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Post by crabbyoldgit on Nov 5, 2023 14:36:25 GMT
Sadly I think Ukraine has lost the war, well to accurate we having promised the world the west are going to run away and lose it for them. Just looked at sky news and bbc features for the last few days and cannot see a single mention . Even the ex air force air chair general has given up and only seems interested in the middle east. So what can Putin learn from this , the Americans cannot and will not be relied on, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq prove that. So if he wants Poland , East Germany , and the rest back just make it difficult and expensive and it's his for the taking. If we want security in the UK sell those carriers and build boomer subs fast do not rely on the American nuclear umbrella and be prepared to use them if pushed , nothing else will deter him.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 29, 2023 18:43:09 GMT
Many years ago I went as a telephone linesman to a complaint of people cannot hear me to an old single farmer. The handset mouth piece was a solid plug of spat tabaco juice from his chewing tobacco habit. The house was Mrs Haversham on steroids , all the lamp shade coverings peeling off , draped in cobwebs , curtains rotted away in tatters in the windows. I fell through the living room floor in the window bay it was so rotten. Nothing had been cleaned in probably 40 years, he apparently ate at the local pub , though if he ever cleaned his clothes God only knows. However he was from enquiry a good and successful farmer and probably worth more than I ever will be or espire to.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 29, 2023 9:20:48 GMT
I did not choose BG , I was transfered upon failure of my previous supplier. Seems I am bad news for energy suppliers, I become a customer and they go bust again and again. However my latest monthly meter readings due and I go on online to fill them in. As every month I have to do password reset for some dumb reason BG have the email address/I'd on a different page to the password so the password safe does not work and I can never remember it from the previous month. But the password reset will not work so I spend 15 mins on hold to be told I have been transfered to the new improved , better platform, use this link to reset password , the person I am talking to can only deal with old platform customers they do not have access to the new platform?. Why evertime is it an organization improves my customer experience with a new software /platform version I get a deep feeling of dread . So I go on the new password reset get the reset email which has to be used within 24hrs, but it instantly expires instead upon receipt. Phone the new platform help line ,I am 1453 in the que and a quick check of the speed that number is dropping I can't expect a reply in under 10hrs. My mobile battery is not going to last 10hrs . Email complaint it's the only way I am ever going to make progress, I have had an auto response estimated time to deal 3 weeks. Checking online of others experience of the new improved platform, credit balances from old platform gone missing , meter readings on bill no longer representing figures on smart meter because someone's other smart meter is now attached to the bill, smart meter no longer working at all, unable to log on, no bill history, direct bebit gone missing it goes on and on. Please leave me alone it is not bust stop trying to fix it.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 25, 2023 9:08:13 GMT
I am not sure the boat will float as high again, the young I meet simply do not believe in the home owning dream as much and are certainly unwilling to make the sacrifices required at present. For example a friends son with 2 children has a very good job for around here. A very skilled marine engineer working all over the world for a major marine engine manufacturer , think container ship size engines,on a salary of £50000 a year no over time payed. His rent for an ex council 2 bed terrace house is £ 1500 pounds a month going to £2000 soon , plus rates and power bills. So he needs £26000 plus a year out of his net income. He took a cold look at rarely seeing his family working commonly 14 hour days living on board or in hotels in sometimes dangerous locations and is planning to walk and go on the dole or a local national minimum wage job with housing benefit. His college got stabbed for cash returning to the hotel in Brazil after their complaints to head office of being in a location where all the other guests were prostitutes or drug dealers, refused a move as there was to little profit in the job to move them. So on his last job the companies Turkish division took on a engine rebuild turned down by other international sections of the business as unable to resource. Then they found out they could not resource it even by dragging in engineers worldwide so many were walking away. So it ended up 18 hr days with a lot of the people in the team unable to share a common language, not safe and 3 weeks of it finished him.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 24, 2023 9:00:55 GMT
