A Step Up.

Just recently I had a brilliant idea for young people to help themselves get onto the housing ladder. I have every sympathy for them, I know how hard it can be and it is much harder now than when I was young. However, there is no phone app for this, you will have to overcome your inertia and it will require you to co-operate with others, face to face and put a lot of effort into it. When I start my alternative society foundation I will provide a forum/format, maybe even finance for this idea, in the meantime you are on your own. I think you are nearly all too idle and unprepared to step outside the box for this, so go on prove me wrong and let my me know how you get on. It would be nice if more of YOU gave ME a bit of encouragement and started following my blog, I am trying to help and I haven’t even asked for any money yet.

Nearly every town and city has scummy districts where property is dirt cheap;  the reason these properties are cheap is mainly the people who live there although most of the properties will need a bit of renovating. But what if several like-minded people got together and started to buy them up with a view to changing the demographic of the area?  In many cases you can buy these properties for less than the deposit on the house you would want to buy. I know of one case when a property speculator bought a property unseen at auction because he couldn’t believe now cheap it was. When he went to see it he didn’t feel safe to get out if the car and put it back in the next sale. They are not all as bad as that but there is a risk and it unlikely that any of the mainstream mortgage lenders would lend on them; hopefully they will be so cheap you won’t need to. If you do need to borrow money think about commercial mortgages and try to make out that you are an experienced property developer. Or take out a loan to buy a car, if you have a good enough income to support it, and then don’t buy the car. I know of people who have bought properties on credit cards. If you do it that way switch the debt to one with a long interest free period ASAP. If you are not a sensible person and already in debt you will need to clear that first but this is probably not for you. Those who got in first would get the cheapest ones, they would deserve to as they would be taking the greatest risk and would have to do the most work. Once the area started to be gentrified the prices would rise rapidly and the landlords of all the benefits tenants would cash in and sell up. So, I have given you a starter for ten, think about it and run with it.

Owning your own home is such a no brainer that you should do everything you possibly can to fight your way through all those people standing around the bottom and get on the first rung. Go without, defer having a family, save that deposit; there is now a savings plan that pays a better rate of interest than most and the government will add a 25% bonus if you use it for a house purchase. Compared to normal interest rates of about 1% or less on savings it is a fantastic deal and you should be putting as much as you are allowed into it. I must confess to being a bit feckless myself when I was younger and I used to spend my money as fast as it came in, fortunately not faster as there was not the same credit available in those days. Please do not even think about buying stuff on credit the interest rates are horrendous and will keep you in wage slavery for the rest of your days When it comes to buying a property just get the best you can afford, even if what you can afford is not up to much. In a few years the value will have gone up so you will have bigger deposit when you move up to the next one. DIY skills are very useful and you can make a lot more profit by renovating yourself. I was in my thirties when I bought my first house. It had formerly been the storeroom for Millom Co-op and it took me 2 more moves and a lot of hard work to get back to civilisation.

Suppose I approached you and said I am in the process of saving for a pension and I want you to pay £800 pounds a month towards it; you may well say OK but what’s in it for me. I say nothing at all except that when you see me enjoying a wealthy retirement in thirty years-time you can say I helped pay for that. You may well think that is not a very good deal for you and yet if you are living in a house or flat and paying rent that is exactly what you are doing. Let’s say I have a bit of capital, enough for a deposit on a modest house, I buy a house with a buy to let mortgage and rent it to you. The rent you pay me covers the mortgage payments with a bit left over. So I now have a house and all it is costing me is the interest I would have received on the capital used for the deposit, I may need to spend a bit on maintenance and repairs and cover periods of no tenants (voids) but HMRC very kindly allow me to take that and the mortgage interest payments (now restricted to basic rate) off from any profits I have made before they tax me. Over the years the house goes up in value and the rent I am charging goes up but the mortgage stays the same, this is called financial gearing. For example; perhaps initially I own 15% and the bank 85%, the property goes up in value but the mortgage owed is still the same and ten years later I own 65% and the bank 35%. If you are buying a house for yourself to live in the maths gets even better because your monthly mortgage payments will probably be less than the rent you would pay only now it is going towards your retirement not mine. Not only that but any capital gains you make on the value of the property are tax free so it really is worth working your butt off and doing without to save that deposit. Some statistics; house prices in UK have risen by an average of 4,300% in the past 40 yrs; if food had gone up at a comparable rate a supermarket chicken would cost £51.18. £1000 invested in a buy to let property purchased with a 25% deposit in the final quarter of 1996 would by the final quarter of 2013 have been worth £13048. This represents a compound annual return of 16.3% and this is in period of recession. More importantly you will have security and whatever happens and no matter how poor you are you will have a roof over your head and no one can turf you out onto the street. I know what I am talking about, sign up to follow my blog now, it will eventually increase your wealth and your well being.

