London House Prices 2

A friend casually said; 'My cleaners looking to buy a flat in Fulham '

Me:  'Your CLEANER! I mean - a one bedroom flat in  Fulham is going to set her back at least £500,000!

Friend:  ' I know - but she owns a £1 .5 million house in Wandsworth' 

London house prices are now surreal. The boom goes on and is now at the stage when even normally sensible people are charging in - convinced they must get on the London property ladder somehow - however low and squalid the rung -otherwise their children will never ever be able to afford to live and work in London.

London property is a BUBBLE.  But - as with any bubble - it is very difficult to say -with any accuracy (a) How big the BUBBLE will inflate to or (b) when the BUBBLE will burst.  But burst it will because it has to.  Wages in London have not risen for the last five years -yet property prices have soared - ergo the poor London workers are being squeezed with more and more of their salaries being used to pay for somewhere to sleep at night. A scruffy room in a flat in a not that smart area of London is now £200 a week plus or around £12,000 a year.

My children will - I am afraid - have to put up with renting such scruffy rooms as I am not going to buy them a flat at these silly prices -but others are - I walked into a friends picture gallery recently and saw a gorgeous 17th century portrait of a boy with his dog and gun by a man called Closterman.  It was being sold - my friend told me - as the owner wished to buy his son a flat in London.   

Well my pictures are staying firmly on the walls - boom come and booms go - and my portraits of my ancestors have witnessed many - and will witness many more I hope before some stupid descendant pops them in Sotheby's to try and make a fast buck.    

 

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds - a racist charity?

The COE of the RSPB recently sent a letter to the Guardian railing against the granting of two licenses by Natural England which allowed for the removal on one estate of four buzzard nests and, on a poultry farm, for five birds to be trapped and relocated - note - neither of these licenses allowed ANY birds to be killed.  So why then did Mike Clarke state in his letter to the Guardian that; ' .....licenses have been granted to kill or capture adult birds?'  What he wrote was demonstrably untrue as he well knew - i.e. in plain language he - the Chief Executive of a major conservation charity - lied. Now as charities can claim back tax paid on donations from the Exchequer the RSPB is in fact part funded by all taxpayers -is it right that a part tax payer funded body should employ a liar as COE and should not the Charity Commission take the RSPB to task for lying?  I only ask. 

Ok - you say - so he is a liar - but how does that make the RSPB racist?  Well -one would assume - that an organisation called the RSPB would be interested in the welfare of ALL birds and not favour one breed of birds over others? Increasingly though - over the last twenty or so years - the RSPB has tended to favour raptors over all else. Now back in the sixties raptors - that is all types of hawk - were seriously endangered for various reasons - the use of DDT being a primary one. Since  those days though raptor numbers have recovered and now birds such as buzzards are thriving. . The problem - conveniently always ignored by the RSPB - is that raptors are just that -raptors. They live by killing other birds and mammals. The famous incident some years back when an ornithologist in Cornwall was delighted when a small bird alighted in front of his hide, which he recognised as a native from North America, it had somehow made the enormous journey across the Atlantic unscathed. He started photographing the bird when - suddenly - a buzzard swooped down and killed it.

The fact is that raptors kill other birds - not just game birds or free range poultry but all birds. Nature is not cuddly - as wildlife charities like to pretend - but red blooded and cruel. Just because a buzzard is a spectacular bird while a fox is a mammal does not mean that it should be immune from being controlled just as the fox is controlled.

Incidentally - talking of control of mammals and protection of birds - it would be interesting to hear the RSPB's  views on culling badgers. Everyone knows that one of the major reasons for the catastrophic decline in the population of all ground nesting birds is the increase in the badger population but the RSPB remains discretely silent on the matter of badgers as - of course - they are cuddly and therefor off limits to a charity which survives on donations from a gullible and ignorant public. 

The Nazis were Germans

I can't help wondering how the BBC is going to cover the First World War anniversary events - just how are they going to avoid mentioning that the war was fought against THE GERMANS?  I mention this because I have noticed that now - whenever the Second World War is mentioned -we were apparently fighting - not the Germans - but some people called the Nazis. Now - actually - that is like the Iraq people saying  - during the Iraq War -that they were fighting New Labour (Oh what bliss - Tony & Cherie in the front line - somehow I don't think even the Iraq army could have failed to blow that curious amalgamation of assorted free loaders, Hampstead thinkers, Champagne socialists and human rights lawyers to kingdom come).

In other words it is rubbish. The vast majority of German people were in favour of the war in 1939 even if they weren't in the Nazi party - the vast majority of the German armed forces were not party members. The vast majority of the German people were, in 1940, intoxicated by their victories. So please could we have an end to this new politically correct fiction that the 1939 -45 War was fought against the Nazis -it wasn't -it was fought against the Germans.     

Save our Forests 3 - a Legal solution?

The biggest threat to our forests is the International Trade in plants.  I won't bore you with the details - as  I have already done this in previous blogs - suffice to say plants are arriving in this country from all over the world - bringing with them diseases and pests which are causing, or threatening to cause - devastation in our woodlands.

The government - apart from lots of hand wringing and fine words - which - of course - butter no parsnips- as the saying goes -says it is virtually powerless to act as - under our EU treaty obligations we are unable to ban or restrict imports from fellow European states - even when those fellow European states are importing plants from China and such place before forwarding them on to us!

However it strikes me as bizarre that no one - has - as yet - explored the legal option - or even - as far I can understand from questioning Forestry Commission executives - even thought of it.  My point is simple - if a nursery provides a client with stock which is diseased or carries a pest then surely that nursery should be liable in law for damages.  The Processionary Moth - for instance - came into this country on consignments of semi mature trees from specific Dutch nurseries - we know the exact nursery - so why is no one taking them to court?

