It’s a pretty scary time in the property market these days. Those 95% and 100% mortgages and loans of ridiculous multiples of annual salary that seemed like such a good idea at the time are coming back to bite many where it hurts. And while we fret and worry the majority of the rest of the world, where by and large renting is the norm wonders why we put ourselves through it.
It is an odd thing this dash for property ownership, which when you think about it, is not property ownership until you pay that last payment of your mortgage, somewhere far far into the future and as many are now discovering there is many a slip….

And when did our houses become investments instead of homes? I think that the whole approach to property ownership is askew. A house should be a home, somewhere we choose because we want to live there and we think it will be a safe and comfortable place for our families, not a good investment in an up coming area, or the next town ripe for development. Chosen for the right reasons property can be a joy to own not a constant worry that has you checking out the for sale signs in your street
and never being able to pass a local Estate agents window.

Settled in you own little nest, property prices can rise and fall all they like, because unless you want to sell to move to another country in which property is cheap and the way of life is entirely different it doesn’t matter. And even if you have to move for work, or any other reason if your property has gone down in value then the one you want to buy will have suffered a corresponding drop.

The era of cheap lending is over they tell us and I think the era of blindly trusting financial institutions to tie us into the most costly deal most of us will ever make should be over too. Who ever thought that lending or borrowing such vast amounts of money that even the slightest adjustment in interest rates would spell disaster would be a good idea?

The misery of negative equity and its likely progression to repossession is one of the most horrible and devastating things that could happen to a family. We’ve been greedy, we’ve gambled and lost, we’ve been short sighted. Whatever your view point and whatever the future has in store for us, perhaps it is time to appreciate our bricks and mortar for more than it’s investment value and return to a time when, in the words of the old song ‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home’

This week there has been a huge row again about a major UK clothing chain using child labour in India. I have a problem with this. It is not possible to judge the rest of the world by Western standards. In some countries childhood is a luxury and ends very quickly, almost as soon as a child is able to contribute to the family income. Even in this country in the not so distant past children were down coalmines and up chimneys, utilising their small stature where it was needed. A series was shown recently on British TV where a group of teenagers were taken to work in the garment producing factories of India. This was designed to show them where their clothes actually came from. During the programme, no doubt prompted by the producers one of the girls went on a campaign to find out if any of the factories were employing children. Eventually she, accompanied by an Indian man who was looking for these children, came across one. She started on a tirade of how awful it was while the boy sat looking frightened and bemused. It was explained to her that if this boy did not work his family would starve, he being the only one able to provide an income. And there we have it. If the young lad worked in England Social Services would provide for him and his family, but he doesn’t, he lives in India. As a child I used to live in Nigeria where youngsters are put to work routinely and I had equal amounts of respect and pity for the children I saw there. While I was free to play and go to school, they had to work. But without an alternative to provide for their family how are they supposed to survive?

From the series I watched it looked as though the Indian authorities were clamping down on the use of child labour, or maybe it was just a charitable group trying to get children into school, but without a living alternative, despite the best will in the world and with a genuine desire that all children be free to play and learn, what choice do these children and their families really have? Maybe someone can tell me.

Yes I know, I know! Apparently overweight people consume a fifth more calories than thinner people and drive round in their cars more because they can’t be bothered to walk! Is this really what the scientific argument has come to? Fed up with giving us different do’s and dont’s that they reverse whenever the wind changes, they are now gunning for a section of society to blame for our ills. They must surely be the last to realise, despite all their scientific know how that attacking the fat/anorexic/drunk/drug addict is just the way to drive them further into their addiction? And to blame them for global warming and food shortage? It is completely laughable and is accompanied by a strong whiff off barrel bottom scrapings. If the government is so concerned about the amount of unhealthy food we are eating why don’t they close some of the factories down that produce completely nutritionally redundant foods? Why don’t they subsidise the cost of fruit and vegetables and other foods that are better for us?

Is this the way to go about things, to demonise and attack one section of society, who if we believe all we hear are increasing in number and in weight year on year? At the very least, I as one of them, (after I’ve walked the dog twice a day and been on my feet for most of it), might come round and sit on you, so be careful what you say!

Group slap therapy for a Northern council who have fined a family £210 for having the lid of their bin open four inches. Why was that I hear you ask? Probably because his ridiculous council have cut down collections of rubbish to once a fortnight. Right, form an orderly queue, all of you and get your slap therapy here! A colleague asked me how long a prescribed course of Slap Therapy would be. Simple, until they stop doing it! Come on everyone lets make a stand for common sense, get people out to work so they don’t have time to develop all sorts of weird obsessions. And above all, if you feel yourself feeling the urge whine, moan, obsess or otherwise become a total pain in the rear end to the rest of us, especially if you re a celebrity with nothing to whine about, BOOK YOUR SLAP THERAPY NOW!

The last time I looked, my licence fee paid grudgingly to the BBC for their broadcast efforts, included radio. This Sunday in the Daily Mail was an article about Sarah Kennedy a querulous old biddy, well past her sell by date who is inflicted on the listeners to BBC radio 2 each morning between 6 am and 7.30. Well I say each morning but in fact she seems to have as much time off with one ailment after another and endless holidays as she does working at her strenuous 1 ½ hour Monday to Friday programme each year. So from this you will gather that I am not a fan. No doubt there are those who are. But in this country of free speech it seems the BBC as well as monitoring the content of our programmes is now censoring any complaints or adverse remarks we make about them. Listeners have complained about Miss Kennedy’s talking over the music, seeming to have little clue about the music she plays, deliberately mispronouncing or slurring her words and making remarks such as ‘ I only saw the black pedestrian on the crossing in the dark because he opened his mouth.’ Pity she opened hers. I actually wrote to her programme asking if she could not take a moment to listen to one of the three news bulletins in her programme and learn how to pronounce relatively simple names like Osama (Bin Laden) which she pronounces Ozama. More recently you would have been forgiven for thinking that there were three contenders in the Zimbabwe elections as she totally mangled Morgan Changurai’s relatively simple name. Yet apparently those who dare to point out these glaring errors and Miss Kennedy’s unprofessional style have now been told that their comments will not be posted on the BBC forum. The reason is apparently that the complaints are always the same and it is therefore getting boring. Hm, strange that, if the complaints are always the same, indeed especially if they are, then surely you would do something about it to please your listening and paying public? After all, we the public ultimately decide who we want to see and hear in various forms of media. The BBC surely do not imagine they can foist whatever they want on us, and that they can ignore criticism given. In my opinion they take such a high handed view at their peril.

No-one doubts that China does not have the best human right record, and further does not use it’s considerable influence where it could, in places like Darfur, to the good. But is this a new thing? A recent stain on the conscience of China’s history? No it isn’t. The obvious question to me would seem to be, Why were they allowed to compete for the honour of holding the Olympics in the first place if their human rights record or any other aspect of their modus operandi was going to cause such consternation? Their assurances, at the time that they were awarded the games that they would put things right obviously meant next to nothing. Are we really to believe that no one foresaw the scenes of protest that seem to being gaining strength across the world in the wake of the famous torch? Why would it not make more sense to make a prerequisite of holding the Olympic Games, a clean bill of health on human rights? Considering the enormous cache that accompanies the honour and, we are told, equally desirable upturn in economy and opportunity for the host, it might even be a way of presenting to some countries the incentive to clean their act up. God knows that nothing else seems to work!