Atomic Razor

Fruit Flies Like Bananas

There were nine days between my last two previous posts. That is so depressing. Having said that when I worked at *n*lysys, every week felt like a month, so something has changed (for the better). I made a list of blog posts I want to write. There were eleven that I could think of off the top of my head of which I have now posted  one, so ten to go (actually make that eleven or perhaps twelve, I want to do at least one post on L-systems and the nature of beauty). But what with finishing off 11SSAL, thinking about the short stories I want to write (and my next novel(s)), general wilfing and procrastination, all the other stuff going on, I have no idea when I am going to get the time to organise my time properly, much less do all the blogging I need to do.

Safe as Houses

The IMF recently reported that the UK housing market was ~40% overpriced. I bought my first property, a one bedroom flat in Stanley Road in Woking (that Stanley Road, although it had changed somewhat since Paul Weller lived there) in December 1996. At that time, I earned £17,157/year as a Higher Scientific Officer in the Fluid Acoustics Research Team of the Structural Materials Centre of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency of the Ministry of Defence. According to measuringworth.com, £17,157 in 1996 corresponded in 2006 to

£22,258.32	using the retail price index
£21,912.25	using the GDP deflator
£26,054.75	using average earnings
£27,864.28	using per capita GDP
£28,999.18	using the GDP

Average earnings is probably the most appropriate criterion to use, so my analogue at Qinetiq today is probably earning something like £26,055/year. The price of my flat was £63,950 - 3x mortgage plus deposit ~3.7x my salary. That suggests that a fair price for a one bedroom flat in Woking in 2007 ought to be ~£100k. But I sold my flat in Woking in 2003 for £155k. I have no idea what it is worth now. My flat in Brentford cost £199,950. That's a ~30% premium on London, which seems about right. So a fair price for a one bedroom flat in Brentford might be ~£130k or ~35% less than the current value of my flat (prices in Holland Gardens have not gone up significantly since 2003). It would seem that the IMF might not be so far off.

Of course, we can caveat this to hell. We only have two data, non-independent, data points, both for the South East of England and therefore not necessarily typical of the country as a whole. 1996 was close to the bottom of the early-mid 1990s recession. Interest rates are probably still lower now than in 1996. Low inflation over the past decade means than people might be more easily able to afford higher multiple mortgages. We might argue that there is no particular reason why we should expect my Qinetiq analogue to be able to buy a one bedroom flat near the station in Woking. He could buy a studio flat in Aldershot or learn some social skills, meet a partner and buy a flat with them.

Yesterday we learnt that, assuming the current technoeconomic paradigm continues, the population of the UK is likely to ~75 million by the 2030s. All those people are going to have to live somewhere (I suspect we might have to look at radical solutions such as building a second Milton Keynes in the Highlands of Scotland), so there is going to continuing high demand for housing in the coming decades - the iron law of supply and demand suggests that there will be upward pressure on prices. Most people are richer than they were in 1996 and that surplus cash mostly ends up in the domestic property market. If they continue to get richer at more or less the average rate of the past quarter of a century, that's going to be a lot more money carrying on going into the property market. And you can still get a large house (OK, needing some work) with a huge garden and a third of an acre of mature woodland in northern Suffolk for £300k. Perhaps it is time to invest in the property market - for the long term. I can't see northern Suffolk/southern Norfolk remaining priced to sell indefinitely (another writing friend also move to a large house with a huge garden there recently - no third of a acre of mature woodland though, but the house wasn't a project), especially not once the blimp from Diss is finally up and running.

The Official Joke Party

BBC NEWS | Politics | Campbell quits as Lib Dem leader

"In a statement to the press, Simon Hughes, President of the Liberal Democrats said that Ming Campbell was resigning as Leader of the Liberal Democrats. He also announced that owing to a regrettable mistake in reading Mr Campbell's bus pass the age of the former leader has been continually misstated; Mr Campbell is in fact 86, not 66. Mr Hughes also said that the  name of the Liberal Democrats is to be changed to the Official Joke Party to reflect more accurately the British people's perception of the party. As part of its new role, Mr Hughes said it will take over two months to find a successor to Mr Campbell. He assured reporters that Mr Campbell would be replaced by a suitably risible candidate."

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The Ballad of Sad Café

When the Manchester music scene is mentioned I always automatically think of Sad Café. Is this just me or do other people do that as well? I can only assume the reason why I associate them so strongly with the Manchester scene is that they were heavily promoted on Look North in the late 1970s. I have often wondered whether League of Gentlemen character Les McQueen, late of Creme Brulée, was a partial tribute to ex-members of bands like Sad Café. Whichever way, I suspect that if all the people who claimed they were at the Sex Pistols' legendary 4 June 1976 concert at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester had actually been there, even the rather laxer Health and Safety regulations of the 1970s might have been challenged. (There was a second gig on 20 July, which many more people did attend and, in memory, has become confounded with the earlier gig.)

Don't, Mr Brown!

BBC NEWS | Politics | Poll delay 'would be cowardice'

It's just not worth it. The risks are far too great. The polls are volatile, Brown's lead in the polls is soft and is flattered by the fact that many Labour and Liberal Democrat voters will simply stay home in the inevitable dark and dank of early November and the Tories are bound to get a bounce from the conference (and Cameron is bound to pull off a humdinger of a speech this afternoon).

It is always said (more or less correctly) that elections are decided by a small number (a few thousand per constituency) of floating voters in a small number (a hundred or so) key marginals. In other words, only about 1% of voters really have an affect on the outcome of the election. In the current situation though, the situation is even more finely balanced.  What happens if Labour loses a dozen seats to the SNP "Alex Salmond is First Minister" Party, half a dozen to Plaid Cymru, half a dozen to the LibDems. Suddenly, the Tories only to capture a ten or fifteen target seats from Labour and Brown is looking at heading a minority government. Given that it would be hard for Ming to justify propping up a minority Cameron administration, it is a stretch for the Tories to win a working majority, but consider 1970.

Unless, of course, Gordo knows something we don't. There are two non-exclusive possibilities here. The first is that severe economic downturn is coming driven by the meltdown in the global money markets over the subprime fiasco and the returning spectre of inflation. The other is the attack on Iran. The troop drawdowns from Iraq are presumably related to this. Brown must know the date provisionally pencilled by Cheney for next spring. But in truth, Brown doesn't need to go to the polls until May 2010. Going early risks the catastrophe of Britain's first PR Prime Minister and, at the very least, brings forward the day (November 2012) when our first MBA/management consultant Prime Minister (I can imagine what will be said about that), William Hague, will enter Number Ten.

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