The House Price Class of ‘75.

From 1952 to 1970 (18 yrs) UK house prices approximately doubled. That’s a year on year rise of 4%, slightly below inflation. In 1975 and ’79 there were two short periods of high inflation, 27% and 22%. In the thirty odd years since then inflation has dropped back to around 5%.

%		x7	x49 yrs	x42 yrs	x18 yrs
1.03		1.23	4.26	3.46	1.70
1.04		1.32	6.83	5.19	2.03
1.05		1.41	10.92	7.76	2.41
1.06		1.50	17.38	11.56	2.85
1.07		1.61	27.53	17.14	3.38
1.08		1.71	43.43	25.34	4.00
1.09		1.83	68.22	37.32	4.72

Compound interest is a strange beast. Little apparently insignificant percentage rises can accumulate to large multiples over time. In the table above over 49 years (‘70 – 2016) a yearly interest of 5% gives a multiple of 10.92 where a yearly interest of say 8% gives a multiple of 43.43. Anyone who’s had a mortgage will know one’s sensitivity to interest rates. Now banks don’t like high inflation, it devalues what they’ve got, so the late 70’s was a scary time for them. From the 50’s and before houses were bought and sold along with inflation. Like everything else they went up year by year like the rising cost of a new vacuum cleaner but something happened around 1980, something that wasn’t in peoples consciousness before, the thought of a house being an investment. House prices rose in line with the short periods of high inflation and ‘appeared’ to appreciate in value. It’s highly likely the banks stimulated or even invented this notion of your house as an investment because they must make the bulk of their profits from domestic mortgages and ‘owning an appreciating asset’ would make a great stimulus to their business. People would be willing to pay a greater percentage of their disposable income to move up the housing ladder. And so it was house price escalation took off. From ’72 to 2006 domestic house prices increased 18 fold from £10k to £180k. It got to the point people were earning more in bed than going to work. But every householder was proud of their home’s increase in value even though it only meant they were paying more and more to the banks in interest for the exact same mound of bricks and mortar. Where inflation was 5% house prices rose by around 8% per annum.

yrs		1972-2016	1952-70
house price multiple		18	2
house rise % pa		7.50%	4.00%

If they’d maintained those pre 70’s increases that 2016 £180k house would only cost around £40k. (In 2007 US banks would lend a domestic cat $100k if they could offload the consequences in a triple A junk bond) So in a way the 2008 crisis began in the 70’s and remains today in homelessness and the affordable homes crisis. And we’ve only got our own gullibility to blame. 

Mental Health and Cows.

For Christmas Sallymouse gave me a book, ‘The Secret Life of Cows’, knowing I have a huge soft spot for Highland Cattle. Rosemary Young knows her herd intimately, each a character with caring family relationships and friends, each relating to humans in their own way. Thirty years of stories illustrate their need for freedom, interesting things to do and eat, the relationships of a supportive group. Her herd is healthy without the need of antibiotics and their meat is health giving too, and it’s commercially viable. She describes how factory farming is profoundly unnatural and emotionally damaging to animals. They become stressed, aggressive, lethargic and depressed, prone to health issues and lameness requiring constant preventative medication. They grow slowly and their meat is less healthy. Personally I love cows because they teach me the real quality of acceptance. If one is willing to divest one’s many human imperatives quality time with a cow will provide meanings to words we would otherwise only construct in the abstract. So mental health according to my Christmas book is situational and the summation of what’s gone before. If, as seems to be, there is a human mental health crisis it is the result of our situation, of factory farming. We also have, “a need for freedom, interesting things to do and eat, the relationships of a supportive group.” Poor mental health isn’t in general caused by some personal weakness but by personal depravation; a systemic process of demoralisation. As such our health becomes prone to attack and our output becomes poor. The NHS is overstretched, there’s an urgent unmet need for counselling and productivity in the UK hasn’t increased in years. Rosemary Young could teach us a lot about running the country. 

Time to Stop Laughing.

