard to move away from this scum 20-30 years ago as they move in.

After all, house prices all EVER go up & rates are always LOW………..you can’t miss. Want a Porsche or Lambo……just go back to the bank & get them to remortage the homes again, letting you extract the “wealth” from them……….laugh at those silly fools that work for a living MAKING things…….this is the new era, debt is wealth !

………….and then the music stopped.

For most of 2010 we had a stand off, house buyers refused to pay the insane “market prices” sellers trying to tough it out & the government trying like Hell to prop up the market with every trick they know.

But now the tipping point has been reached, only today I had dinner with a civil service contact whom had a bad week. When the recession hit in 2008 the government agreed to cover the interest on mortgages for 2 years. For many people its like “Times up”…..& these are not lower class scum either they middleclass & they pissed!.........they refuse point blank to except that the government is going to STOP giving them “free money”.

At the other end of the spectrum:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331540/Council-house-life-tenancies-end-People-kicked-2-years.html

Indeed the “Free money machine” is now not working elsewhere. For many years Labour hid the true level of unemployment by paying for older people to train to be plumbers or electricians…..modern apprenticeships …..even if you where 45. Over 1 million people are “In training” on things like this……….they were told last week that they have to pay for training if they want it!

We were paying kids £30 a week to stay on and study…….that’s about to die as well. Program after program is getting killed & unlike when I was a lad theNorth sea oil is almost gone & Britain is £10 TRILLION in debt!........an un-payable debt.

I fear 2011 will be a year of “discovery” for those whom thought the magic money machine would run forever & ever.

Mega

[Mega]

Re: Economic reality bites in Blighty

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20...unrest-reforms

WE ARE BROKE.............try keeping yourself fit & heahtly.........eat less....walk a couple of miles a day...

[Mega]

Re: Economic reality bites in Blighty

Oh BOO HOO!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/...pupils-protest

Am so sorry that you are being asked to pay £9,000 for your course................Gee i mean that will make it differcult to lease hire a BMW for the 1st few years after you leave & if you don't get a high paying job you don't have to pay!

Mega

[pianodoctor]

Re: Economic reality bites in Blighty

MEGA wrote: "For some years now Mega’s life has not been a happy one. He had to watch some of the most undeserving scum in British society get given….EVERYTHING."

Why unhappy?

Most of my life I felt pretty poor. I looked around me and my peers were buying mini-mansions, multiple luxurious cars, filling their houses with expensive furniture and electronics, taking regular nice vacations, etc. I figured my modest earnings made me a loser. I assumed they were earning the big money they needed to buy those things. My own modest money went to the necessities of life, and to the most modest forms of housing, the cheapest automobiles, health insurance, taxes, and trying to save something for old age. (I always assumed that U.S. Social Security was not going to cover me adequately in old age.) I rarely took any vacation or traveled or went to nice restaurants or had nice personal effects. Because I couldn't do those things AND save AND not get into debt. I had to make my choices.

I never went into debt because I learned an early life lesson at age 19 getting a musical instrument on loan that borrowing money was not a good deal for me. I figured borrowing was really a luxury item. I spent a good deal of my life without even a credit card. I looked poor and felt poor. But I spent no more than I earned and even saved a little. I have bought modest houses with loans, it's true. But they were at a time when buying was not much more expensive than renting, and I 'assumed' preexisting mortgages at very very low rates. At the time, it was a better deal than renting. It was prudent.

Now here we are 30 years down the road and appearances have been revealed to be a giant delusion. Most of that conspicuous consumption I saw all around me was based on debt. And that's what most of those people own- debt liabilities. On the other hand I am paid up to date on everything with no liabilities and have a positive net worth. Not hugely positive mind you- I could not retire on it today. But I realize now it's more than a lot of my peers that I thought were so well-off have, and I'm not into old age yet.

What's to be angry about? They have their debt, I have my savings, and I may yet achieve a decent retirement. I don't know what's going to happen to them with their mountains of obligations. Looking to find minimum wage work at age 74 perhaps? If you are a regular working person like me, maybe you have some savings and little or no debt too. Maybe you are now in a better position than they are. I'm not unhappy or angry at them. I feel badly for them. And now perhaps I also feel a bit of satisfaction that maybe I'm not so poor after all and that my inner sense of things somehow kept me moving in the right direction, despite the appearances of what seemed to be going on around me.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Economic reality bites in Blighty

My oldest daughter called me and told me that she was in difficult financial shape. It seems that she bought a house a few years ago on the mainland of British Columbia. No-mind that I told her NOT to buy it.

She rakes-in like $40,000 per year, give or take, as a senior teacher, and she is heading for a great retirement. But she had to have that little house........

She would not let me talk to my grand daughter on the telephone. (Punishment for the miser.)

My income is below poverty level, but she resents my scrimping and saving. That one-cent of interest at the TD Bank that I get monthly and entered into my passbook in Langford, BC is quite meaningful to me; it's a monthly ceremony at the bank.

