Big J

I would hardly say that £20k plus on an asset that was tax free until 8 months ago constitutes a wee bit of tax 😄 It's a difference of perspective here. I don't object to a free market economy, but it shouldn't be at the expense of public investment. The successive British governments have mismanaged and squandered colossal sums of money lining their own pockets of buying votes and as such we have a country where the concentration of wealth is in private property as opposed to public infrastructure. That imbalance is probably one of the main contributing factors to our low levels of productivity (when viewed in the European context). Compare our roads to the German autobahns. Our train network to just about anywhere in Europe. Our health sector to France. We just need concerted investment in bringing the lagging parts of the economy, society and the country into the 21st century. That's not communism. It's socially responsible capitalism.

My dad has said the same thing. They would much prefer to just buy something new not needing any work. It's a similar mentality to buying an old car. You can chuck a whole load of money at it, but it won't perform as well as a new vehicle and you'll be doing well to get your money back. Interesting. I didn't know that. There do seem to be some fundamental differences in the psyche between Norway and Sweden. You're confusing communism and socialism my good man. There is a capitalist argument for first class infrastructure, health care and education, in that it improves productivity and profit on a population-wide basis.

It's a rather philosophical question, I fear. If we only do things that we see as being financially lucrative, we're fundamentally doomed 🤣 We should be investing in our homes to make them better places to live, not because it makes us wealthier. I'd rather be in a house that is worth a lot less, but pay some of that excess money into the tax system so that the infrastructure, health care and schooling is better. You do notice the difference acutely between the UK and many European countries, in that we (as a nation) have a lot of amassed personal wealth. I say that insofar that individual properties can be sold for a lot of money, but all the infrastructure and services around them are terrible. I recall working down the bottom of a valley a few miles from Tiverton 2 years back. God awful little lane, pot holed to hell, both wingmirrors in the hedges are you drove it. No school, no pub, no services whatsoever. A 3-4 mile drive (at about 20mph max) to get to Tiverton, but forget it if it's icy. And then once you're into Tiverton, you're in a market town with some notable social issues. The high school has a permanent police officer there, for instance. But despite this, the average house price on that postcode 2 years ago was about £658k. It feel that if the owners of these homes spent less on their mortgages and more in local taxes, the whole area would function better.

Yeah, my Dad's pretty pragmatic about the fact that his house near Poitiers hasn't and probably won't appreciate much. It's served him well as a cheap and spacious home and didn't cost much in the first place. Fundamentally, in order to sort out the housing market, we've got to do away with the idea that a house is an investment. It's first and foremost a home. It has to perform adequately in that regard, and part of that is affordability. By treating homes as investments, we forget what their primary function is.

Affordability is determined by two factors really. The willingness of the creditor to lend you the money in the first instance and your ability to pay it back. Once the ability to pay it back is lost (through interest rate rises or loss of earnings) then the willingness of lenders to risk lending decreases. Affordability criteria then becomes stricter, reducing and limiting the maximum amount person a with income b can borrow. Once the lending cap is reduced, asset prices can only go down as people simply cannot get a mortgage to cover the cost of it. Then you're into an awful situation (which I remember friends in 2008 finding themselves in) of negative equity, at which point you have people doing what @Mick Dempsey said. Huge interest rate rises aren't likely though, it would appear. It would bankrupt almost every western government to do that, but it really does feel that the longer we go on without some sort of adjustment, the worse it'll be when it comes. I rather like the policy that the Dutch and German government use when it comes to building low cost housing. They will sometimes employ compulsory purchase orders for land, but will do so on the 'present use value'. So rather than an acre of building land costing £500k - £1 million, it'd be £9-12k. This would massively reduce the cost of constructing housing, and given that good quality, sustainable construction is less than £1500/ square metre, you could see top notch, 120 square metre houses for less than £200k. Owning a home isn't something that I regard as being fundamentally necessary. Living in a home of good quality and affordably however is

The economy contracted for 5 consecutive quarters, GDP took 5 years to recover and unemployment reached it's highest rate for 13 years. It's generally regarded as a crash.