As Frankie Boyle reviewed 2017 and ushered in 2018 in his own acidic fashion his audience laughed at every vividly painted dystopian vision. It was as if a clown had taken over the rational of the circus, the audience chuckling as the knife thrower splits his assistants skull, the trapeze artists fail to grasp each other while booing in boredom the jugglers skills. Are we to meet Armageddon with a smile? Have we built an imposition on the earth too big to unravel? Well I suppose that is a form of joke. I mean too big to fail is one thing but too big to stop is far more scary. Already our million horsepower leviathan express, much like the Big Red Coca Cola illuminated juggernaut, is circumventing the world so fast it’s leaving many millions to struggle and starve beside its tracks. And of all the committees in its cab not one has a steering wheel. It’s not that we don’t know, top to bottom we know, it’s just, well all the pretty lights and it’s so red and handsome. So we stand, gawp and laugh like the Christmas crowds in wonder probably singing, “Oh we’re going to Dystopia”. I mean if one person had stood up in Frankie Boyle’s audience and shouted, “Well I’m not fucking laughing!” he’d probably have got stoned (as in stones) for ruining everybody’s evening. Maybe it’s fight or flight. Maybe an antelope with two sets of claws in its rump attached to a lion is, counter to our expectations, laughing at the thought of it and shouting to his friends in the herd, “Big bugger, this one. Anyone got a selfie stick?” and getting in response, “Nice on Steve. You keep larfing mate. Sorry can’t help, Gordon’s scratching his arse and I’m doing the Misses.” So here we are surrounded by a pride of misfortunes of, it has to be said, our own making and jolly well making the best of it. Well not exactly making the best of it, we’d have to stop laughing to do that. 

When Vladimir met Donald.

Shall ve tauk a work in the garden/ Really it’s cold out there?/ It will be refeshing/ So Vlad how are things?/ OK OK/ You got the election sewn up/ And you vun yours/ Happy guys you and me/ Vias/ So what you want to talk about?/ Donald it’s the election/ Jeez I got to hand it to you guys, you know how to do an election. I had to do all kinds of shit to win mine but of course you../ And I will win yes/ Sure/ You know why?/ You got it sewn up, tight as a../ But who seone it up?/ Well I guess../ You know we have oligarchs/ Yeh like me you mean/ Well er, yes oinyvay/ We rich guys got all the power right/ Oinyvay Donald, how you say, they not going to kill you/ What!/ They not make you an offer you can’t refuse. Great program by the vay/ Oh you watched that here/ Oh yes. How do you think we run the country, it’s like a handbook (laughter)/ Donald have you ever seen me smile lately? You have Ivanka/ You want Ivanka!?/ No/ I can arrange it/ No no/ To be honest Vlad she’s no fun anymore and well, between you and me being President isn’t either. It’s not dealing it’s politics/ No! But they voin’t kill you/ No but we’ve shot quit a few Presidents/ Really/ Really. You know I could deal with your oligarchs/ Really! You’re welcome to them/ No Donald what I voint, vot I really really voint/ Nice, I liked the Spi./ Pardon?/ No sorry/ Vot I really really voint is the Miami Dolphins. I want to live in Vlorida. I got the money. All that sun. Here is bloody snow and cold all the time/ Vlad I had no idea/ Vill you stop calling me that!/ Sorry, V,Vladimir I had no idea. You want me to../ Visa, passport the lot, I vont to be a USA citizen and own the Miami Dolphins. They wouldn’t dare kill me then/ Wow that’s strange. I like the cold. I don’t know why but the sun turns me this strange shade of orange, it must be genetic. So if I get you that can you get me your election? I’d throw in Ivanka?/ No thank you, but yes I think they might like you/ Of course you’d prefer they guys in Miami, sorry Vladimir/So do ve hab a diel?/ Deal. (Poor guy, should have bought the Patriots) (Poor guy, he won’t last a month)

A different take.