Is this a scam ,I think so. So daughter has 1st grandchild and her partners father is not in a good financial position , as a present he buys a session for baby photos marketed at grandparents ,I kind of guessed prints will be charged for and may be a little steep. But wow, the minimum order is £250 for 3 prints and as a special offer £750 for 18. So instead of a nice present the new parents are looking at a big bill or possibly offending grandad by wasting his money and walking. This possibility was raised by the photo business to apply pressure, but thank God they walked. So if your thinking of doing the same present for your child ,don't. The parents have invested in a extra lens for their digital slr and are just going to keep pressing the button until they inevitably get a few good ones that are individual and special to them.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 24, 2023 7:02:40 GMT
Absolutely, my 1st mortgage was limited to 3 x base income , overtime bonuses ect could not count. This limited the market to prices which realistically people could pay during financial shocks over the life of the loan.Given even then it could be very hard , my interest rate went to 15% the day I moved in. My then insurance backed repayment of the capital, garrenteed the full amount of the loan from day one, any excess profit was mine at term. Then the sillyness started , 5 times salary , assumed return rates which if not achieved would leave a shortfall. All this was to drive commissions , builders profits and estate agent fees. It was in all their interests to drive the fantasy of turning homes into commodities which would perpetually increase in value in excess of inflation . Well America should have given us all a lesson in that stupidity, however all I see is a steady pressure from the housing business sector is to make homes more affordable. That is of course only by , multi generational mortgages, shared ownership or any other way of driving real house costs and profits up, not house prices down to a sustainable level. So what do I see now around me, every layby, bit of waste ground being used on occasion by young people living in vans. They have given up being in the system it does not work for them and never will, and unable to afford rental or house purchase no longer see any future in participation in classic social society. There numbers are increasing rapidly, two years ago there was only a couple of cans working around the island , now there is over 20, it's seen as perfectly acceptable style and way of life among the majority of there peers.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 21, 2023 17:36:13 GMT
Next month I think I have 22 loans redeeming which will be about 10% of my remaining stake, 😄. However I expect a lot of voting for extensions and I am getting increasingly fed up ☹️. For sure any loan not paying increased rates with a solid track record can get lost. Also any loan requiring interest free, no solid believable exit route within 3 months can go to. Life's hard and getting the feeling that our borrowers are finding the existing rates very attractive compared to transfered rates so stringing us along for a refinance in the future is good business.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 14, 2023 7:13:10 GMT
My tour took place on the day before the Sabbath, on the Sabbath we were free on our own .So part of the tour was being shown how to identify what streets were safe and unsafe to enter on the Sabbath. Orthodox Jews would not throw a rock out of their upper windows on your head on the Sabbath ,that's work and banned but lining up rocks on the window seal the day before and just tipping them over the edge was not work, perfectly acceptable a punishment for you breaking the Sabbath.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 13, 2023 17:58:04 GMT
My trip 30 odd years ago was odd, the main purpose was diving based in Eilat and into the Egpytian Sinai and though I liked the Israeli people it was strange. Ok Eilat is not Israel in the kind of way California is not the US. In Eilat I never saw an Orthodox Jew and the few Arabs were treated a bit like Aboriginal people or red Indians in the US I guess at the turn off the 20th century. They were marginal, ignored and semi invisible. Egyptians were belittled , the Sinai had been handed back to Egypt in return for peace but the open opinion was that they were incapable of developing any tourist future or anything else in it and it would be given back to Israel as uneconomic to keep. Got that wrong did they not.Understand at that time I dived at Ras Muhammad , toilet was a spade and walk, hotel was a sleeping bag on the beach and dinner walked up a wadi and came back as goat stew over an open fire. In those Arab villages that had western tourists to the north like Bethlehem we were welcome, money talks, else where it was tense. Our trip to Jerusalem was by organized bus , but one couple stayed on and returned under there own steam by hire car. They had checked that they would be safe, but safe is relative and though they were not directly threatened,the car was comprehensively stoned in various villages on the way.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 12, 2023 6:22:13 GMT
