Britain - The Official Thread

[Tired Tyres]

That's a bigger percentage than Thatcher and May. Look what happened to them.

Now we get to see how good the teflon on him is.

 

[Touring Mars]

Listening to Boris explaining how this is a great result and an opportunity to "move on" almost made me puke.

However, his comments about the media - who he's basically blaming for stirring up trouble for him - are downright dangerous and very reminiscent of Trump's playbook.

No Boris, this is NOT an opportunity to "unite" the party... 148 of your own MPs want you out.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Boris: "an extremely good, positive, decisive result, that enables us to move on..."

We're stuck with him and the rest of the spineless ***** until the next GE, and that means we're probably stuck with them until the late 2020's.


....


Off topic, does anyone have experience emigrating from the UK to Ireland, Germany, Belgium or Romania, if you don't have much money and no degree qualifications?

 

[HenrySwanson]

 

[Famine]

A higher percentage voted for him than for Brexit.

He's going nowhere, and even if he does there's just a slew of wastrels lining up behind him.

 

[Tired Tyres]

City donations worth £15m raise concerns over influence on UK politics

Total donated to parties by financial firms and individuals tied to the sector over two years, report says

www.theguardian.com

Interesting reading.

 

[HenrySwanson]

Are we ready for deathgate?

* Language warning in one(?) of the tweets


Basically the accusation is that Johnson lied about the severity of his bout of COVID, and it's well worth looking at the whole thread. Here's a summary video if you want to skip ahead:



---------

These findings aren't likely to be surprising to people who've worked in healthcare or who have actually suffered with a severe case of COVID. At the time I suspected they moved him to ICU as a precaution because of his importance to the country, and not on purely clinical grounds. Care in ICU is primarily to provide support for failing organs or other treatment requiring intensive monitoring, and admittance is assessed on a case by case basis. At St Thomas' (where Johnson was and where I had a placement) they also have a HDU (High-dependency unit) which would provide care between the level of a normal ward and an ICU, where it's also possible to have organ support but unlike ICU it would be for one organ. With COVID the risk was of going into respiratory failure, and this would require ventilation in the worst cases. To measure how much oxygen was getting into the body they would have monitored his sats (oxygen saturation taken with a probe - during the recent wave it was recommended for people to use one at home) and possibly taken blood gases. Based on these measurements they would have titrated his oxygen supply, and it was reported that he was on 4 litres of oxygen. Bear in mind that a ward's supply of oxygen goes up to 15 litres (from one of those plugs in the wall), and if a patient's sats are still not adequately maintained at that amount then you're thinking of ICU/HDU for ventilation (it's true we don't know if he did require more oxygen than the maintenance 4 litres before his ICU admission). Johnson was never critical enough to require intubating (tube in your airway - invasive ventilation) nor even non-invasive ventilation (you may have heard of CPAP or BiPAP machines). To be "close to death" with such a relatively bengin clinical picture is, frankly, laughable and I'm glad it's being exposed.

 

[Touring Mars]

Boris Johnson really does believe that he has presidential-like power...

Breaching the Ministerial Code used to spell the end of a career - but faced with charges of doing that himself, Boris Johnson's answer is to not only reject the advice to strengthen the Ministerial Code, he's actually watered it down to make it easier for ministers to remain in their governmental posts for 'minor' breaches; but even his own MPs have had enough and now a Labour (opposition) motion to reverse this self-serving position and implement the full recommendations of the Sue Gray report that would strengthen the Ministerial Code is now very likely to be passed into law with the help of 148 angry Conservative MPs.

Johnson can now expect a lot more of this.

 

[Famine]

Friends in high places...

Zelensky ‘very happy’ Johnson survived confidence vote

The Ukrainian president called the Prime Minister a ‘true friend of Ukraine’ after Boris Johnson survived the confidence vote.

www.independent.co.uk

 

[UKMikey]

He must still be practising writing comedy routines.

Meanwhile, here's the memo circulated amongst Tory MPs before the vote.

 

[Touring Mars]

He must still be practising writing comedy routines.

Meanwhile, here's the memo circulated amongst Tory MPs before the vote.
View attachment 1158429

Just imagine what the opposition parties must think of him when this is what 41% of his own party think...

-

Boris and his entourage of spineless sycophants really do believe that they can ride this out by simply declaring the whole issue 'OVER'... that everyone should just 'MOVE ON' - especially the pesky 'MEDIA' who keep 'BANGING ON AND ON' about trivial annoyances rather than allowing Boris to 'FOCUS ON THE JOB IN HAND' and 'LETTING THE PRIME MINISTER GET ON WITH DELIVERING FOR THE NATION' (whatever it is that he plans to deliver other than yet more lies, betrayals and crushing disappointment, that is).

