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Cost of Living Crisis


Paco

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16 minutes ago, Detournement said:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/15/priced-out-uk-house-hunters-turn-to-lorry-sized-tiny-homes

Trailer Parks but for hipsters. 

These are my favourite genre of articles where the media takes something dystopian - in this case living in rented wooden box in a field - and tries to make it sound aspirational.

The guy who grew up in a 7 bedroom Victorian villa, works 6 days driving a lorry and can't afford to buy a one bedroom flat so he's spending 30 grand on a wooden trailer to park it on "land his parents own" seems totally legit....

Quite hilarious some of the descriptions.   A 'bedroom'  where even being sat on the bed means you're just about hitting the roof is described as comfortable.   Yes,  crawling around and getting concussed anytime you lift your head Is exactly my idea of comfort.

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7 hours ago, Detournement said:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/15/priced-out-uk-house-hunters-turn-to-lorry-sized-tiny-homes

Trailer Parks but for hipsters. 

These are my favourite genre of articles where the media takes something dystopian - in this case living in rented wooden box in a field - and tries to make it sound aspirational.

The guy who grew up in a 7 bedroom Victorian villa, works 6 days driving a lorry and can't afford to buy a one bedroom flat so he's spending 30 grand on a wooden trailer to park it on "land his parents own" seems totally legit....

Feel for folk who live in areas that are now unaffordable for first time buyers (mostly due to second home owners and AirBnB) but surely you’d be looking at moving elsewhere in the country before living in a glorified Trailer Park. There’s plenty of areas with more affordable housing for first time buyers.  The areas where you’d have no chance of getting an affordable home will probably stop you building a Trailer Park anyway as it’ll be NIMBY! 

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10 hours ago, San Starko Rover said:

The areas where you’d have no chance of getting an affordable home will probably stop you building a Trailer Park anyway as it’ll be NIMBY! 

The article does say at the end they want to create a new planning category between residential and fixed caravans. 

Trailer park owners in America make a fortune and it's probably something that is inevitable here given where we are politically. 

 

Edited by Detournement
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Claire and her husband James, who did not want to give their full names, upsized from their three-bedroom mid-terrace former council house in central Hertfordshire to a £600,000 five-bed in a Cambridgeshire town in spring 2021, in the belief that mortgage rates would remain low. “We stretched our budget to move to our dream house. Monthly payments have just increased by £370, after we rushed to re-fix for five years at just under 4% in November,” Claire says.

The couple, who have two children, have a household income of just over £60,000,

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/21/upsize-downsize-why-the-covid-property-race-for-space-went-sour-for-homebuyers

Five bedroom house. For a couple and two weans. 

Six. Hundred. Thousand. Pounds.

Ten times their annual income.

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and do not qualify for any government help apart from the £400 energy grant.

The world's smallest violin playing for this obvious injustice!

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“When we bought, it was inconceivable to me that interest rates would be going up this much. I’m not sure we’d be able to weather another big financial change. Retrospectively, I feel it was quite irresponsible for the bank to lend us this much, and I know they would have lent us more.”

Just get so far to f**k. The failure of people with ample resources and options to take any sort of personal responsibility for their moronic actions is risible. 

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13 hours ago, virginton said:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/21/upsize-downsize-why-the-covid-property-race-for-space-went-sour-for-homebuyers

Five bedroom house. For a couple and two weans. 

Six. Hundred. Thousand. Pounds.

Ten times their annual income.

The world's smallest violin playing for this obvious injustice!

Just get so far to f**k. The failure of people with ample resources and options to take any sort of personal responsibility for their moronic actions is risible. 

It's all the banks fault, they said we could have........no you decided you needed to have.

My girls share a room, it's not the end of the world.

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16 hours ago, virginton said:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/21/upsize-downsize-why-the-covid-property-race-for-space-went-sour-for-homebuyers

Five bedroom house. For a couple and two weans. 

Six. Hundred. Thousand. Pounds.

Ten times their annual income.

The world's smallest violin playing for this obvious injustice!

Just get so far to f**k. The failure of people with ample resources and options to take any sort of personal responsibility for their moronic actions is risible. 

That article is the most Guardian thing I’ve ever read. Mind boggling levels of cash in the bank included in every hardship story. The guy at the end saying that he cashed in £1.1 million, paid £750k for a new house and presumably walked away with £350k cash in order to save a few quid on gas bills is quite something. 

