scruffian

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.

More interesting graphs.

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

Going on hoiliday for 10 days today, so no updates for a while. Went to see the doctor today. He said I can do what I want 3 months after the initial fracture which makes 9th August, so I’ll see a lot of you from that date on. Lots of trips and things I hope.

Looks like someone got interupted.

Tim’s got a new bike.

We saw this fox alive a few days earlier. Now it stinks.

Apparently not all the photos in the adventures with a broken leg page were working. They are now.

That’s the kind of sick headline you might find in a local newspaper. We knew the French wouldn’t be happy.

It’s no laughing matter though. I hope that no-one is hurt, but that’s a bit stupid becasue I know they are and at least two people are dead, so someone is going to be very sad this evening.

Here are some pictures:



In other irrelevant news (that’s not a phrase), how would you feel if you had this on your arm:

That reminds me, go and read the front of the office series two scripts. Some funny emails. This is my new favorite website.

I keep getting emails from admin@scruffian.com and things like that, with .zip files attached. Never open a .zip file attached to an email. If anyone else is getting these please let me know. If not then that’s good. Thanks.

I went to a screening of the announcement for hte olympic bid at lunchtime today. There were lots of politicians there and champagne and cameras and media people. They all cheered when it was announced that we had won. You might see me on Meridian.

Some boring links.

As far as I am concerned I think this is bad news, but I am not sure. I think it might increase demand for land in the South East making it even more difficult to have jumps and buy houses.

On the other hand countries always end up making a loss when they host the games so that will be bad in the long term, or good for me I guess. Thing is, when the olymipics are here, I will be 30. Scary.

Another good thing that might happen is cycling facilities, but probably not, they’ll just use what there already is.

“I am going to ride as much park as I can this winter”. Who said that?

I think I agree with that sentiment. I spent a lot of time digging from November to May. Then I broke me leg. This winter I will be doing lots of manuals and riding Sittingbourne a lot. I have also been thinking about quitting.

I don’t mean I want to quit – I have never wanted to ride more than I do now – it’s like starving yourself. But I was just thinking about people who quit and their reasons and things.

Generally I can’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to ride, as it makes me so happy, but I also have to understand that this isn’t true for everyone. Some people just don’t like it that much – it’s not their favorite thing to do. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can realise that and make a decision to stop riding and do something else. That must a hard thing to do, especially when you have a lot of freinds who ride.

It goes back to the whole reason that you ride I guess. A lot of people get into it through freinds and just carry on becasue their freinds do it – like most other things in life I guess. There’s no point in carring on unless you really love it. Well that’s what I think anyway I am sure I am wrong. I can remember back in the days when I could ride (!) when I got home from work the first thing I wanted to do was to get on my bike. I guess if you don’t feel like that then why bother. It’s meant to be fun not hard work. If you’d rather be doing something else then go and do that.

Not updated in ages. Don’t really feel like it for lots of reasons.

My boss has employed her younger brother to work here next week becasue he needs a job.

I hope that Geroge Bush forces Tony Blair to get rid of the Common Agricultural Policy, killing all the farms in the land and driving the country into the biggest economic slump since the war. Then there might be some land that you don’t have to sell your soul to buy.

I tried to sell my soul but no-one wanted it.