Boris really cannot fathom why people can't just 'STOP IT' and 'LEAVE HIM ALONE', especially his annoyers-in-chief, 'STARMER', 'THAT SCOTTISH BLOKE AT PMQs', 'SOME SECTIONS OF THE MEDIA', and other 'IRRITATING PEOPLE' who are tacitly 'SUPPORTING VLADIMIR PUTIN' by distracting him for his 'REAL JOB' of fighting global 'BAD PEOPLE', 'GETTING BREXIT DONE' and 'DELIVERING ON OUR PROMISES'.

There's NO GOOD in continually bringing up 'PARTYGATE', 'SUE GRAY', the 'GOOD FRIDAY AGREEMENT', the 'NORTHERN IRELAND PROTOCOL', 'THE EU', 'DOMINIC ******* CUMMINGS', 'COVID BODIES PILED HIGH', 'THE COST OF LIVING CRISIS (WHICH IS A GLOBAL PROBLEM AND IS NOT OUR FAULT)', 'BREXIT SHAMBLES', 'TORY CORRUPTION', 'LONDONGRAD' and other 'DISTRACTIONS FROM THE REAL WORK OF GOVERNING THIS COUNTRY AND DEFEATING VLADIMIR PUTIN AND CHINA' because not only have we 'MOVED ON'... but 'WE DON'T CARE' anyway.

 

[HenrySwanson]

BREAKING We have a new definition for the word "deluded"

“In a long political career so far — which has barely begun — I have of course picked up political opponents all over the place. And that is because this government has done some very big and very remarkable things which they did not necessarily approve of. Absolutely nothing and no one is going to stop us from getting on and delivering”.

 

[Daz555]

Boris Johnson wins confidence vote by 211 votes to 148​

Sir Graham Brady, chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, says 359 votes were cast. There were no spoilt ballots.

Confidence in Boris Johnson: 211

No confidence in Johnson: 148

Johnson has had it, in spite of some of his loyal supporters crowing about the result as if it is an election victory... 41% of HIS OWN MPs want him gone. That's..... incredible.

And Rees Mogg called for May to resign when she

Off topic, does anyone have experience emigrating from the UK to Ireland, Germany, Belgium or Romania, if you don't have much money and no degree qualifications?

Well Ireland is easy as we are in the Common Travel Area - you are free to live work and enjoy the rights in each jurisdiction and have access to healthcare etc. Just get on a ferry or a plane and away you go. You don't even need a passport to enter Ireland and vice-versa.

 

[DK]

Good luck finding anything affordable to rent that isn't in the middle of nowhere or a glorified shed in a back garden.

 

[Touring Mars]

Well Ireland is easy as we are in the Common Travel Area - you are free to live work and enjoy the rights in each jurisdiction and have access to healthcare etc. Just get on a ferry or a plane and away you go. You don't even need a passport to enter Ireland and vice-versa.

Don't worry, Johnson and his band of cretins are working on ruining that too.

@DK Unfortunately, that is increasingly the case elsewhere too.

 

[Liquid]

There are so many dumb 🤬s on the island. Propaganda works.



I would guess that a large amount of people who said this are themselves homeowners ignorant to today's market.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I would guess that a large amount of people who said this are themselves homeowners ignorant to today's market.

Yep. I'm sure it was never particularly easy despite 30 years of relative stability, but the fact is, it's getting harder... and not by a bit, but by multiples.

Unsurprisingly, it would appear there's some correlation with the construction of social housing.

And now Boris wants to do right to buy again! I'm certainly not against right to buy, but for every house sold, two need to be built.

 

[swinny]

There are so many dumb 🤬s on the island. Propaganda works.



I would guess that a large amount of people who said this are themselves homeowners ignorant to today's market.

I’m not sure who’s dumber them or you believing sky news etc.

 

[Touring Mars]

There are so many dumb 🤬s on the island. Propaganda works.



I would guess that a large amount of people who said this are themselves homeowners ignorant to today's market.

Yeh, economising will help, but doesn't really address the wider issue.

• First time buyers paid an average property price of £281,900 in 2021
• Average 8 years to save deposit
• Average income of a first time buyer is £50,800 in 2021 (solo); £70,500 in 2021 (joint)
• Average first time buyer deposit is £61,100 (2021)
• Source: Barclays

Using the averages above, one would need to save £635 a month, every month for 8 years in order to afford the average first-time buyer deposit (which equates to 20% of an average-priced FTB property of 282k).