Similarly the outbreak of Chalara disease in Ash we know came in on diseased stock imported from Holland and Germany for planting out in the UK - why is no one suing the the nurseries which imported the stock or those on the continent which provided the diseased trees in the first place.

This - seeming - total absence of any form of legal liability for bringing in disease or pests - which may cost land owners and the tax payers many millions of pounds to try and eradicate or control - has resulted in the nursery trade for both forest and garden plants being totally cavalier and irresponsible in their sourcing of plant material.

Now imagine if someone brought a successful legal action against either a Dutch nursery or a UK nursery which had imported diseased stock from one.  The said nurseries would of course have to fork out many millions and possibly go bust unless they had sufficient insurance cover.  The effect, though, on the whole plant trade would - overnight - be miraculous - insurance underwriters would impose enormous increases in premium on those nurseries or landscape architects who fancied importing cheap trees from abroad. The nurseries in Holland would realise they had to clean up their act or - effectively -they would be banned from their largest market. In other words -One successful legal action - or even perhaps the threat of one - would have the effect of stopping the importation of suspect plant material without -in any way - breaching EU rules - a great result all round.  All we need then is for someone to start the ball rolling. I doubt it will the government or the FC but there must be someone out there in the private sector who has suffered a pecuniary loss from disease so has a bona fide case in law. Surely - funding and bringing such a case -would be a great opportunity for that mega rich charity - the Woodland Trust - to come of age and do something which really would benefit Britian's woodlands - rather than just talking about it..     

Grey Squirrels & rabbits

This time last year I was over run with grey squirrels. Not just me either there was, for some reason, anyway in the South West of England, an explosion in the population of the grey squirrel with consummate appalling damage to young broadleaved trees.

What a contrast this year - a virtual dearth of grey squirrels.  So what has happened?  How can a species boom one year and bust the next - or was last years boom effectively the reason for this years bust? I long to know the answer. Oddly with the waning of the grey squirrel I have noticed a waxing of the rabbit population> I have never known so many rabbits and think back to my childhood when seeing a rabbit was quite an event - 99.99% of rabbits having been killed by myxomatosis.  an old friend worked in the then Ministry of Agriculture and told me that the boffins aim was to completely exterminate the rabbit in the UK. One day the phone rang in his bosse's office. Someone had seen a healthy rabbit in an orchard in Kent - down they all went - with dogs and guns determined to kill this lone survivor - after an exhausting day they ended up killing five rabbits and missing one or two as well.  They got back into their cars and drove back knowing that the rabbit would make a comeback one day - and - at Fulford anyway - that day has now happened. Bunny is back with a vengeance.   

Gay marriage - Equality - and Inheritance Tax Avoidance

Charles Moore wrote a brilliant article on Gay marriage in the May 11th edition of the Daily Telegraph.  In it he pointed out that the Act allowing Gay Marriage does not make failure of consummation a reason for annulment as, trying to define what exactly was 'consummation' in a gay relationship defied the finest Parliamentarian draftsmen. Similarly it was decided that 'adultery' in whatever form would not, in the context of a gay marriage, be grounds for divorce. In other words sex and the sexual act has no meaning within gay marriage. So far so good. But now for a small problem - the Equality Act.

The Equality Act causes several problems for Gay marriage but the principal one is that you simply cannot have one form of marriage for gays and one for heterosexuals. So if non consummation of marriage is no longer grounds for annulment and if adultery is no longer grounds for divorce effectively sex is no longer part of marriage not just for gays but for everyone.  It follows that if sex is not part of marriage the various acts which forbid marriage to close relations etc. are clearly outmoded. In other words there can be nothing - theoretically - against a father 'marrying' his son or daughter or a mother doing so.  Now as 100% Inheritance Relief is given to wealth left to a surviving spouse the conclusion is obvious. The easy way to avoid IHT is to divorce your husband or wife and marry your heir.

Now 'Our Dave' has recieved a terrific pasticng for his cackhanded attempt to bring in gay marrriage but are we doing him a diservice?  Is he perhaps instead secretly bringing in a measure which effectively abolishes IHT with the unwitting total support of  Liberal  and  Labour parties?    



  

A TRAGEDY MADE WORSE

A thirteen year old boy was tragically run over and killed when crossing a B road from his school to the playing fields.  So far so ghastly but to add to the tragedy the school in their stupidity posted details of the boys death on their web site before the father had been informed, yet another classic instance of the dangers of 'instant' communication compounded -in this case - by idiotic and crass 'friends'  who - reading the website -began to send him texts and e mails of condolence before he had been told. What sort of low life people were these who thought texts and emails of condolence were appropriate in the circumstances anyway - couldn't they wait and write a suitable letter? 

Now I only know the details of this case as reported in the newspapers but what sickened me was that parents - who up till now had my total sympathy- had instructed lawyers and were now suing the school and wanting damages. Damages = cash so it seems we are back to the pre Conquest days of Anglo Saxon England and Weir Geld or Blood Money. The school has apparently accepted full responsibility but I wonder if it should have - surely the boy who died was really responsible for his death by failing to obey the most basic highway code of looking right, looking left and looking right again - before crossing.   As far as I remember this basic safety code is drummed into all children at a very early age.

Now though in this modern compensation culture world there is no such thing as an accident and seemingly no such thing as a tragedy in which the victim was to a great measure responsible - not anyway when scum bag lawyers gets going. The result of cases such as this of course is yet more 'Health & Safety ' yet more 'Risk Aversion' yet more cotton wool wrapped round children and adults.

Sadly -no matter what- accidents will happen and it is time the law recognised accidents as such and also recognised that individuals must accept responsibility for their actions.