My Tree-mendous Love

I think you can now have your ashes incorporated with a sapling in a sort of grow bag, so in some way you become a tree.

Tangled Pretzel

I love trees. No wait. I fucking LOVE trees.

If I had to pick my favourite thing in nature, it would be trees. And I have many favourite things in nature! If I could live in a tree, I would. I can stare at them for hours. Touch them, sit underneath them and be happy instantly. Listen to them for even longer, when the wind blows through their leaves and the sounds that bring me peace and fuel my imagination.

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A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words.

I am sorry that, so far, I haven’t been able give my blog as much attention as I would like; the situation should improve now that I have made a “meaningful start” and secured the planning permission on the latest development project. Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago someone asked what I did for a living so I said “I am a developer”; “with a small p” said Carol, no need to get personal darling.

 Anyway, I am going to try and put a lot of pictures on my blog on future and this is the first attempt. I set out for a walk today with the intention of capturing a good image of the Autumn colours, but it was so grey and cloudy that I have had to use a picture of the fells that I prepared earlier; the sentiments that go with it apply just the same however.

I often think how lucky I am to have The Lakes on my doorstep, especially now most other places are so crowded. Beauty and silence two of the attributes I hold most dear. But now it seems that we are applying for World Heritage status. I sincerely hope we don’t get it; The Lakes would be turned into a theme park and the accountants would move in and start “improving” it so that they could screw every last penny out the visitors. “Pave paradise, put up a parking lot” as the song says.

Also in the news recently is the poor quality of the mobile phone signal, as if it was a bad thing. This is The Lakes for fucks sake it has mountains and unless you put a whacking great mast on the top of each one, with a road and power to it, you will not have a good signal in the valleys; no doubt many would see this as progress. The present coverage is more than adequate and I think there is a very good case for making us a mobile free zone, except for calling emergency services. If anyone can’t manage without a mobile for a few hours or a few days they need to have serious look at their lives. They could still use them for photographing the scenery which will look a lot better without phone masts blighting the landscape. Of course, if we do get the World Heritage status we would then have to have a good signal so that the punters can use phone apps to go from ride to ride. If we destroy something created by man it is called vandalism if we destroy something created by Nature it is called progress.       

Another Kind of Congress

Now that we are leaving the EU I would like to see us form an alternative Union, but getting it right this time and not allowing overpaid, incompetent bureaucrats to get control of it. We would all keep our own sovereignty and culture with no standardization, so we could have our sausages any size we want; and our doughnuts could look just like Fannie’s come to that, as Johnnie Craddock famously said. We would have tariff free trade without any other obligations. We would have visa free travel but no automatic right to live in one of the other countries. We could have a common currency for ease of travel and trading and to stop the banks creaming off a percentage of every transaction/currency switch, but it would float against our own currencies which we would all keep. The cost of administering it all would be kept to a minimum by statute and would be done by elected officials; there would be no equivalent of the European Commission.  This is what the EU should have been but sadly wasn’t; it is what it could be but sadly never will.

So, who do we invite to join us? Initial thoughts, Sweden, Norway, Iceland who all have a not dissimilar culture; Greece, because they are lovely people, it is a wonderful holiday destination and they have been screwed by the EU. We might have to help them with their plumbing so that we don’t have to keep putting our papers in the bin. Italy because their food is every bit as good as France but they are more exuberant about eating it and they enjoy life generally. Possibly Spain and Portugal.

Any countries that give us a hard time with Brexit but want to join us when the EU breaks up will have to eat humble pie. We can do it, we have won world wars against vastly superior forces, we have ruled the seas, created an empire and then given them independence and now we have given Brussels eurocrats a bloody nose. It is a good plan and I recommend it to the House.

Descent into madness.

Came back home on Monday after a week in Menorca. Lovely island. We drove all over and had some walks on the coastal paths that go all around the island. Hardly any traffic even in Mahon, the capital, the same could not be said for here. Picked up our car back at Manchester airport and straight onto the Manchester motorway system, it seemed everyone was mad. I have driven millions of miles in many countries of the world but after a week of tootling about I was disorientated. Everyone was going much faster cutting in and out and you just knew that a slight mistake or a moment’s hesitation would earn you a long blast on someone’s horn and a shaken fist. I feel really sorry for anyone from a quiet place who hires a car at Manchester airport, they must think they gave arrived in Hades. It took until Preston before I got fully back into the swing of it. Nowadays it is always a relief to get past the Blackpool turnoff on the M6, and know you will soon be back in what I would call civilization. Speaking of the coastal path known as the “Cami de Cavalls” in Menorca it has regular fortifications along its length and was built to defend the island against invasion at time when possession of the island had strategic importance in the Med. This is a very good idea and several organisations, such as “The Ramblers are working to get a continuous path around the coast of the UK. Although it will be primarily for leisure use it could prove useful in the future when we need to have a “dads army” protecting our coast, see previous postings.