£635 a month is a very tall order over and above rent, bills, kids, having a life etc., but although I don't like it, it doesn't make it untrue that people who wish to save that amount have little to no choice but to stop spending money on other/optional things. That said, cutting back on a few luxuries will help, but I seriously doubt that there are many would-be FTBers who spend anything like £635 a month on luxuries...

In order to buy my flat - which even today is worth significantly less than the UK average - I put away an average of £340 a month for 11 years. I could have done this a lot quicker if I had not spent quite so much on booze enjoying life other things, but I do accept the general point that one does need to make some sacrifices - and indeed some people would need to drastically alter their spending habits in order to have any chance of getting on the property ladder. That said, my workmate in London took things to an extreme in order to ensure he could afford to buy a house in Melbourne when he returned... he never went to the pub, never bought lunch at work (i.e. he always brought a packed lunch...), and generally lived like a hermit for 4 years, which IMO was pretty self-defeating...

 

[MatskiMonk]

I’m not sure who’s dumber them or you believing sky news etc.

The study was published by Kings College London.

Takeaways and Netflix to blame for young people failing to get on housing ladder, say half UK public

That aside, what about it do you think that it's dumb to believe? The attitude exists and the findings of the study anecdotally very much reflect my real-world experience, I don't find it hard to believe at all - I've had those suggestions made to me! Now, I cannot pretend to have always (or ever) been particularly financially sagacious, but I suspect it's the £140,000-ish I've paid in rent over the last 21 years that would have been more useful to have than the occasional Chinese or my Disney+ subscription.

 

[Roo]

Speaking as a very recent FTB...

My first thought is that suggesting planning a holiday whilst eating a Chinese and watching Netflix is the be all and end all of people not getting on the property ladder is obviously rubbish.

But... I don't have any streaming subscriptions. I haven't bought a takeaway for years, not that I ever really bothered with them before. My last proper holiday was in 2015 (Edit: I forgot I went to Le Mans in 2018. That came to about £600 iirc.). I never buy takeout coffee, and not just because I don't like coffee. I don't smoke. I don't drink alcohol. I always make my own lunch for work, and again, not just because parking an artic to grab a sandwich is a pain. You can count the number of resturant meals I've had over the last decade on the fingers of one hand. My freezer is full of things with Morrisons reduced labels on. I'm still driving a scrapyard shopping trolley in my mid-30s, although I am quite attached to it now. And 3 weeks ago I completed on the flat I now own (well, I guess technically it belongs to the bank until the mortgage is paid off).

A few back-of-an-envelope calculations suggests to me that not spending £1000 a year on a holiday, £7 a month on Netflix, and £20 a week on takeaways soon adds up to north of £2k a year. Over the 21 years Matskimonk mentions, there's your property deposit without any other sacrifices - restaurants, event tickets, a new car etc. I'm aware inflation means the maths isn't quite that straightforward.

Now I won't deny that I am incredibly lucky to be happy on my own, not be particularly sociable, have no concerns about what others think of my appearance, have no desire for a partner or children, and to enjoy saving money - as I type this sat on a free chair (from the scrap pile) on a free keyboard (from a waste electrical company that I would drop a scrap metal skip to) in free clothes (that other people were getting rid of*). But it wasn't that long ago I made the change that got me here.

6 years ago I was working on a farm, living paycheck to paycheck, and not saving anything because what was the point when I was earning so little? Eventually I got fed up of that, and spurred on by having reached 30 with nothing to show for it, I - slowly - saved nearly half the £3.5k required to get an artic licence, put the rest on a 0%-for-2-years credit card (on the basis that I could quickly clear it once I started earning LGV money), and not long before my 32nd birthday I held a full C+E (LGV + trailer) licence. I got a job driving trucks for a scrapyard on a wage that was not a lot for a truck driver, but more than double what I was earning on the farm. The credit card was cleared in 5 months.

Last year I moved on as I now had experience and had ironed out the rookie mistakes, so could earn more. My other piece of good fortune was that a kid I knew when I was in Scouts who I had kept in touch with now runs a multi million pound haulage company, so the interview was me saying "Give us a job" and him saying "alright then" just as the lorry driver shortage was taking effect**. That had me earning 50% more than the average UK wage and I was still saving as much as possible, so when my landlord let me know last Christmas he needed his flat back, I was in a position to buy. £220,000 for a 2 bed flat with a £33k deposit later, approaching 36, I now own a property - something that seemed inconceivable on my 30th. I'll give it a few months to see how the bills work out and how I'm going financially, and then... I fancy a fun car. Not sure what yet. Got some saving to do before that anyway.