My oldest daughter wants me to pay for the entire family to cross over on the bus, then rent a motel, then pay for the good-times, then gifts, then... whatever.

Forty-thousand dollars per year to live on, and a retirement, and she resents me. But she drank the lattes and had to have that little house on the mainland. So I am being punished, as if I were to blame for her choices in life. No mind that it was her father who drove from Regina to Duluth or from Winnipeg to Duluth, or from Edmonton to Duluth, every Christmas so that she (and her sisters) could have a fine holiday season with her grand-parents.

No-mind that she urged my X to divorce me because I was too cheap, too eccentric, and too selfish. Now, in the well-known tradition of feminism, she is the victim.

Oh, this is going to be a grand Great-Recession! Hard-times are not only in the UK, but in Canada, and in America, even in Silicon Valley in California. This is the reckoning. From East Sooke to San Jose to Blighty, this is the reckoning.

To think that in Silicon Valley, there are people in the Valley making millions of dollars per year and not realizing that half of the people in the Valley are starving. They don't see it. Even in my own family, there are some who just don't see it.... Kids go hungry to school each morning in San Jose while thousands of people drink their lattes and play with their toy telephones, just a few miles away.... It's an amazing story, and it is part of this reckoning.

[jpetr48]

Re: Economic reality bites in Blighty

What you are saying was a research study and placed in a book The Millionaire Next Door. Looks are deceiving. Thanks for sharing plandoc and starving steve. Contentment whether we have much or little is key. Thankfully, I never bit on the certified Acura and keep driving my 2005 Honda here in Orange County too- no mortgage or debt- just thankful to God for all He has provided (in the good and the not so good times).

[North4st]

Re: Economic reality bites in Blighty

I think I am fortunate to have a somewhat more global perspective on the economy based on where my extended family lives and their weekly updates. I live, to my constant amazement and thanks, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia (shout out to StarvingSteve on the Salmon River) and have a steady personal consulting business in Information Technology.

My brothers and sisters [siblings and outlaws] live in Toronto, California, Florida, England and Germany. Good value when I want a vacation but great intelligence when I read the online papers (Guardian, NYTimes, GlobeandMail) and probe for comment. I have lived vicariously through them the US housing bubble and crash, financial hardship, life stress and divorce; not to forget the remarkable mechanism of residential short sale where a house mortgaged at a $150k gets sold for $46k and they stay living there as the new renters!

Here’s what I see. Some of the family is grateful and busy laying down the foundation for a comfortable retirement and eking out the day-to-day pleasures that can be had through savings, and living a life based on thoughtful intent. The other half are compartmentalizing their predicament and flipping between their life of entitlement (and immediate gratification) one moment and their consternation of why these awful things are happening to them. Funnily enough, that latter group live in the U.S. of A.
Weekly, I spend time coaching my 50+ sibling in Florida on how a person with a $60k+ income can live within their budget. The home equity leveraging and credit card juggling my California sibling exercises is way beyond my comfort zone.

To get to the point. Yes Mega (glad you’re back dude) now is the great time of reckoning for Blighty. But it had to happen and it won’t be forever. As for the U.S. of A.? It has got to happen there too. Lower standard of living, even fewer public services, and INCREASED TAXES. Look at the physics and do the math. Privatizing profit and socializing debt results in a world like this. You’re not going to grow your economy out of this predicament and keep your taxes low and your standard of living high. The only other option is waging a war for treasure and subjugating some other population. Maybe I am naïve in thinking that is the only part of the “new economy” that is new. The world won’t stand for those tactics anymore. Oh, wait, who’s profiting from Iraq oil this week?

[Jay]

Re: Economic reality bites in Blighty

Steve, I hope you can work things out with your family. Without your friends or relatives what is the point? We really are our relationships in many ways. Sometimes what looks and feels like reality is just a story about what happened. Maybe a valid story, but a story nontheless.

[Mega]

Re: Economic reality bites in Blighty

I keep my eyes open & YES you can see thing starting to turn.
The car parks were full of SUV's (Britian always been a small car nation) now only a few. Once Cheap peek oil kicks in, together with large road taxes (based on CO2 output, hence a large powerful car is £500 a year!) i expect to see LOTS of old small cars. The industry calls it "Down sizing".........i call it return to the mean.

The "Sheep" simply can't or don't want to know what is about to hit them. The standard of life for them is going to crash...not just no BMW but no car at all!.........They think that the "recession" will end & house prices will rocket again..........but that can't happen. Even if "They" go the inflation route normal day to day expenses will rocket, removing the amount of money they have to pay a home loan.

Right now the BBC (Shits!) are trying to pressure the goverment because the banks are tightening the lending standeds.......no more than they were 10 years ago, you know when someone asking for a loan HAD to find 20% down & look like they be able to pay it back!

Its like trying to winne a crack head off drugs.......they rather stay HIGH, yes but you smoked your stash & thats it bro!

2011 is going to be "Fun" & i can't wait for 2012 when the "Games" come to London & riots are going on.
Mike