The Ranting Room

In the U.S. the big annoyance is "McMansions", of which there are oodles of little developments in my area...I drive past and wonder, where the hell is everyone getting this money - I must be in the wrong line of work!  

Perfect, Dean, just perfect!

"Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, the TV production team have cajoled him into hiring a crane and pointlessly filming it in the pouring rain. To add to his misery, I'm now gurning at the camera in a smarmy way and sounding dramatically concerned

Yes, Yes, Yes!



To think - all over the world, there are bemused prog fans thinking to themselves "what the bloody hell are those English people on about?"

Bailiff:

"You are the biggest peasant - Goodbye"

Blacksword wrote: Lets see a program about a real young couple, without a pot to p1ss in, struggling to get together the smallest of deposits, to part buy/part rent some housing asscociation cupboard

Andy - such a programme highlighting issues faced by real people would not get the ratings required by the robber baron TV networks...



...unless it were entitled something like "Police Camera Scum Property Ladder" with grainy footage (taken from a helicopter with plenty of snap-cuts) of a young couple going into an estate agent, there to be met by Noel Edmonds with a row of boxes, one of which contains the key to a 1 bedroomed flat on a sink estate (which is all they can afford) & the other 15 boxes contains viral anthrax (which to be honest is preferable), they then get chased by a police car to the estate they can afford (with plenty of cutaway shots to an estate agent giving platitudes like "I did recommend a possible shared ownership scheme whereby they only pay £600 per month mortgage to own 1% of a new-build house made of cardboard & cheese + £750 a month rental on the remainder - this way they get 2 different chances for eviction, as they only earn £20,000 pa between them, but they wouldn't listen") where they're met by Chris Tarrant & Ann Robinson to take part in a gameshow format style property auction where they may get the house, but will definitely lose any shreds of dignity remaining after they'd already spent the last 12 months being told "you don't earn enough" by every mortgage lender in the high street & can only afford the 1 bedroomed sink estate flat as Dodgy Barry gave them a sub-sub-sub-sub prime mortage at an APR of 67% secured on their property, their parents' property, their dog and great uncle albert's remaining kidney...

Still - they may get an additional income from the 20p repeat fee every time it's shown on every single bloody sattelite channel every afternoon, evening & weekend, inbetween re-runs of 'Grand Designs' (and don't even get me started on that)!



Sorry, what was the question again...?

Edited by Jim Garten - June 24 2008 at 07:38

^^at my Youth Hostel, I have between 25-30 nesting pairs of House Sparrows, both in boxes around the building, and in the holly hedge around the edge of the car park...

Blacksword wrote: Who are these people and why can't they off back to where they came?.

Jim

Those property programs are one of my - many - pet hates. I find them offensive. The scenarios you describe are spot on, and hi-light the true problems in this country; that massive divide between those who have money and those who dont.

Lets see a program about a real young couple, without a pot to p1ss in, struggling to get together the smallest of deposits, to part buy/part rent some housing asscociation cupboard. I'm sick of all those couples turning properties down because they 'dont like the stables' or whatever. Who are these people and why can't they off back to where they came? People dont pay their TV liecense to be reminded of what paupers they are.

This has been touched upon previously, but Rachel's post highlights a serious problem in rural communities; villages are dying (literally) because any young people brought up in a small village cannot afford to stay, as overpaid city types are buying up everything from cottages to barns in order to have a country retreat - as a result the property prices soar in the area, young people leave the community to find somewhere (relatively) less expensive to buy or rent property, leaving the village to the aging 'older' residents.

I'm of an age that can remember when Welsh villagers started burning the weekend retreats of wealthy English for exactly this reason - are we soon to see mobs of pitchfork wielding wrinklies storming up the drives of immaculate barn conversions (with a break to pop in for a cream tea, naturally) & hurling flaming torches through the windows, only to find that as they're naturally triple glazed (to keep out the appalling noise of church bells, cows & sheep which disturb the sleep of the saintly city bred rich) they bounce right back at them resulting in city bankers (new rhyming slang if ever there was one) waking of a morning to find their driveways littered with the still smouldering remains of Mrs Miggins & the vicar by the mock Georgian front door.

We live in a country rapidly developing a blame-culture, so at whose door do I lay such blame for the immolation of hundreds of elrerly villagers (for it will happen, mark my words )?

These two:



It is down to programmes like Channel Four's "Location Location Location" that city types now believe they have not made it in the corporate dog shag dog world of city brokering/money laundering until Phil Spencer has persuaded them to take a 19th century cottage & fill it to the brim with Harvey Nichols's finest tat at "only £500,000" whilst Kirsty Allsop trawls the villages of the Dordogne to find some toothless crone willing to part with her ancestral home for "only €15,000,000" (plus rebuilding expenses and another €300,000 to bribe local planning officials), all the time training the chinless idiots they're sourcing property for not to see a room, but to see a "good space", not to see a home, but an "investment opportunity" - this at a time when the property market in the UK is poised on the brink of another nose-dive, so whilst Mr & Mrs Joe Average are patently unable to get even the smallest toe on the property ladder without their bankers hitting it with a 25 pound club hammer (or "interest rates" as they're commonly known) the major TV channels continue to churn out these kind of programmes (one of which with a supreme touch of irony is actually called "Property Ladder") just to rub their noses in it - "Hey you filthy poor people, here's an hour's worth of programming designed specifically to show you what you cannot, and will never in your wildest dreams be able to afford" - enjoy!

Bs

^^ I've overheard two rather interesting conversation recently.  Two female friends met in the local co-op; the first one says 'Oh I haven't seen you around much lately'.  The second tells her that she had taken a job in Hereford (20 miles) because it was paying £6.50 an hour instead of the £5.50 she was on locally.  The recent petrol hike however, has meant that she is worse off, because much of her meagre wage goes on fuel, and she's having to find something local again on £5.50 an hour, to make ends meet.

...my word, there's some jolly fine ranting going on this evening...have a clappy, everyone...