I visited Jerusalem some 30 plus years ago as part of this we had one day with a Jewish guide visiting the Wailing Wall, Alexa Mosque, site of the Jewish 1st temple and other religious sites. First thing to say is the close proximity to each other of all these sites, close walking distance. Approaching the wailing wall from the Jewish area you did not need to be told when entering the Arab area the drop in standard of municipal infrastructure may as well have been marked with a painted line in the road. At the wailing wall above your head a fence prevented the Arabs in the Alexa mosque dropping rocks on your head.Then walking approx 100m to the right we were at a narrow rough path leading up to the Alexa mosque site guarded by Israeli soldiers and just through a small gate mosque officials. Our guide counts out plans of the now ruined 1st temple and explains that for Orthodox Jews the state of Israel will not exist until the 1st temple is rebuilt and the Messiah comes, not Christ. However there is an problem the Alexa mosque is in the the way and will need to be demolished to restore the site. He then carefully counts the plans back and leaves them with the Israeli soldiers explaining the Arabs will not like us turning up with from their point of view sets of builders plans before we enter the mosque site. So when Benjamin Netanyahu turns up with a bunch of orthodox Jews waving plans of the 1st temple forcing entrance with the help of Israeli soldiers he knows exactly how incendiary these actions are. Later we stopped on the mount of olives looking down on the smart tombs of rich Jews and the older partially wrecked Arab graves, the marble for the Jewish graves had in many cases been acquired from the Arab graves which when the days of of Arab control had been acquired from Jewish graves and probably cycled back and forth over the years.When Christ returns he will ride a donkey down the hill through the graves ,the dead rising to great him and then through the golden gate which now leads into the mosque site and on to the 1st temple. Of course from the Arab point of view this is not going to happen, because. 1 The Christian Messiah is not coming back 2 If he does come back they have completely bricked the gate up , so he's not getting in. 3 If he gets in two large guards stationed inside the gate 24 /7 armed with clubs will beat his head in, I joke not. I could go on with other examples but these give a taste of the complexity and tensions of Jerusalem and the issues around the religious and political tensions.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 8, 2023 19:17:16 GMT
I was not involved in TC however my impression of this situation is that the big investor forced them into administration ending an orderly wind down. This just means a big pay day for the administration company and in the two conditions above a small proportion or a larger proportion of the bugger all left after the feeding frenzy for the investor in question. Of course any share of bugger all is bugger all.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 6, 2023 9:16:10 GMT
What's is snow ?,I think I can just remember it. Saw a frost 3 maybe 4 years a go. Having said that living on a virtual island surround by the sea in dorset may just have a bit to do with it. Heating bills are so high, record latest day to turn start heating November 15th, did not need it but the log burner looks so nice
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Oct 4, 2023 15:20:35 GMT
Got to agree as long there is no cut and run administration it's not good news but heck it could be a dam site worse. Must say I find the most of the more recent loans an issue , I want to say no extension, want my money out now but the borrowers seem to have kept their end of the deal and in normal circumstances would have prob got a refinance with A C. On the more mercenary side the loan to asset ratio looks on the surface at least reasonable and forcing administration of the borrower is not a good option when they are paying as agreed and may find a way out and pay in full.
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Sept 21, 2023 6:21:49 GMT
Most house gardens could of course offset a trip to the isle of wright, provided they went by peddle bike and cannoe .
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Post by crabbyoldgit on Sept 16, 2023 13:36:35 GMT
Insulating the inside face of the exterior skin of an existing cavity wall or the exterior face of the interior wall leaving an air space would be a major construction feat, probable demolition of the exterior wall and rebuild. However it would be the only retro fit cavity wall I would consider, my house being within 1mile of the sea in a 270 degree arc exposed to high winds and driving rain. Conditions that the bba recommend the refusal of retrofit cavity wall infill but the companies fit on the island all the time. Also insulation removal firms do a good business getting the stuff back out again. The industry guarantee is not worth the paper it's written on and it is not government backed only approved, practically impossible to claim on and laughably underfunded.
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