a scruffy ruffian
Today on radio 1 Vernon Kay played an amazing song. Probably the best piece of music I have heard since I heard Sigur Ros. He then went on about how much he hated it. Go and download Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek. You’ll probably hate it, but Amy Pell likes it and so do we.
See you in a week.
We are going on hoilday again on Thursday for a week. The weather is looking bad and we will be camping. However on the plus side this is just down the road from where we are staying. Digs and Elliot helped build them. I hope they let us ride, as King of Dirt is the next weekend. If not I guess we’ll have to help dig!
There was something going on at the station today.
Bomb disposal unit.
Lots of police.
The fire station is right by the railway station and Tim was there doing routines.
They used this mini tank to investigate. It was remote controlled and the manoevered it from the van looking at the screens.
The guy in the blue shirt was the driver. A bit of an idiot.
The screens.
More police.
“Ladies and Gentlemen there will now be a small explosion, it is nothing to worry about”. And he was right. The suspect package was obviously just someone’s clothes or else it would have been a big bang! Oh well that was entertaining.
How many people were killed as a result of the attempted bombings in London last Thursday?
None I hear you say. Not correct.
“Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot dead by officers at Stockwell Underground station on Friday after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber.”
This is crazy.
“Met Police Chief Sir Ian Blair has apologised to the family, but insisted that the policy of “shoot-to-kill in order to protect” would continue.
He also warned that more innocent people might be killed in the fight against terrorism.”
So now the police are going round killing “innocent victims” something which the terrorists haven’t done. The police are actually being terrorists themselves. I am more scared of the police than of the terrorists. In fact I am a bit scared of writing this in case the police come and shoot me.
This video is interesting, or go here and scroll down to “911: A Closer Look”. I am not saying that I agree with it all, but it does make you think that maybe there is more going on than we are told.
Still I am sure the truth won’t ever come out in our lifetime.
A lot of the workers at sainsburys hate the self checkout. I love them. I just rode to sainsburys, got some milk and eggs, skipped a huge queue of people who are scared of machines, put all my loose change into the self checkout, and was out of the store in less than a minute. I didn’t even have to talk to a human being, which, given some of the staff in sainsburys, is probably a good thing too. The other day I didn’t even have to use money for my £2.08 purchase of fruit and fibre (I used a card). No money, no interaction with people. The future.
I think the reason that the workers at sainsburys don’t like the self checkouts is becasue they are scared they will take their job. I think they are good.
You may or may not know that I am trying to make a video. I want to use some unsigned bands/artists on it, so if you know anyone who makes good music that they would like promoting please let me know. It doesn’t have to normal BMX typre music it can be anything, and it doesn’t have to be a good quality recording.
A lot of the people who read this website are too young to worry about issues like house prices and land ownership, but you’ll get there one day. When you are young you kind of assume that you will be in a similar position to your parents – I did anyway. I thought I would get old find a nice job and buy a house. Well that never happened. I moan about the first two too much anyway so now I guess it’s time to moan about houses. This has an effect on a lot of you anyway without you realising it – if you ride trails then you will know the problems involved with trying to get some land to put them on.
Bascially at the moment houses are seriously over prices. A guide for what you should/could get a mortgage on your house for is roughly 3.5 times your salary. The average salary in the UK at the moment is about £24,000 (I don’t earn this). However, this still puts even the most basic studio flat out of reach of most people (you need 100,000+). This is really annoying.
What has happened in recent years is that the cost of houses has risen very quickly making them way bigger than salaries. This means that if you want to buy a house you have to take out a huge mortgage and work really hard to pay it off. This is not fun, and if you are relying on two salaries it means that you can’t have kids or the bank will come and take your house away. This is why less and less people are buying houses now – not because they don’t want to buy because they can’t
This rise in house prices has also caused a huse rise in land prices which means that if you want to buy a small section of woodland to put some jumps on you are looking at paying hugely inflated prices.
This has meant that I have spent a lot of time thinking about ways to get a house without paying ridiculous prices. Gypsies get away with just parking their caravan in a field and they get left alone, but who wants to live in a caravan. I have heard of some people who live in huts at the trails. That sounds like lots of fun in the summer, but in the winter it would be miserable, and you would still need a job to get some money to buy food.
The other problem is you can’t just buy some land and build a house becasue you need planning permission. To get land which you could get planning permission on is about 100 times more expensive than other land and actually makes up a large part of the cost of a house.
So this means that a lot of people are stuck and there are no first time buyers. This has led a lot of people predicting a stagnation of the market or a soft landing.
This is all lies. The market is heading towards a crash and everyone knows it, they are just too scared to say so in the media becasue it will make it happen quicker and all people with houses will suddenly find that they are worth less.
Here’s a reason to not believe anything the banks say. This article was writtin in 1999.
The Halifax said it believed the sudden rise was a one-off. Economist Martin Ellis said: “We are not looking at the beginning of a property boom as seen in the 1980s, but now is a good time to buy a house as mortgage rates are competitive and there are plenty of discounts to be found.”
Well that turned out not to be true. This is the beginning of the boom.
I like pictures. If you don’t believe me look at this graph:
The house price boom is a global phenomenon and is the biggest economic boom in history. The bigger they are the harder they fall.
By the way, did you know mortgage means “death grip”.
What am I holding?
I am back on my bike again. I haven’t ridden any jumps or anything yet but it just feels really fun to ride up and down. It hurts a little bit when my knee is totally bent, but it needs strengthening. I still can’t fully bend my knee so I don’t want to risk falling off just yet, but I am doing lots of excersies to get it normal again. I’ve had the cast off for 3 weeks today.
Apart from that there’s not much to report realy. Go to a real website:
The Shovel Load
Pretty Shady
Small Wheels Big Thrills
Digital BMX
Derelict BMX
Thought it was about time I did another shark update. I have just discovered that you can get google to give you updates everytime there is a shark attack. I would STRONGLY recommend this – it’s great. You get to heaer about every attack straightaway.
The Basking Shark – chosen for this update as you have quite a good chance of seeing one over the summer, especially off Devon, Cornwall and Scotland. We are going to Cornwall in less than 2 weeks and I will be looking out all the time.
The Basking Shark is the best British Shark. It is very big and often gets mistaken for the Great White.
You can see why here – this one is dead:
Basking Sharks are in fact filter feeders so they don’t have any proper teeth.
Basking sharks, scientific name Cetorhinus maximus, are the second biggest fish in the world, the largest being the tropical whale shark. These harmless plankton-eaters are said to grow up to 13.72 m in length with their enormous dorsal fins rising up to 2 m above the surface of the water.
They can weigh up to 7 tonnes, a similar weight to two elephants. Experts have estimated that a single basking shark can filter the planktonic shrimp out of enough seawater to fill a 50m swimming pool every hour. On the Isle of Man you might see them feeding with their enormous mouths agape, witness their courting behaviour, or, very rarely, you might see one breach, leaping out of the water like an enormous salmon. This is a sight you are unlikely to forget in a hurry!
scruffian 