A house is a home not an 'investment'

It is a shame that it is those who don't deserve to that are usually those that suffer. The housing market is a case in point. Those who got onto the housing ladder in 2006/7 when the housing market peaked are now in grief because prices are down some 20%. Others see their chance of owning a home receding. It is the word 'home' that matters. For decades ones 'home' was also seen as a safe route to ever increasing wealth. This delusion was fueled by oceans of credit. I sold a house in 1985 which was sold again in 2005 for eight times what I got for it. Meanwhile the average income had slightly more than doubled. That madness was bound to stop sometime and it has.Transactions are down some 50% from a peak of 1.25million and likewise the number of estate agents has halved. To get some sort of balance back prices need to fall further. Predictions are 3% this year, 5% next year & 5% in 2013. Cruel luck -except of course for those who can afford a property costing millions where the market is still buoyant.

So called 'balance' can promote bias

It is basic that if you belong to an extremist group of any kind your biggest enemies are those who belong to your tribe, religion, party or whatever but who do not subscribe, may even detest, your extremism. So what do you do? Well today you come up with a demonstration against remembrance, and get yourself banned. Our witless media gives you airtime during which you get the chance to say that the poppy is a figleaf to cover the crimes of the Government. With luck this will create a backlash which you can exploit by playing the victim of oppression and hoping that those of your tribe, religion, party or whatever become pushed away from their moderate position into giving you support. Sometimes so called 'balance' in the media is anything but.

To print or not to print

This was sent to the Observer a few days after the date referred to. No surprise that they didn't publish it.

Dear Sir, Below is a letter that I would appreciate being considered for
publication. If unable to publish but are able to forward it to Mr Brian
Hughes [Letters 16th October] I would be most grateful.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - --
Dear Sir,

Brian Hughes [Letters 16th October] bemoans the "traditional role of party
conferences as a showcase for leaders" and pleads for political parties to
"transform [Conferences] into explorations and explanations of political
philosophies".

That is what Liberal Democrat conferences do, and have done, for decades.
They are the only major party that actually decides the direction, & sometimes
the detail, of policy at conference.

Yours faithfully,

A message to my grandchildren

On the 11th November 1918, at 11 o'clock in the morning what was then known as 'The Great War' came to an end. It was only 'Great' in scale and death. To give the numbers of those killed some meaning of the twenty two members of schoolboy cricket teams that played each other before the war started sixteen were dead when it ended. In 1921 the Royal British Legion was started to help soldiers sailors and airmen who needed help and to make sure that people that came after them like you and me never forgot the horror of this war and the wars that were to come after it.

On Friday this week for the first time we will be remembering the end of this war at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year. It will not happen again for 100yrs. Main services to remember the dead of all war will be on the nearest Sunday - the 13th.

All war is bad but not all are wrong. Some, like the war between 1939 and 1945, when I was a boy, are necessary because of a great evil. We wear a poppy to show that we care about those who put their lives and their future at risk to go and fight and often die or are very badly hurt.

My family, and so your family were lucky. My grandfather fought in South Africa and the Sudan over 100 years ago. He died in 1913 of an illness. He was 34 yrs old. I had two uncles who survived the Great War. My father was just too old and unfit for 1939 - 1945 & he was a fireman during the bombing of London. He survived. I had another uncle who was left behind to repair aircraft. The ship he should have been on was sunk and 1400 men died.

I hope on Sunday at 11 o'clock you will just be quiet for a few moments and if you see people, especially older people, you will treat them with kindness and respect. I'm sure you will.

Complicated voting?

Taken from Highland UA Council website

"The seven-cornered by-election for Inverness South (Ward 20) on The Highland Council has resulted in a victory for Mrs Carolyn Caddick, Scottish Liberal Democrats. The turn out was 26.8% and the total number of valid votes cast was 2,607. The by-election was held following the resignation of John Holden (Labour).
The count was held at Inverness Town Hall.
David McGrath (Independent), was eliminated at the end of stage one, with 94votes.   
His votes were then redistributed and Donald Boyd (Scottish Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship”) was eliminated at the end of stage 2 with 130 votes.
Gale Falconer (Scottish Green Party) was eliminated at stage 3 with 189 votes.
David Bonsor  (Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party)  was eliminated at the end of stage 4 with 339 votes.
Katherine Mackenzie (Scottish Labour Party) was eliminated at the end of stage 5 with 379 votes.
At the final stage, there was a re-count of votes. At the end, Mrs Caddick had 1,091 votes, and Ken Gowans (SNP) had 1,084 votes".

And the NO2AV campaign managed to sell the idea that AV was complicated ! ! What a fabulous con trick they managed to pull off.

We are NOT all in it together

"We are all in it together" is the most cynical sick joke of this decade. A report in the Scotsman says: The effective tax rate paid by Britain's biggest companies has dropped by almost a third over the last two years, but many are still considering moving their headquarters abroad. In 2009, FTSE 100 companies on average paid tax equivalent to 35.8% of their annual profits. But new research by UHY Hacker Young, a national group of accounting firms, shows that figure has fallen to just 26% in 2011, even though profits are higher. For Aileen Scott, tax partner at Campbell Dallas, the only Scottish member of the UHY Hacker Young group, "While the government has made efforts to make the UK tax regime more attractive, will it be enough to stymie the tide of British companies still thinking about the exit?". On top of some of the FTSE top executives giving themselves up to 50% pay rises this really stinks. Still as long as we pull out of the EU and relentlessly hunt down benefit cheats it will all come right. Like hell it will.

The uselessness of Trident

Trying to work out how many nuclear weapons needed to destroy the UK is a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question but here goes anyway. I'm assuming the data uses American Tons of 2000lbs or 907kg. It doesn't matter that much in terms of the discussion.Worldwide there are approx. 30,000 warheads with a total capacity of about 5thousand million ton of TNT [5000megatons]. So that gives each warhead about 170,000 ton or roughly eight times the 22000 tonnes of the bomb used on Nagasaki. [The biggest ever detonated was 50megaton & 100MT is believed to be enough to cause a Nuclear Winter].

The Nagasaki/Hiroshima bombs each devastated about 5sq miles. The area of London is about 620 sq miles & Birmingham about 100 sq miles. Again without defining what is included & what is not these data are very approximate. However we might say, without getting too tied up in irrelevant accuracy, that 10 average bombs on London, two on Birmingham, 3 on Manchester would effectively render those cities completely disfunctional. It doesn't take us long to realise that maybe 30 would effectively wipe out the UK.

Doesn't really matter whether the answer is 20 or 50. In this ball park an enemy like the ex Soviet Union could reduce us to nothing with only our Trident Submarines still functioning. So we could hit back. Yippee. Big Deal. But the Soviet Union isn't there any more. Only the USA has this capacity in terms of warheads & delivery system. Is Liam Fox seriously considering a need to deter an attack from the USA?

Would a terrorist or a rogue state with the warheads & capacity to deliver two or three bombs on the UK [only Israel can do this right now] be deterred by our Tridents? That number of bombs would still leave us functional & deterrence/retaliation could very effectively be from Cruise missiles.

Liam Fox made some good points in his speech to the Tory Party conference but his affirmation of a replacement for Trident, as a sop to the Tory 'Right', is what should truly differentiate the LibDems from the Tories on Defence. Trident is a completely indefensible waste of money. On every possible argument, & there are many besides the one I have just made here, it has no value whatsoever.