Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

cynic - 18 Sep 2015 19:17 - 63141 of 63143
yes DC, it's a great change and a pleasure to have a sensible and interesting discussion in progress

Agree Cynic, Some very good posters on here and also one or two bad and very boring ones. I did run on the thoughts of AJ Bell doing away with this thread. WHEN sensible and interesting posts are made it is good to have a break and read. Perhaps they should bring in guide lines and ban the very boring political cartoons that appear day after day after day . :-))

Cynic. Only my opinion, but firmly believe all new housing, house conversions from offices etc and major refurbishment of old housing stock should be up to current building regs. Including control of heat losses sound insulation and wiring/plumbing. Major refurbs are good for 15 plus years. Most of housing stock dates back to the Victorian boom times but a lot of the 60s houses are little better. Masses of lost heat energy.
It's said by the construction industry there is a shortage of 200k plus. This will seriously hold back the improving economy.
In our area the standard rate for self employed chippy, plumber/brickie is £150/day. (Note they have to have own tools, run a van and be responsible for making good their own work and any call backs). For a subbie on contract work they would expect to price themselves at £200/day. Not bad for 100miles from London.

Sorry double post

my own house in intrinsically from about 1845 and the property i own in london dates back to 1910 as does much of the property in that area
not a hope in hell that either could or should be either knockd down or even modified externally significantly

Yes, but not much chance of it falling down in 50 years like a lot of the crap being thrown up now.

that wasn't what will was saying ..... mind you, never ever take the plasterwork off victorian brickwork; it'll scare you to death!

Cynic No of course not, if house satisfactory definitely should be kept. But abandoned houses are that way for a reason. It would not necessarily be a good idea to build your houses the same way now.

I don't have a house. I live in the converted sail loft and ancillary buildings of a former boatyard. From outside still looks like an industrial building, it is out of plumb and does not look residental. Inside is a new steel frame, it is super insulated(2xbuilding regs requirement) and heated by a wood burning stove.
If you take a 4mile wide strip centred a long the m4 from Cardiff to London and then on out to Chambridge and build 800k houses at affordable prices over the next 3 years you could probably satisfy most of the housing need but I doubt very much if the price of houses between Chelsea and Hackney would be reduced by a single penny.

http://news.sky.com/story/1555206/hungary-confiscates-croatian-migrant-train

Hungary Confiscates Croatian Migrant Train

Hungary has confiscated a Croatian train that tried to transport 1,000 migrants into the country - describing its arrival as a breach of EU law.

The migrants were accompanied by 40 Croatian police officers, who were disarmed and sent back to their homeland in what Hungary called a "major, major incident". The driver was arrested.

Hungary said the migrants were being transferred to a reception camp.

Budapest has stated repeatedly that it will charge such migrants with illegal entry and expel them back to the country from which they arrived.

The train's seizure is the latest development in a spat between Croatia and Hungary which has left the fate of thousands of migrants uncertain.

"If you take a 4mile wide strip centred a long the m4 from Cardiff to London and then on out to Chambridge and build 800k houses at affordable prices over the next 3 years you could probably satisfy most of the housing need"



will10 - 18 Sep 2015 21:24 - 63150 of 63151

Pie in the sky....who would buy it? who would rent it (and what with?) and who would pay for it?


Too many unproductive, non earning people with expectations well beyond our (taxpaying) ability to pay for.



For example:


Why should I pay for Jeremy Corbyn's friend Claire to have so many children?

The star of Corbyn's first PMQs is unhappy about tax credit cuts. But it's not the taxpayer's job to backstop unaffordable choices





By Julia Hartley-Brewer

11:48AM BST 17 Sep 2015




Meet Claire Carey. Claire is a working mum of five children and one of the stars of this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions.


She didn’t actually appear in person in the Commons on Wednesday, but she was one of the 40,000 people who sent Jeremy Corbyn a question to put to David Cameron, and hers was one of the five read out by the new Labour leader.


So far, so good. Claire, we learned from her question, is not happy about the Government’s changes to tax credits.



“How is changing the thresholds for entitlements to tax credits going to help hard working families?” she wanted to know. “I work part-time, my husband works full-time earning £25,000. We have five children. This decrease in tax credits will see our income plummet. How is this fair?”