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1 hour ago, Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo said:

That article is the most Guardian thing I’ve ever read. Mind boggling levels of cash in the bank included in every hardship story. The guy at the end saying that he cashed in £1.1 million, paid £750k for a new house and presumably walked away with £350k cash in order to save a few quid on gas bills is quite something. 

"Adam Fahey, an architect and father of four from Surrey.... The house we’re moving to is much smaller: we’ll have about 650 sq feet less than in our current house, which is a six-bed with four reception rooms."

:lol: 

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5 hours ago, Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo said:

That article is the most Guardian thing I’ve ever read. Mind boggling levels of cash in the bank included in every hardship story. The guy at the end saying that he cashed in £1.1 million, paid £750k for a new house and presumably walked away with £350k cash in order to save a few quid on gas bills is quite something. 

To unleash them from there £300k mortgage on a £1mil house. Hardly scraping by.

The first couple have failed to mention how much deposit they put down. And when they took their mortgage they would've been shown the stress tested amounts at higher interest rates. That's only recently been scrapped. Broker made sure I was well aware the stress test figure when I sorted my mortgage (only the £92k) in the summer.

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5 minutes ago, Madame RH33 said:

To unleash them from there £300k mortgage on a £1mil house. Hardly scraping by.

The first couple have failed to mention how much deposit they put down. And when they took their mortgage they would've been shown the stress tested amounts at higher interest rates. That's only recently been scrapped. Broker made sure I was well aware the stress test figure when I sorted my mortgage (only the £92k) in the summer.

And don’t forget poor Amy the Analyst who only had a mere £190k  to put up front for her new house. 

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The uni is changing next year's pay award. Instead of an uplift in August, they're splitting it in two parts. Bringing forward part of the uplift next month, and the rest in August. 

In total, 7% for the lowest paid staff, and 4% for the highest. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I see the entirely predictable council tax rise has been met with outrage from the "Solidarity with the strikers ✊️" brigade.

I don't see the issue - time to pay up for the public sector pay rises you supported 🤷🏻‍♂️

Edited by Todd_is_God
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Meanwhile, in the Scottish Borders... 

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23328744.tory-councillors-vote-50k-coronation-fund-helping-foodbanks/

Intro to report - "A TORY-run council will splash £50,000 of savings on funding coronation community parties instead of helping foodbanks after elected members pushed the "out of touch" proposal through in a tight voting contest.

The plan by the Conservative administration of the Scottish Borders Council was approved by 18 votes to 15.

SNP councillor Fay Sinclair claimed hundreds of people had been in touch with the party group “absolutely aghast” at the planned “misuse” of public money.

The SNP group put forward an alternative proposal of distributing the reserves to local foodbanks but every single Tory councillor voted against this option.

Tough decision right enough. 

🤮

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13 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

I see the entirely predictable council tax rise has been met with outrage from the "Solidarity with the strikers ✊️" brigade.

I don't see the issue - time to pay up for the public sector pay rises you supported 🤷🏻‍♂️

Can you point us to this outrage so we can see what a "solidarity with the strikers brigade" actually looks like ?

 

Council Tax has risen every year since the freeze ended, it would have been raised by as much as the Councils think they can get away with regardless of LA workers getting a rise of half the rate of inflation !

People don't like paying more tax, who would have guessed .

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Won't someone please think of the landlords? 

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/feb/24/lots-of-us-are-very-anxious-why-britains-buy-to-let-landlords-are-selling

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Designer Philip Harris, 42, who has properties in south and east London, became a landlord by accident after meeting his now wife. She already had a flat, but rented it out, and the couple bought a property off-plan, when it was still at the design stage. When their children were born, they needed more space and bought a third property, renting out the second one. At the time, they saw their small portfolio as a retirement investment, but now, worried about mounting costs, they want to reduce the risk by selling one of the homes.

So not at all 'by accident' then, but rather 'a conscious plan to extract rent to pad their own nest'. 

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“It causes me huge amounts of stress and anxiety,” says Harris. “We have a big mortgage and, on top of that, an outlay every month to cover the expenses. We are just trying to breathe through it, as we are hoping there will be some respite.”

Expropriation is a form of respite.

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Edited by vikingTON
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On 22/01/2023 at 13:44, Miguel Sanchez said:

"Adam Fahey, an architect and father of four from Surrey.... The house we’re moving to is much smaller: we’ll have about 650 sq feet less than in our current house, which is a six-bed with four reception rooms."

:lol: 

:lol:

We've got only 7 rooms, never mind 4 reception rooms.

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