Big J

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 🤣

Providing for people in their retirement is a major issue for all western countries. I agree with you that the approaches trialled haven't necessarily been the best courses of action but they haven't been wholly unsuccessful either. From speaking to various people in Sweden, the consensus seems to be that (rurally) the integration is going fairly well. The town we're looking to move to has almost no issues now, and any incomers who didn't settle simply moved away. The Swedes acknowledge that they took in too many refugees in 2015 for it to be sustainable and the politics there reflects that realisation. I however welcome moving to a more multicultural society, and particularly relish using three languages on a daily basis (English, German and Swedish). Regarding what Andy said - as I said, I don't think that the Norwegians have the best balance. There is vast amounts of money to be made there, hence the number of Swedes working there, but it's very similar to all the countries around Luxembourg. I do want to be within a few minutes of a lake, a forest, a school and a supermarket. I can easily have that in Sweden, in any one of thousands of towns and villages. For the cost of a modest plot here. Objectively, there are some things that are good about the UK (such as the pubs and the generally outgoing nature of the random people that you meet in them) but the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, when viewed objectively.

As I said, different lenses Andy. It's the same way that there is no point trying to persuade you that the UK's present situation isn't as a result of the EU. Some people enjoy Devon. I f*cking hate it. I had to move my forwarder from Minehead to Barnstaple yesterday. I was along for the ride in the tractor as we negotiated the A39. Miles and miles of stupid, inadequate roads where we could barely fit a tractor trailer. Thousands of clueless tourists that don't know how to drive. I know some people would be looking out the window going "oooh, look at the pretty view" but I just see the total nightmare that is trying to work in this region. I imagine your sister in law swims in the sea. Swimming in the sea is fraught with difficulty. It never gets to more than 18c, jellyfish are a big issue, as is boat traffic. Parking at seasides is expensive and sometimes impossible and our nearest beach is 30 minutes away. And then there are the various water quality issues with sewage discharges after rain. As I said, many people are happy here and fair play to them, but for me it's an extremely expensive place to live, that is difficult (logistically) to do work in and has very restricted personal freedom.

I'm not sure where you are in the North West, but having lived in Manchester, my impression of the region is that it's a drizzly and generally grim place. Only place I've ever had a bike stolen, only place I've ever been knocked off my bike and left in the middle of a junction with the driver zipping off. I remember visiting friends at Whittle-le-woods and going for a walk at a local moorland. The litter was extraordinary and there were dirt bikes everywhere, screaming up and down the paths. I've a friend in Morayshire from Preston who has some extraordinary stories from the estates there. There is a massive issue with littering at swimming spots in the UK at the moment, which is destroying the enjoyment of it for the majority. It's depressing. Have you been to Scandinavia much Huck? I'd be interested to understand what your perspective on the place is

They have a fantastic quality of life, but it's not because of inflation. It's because they are strongly in favour of aggressive free market capitalism but not at the expense of social policies. People often mistake Scandinavian countries as communist/Marxist and not in favour of capitalism. That couldn't be further from the truth. Sweden is an exceptional place to start a company. There is substantial support from the state to become an entrepreneur. They just don't ascribe to the American model of capitalism, in which the winner takes all and exploitation of the lower echelons of the workforce is regarded as normal. It does also help Norway rather that they used the wealth from the North Sea to create the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, which owns 1.4% of the worlds shares and is worth $248k per citizen. In the UK, we used the income from the North Sea to subsidise tax cuts, especially for the rich. As a consequence, we now have absolutely nothing to show for 50 years of oil and gas extraction and a National Debt that amounts to £32,500 for every man woman and child, which increasing at £10 a day at the moment.

We're looking at the same situation, but through different lenses. I don't regard migration into a depopulating country (which is pretty much any western, developed nation) as a negative, provided it's sensible, proportional and controlled. Norway is fantastically expensive, yes, but wages are far higher than here. Quality of life is much, much better. It struck me when I was in Sweden this year that if you value the outdoors and value personal freedom, that you have a quality of life there that is simply unattainable in England, irrespective of income. It just doesn't exist here. Yes you can earn a packet, but you still spend your life stuck in traffic jams, visiting crowded seaside towns or National Trust properties, restricted to walking on public footpaths or national parks with no right to roam. You're completely stuffed if you want to swim - I have as close to zero as makes no difference swimming options within 30 minutes of my house. After a bit of rain, it is zero due to agricultural pollution and discharged human waste. I don't think that Norway is the best example of the Scandinavian ideal. In all likelihood, it's probably Finland, which is usually deemed to be the best place in the world to live.