Grateful Dead joke

Did you hear about the Deadhead who bought two microwave ovens so that he could make copies?

"Buy-to-let properties to flood market as investors cash in"

The Goblin King & The Badger came up with this CGT wheeze last year to stave off the property price crash, but their Day Of Reckoning has now arrived. As widely predicted.

But who's going to lend people money to buy them? Not Northern Rock, First Direct, Lehman Brothers, London Scottish Bank or various other smaller building societies. And probably not Halifax/HBOS* either.

If anybody knows of any more lenders that have stopped lending, please leave a comment!

* Via Growler at HPC.

Living Well Is The Best Revenge

The reviews of the new REM album 'Accelerate'* are pretty accurate; it's short and noisy, and thankfully is largely free of drivel like 'Losing My Religion' or 'Everybody Hurts'**.

It is worth buying*** for the opening track alone, 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge' (aka 'Living Well Is The Best Defence'); the guitar intro is a lot like 'Heatseeker' by AC/DC and it just gets better from there. If the bass-line were the fire brigade, it would turn up the minute a fire started, put it out safely, rescue a cat from a nearby tree and have some tea and biscuits without breaking a sweat. And never go on strike. I have no idea what Michael Stipe is singing about, so I shall pencil it in as the libertarian national anthem.

* Rather bizarrely, this is the first album in the alphabet, according to my iTunes, I filed 'Abba Gold' under 'Gold' rather than 'Abba Gold'.

** Two of the worst songs ever inflicted on humanity.

*** Or save yourself a tenner and just download the first track for £1 or whatever it costs.

Total and utter f***ing shits of the day (2)

Every now and than, the Scottish Mafia running England give the game away*.

The Goblin King and some other taxpayer-funded total and utter f***ing shit called Stephen Carter, have devised a new ... strategy [which] follows warnings from Labour MPs that "Southern Discomfort" at the Government's performance could lose Labour the next election. Responding to the concerns, Mr Brown appealed to the self-interest of homeowners, small businesses and the aspirant working classes. He said: "I think the important thing is that over the last 10 years people in the South have seen their living standard rise substantially. They've seen their net wealth rise even faster than their incomes."

That's the key, isn't it? Generate an asset-price bubble (and corresponding credit-bubble; they are two sides of the same coin). Or how else does anybody explain a society who sees "their net wealth rise even faster than their incomes"? When that net wealth is just a number on a bit of paper? It's the net debts that aren't just numbers on bits of paper. That's real money that somebody wants paid back. Sure, many people have seen their living standards rise substantially. Only to see them fall again when the bailiffs come a-knockin'.

They have f***ed over the 'priced-out generation', lined their own nests by paying off the mortgages on their investment properties out of their Parliamentary allowances, brought the economy to the abyss, and they are now practically admitting it was all a three-card trick.

I mean, f*** it, I profited enormously from the house-price bubble, but I got out in time, so am largely protected from the ensuing crash. No doubt the Tories (who did the 'house price bubble" back in the late 1980s) won't be any better next time round, but at least that's what we expect from the Tories.

* See also here.

Number crunching

The number of visits this 'blog has had in each of the last six months has fluctuated between 2,200 and 3,200 (45% variation). The number of posts I have made has varied between 63 and 114 (81% variation) per month.

As somebody who can't resist multiplying and dividing series of number to try and discern some pattern or consistency, I duly divided the number of visits-per-month by the number of posts-per month and, interestingly enough, the figure is fairly constant, fluctuating between 27 and 35 (only 30% variation).

This could mean one of two things:

1. More posts attracts more visits, or

2. In some months, there is more going on, more stuff worth posting about and more people visiting each other's 'blogs.

Hmmm.

The Stars My Degradation

One of many immortal lines in The Stars My Degradation is when Dempster and the others have been captured by the vegetables and are about to be eaten. Dempster asks Axel "Why can't they stop chanting 'Gubba, gubba, gubba'? It's driving me beserk" and Axel gives him a funny look an replies "Er, they stopped doing that an hour ago."

This is just in the context of our photocopier that has been clicking three times a second since yesterday.

April fool

Anybody who votes for Siân Berry, Green Party candidate for London Mayor, who wants to give everybody free home insulation.

Er ... Siân, just remind me again, who's going to pay for it?

'Housing expert' reckons that Elvis will be found on Moon

According to last Saturday's Express Housing expert* John Wriglesworth said: “I do not believe we will have a price crash ... I think there is more chance of finding Elvis on the moon than house prices crashing over the next five years".

Go figure.

* What sort of qualifications do you need to count as a 'housing expert'?

"World in the dark... except Britain"

Yup. The rest of the world is still in thrall to the MMGW nonsense, whereas we have seen the light!

He Kills Coppers (2)

Just watched episode two. It's still brilliant edge-of-the-seat stuff.

But why on earth did the Irish fairground guy call him 'Billy' to his face? After he'd made his 'phone call he should have just kept walking. And am I right in assuming that ambitious young reporter is a repressed gay? Or is he just a total sadist?