 In the referendum and these opinions (reference to Brexit artical and comments) there is a resolute 50/50 split, each side arguing their case economically and socially in a somewhat blinkered accusative fashion. In the British zeitgeist ‘head’ this is stress, an unresolvable all consuming problem. The result as in a single persons’ head is poor performance, bad decision making and a lack of vitality and vision for the future. The UK socially and governmentally seems to be unconsciously plotting its own decline. The Cameron referendum opened a fissure of neurosis in this ongoing process. We are no longer the country that started the industrial revolution or that ‘never had it so good’, they’re the reminiscences of a prise fighter, we must grasp the opportunities we now have, and in that sense we can and do lead the way. As our planets’ resources dwindle and human ingenuity and profligacy become destructive we have a new role to play because the world has a whole new set of needs. From John Lennon to David Attenborough we have a certain sensibility we don’t give credit to. Our future is not trade deals but a different economic; one that matches the changing times and that gives us pride in the world again. When Big Pharma is proving a pariah, Monsanto a carcinogen and petrol a planetary pollutant profit itself is becoming the bane of our unconscious. In or out this is our best trajectory, Brexit is just a side issue. 

Money’s End.

12^th November 2019, 11.15am. Global currency trading collapses causing a ninety two trillion dollar drop in world liquidity. 10.57am all major stock markets stop trading. 12.05pm banks begin to close their doors and you’re left with the cash in your pocket. After frantic conference calls there’s worldwide agreement to apply 11^th Nov 0.00am backup data to begin 0.00am 13^th Nov. With twelve hours to notify all major players the 13^th begins almost as if yesterday never happened but by midday the collapse began again with the same consequences and a similar response, but this time using the 4^th November data. This would give a week to figure out what was going on. Automated high speed and algorithmic trading was banned with currency trades to be no faster than one per second. This would slow the market. All went well until on the 19^th a collapse occurred again. They went back a month then two months but each time a collapse occurred. By then January 2020 had become September 2019. Computer systems were scrutinised along with every aspect of the financial market but there seemed nothing awry. In these one and two month periods everything went differently except they ended in a collapse. It was like they were just climbing a slippery slope only to slide back down again. A wider range of the brightest minds was brought in to identify the problem. Only when they built a computer model of the whole financial process did an answer become evident. It was called the ‘Kid/Toy’ syndrome. Give a kid a hammer and sooner or later he’ll flatten his finger with it. The combination of the professional financial mindset and the technology at its’ disposal will always cause a collapse. (like the 2010 ‘Flash Crash’ where the US lost one trillion dollars in 32 minutes) It was all just a matter of time. The question then arose, ‘How far back do we have to go before it doesn’t happen again?’ 

The Emancipation Con.

Hardly a day goes by without a victim of past inappropriate Weinsteinian activity coming forward exposing famous figures to the full wrath of our moral justice. There’s a sense of mass pride in our repugnance for these people as they fall under the righteous sword of public opinion. And quite rightly so. There can be no defence or excuse for their actions and it’s a fitting tribute to our current climate of newfound emancipation. Back then victims could only suffer in silence but now they are able to voice the harm caused. So far so appropriate. But there’s another side to this coin. Perpetrators and accusers aside back then there was a personal robustness in society. If it happened you dealt with it the best you could as just another of life’s shitty circumstances, and in the words of the cup we, “Drank tea and carried on.” Over the intervening years could it possibly be that robustness has dissolved into an angst-ridden fragility, a sort of personality disordered McCarthyism? Nowadays we all drink from the same inconsequential well of social media. We go viral over whatever goes viral as quickly as Kevin Spacey lost his career. One feels fear bound to agree because any defence would be vilified. I’ve just read that Janet Jackson’s career crashed after a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ during last year’s Super Bowl, a ludicrous disjunction of events caused by social whispering. Yes abuse of power is wrong but when society as a whole begins to act like a herd of spooked cattle the damage will be far greater. We will lose the ability to think autonomously and be guided by a communal irrationality; the death throws of decadence. We will make bad decisions and leave good actions undone. Be careful, not for what you wish for, but what you think is a good thing.