Sure I've been lucky at times, but I've done it on my own. None of my family have been able to help financially, none of this has been funded by inheritance, and working 11 12 hour shifts every 14 days is not a recipe for an engaging social life. And yes, I've sacrificed having much of a life for half a decade, and I couldn't have done it if I'd chosen to have the expense of the other big life events - university, marriage, kids. I know it's hard, and it shouldn't be this difficult; a person on an average wage ought to be able to afford a property and children and university fees. But it can be done, and so I find the suggestion that cutting expenses for things you can survive without, even if not happily, is not totally without merit.


*Although I draw the line at second hand socks and underwear.
**The irony of a Brexit I voted against being a factor in where I am today is not lost on me.

 

[Sprite]

Yeh, economising will help, but doesn't really address the wider issue.

• First time buyers paid an average property price of £281,900 in 2021
• Average 8 years to save deposit
• Average income of a first time buyer is £50,800 in 2021 (solo); £70,500 in 2021 (joint)
• Average first time buyer deposit is £61,100 (2021)
• Source: Barclays

Using the averages above, one would need to save £635 a month, every month for 8 years in order to afford the average first-time buyer deposit (which equates to 20% of an average-priced FTB property of 282k).

£635 a month is a very tall order over and above rent, bills, kids, having a life etc., but although I don't like it, it doesn't make it untrue that people who wish to save that amount have little to no choice but to stop spending money on other/optional things. That said, cutting back on a few luxuries will help, but I seriously doubt that there are many would-be FTBers who spend anything like £635 a month on luxuries...

In order to buy my flat - which even today is worth significantly less than the UK average - I put away an average of £340 a month for 11 years. I could have done this a lot quicker if I had not spent quite so much on booze enjoying life other things, but I do accept the general point that one does need to make some sacrifices - and indeed some people would need to drastically alter their spending habits in order to have any chance of getting on the property ladder. That said, my workmate in London took things to an extreme in order to ensure he could afford to buy a house in Melbourne when he returned... he never went to the pub, never bought lunch at work (i.e. he always brought a packed lunch...), and generally lived like a hermit for 4 years, which IMO was pretty self-defeating...

I was lucky.

Living in the north average prices are a little easier to swallow. Plus my work had a 5 year sharesave scheme. So I managed to save £9k but come the end the shares had dipped below my buy in so I made no profit. Luckily the options could be taken back out at cost, so I got my money back.

I also lucked out and managed to grab a 5% deposit mortgage before they disappeared. Granted my mortgage is over a short period of time 20 years and the cost is high £800 per month but the house has made around 10k per year in the price rises.

I do feel for those wanting to get on the ladder. One of my colleagues is currently trying. She inherited a huge chunk of money but her issues are 1. She spends like crazy and the inheritance is going fast, she’s always at her local and buying junk she doesn’t need. 2. She doesn’t want to get in at the bottom of the ladder but is expecting to buy a larger new build cheap and has unrealistic aspirations.

It also doesn’t help that councils are doing their thing. Wakefield is currently in plans to pull down loads of buildings in the city centre which have retail at the bottom and flats above. A friend was given 12 months to find another home and told his lease wouldn’t be renewed. He couldn’t afford the rents around town let alone just outside so had to move back south to his parents.

What are the council going to do with the land after they have pulled down the buildings?? Ohh that’s correct, build some small parkland area with trees and benches.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the council actually offered to help those in the flats find new homes locally.

 

[MatskiMonk]

A few back-of-an-envelope calculations suggests to me that not spending £1000 a year on a holiday, £7 a month on Netflix, and £20 a week on takeaways soon adds up to north of £2k a year. Over the 21 years Matskimonk mentions, there's your property deposit without any other sacrifices - restaurants, event tickets, a new car etc.

Awwwwright, blimey Phileas...how's the view from Concorde?

If you build in a grand a year for holidays it certainly would add up, but I've definitely not spent anything like £21,000 on holidays!!

Everybody's story is different at the end of the day. Probably the most fundamental mistake I made was not saving more between the age of 19 and 22, before I moved out of my parents house, not least because this was around the 2000's just before the cost of housing started to go mental, but also because it then took another decade before I got anywhere close to earning the average wage and being able to save any money with any regularity - not that I then did, admittedly, but the path I set out on when I decided to leave home with no real savings was probably responsible for a lot of the problems that followed.

