It is not just London, the whole of the South and many parts of the North are now ridicously expensive.
True London is one of the worst, although probably in terms of affordability parts of Cornwall and the Lake District are even worse.
When will the Goverment realise that if x people move to the UK each year, we need enough new houses for x people each year.

The day after fat cat Democrats here in the U.S. realize the reason people in India can afford food, shelter and clothing on a salary of $150 a month is because their government doesn't tax them to death. Joke of the day: The word politics comes from the Greek words poly, meaning many, as in polygon, and ticks, blood sucking parasites.

I have been doing ok in Ft. Worth/Dallas Texas area for the last four years.. I have steady contact work that I do.. I have not been out of work more than 4 days in the last 3 years. <knock on wood>

Its not easy to get a full-time job in this area though, but contract work is quite plentiful I would say.

Which is all well and good. I don't know how mortgage lenders in the US view this, but in the UK, it would be very detrimental to how much you can borrow to buy your home.

The other downside of contracting, whatever the field, is that if you are earning well, then you still have to put as much as possible "to one side", to cover "those rainy days". Hence, you don't really get to benefit from your good fortune - other than, often your rainy day fund get's larger.

Just a thought!

regards

John

p.s. As for the comment's about housing being so much cheaper "up north"(uk), well yes, in some area's you'd be correct. But that doesn't apply to everywhere. The biggest bonus of "up north", is that lot's of stuff that goes toward the whole "cost of living" is cheaper. The bastard's who run the businesses, using the "what the market will stand" excuse. Even "Mickey D's" is cheaper, from about Birmingham upwards. Beer, very much so (it's been about £2.30 to £2.50 a pint for sometime now).

The "knock on" of this is that if you do the kind of work that can be done from home, but where the income is relatively high, they yes, you could easily find a home that, say, would be in the £200k bracket up north, but down here, you'd get no change from £450k+

In fact, come the revolution, comrades,

I'll volunteer to be the man behind the rifle. First against the "swiss cheese" wall, estate agent's followed by insurance agent's, followed by Lawyers (except those who can demonstrate lots of "pro bono" or legal aid work), then all the tories (the only good un, is a dead un), followed by the ........................

Perhap's I was getting, just a little, carried away!

Uhm, since when is the British govenment in the construction business? Or do you mean calculating for the cost-of-living? (me confused American)

They have some control over the amount of houses to be built. Before any land can have houses built on it the Government needs to say it's ok. In this way they exert some control.

Hmm I guess we have something similar over here (zoning laws and such) but that's local government, and I've never heard anybody grumble over it. Learn something new everyday. I know this is offtopic, but it's actually more interesting then hearing people bitch about the economy. Why would the national government get involved in something so small-scale? Are they real nitpicky about giving their ok, or is it just dealing with national level bureaucracy?

Nah, well, erm yes, and no (sorry that sounds confusing).

Normally, the local authority (county or city) would decide on where what goes where. But when the proposed development is in a contentious place, then the government have the final say (though if you've enough money, you can still contest this in the House of Lords appeal's court).

Contentious would be environmentally or something like that.

Also you should remember that you effectively have a level of bureaucracy that we don't i.e. State level bureaucracy. But that's mainly to do with the size of the UK and the density of population.

The zoning thing, well mostly we have a similar thing in that, say you have an old factory that you want to make into flat's (apartments), then you'd have to have planning consent for the change of use. There's also stuff like "listing" in some area's. By that, I mean that if the area you want to do something in is a conservation area, because of history, then anything visible that you do has to blend in. If the building is "listed" the that limited what you can do inside and out, usually because of historical significance. The worst case would be a grade 1 listing. That means that if the building was made of mud, straw and cow shit, any repair's have to be of the same material. Double glazing and central heating is out.

As you can see, that means that things can get expensive. i.e. if the building was originally built and decorated with lead based paint, then that's what you've got to put back up. One of the current "money spinners" for people doing restoration, is "Lime mortar", it has to be specially made for the job - the upside is that it's flexible, it breaths etc Some of the older building's in the UK where built using it 500 year's ago, and they're still standing.

regards

John

Well not only do they control it via legislation they do own lots of homes (or rather the council do, however the goverment controls to some extent who gets them). They did use to build them as well but now they don't. They also put high taxes on buying and selling houses causing the market to be more unstable (because people move less) and put VAT (GST in the US) on renovating old houses to make them fit to live in. In addition they have lots of empty houses which they are too incompetent to rent out and don't want to sell.

In London there have been cases living in council houses for years without paying rent because the council forgot ! The worst thing of all is that here if you live in house without paying rent for 10 years, it is yours !

Surprisingly perhaps for Americans in London now in my experience, often people who are unemployed live in nicer homes than those who don't.

I'm not sure how much detail to go into, sometimes it seems like people from other countries know more about America than the Americans do. If I'm boring you let me know. Also, I was up past 2 am last night de-virusing a computer so I'm a little punchy.

Well, by the national level bureaucracy, I meant that, the higher you go, the less flexiablity they have dealing with individual cases, and the longer it takes to get anything done. Since the States started out as pretty much quasi-independent nations, government matters get handled locally by default. For instance, there is no federal law against murder. I would guess the reverse would be true in Britain- in case of doubt, something would be handled at the national level.

So basically, we do have more levels of bureaucracy, but I guess they don't get in our way as much.

