The government has decided in yet another example of their fucking stupidity that they are going to help people out by having a year long holiday for anyone wanting to buy a property under £175,000. This is an increase in the threshold from £150,000.
Please tell me where the fuck in the south of England I can find a house under £175,000. Answers on a postcard.
So it would seem that after last time in New Orleans when nobody did anything about the impending doom of a predominantly black city, the state government has decided that it does not want to be caught with their pants down again. This has led to an amazing panic spread all over New Orleans as everyone is desperately leaving the city and Mayor Ray Nagin proudly said on TV that they could fly out 700 an hour by plane…. that’s good for a city with a couple of hundred thousand inhabitants.
I wonder if, after last time, anyone thought that it might be a good idea to either rebuild New Orleans on top of stilts or, even better, just not rebuild it at all. The US is a big country and there is plenty of room to relocate the inhabitants to a less disaster prone area. I am getting a bit bored of the constant news cycle of “people choose to live near massive risk of flood/volcano/earthquake and then all have to be rescued by civil contingency workers from freak flood/volcano/earthquake”. It all seems a little dumb as we keep building on fault lines or in low lying areas. Holland, for example, is pretty much entirely underwater; London is doomed to become an extension of the english channel and most of the wester seabord of the United States is just one tremor away from going all atlantis on us.
I live on a hill. I live near a river that is prone to flooding. I could live down the hill and be nearer the river but then when the river floods I would feel pretty stupid as people canoe past my bedroom window. It’s not that hard to grasp… if there is an inherrent danger in building a city near a fault/volcano/huricane hotspot or the area is below sea level and only kept dry by vast expensive civil engineering works then just don’t bother and go somewhere else with your city. If people are stupid enough to still live there and trust their fate to a god or the weather system then screw them, let’s not pay out tax money helping these fucktards out when the waters rise or the hill next to them explodes.
OK, so the government has been caught with their pants down and the housing ‘crisis’ is continuing unabated. Let’s remember that this whole thing is caused by fear, uncertaintly and doubt rather than any actual downturn in the economy. Our glorious financial leader has decided to hint at offering a number of breaks to house buyers in a hope that it will stimulate the economy and get the markets moving.
What this has done though is cause people to think “why buy now when I can wait a few months and maybe not have to pay five grand in taxes”. This has caused the housing industry to slow even more.
While I applaud anything than means that estate agents are being laid off and house prices are falling to a level that means the likes of me might one day make it onto the property ladder (and also I get to see the pain caused to smug fuckers who recently made it onto the property ladder as first time buyers with help from mummy and daddy and are now mortgaged to the hilt and facing 17% negative equity) I also can’t help wondering if this is just going to prolong the annoying news stories about financial meltdown. I am bored of the credit crunch, I know all about it and why it happened and because of this I just think the media needs to shut the fuck up, stop predicting doom (like they do with the fictional terrorist threat) and get a real job so that everyone else can get on with their lives and wait for this whole thing to die down.
The road systems here and all over the world were conceived in an age where people were a lot nicer to each other. These days people are not bound by the same social guidelines and so the law of the jungle often pervades and it is most obvious on the roads. Let’s just deal with that and actually design the roads around the fact that drivers are selfish bastards rather than hoping that people will do the ‘right’ thing.
I was recently driving down some motorway somewhere in the UK and a lane had been closed. Plenty of notice was provided to allow people to safely and courteously merge into the remaining two lanes but there is of course a problem with that… if you merge over into another lane some prick in a BMW or similar will shoot down the empty lane and cut in at the last minute, thus slowing everyone down in that lane as the person cut up by the BMW has to brake hard.
The other thing that happens in these situations is that you might see a large gap to merge into and as soon as you indicate the cock you are pulling in front of accelerates to close the gap in the hope of cutting you out. This normally means that everyone behind him accelerates to close the gaps in front of them and then they all have to slam their brakes on when they realise they are too close. This causes a wave or braking that often extends back many miles.
One thing I like to do is block the empty lane and speed match a car in the lane next to me. That way there is more incentive for people in front and behind to merge over with lots of time to spare and prevents people shooting down the clear lane from behind me (nothing I can do about those in front). It speeds up the traffic flow in front of me because everyone merges early and the traffic flows better. It relies on someone in the next lane over creating space for me to merge into but that’s normally OK if people are smart enough to realise what I am doing and I indicate a lot. Personally I would prefer it if everyone was couteous and considerate while driving but as that’s not going to happen it’s time we took back the roads and made sure ourselves that the roads work inspite of the cocks who ruin it for everyone.