Claire didn’t ask to be put in the media spotlight, but she did choose to appear on national television. She was interviewed on Newsnight last night, where she reiterated her concerns about the cuts to tax credits.

So, Claire, let’s talk about what is and isn’t fair about tax credits.


How is it fair, for instance, that her husband, someone earning close to average wages, should be relying on the taxpayer to help fund his family? How is it fair that Claire thinks she is entitled to work part-time and expect other families, through their hard-earned taxes, to help pay for her standard of living?

And how is it fair that Claire and her husband believe they are entitled to expect taxpayers to contribute towards the cost of their choice to have five children?

For starters, Claire and her husband won’t see their income “plummet” when tax credits are cut. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the maximum loss to any family from the changes next April will be £1,000 a year – a big number for low-income families, yes, but hardly what most people would call “plummeting”.

Let’s also question why a family with two able-bodied earners should need taxpayers to subsidise their income in the first place. Is that really what the welfare state was meant to do?

And what’s fair about Claire only working part-time when many of the people paying taxes to fund her tax credits – including other mothers of young children - have to work full-time to make ends meet?



"Claire decided to have five children despite knowing she and her husband could not afford five children"



More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11871261/Why-should-I-pay-for-Jeremy-Corbyns-friend-Claire-to-have-so-many-children-tax-credits-PMQs.html

We think wehave it bad, Turkey has 3m refugees from Syria

There is a headline in a paper tomorrow that says 4 out of 5 refugees trying to get into the EU are not from Syria

Almost three in four people do not believe that Jeremy Corbyn looks like a prime minister-in-waiting, according to a poll for The Independent.

1 in a thousand thinks Fred is a closet TORY.

Haze,

Thank god for that.

Imagine another Wacky Dave prancing around in the HP.

--=-=-=-=-==

Memories or to-day?

Claire Carey wants to stop eating all the pies ,maybe her money would go further.

Oh dear! Speaking as a sexist, no wonder some of our sex are sexist.

:-)

"There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever."

Jeremy Corbyn's 'jealous' lover Diane Abbott staged an astonishing confrontation with his wife – ordering her to 'get out of town', The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Ms Abbott, then a young Left-wing activist, stunned her love rival Professor Jane Chapman – Corbyn's first wife – by turning up on her doorstep out of the blue to demand that she leave London.

In an exclusive interview, Prof Chapman was scathing about Ms Abbott's 'hostile' behaviour which she thought was fuelled by resentment over her continuing contact with Corbyn, the new Labour leader, even though they had separated months earlier.

Jeremy Corbyn handed over £45 to a fraudster who claimed he was an IRA bomber on the run, it has been reported.

Conman Sean O'Regan allegedly approached the politician in Parliament in 1987 - at the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles - claiming he had planted bombs in London and needed to flee.

The Islington North MP is said to have given the trickster cash, believing he was helping his escape. However, at the time, Mr Corbyn reportedly said it was a member of his staff who had handed over the money.

But when news of the fraud broke, four Conservative MPs submitted an Early Daily Motion in the House of Commons that referred to the ensuing conviction.

It said: 'In evidence given at the Central Criminal Court on Friday 30th January, it was stated that the honourable Member for Islington North gave £45 to a confidence trickster posing as an Irish Republican Army Bomber'. It added his actions posed a 'grave threat to national security'.

Tomorrow's Observer

Jeremy Corbyn has done little to boost Labour’s popularity and faces an uphill struggle to convince voters that he would be a better prime minister than David Cameron, according to a new Opinium/Observer poll.

The survey taken during Corbyn’s first week as Labour leader found almost twice as many voters choosing Cameron (41%) over Corbyn (22%) as the best occupant of No 10.

While 89% of Tory voters said Cameron would be the best PM, only 58% of Labour backers said they thought Corbyn would do the job best, suggesting serious doubts within Labour ranks about their newly elected leader.

When asked a separate question – if they could imagine Corbyn as prime minister – 32% of likely voters said they could. However, 57% said they could not, including nearly a quarter (23%) of Labour voters.

and the alternative a failed con man working for his own charity!