We do have some enviromental restrictions, but those are integrated into the local zoning laws. (For instance, where my grandparents live, you can't have a septic tank unless you have more than 2 acres.) You would also have to rezone if you switched uses, but the paperwork isn't that bad (AFAIK), and at least in my area, you can always build on the outskirts of town.

We have something similiar to "listing" - registering (ooh, big change in name!) at local, state, and federal levels. That does cause some troubles. One guy locally is accused of commiting arson rather than having to renovate and condemed hotel that was on the registry. But since this area was really settled only 150-170 years ago, there aren't that many historical sites to deal with.

The government owning (and somethings building) a lot of housing seems pretty bad- sounds like something it would be real easy for them to screw up. Aside from the obvious offical buildings, our government(s) doesn't have much besides some housing projects - which are real ratholes. I'm not even sure who is responsible for those. I'd definitaly scream at the Powers That Be to sell any real estate they don't actually need. I'd guess, since they haven't already, somebody is in favor of keeping them?

Putting a high sales tax on housing - or a Value Added Tax- does seem like a bad idea. We have a yearly property tax based on how much property you own which pays for most of our local government. (State gets most of its money from sales tax, Federal from income tax.) I remember hearing about somebody in England who was running a greasecar (a diseal modified to run on used cooking oil) got in trouble for avoiding the gas tax (for road repair). On the other hand, I've also heard Taxman by the Beatles (George was paying 95% of his income to the government) Of course that *was* back in the 60s. So are taxes higher in Britain, or are they just set up different?

Getting the house if you don't pay rent for 10 years makes a certain amount of sense. If they aren't bother to collect rent, then the landlords probably aren't taking care of the roof or plumbing.

That last bit would be a bit surprising, but might be better than having them live in some of the ratholes we have here. To each their own.

They do that here in the states too.

Two posts about adverse possession in one day on a linux message board, imagine that.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...265#post972265

just because i feel like nitpicking - go kill an FBI agent during the comission of his duties - you'll find out pretty darn quick that federal murder statutes do exist

Taxes are higher in the UK we only had national tax freedom day 31st May. They are also
different.
I don't mind them being higher it is just I don't see much benefit from them. I particulary disliking being tax so other people can live in a nicer home than me, specially when if you think about it, if I didn't pay for them to live there I could !
Regarding someing getting a house after 10 years that seems fair. The annoying bit is that they were council houses (ie paid for by my grand parents taxes) so it is annoying they were thrown away by incompetence.

Strange really,

The more people post about every day life in the US, the greater the similarities I see.

Most of the stuff about law and so on, the State related stuff, well if that were divided between local (i.e. town/city) and federal, then you'd end up with pretty much the same system.

The main differences seem to be the way funding for a given "thing" is arranged. That's where things do differ. But, not really.

UK basic taxation for example.

The majority of Brit's are on a "pay as you earn" system (2 rate's of 22% and 40% basic, depend's on how much you earn), but you don't have to be. You can be "self employed" and your income is then handled, usually via an accountant (but there's also method's of self assesment), who pass the completed accounts to the Inland Revenue (the same as the IRS).

The local government is funded via "community charge" also known as "council tax", annually, they set the rate, calculated on the value of your house (irrespective of whether you own it), this is done in value band's. And time for another "But", the government control's how much they can increase it by, because it can influence inflation figures. they also contribute toward's the local authority funding.

The only local law making done by local authorities, are known as "bye laws", mainly stuff like not letting your dog shit on the grass in the public park's or where the bus stop's are going to be (plus they have influence over lot's of local traffic matters).

Everything else, well the government write and enact the law's, but technically, they have to have "Royal Ascent" i.e. the government are writing/enacting them on behalf of the Crown.

Which is why, when you see some law quoted (criminal, this is), it's always quoted as "Crown versus Whoever". As opposed to non criminal law, which would be Someone versus Someoneelse.

It's stuff like that that show's the differences. Like our custom's and excise people, don't have the power of arrest. That has to be a police officer. The fact that when they bust in, they'll have a police officer present, just in case (breach of the peace is a favourite), is totally irrelevant. the animal protection people (RSCPA), technically can take a dog away from you, if there's evidence of cruelty, but invariably, they'll have a police officer present, just in case you want to try and stop them.

Like I say, so many different way's of handling and funding things, too achieve very similar result's

It's reminded me as well, that we often get to hear of what should be considered stupid law's in various part's of the world,

Stuff like you can't put your washing/laundry out on a sunday, and you can't have a bonfire on a monday (because you've hung your laundry out that you couldn't do on the sunday). I'm given to understand that this is law somewhere in Germany.

Then there's numerous local reg's/laws, that radio presenters find out about, from various part's of the US. Too many to recount, but they often seem strange.

Those same radio people get a little pompous/arrogant is if the same thing couldn't happen here. WRONG. If you're a licensed taxi (historically known as a "hackney carriage"), then to obey the letter of the law, you're still supposed to have a bale of hay and bucket of water in the boot/trunk, for the horse (since when).

And i'm not sure, if "they've" got round to repealing the one about all men, over the age of 12, must practice their archery on the village green, on Sunday's after church???

So all those "little englanders" who think the place is a perfect example to the rest of the world, I say get back into your graves (the one's you and your attitudes should have got into/stayed in, when Queen Victoria died).


<edit>Sorry for the rant, somewhat off topic</edit>