Interesting point to note: 2008 (just before the crash): UK average house price 6.8 times average salary 2021: UK average house price 8 times average salary

The interest rates were obviously an issue in the 80s and I'd argue that the happy medium is probably somewhere in between (as it was around 2008, with 5.5% base rate). My mum and dad's first house was £8k in 1981, when the average wage was £6k. That same 2 up, 2 down is now £170k on an average wage of £31,400. So the house cost 1.33 times average annual earnings in 1981 and 5.9 times in 2020. Another way to look at it is mortgage payments. Assume that you're willing to pay out half of your pre-tax income per month on a mortgage. Using my parents house as an example, in 1981, your mortgage (at 15% interest, on 80% of the total) would have taken less than three years to pay off the £6400, with only about £1200 in interest. In 2020, the same house would take just under 10 years to pay off, but you've got to find a £34k deposit (as opposed to £1600 in 1981, which would be worth £5500 now). And Derby is really very affordable in the scheme of things - it's about 30-40% cheaper than here. The issue is of course that if the interest rates increase (which they have to, in order to curtail inflation and stabilise the economy), then our current house price structure cannot stand. The government is in the unenviable position of having contributed to a crisis that it cannot fix. Don't increase the base rate, house prices continue to spiral out of control along with inflation. Increase the base rate and millions will find themselves unable to meet the payments, or in negative equity as the market sinks. There is a serious housing shortage. The government has not built social housing in any meaningful quantity in decades, the right to buy wiped out the existing social housing stock and the housing market is controlled by ill-educated planners and volume house builders, who've seen their profits skyrocket in recent years. Agreed. As the video I linked explains, equity in the country is very much in the hands of the older generation, who've seen modest property investment put them up to previously unforeseen levels of wealth. I'm not begrudging them at all - I'd be happy if I was in that position, but something really does need to be done at a governmental level to bring affordable housing to the masses. As the video states, housing becomes proportionally less affordable, the lower the wage bracket you find yourself in.

I agree, to an extent. The government cannot afford for the housing market to crash. Given that housing is inherently more unaffordable for lower income families, they're presiding over a situation where with runaway inflation, they either increase the base rate (and bankrupt millions of low income home owners) or allow an unregulated increase in the cost of living, bankrupting fewer people in the short term, but pushing the problem (and exacerbating it) further down the road. My parent's first house was a 2 up 2 down in Derby in 1981. My mum was 20 at the time, and had a very junior position in the housing office. Probably a smidge over minimum wage. Her annual salary was £4k and the house cost £8k. In 1997 when we moved to a 4 bed house in Little Eaton my parents between them earned about £33k (lorry driver and teacher) and the house was £113k. Still affordable. That same 4 bed house is now valued at £470k and you'd need to have a combined income of £84k (20% deposit) which leaves you a monthly mortgage cost of £1417 (1% fixed rate), but that would increase to £1985 at 4%, or £2423 at 6%. The affordability of housing in the UK has massively decreased in our lifetimes 😟

It's not exactly news, but I found this to be an interesting and succinct summary of the housing crisis in the UK. I have honestly got no idea how anyone starting out could afford to get onto the housing ladder now and fully expect the market to crash in the coming years as increasing interest rates make mortgages completely unaffordable for millions of people.

Hard not to get a bit depressed with this kind of forecast. Has anyone informed the weather that it's supposed to be summer and this is the south of England? It honestly feels more like October at the moment.

Very sorry to hear that. Rest in peace

I mean, a lot of Scotland is stunning. Livingston is just.....not 🤣 It was our nearest large town when we were in Scotland. I went a couple of times to the shopping centre there and it was like taking a couple of steps back on this famous illustration:

Welcome to the forum Seth Any particular reason you want to move to Livingston? It really is a dump.

Yep 🤣 It's like a typical week in early October. I pity the poor holiday makers camping down here at the moment.

Intermittently here too. It's fecking miserable out there - the fire is on (albeit some of the summer's cardboard pile). Once that living room temperature drops below 20c, the fire goes on

I put about 50-60 thousand miles onto two Citroen Relays over a couple of years. One was a 14 plate, the other 66. I only bought the second one because there were a number of things on the options list that I wished I'd had on my ex demo one. They really are outstanding tow vehicles. Very short overhang on the back and much more stable than a pickup. The 66 plate one I had also had uprated leaf springs. A 6000kg train weight was no problem for the 160ps engine. I once did 697 miles in one day in it, towing the whole way and loaded for most of it. Highly recommended, and probably what I'll end up back in once we're in Sweden.

A genuinely lovely thing to write there Mark, and you're completely right. I take my hat off to you with the litter picking too. I went swimming in the River Ax last week and thankfully the place had very little litter, but I did nevertheless pick up and take home what I did find. It's just an obvious thing for me (and you). It's certainly worse than it ever was, but it has always been pretty terrible in Scotland. I recall going pike fishing one day at a reservoir about 30 miles north of us. The fishing was slow and I filled two black bin bags from about 150m of bank. I barely scratched the surface too. I've never, ever been able to understand why people would chose to make the effort to go somewhere pretty and then trash it. Anyway, thankyou for the support. ☺️ Perhaps if we'd grown up here we'd feel more rooted, but that not being the case, you end up judging your living situation in very objective terms. When you're not happy, you're not happy. Getting out of the rat race and reducing our stress is so important for my wife and I. The Swedes have a word for that balance which is 'lagom'. Not too much, not too little, simply lagom.

