The title just refers to the fact that I am completely
baffled by the slogan for Stella Artois. I mean, what?
First blog for a while. That’s largely because nothing has
changed in the housing market and I have nothing new to say! Not that I
generally do. It’s also because I have so much work to do, I don’t know where
to start, so I’m not going to. I’m going to write a blog post for ten minutes.
I still as a surveyor on a daily basis see an awful lot of
money flooding into the London market from all over the globe, pushing out baby
boomers into the regions, retiring to their orchards in Sussex and Hampshire to
start a Handmade Artisan Cider business, having made hundreds of thousands of
pounds on selling their little box in Fulham (millions in the case of Fulham,
really) and pricing out the locals. The general mood now I think seems to be of
resignation at the status quo: if you’re under 35 and don’t have parental help
(ie your parents don’t own their own home), you will never buy, and spend your life on a rolling periodic tenancy. This seems to
be accepted now. What that means the country will be like in 10 or even 20 years,
no one seems to think about.
One thing that has changed actually, after ranting on this blog for
quite a while on how Carney seemed to have bewitched the media and they seem to
be oblivious of the fact that he contradicts himself almost constantly (so do I, but I'm not in charge of the economy): the media
are starting to turn against him now, and even report his actual words
that come out of his actual mouth. Fickle eh?
The Canadian property market, which he stoked into the
biggest asset boom in the Western hemisphere before he came to do the same for
Osborne here, is now starting to implode, but we’ll ignore that for now.
Let’s focus instead on another nation that is also famous
chiefly for being shit at cricket: France. President Hollande has today
convened an emergency cabinet, largely in response to the housing market there going
into what Le Monde describe as a ‘meltdown’. But in French, obviously. Une meltdown.
What number have new housing starts in France dropped to?
306,000. Meltdown!
Meanwhile in the UK, “the Government’s Long Term Economic Plan
Is Getting Britain Building Again”, and our starts have grown to…possibly 150,000, if
we’re lucky. Half a French meltdown. Une demi-meltdown.
And we at OP have just had yet another planning application
turned down for no apparent reason, so we’re taking it to committee. So that looks like a possbile 149,999.
Still, at least housebuilders’ profits are up almost 50%,
and the baby boomer rentier class can retire in comfort to their orchards.
More Cidre anyone?
