Property Prices

The English saying goes 'What's that got to do with price of fish?', which is strange as you'll almost never hear Brits discuss the relative prices of freshly landed mackerel, sea bass or Atlantic salmon. Yet you will hear them debate in forensic detail how much a three bedroom house went for in the next street which wasn't even that nice and the garden was much smaller than the others. In fact, there appears to be an unwritten, binding law in the UK that states when a social gathering of three or more people lasts longer than twenty minutes, the price of housing must be discussed by the group.

True, the mania has abated somewhat since the worst excesses of the property boom, when the TV schedules were filled with programmes suggesting that an easy way to get rich was to quit your job and spend six months renovating a house to then sell at an inflated mark-up to gullible buyers. Apparently, all you had to do add value to any home was put in plastic-looking wood veneer floors, paint everything beige and furnish each room in darker shades of mushroom and fawn. Prospective homebuyers in 2006 all dreamt of living in a home decorated in the style of a Best Western conference suite.

Beigeland

Of course what the programme never showed you was the couple who did not quit their jobs, bought an identical property, did absolutely nothing to it and then sold it six months later for 5% more than the original purchase price, which is what anyone can do in a rising market.

We're now into the fourth year of recession, yet the fixation with property remains strong, which is odd when you consider the following three factors.

1. Who benefits from high prices?

There's one only group of people who benefit from high property prices: those who already own property in a high price area and have little or no mortgage. At the extreme end of the spectrum, The Duke of Westminster and other major land owners get wealthier every year without lifting a finger. But property owners are not all billionaire Dukes; there are plenty of rich retirees with final salary pension schemes, who hit the jackpot by purchasing a house thirty years ago and watching its value treble in real terms.

Kerching!!!!

This unearned windfall gives these gold-plated oldies plenty of free to time in between golf, cruises and visits to their holiday homes, to complain about the state of modern Britain, lecture the rest of the population about the virtues of thrift and sink some of their cash surplus into buy-to-let flats to soak their fellow citizens.

2. Less homes are being built

You would think if the property market worked in any way efficiently, that the chronic undersupply of housing in the South East might lead to... I don't know... more houses? In fact the rate of new build is at its lowest ever, because developers realise that the market prices have far outstripped the average earner's ability to pay for them.

Let's take an example: Upper Holloway, hardly a glamorous neighbourhood, the average price of a four bedroom house is £865,000. So if you were a couple with children looking to buy that house, you would need £86,000 as deposit and a joint income of £250,000 (assuming you didn't already have equity). That's three times the London average, it puts you in the top 1% of earners and your reward for your stellar pay packet, is a house in...Upper Holloway. I'll repeat that for emphasis: UPPER....HOLLOWAY. I'm not singling out that area as being particularly shabby: if you are a fan of fried chicken outlets, Irish pubs filled with elderly alcoholics and plumbing merchants, then the N19 postcode is a veritable idyll.

Street drinkers' choice

If you want somewhere classier, for example Kentish Town (trust me it is in comparison to the Holloway Road), then your house will set you back a further £300,000. Even then you are still in what estate agents like to call 'an upcoming area', which means you are more likely to see Special Brew being drunk at ten in the morning than in a genuinely posh area, such as Barnes.

As far as I can tell London property prices have decoupled from all local economic factors; now the only new homes worth building are luxury flats aimed at the super-rich. And in the midst of the housing shortage, many of these properties stay empty for much of the year. Walk down a ultra-rich ghetto such as Hamilton Terrace, in St John's Wood, nobody's home, ever. Apart from the maid, but she's Filippino and they've confiscated her passport.

3. Prices are supposed to fall during a recession

There is normally one upside in a recession:  house prices, commercial rents and residential rents come down, which eases the pressure on people's disposable income. But in London, prices stay in the stratosphere and then people wonder why the economy is failing to respond, even after £375 billion of quantitive easing (that may of course have made things worse). Many are paying 50% of their net income in rent.

Imagine if the apocalypse came to pass and prices came down by say 20%. A lot of paper wealth disappears; plenty more real economic activity becomes possible. Renters have more money to purchase boutique London gin cocktails served by mixologists in secret bars, complicated hair cuts, skinny trousers or whatever it is young people fritter their wages on these days.  Homebuyers wouldn't have to load themselves with crazy amounts of debt and might have something left over each month to spend on nights out rather than stare at their beige walls and vases filled with twigs, wondering if all the sacrifices were really worth it. (Answer probably not).

   Overvalued property prices suck money from the young and give to the old, they extract wealth from those in employment and give it those who do not need to work: retirees, landlords and investors. They are making us poorer, not richer and the recession goes on...and on...and on....

Processed Foods

Right now in fair-trade, environmentally aware cafes located in the bohemian yet affordable parts of Britain (i.e. Dalston), vegans and vegetarians are looking at one another over their breakfasts of tofu and lentils with smug smiles, nodding and saying 'I told you so'. (Their glow of righteousness still not powerful enough to offset their pallid complexions, thanks to chronic anaemia.)