I agree. But I'd add the caveat that the region could comfortably accommodate many more tourists if the infrastructure was properly upgraded. I cannot see that ever happening though, so the inevitable Friday and Saturday M5 car parks will continue every summer ad infinitum

Dash cam mate 😎 Because we moved around a bit when I was a kid, I don't feel that I have a tie to anywhere. That's probably not a good thing, but I'm very unlikely to get homesick. I do miss the Highlands, but I fear that it's being ruined by all the Weegies overrunning the place since Covid. Parts of Scotland are genuinely absolutely stunning (my favourite bit is the bit between Ullapool and Lochinver) but are sadly being tarnished by a significant minority that don't respect it. I remember reading that during the relaxation last summer after the first lockdown, that the path up to the Hidden Valley at Glencoe had all the handrails ripped off and cut up for firewood by neds. Leaving a 50ft drop down to the river. I just can't understand the mentality to be as partriotic as so many of the Scots are and then to destroy your natural landscape. You have the best of living in the West Country Matt. Within Dartmoor, you've loads of open access land at your doorstep. Ok, the roads are a ballache, but at least it's pretty and accessible. I'm hoping to work at Hembury Woods on the edge of Dartmoor again over winter and I'm genuinely looking forward to it. Beautiful oak woodland with the river tumbling down the valley below. It's very pretty. I agree with everything else you said.

Yep, I'm a grumpy bastard. I know that and I'm perfectly happy to be grumpy. But what exactly is so great about Devon? Within the context of the rest of England, it's perhaps a bit more scenic, but most of the nicer areas you scarcely see because you're confined to the roofless tunnels that are the roads. And then you struggle to access the land because it's all private, mostly farmland, has a limited number of footpaths and 8 months a year is muddy as hell. Personally, I love lakes and forest. Devon has very little of either. Or is it the insane traffic you prefer? Like a customer of mine who had to sit for a full 20 minutes at the junction to cross the A30 to get to Chard. Or the 1hr 10 min I lost the other day on a 40 minute journey due to the Devon show. Do you enjoy reversing long distances on every journey because the road isn't wide enough to pass, or losing wing mirrors? Or having massive issues moving any machine almost anywhere, because lorry access is generally terrible. Or is it the people? The people that square up to your harvester driver when they arrive on site because for some reason they believe that no tree should ever be felled. Or that report you to the EA when you clear a drain and the stream runs cloudy for a short while? Or is it being reported to the Forestry Commission for felling stone dead ash, despite the leader of that particular parish council being given my contact details and encouraged to speak to me. Or the endless grief you get for simply trying to do your job, providing local timber for local markets. Or being crashed into (well technically, rolled into) by some idiot in a Polo on a blind corner on a tiny lane? I was stationary as he mounted the bank and rolled into my van. I particularly enjoy the flippant nature of landowners who change their minds without so much as a thought to how that might affect us as a company. Like the guy last year who cancelled a three month job 10 days from the start (after 7 months of planning) because he decided at the 11th hour to go with a major harvesting company. Who left him high and dry with the job only partly completed. That nearly sunk us last year actually - middle of covid and lockdown and it didn't just f*ck me up, but a lot of subcontractors too. So forgive me for being a little bit miserable about Devon. Many people hold it up to be this Utopian paradise, but the reality is that it's just as shit as anywhere else with the added complication of terrible roads, terrible weather and literally millions of tourists. Do you really think Sweden is a dark place? Did you know that Stockholm gets 40% more sunshine hours in a year than Plymouth? Sitting in a conifer plantation, listening to R4, comedy or podcasts is my idea of heaven. Knowing that I have a lifetime of work ahead of me, that I don't have to work my nuts off, that my children have lifelong free education and the certainty of being trilingual, that I won't have to fork out £750k (25 years of payments for a 4 bed family house here) for a mortgage and that I can go swimming and fishing whenever, and wherever I want. Well that makes me happy. And knowing that this is as much traffic as I'll ever see

Thanks Andrew. I think that the opportunities for hand cutting in Sweden are fairly limited now. It's almost all machine work, and I'm hoping that with a forwarder or combi machine that I should be fine. I'm also hoping to have pretty decent conservational Swedish by the time we get there. I know that the local sectors do favour local contractors, but I'm pretty confident of being able to work my way in. I've done it here in Devon. I'm looking forward to the bureaucracy ...... honest 🤣