8 replies to this topic

[slyoldfox2001]

These reason why this country isnt spending is simple.
We are all afraid that we are going to lose our jobs and hence our homes.

What the Government needs to do is to step in and force all mortgage lenders to reduce everyones mortgage for the next 2 years to something like 0.5% above the BoE Interest rate, irrespective of whether or not they are in a tie in of some descritpition.

This will then free up disposable income which people will then feel they can go out and buy a new car with (or anything else).

The country relies on people spending money.
Spending money keeps people in a job.


The other important thing to remember as well is that we should all try to buy British made/built products even if it is slightly more expensive.
The british are gutless at doing this. If you look at the French they all buy French cars even though they know they are *poop poop* - why - because it keeps the French in work.


Simple as. Money Crisis solved.

Thank you

[ROCKET]

Bored again at work Steve

[Jammy]

There are millions of people that don't own a home. Your plan would do nothing for them.

And buying British, isn't really as simple as that. Just buying from a shop in the UK will help some British jobs, it will keep the shop person in work, their manager, their supplier, etc in jobs. And there isn't a great deal that the UK makes anymore. Ok so some food, but apart from that?

Would you buy a Honda or a BMW Mini? Built in the UK, but the money ultimately goes abroad....

[Ethel]

Or just postponed if we go back to fueling a runaway housing market.

Will you be forcing landlords to pass on their windfall to their tenants or can they just increase their property portfolio, push first time buyers out of the market again and cream in even higher rents from people desperate to put a roof over their heads with no alternative?

Revaluing existing assets like houses just devalues the truly productive jobs people do to pay for them.

My solution:

Tax the property investing parasites so hard they want to sell up and put their money into making things to sell, because making things makes jobs.

Might help if some of the things they make are affordable owner occupied homes too.

[Juju]

Or we could just relinquish our (almost uniquely) National obsession with owning our own homes?

[slyoldfox2001]

the thing is society is always made up of 3 different bands - the poor, the middle/working class, and the rich


the poor will always not be able to afford much
the rich will always spend
its the middle/working class that can and always does make the difference.

these are the people that will impulse buy if they feel the time is right.
i would say the UK is made up of 70% middle/working class (might even be higher)


as for the mortgage rate the government needs to be more forceful.
perhaps we'd be better off if everyone was only allowed one mortgage and governement owned to the rest of the houses ??

[Ethel]

Agreed it doesn't matter too much who owns the bricks 'n mortar, provided people have a secure roof over their heads and are able to live where, and up sticks 'n move when, they want to. Trouble is, we haven't yet devised a better way of doing that than owner occupancy. State owned social housing just created ghetto estates for the less well off and denied equality of opportunity by condemning people by their postcodes. We've also developed a fondness for a two tier system of rights in recent years - no asbo culture and evictions for nuisance in mortgage laden suburbia. (How I enjoyed reading about that chavvy lottery winner who moved to the sticks 'n inflicted his own backyard demolition derby on his well heeled neighbours)

A lack of physical divisions in society is likely to help eliminate those of opportunity too.

Oh, and also, if we like the idea of having a home as an investment as well as somewhere to live we'd all better have one if we don't want to open up an ever increasing rift between the have's and have nots. If you want gated communities, car jacking, 'n a burning tyre round your neck there's always South Africa. To be fair to South Africa that's a legacy of darker days


Isn't it a bit pessimistic to say we'll always be a 3 tier society? History suggests increasing equality is possible. If we want opportunity then that does mean inequalities but we should strive for steady and unchanging gradient from the bottom to the top of the pile. It's too much of a precipice at the bottom 'n too much of a plateau on top as it is.

Maybe we should grease the highest 1/3rd so you have to keep striving to stay on top? - is analophillia a word

[blacktulip]

- is analophillia a word

only on jammys dvds

[Ethel]

- is analophillia a word

only on jammys dvds

mmph I'm embarrassed I didn't spot that one. There is a more "Anglo-Saxon" term for that. (though, if you're interested - 'n I doubt you are - it's actually derived from a French belief about what they thought the natives liked to get up to in Bulgaria)