Monthly Archives: April 2008

5 Tips For 1st Time Buyers

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Reading this Motley Fool Article entitled 5 tips for struggling 1st time buyers got me thinking.

As has been pointed out, 4 out of the 5 tips rely on parents help in some way or another. Looking with a cold eye on the situation it is now almost impossible for a couple (let alone an individual) on an average income to buy a property.

A default notice was wrongly places on my credit file in 2007, this prevented me from taking advantage of HSBC’s 100% graduate mortgage… It took me a year of fighting to have this removed, and now that it is, no ones lending anyway.

I speak to many people of previous generations who tell tales of buying land in their ideal spot, building their home, or buying a place at auction for £10,000 which is now worth £300,000. Will we ever see that sort of growth in our lifetime? Not within a time-frame of 20 years as some people previously have.

So is this unfair? well… economies are all essentially lots of sets balances, one imbalance starts chain reactions creating both positive and negative outcomes, depending on who you are and what situation you are in. There will never be an economic state that suits everyone so in that sense, this is just a transitory period on the way to a greater balance.

Could policy makers make live easier for 1st time buyers, desperately wanting to get on the housing ladder? Yes – planning policies which don’t require large sums of bribe cash would be nice. mortgages made available for 1st time buyers who want to convert derelict houses, barns, churches etc…. (my parents were allowed one of these with no problem but I am not). Why should these opportunities be reserved exclusively for cash rich developers and builders when they could go towards solving a problem.

Discrimination – yes, even though I can prove a substantial income for years, I cannot get the best rates beacause of my self employed status. Also the fact any company can place what they want on your credit file with no accountability or penalty if this is done incorrectly or wrecklassly is wrong. Credit referencing needs a complete overhaul.

The only thing I should have to do to secure a mortgage is prove my income and the ability to maintain that income to a human, not a computer! What I buy with this money is my business and my risk!

New Extreme Pornography Laws in the UK

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OK… Watching violent porn / extreme porn is something a lot of people do – while I personally find the idea of watching a film which portrays (with consenting, professional actors of course) a rape distasteful to the point of mild nausea, I understand that some otherwise well adjusted people want to watch this sort of thing played out once in a while.

Will this turn them into a rapist? NO, NO, no, no, no!!!

OK, people capable of torture, murder and other monstrous violent sexual acts have to be very deeply disturbed – this mental damage goes far beyond what exposure to film and video games can do! This is deep rooted sickness and the craving for pornography, films, video games is side effect not cause.

I’ve had a video involving a golden lab doing something unmentionable to a blond girl placed on my PC to play on every boot up (this was a college prank)

Of course as soon as I worked out how to stop it from happening I did, it was a good prank because it was days before I rebooted after that person had tinkered with my startup.ini file.

The residuals of this video (even after deleting) may still exist on an old hard disk I have on a shelf somewhere, the chances are slim, but it is possible none the less – does that make me a sex offender?

While I’m looking through torrent sites, underground hacking sites (I’m allowed to do this out of my own interest and curiosity … or am I?) some of the most disgusting pop-ups appear on these sites – have some of them downloaded into cache? probably – will this make me a criminal from next week? – If you have EVER seen anything like this, even as a joke or accident or as an unwanted pop-up you could be charged and placed on the sex offenders list, even if you deleted the files etc etc!

We have had violent media in one way or another for many generations, when I was young was keen on shooting Germans in the game Wolfenstein 3D, since then I have visited Germany several times and never felt any inclination to go on a killing rampage!

We need to look at the deeper problems, which of course the government will not do as it will cost too much money with too little press coverage, this is the only reason for the bill – maximum exposure, they are being seen (by idiots) to be doing something about a problem.

In reality this is one more step towards communism in the UK. Freedom of speech is very much a thing of the past, and now there are several websites which the french, Irish, Germans, Americans etc. can visit but we in the UK cannot under law! Where I don’t have any problem with the specific nature of this particular move, I have a big problem for the prescience it sets – is this the start of further censorship in the UK?

Will imported films and TV shows now be vetted for any language and content that could in the governments eyes cause individuals to go out and commit crime?

Read the article on the BBC website here

To add to this it was this story that sparked off these legislation, a horrible affair it is, although I must say – if the Internet had not existed – this individual would still be capable of this – as I said before to be capable of such things you have to have damage beyond that which exposure to media can cause.

Money money money!

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Its taxed when you earn it, its taxed when you spend it, its taxed when you save it, its taxed when you die, its taxed when its inherited, its taxed when they spend it…..

If the government were a private company taking a subscription for services provided I think we would all expect a greater degree of transparency.

We all see waste and total incompetence at our expense every day and we sit back and accept that this is “just the way things are”.

An attitude en mass such as this will literally bring this country to its knees. I want to see more fuel strikes, more demonstrations, more voices heard… Its about time they worked for us again!