It's clearly not impossible for young people to get on the ladder. But, the young people I know that have been most 'successful' at it very clearly fit one scenario... Meet your partner in your late teens, live at home into your early 20's, don't get pregnant, save combined wages whilst living at home, buy house, not much real sacrifice at all.

 

[TheCracker]

The truth of it is, and certainly looking through what everyone above has said about how they have or haven't been able to save, is that it is (just about) possible to save to get on the property ladder, with little or no parental help, if you are prepared to sacrifice virtually all your social life (or don't have or want one in the first place. Roo )

I bought my first house i was 28 or 29 and that was pretty much what everyone my age was able to do with two average wages going towards the deposit and mortgage payments. That was with a social life and holidays etc. In fact, we (then girlfriend, now wife and i) pissed it up the wall for a number of years before that so could have quite easily bought a house 2 or 3 years earlier if we'd cut back on overly frivolous spending. And that was in no way unusual in our peer group.

That was 20 years ago now but was still roughly in line with what my parents and their age group were able to do 30 years previously. These days, its almost out of the question for those aged 25-30 to follow suit. I blame a lot of that on the buy-to-rent culture that's bred a new wave of landlords but also pushed house prices at the 1st time buyer level out of reach to those 1st time buyers.

 

[Sprite]

Yeh the buy-to-let is killing first time buyers. The street I’m on has loads and every time an older person passes away the property is snapped up and rented out.

I have three houses directly across the street, two to the left of my property and all the houses immediately at the back all rented. I’d say it’s a 70/30 split for let/owned.

The thing is, rents are insanely high and this then puts new buyers in between a rock and a hard place.

 

[Liquid]

Anecdotal: A new build in a Cardiff suburb is supposed to be easy-to-buy, cheap housing for first time buyers. Someone from London has bought six of them at 250k each.

I don't think people deny that it is impossible to save up and buy a house in today's market but the quality of life you must push yourself through in order to do so is quite extreme and mentally destructive. When rent costs more than the equivalent mortgage payment, saving that money is quite prohibitive in the first place before you factor in any other variables like cost of living.

 

[Roo]

Awwwwright, blimey Phileas...how's the view from Concorde?

I'd tell you if I could get all this caviar out the way

If you build in a grand a year for holidays it certainly would add up, but I've definitely not spent anything like £21,000 on holidays!!

The thing about not taking holidays is I'm rather out of the loop in how much they cost! It wasn't a dig at you, I just used your years as an example and the numbers more or less matched up.

Everybody's story is different at the end of the day. Probably the most fundamental mistake I made was not saving more between the age of 19 and 22, before I moved out of my parents house, not least because this was around the 2000's just before the cost of housing started to go mental, but also because it then took another decade before I got anywhere close to earning the average wage and being able to save any money with any regularity - not that I then did, admittedly, but the path I set out on when I decided to leave home with no real savings was probably responsible for a lot of the problems that followed.

My story does have parallels with yours, although I was... encouraged to move out when my mum and her other half sold up and emigrated. In my case I never believed it was possible to earn more than the minimum wage I was on in my dead-end job; I couldn't see how other people earn anything approaching an average wage, let alone more than that.

---------------

There's one other piece of luck I hadn't thought of before it was mentioned here: I bought my flat privately from a couple I knew, so the buy-to-let scalpers never got a look in.

 

[Dotini]

I never believed it was possible to earn more than the minimum wage I was on in my dead-end job; I couldn't see how other people earn anything approaching an average wage, let alone more than that.

Do you think it may be possible to earn many times the average wage by going into commission sales?

 

[UKMikey]

I don't have any friends who own multi million pound companies, but at least I'm not in the line for the food banks yet.

 

[DG_Silva]

This has struck a chord as we're currently in the process of moving.

We got extremely lucky when it came to buying our house - my partner had a big settlement from Birmingham City Council's 'Single Status' payouts, that I was able to put a 55% deposit down 9 years ago. The house is now worth £180k, and we're moving up to Derbyshire for a bigger house in a (much) nicer area without the need to increase our mortgage.

I shudder to think whether we'd be able to do it now, I doubt it very much, even with a sizeable 'inheritance'.

There is a simple solution to this matter though, and while I know it sounds like communism, it actually makes sense; one person/company/organisation can only own two more properties than they have built, and that properties owned by companies are tied to the directors. This would prevent individuals from buying up extraordinary numbers of houses just to rent them out, making more housing stock available, and reducing the cost as scarcity is no longer an issue.