Yes, meat eaters of Britain, if you chose to eat budget mince in a packet meal over the last few years, there's a good chance you have ingested horse. And probably not quality horse; more likely exhausted, old Romanian road-kill horse sprinkled with bute, a potentially toxic equine medicine.

I admit that conceding a point to vegetarians hurts like stubbing your toe on the bathroom radiator. To any vegetarians who are offended, I understand not eating animals with faces e.g. cows, pigs and Piers Morgan. That makes some sort of sense. No one has satisfactorily explained to me why mussels or clams are off limits (unless you are militant about the plant/animal classification divide). Seriously, a mussel has rights? Oysters have feelings do they? What about the microscopic organisms that crawl all over your body and you senselessly slaughter every day with detergent...I digress. This blog is not the place to discuss the rights of whelks; back to ground up horsies.

Each day the scandal grows,  spreading from Romania to abbatoirs in Wales that store carcasses in skips. The usual nonsense will be trotted out (excuse bad horse pun): more regulation, more government oversight or blaming the EU. There may be some truth in all of this. Yet hearing the food industry bleat that it is the government's fault for not forcing them to check their own products reminds me of the bankers squealing that they cannot be responsible for cheating their customers or mis-selling junk products. It was all the government's fault for not passing laws to stop them.

What a strange concept of business it is where Tesco, Findus and Waitrose need the threat of legal sanctions to test their own meat products from time to time, you know, just to check that the beef mince is actually beef mince. Their managers should have watched more urban narco dramas like The Wire. When buying products that can be easily adulterated, always check the purity first. Any Baltimore street dealer could have schooled them right.

In every crisis, politicians, commentators and lobbyists always insist that we must learn lessons. Usually we do. Unfortunately nine times out of ten, the lesson is the same:  more laws, more regulation, more oversight. Maybe that's the answer or maybe the government has enough to do and spends enough of our income as it is. Let's say we introduce these stringent rules making it clear that when you label a product 'beef lasagne' it must be 100% beef, rather than lucky dip meat; it will not change the fundamentals of the food industry or British eating habits.

The unpalatable truth is that British consumers expect to pay rock-bottom prices for processed foods which they can slap in the microwave or oven, whilst watching TV. The fact that they all taste worse than the most basic home-cooked meal and cost per portion at least twice the price is no deterrent. Apparently we are all too busy on our iPads, X-boxes and PDAs to venture into the kitchen to do any actual cooking. So let's all unite in our shock and outrage at the evil food industry, whilst expecting that meat should be as cheap as vegetables.

You do get what you pay for in this world. And if you pay next to nothing, expect to eat such delights as de-sinewed flesh and random animals.

Madrid Airport

Madrid Airport Terminal 4, in this recent visitor's opinion, is the simplest way to understand the failure of the grand EU project.

I formed this view at 7am a few days ago, having drunk two overpriced beers in an overcrowded, overlit cafe in said T4.  That makes me sound like an alcoholic, which I am not. Technically I was on Mexico time, midnight according to my body's booze clock, and a brace of beers by the witching hour is virtually temperance. Also there were several Russians drinking neat spirits, whilst I stuck to €5 cans of lager. And I had just emerged from a twelve hour long haul flight with Iberia.

The Spanish flag carrier Iberia, in case you have never had the pleasure, is one of the reasons people are afraid of flying. For the first ten minutes of its inflight movie, displayed on a handful of ancient, tiny cathode ray tubes borrowed from the Science Museum, I thought I was watching a 4th Matrix movie, until I realised the TV was turning everything green. Apparently it was a film about a writer, featuring that bloke out of The Hangover. But even though the in-seat sound channels only stretched to four distorted, tinny feeds, I couldn't locate the English soundtrack. My Spanish skills did not stretch to following the plot - especially when everything was turquoise.  The second offering was worse: a Spanish language cartoon about a treasure hunter that made Transformers 3 seem like Citizen Kane.

Anyhoo, it was in this sleep-deprived, poorly nourished, under-refreshed state, that I found myself in Madrid T4 (after a great holiday in Mexico, so no need for sympathy). But I worried that if wrote a blog there and then, it might appear to be the ravings of a man drinking beer in the morning, rather than a considered appraisal of the weaknesses of the European Union. With the benefit of sober reflection, I believe my first impression, as first impressions nearly always are, to be entirely accurate.

Picture the scene, if you haven't been there and don't want to use Google Images. Madrid T4 is a vast building, so huge that you think your mind is playing tricks on you, as row upon row of identical chairs stretch away in the distance - like an artist's impression, a CGI virtual tour, only real. Imagine then: hundreds of transit passengers, desperate for food, a coffee, a tea or perhaps a neck massage (such things are available in Singapore airport 24/7 FYI). In this gargantuan Soviet-scale expanse of nothingness, there was but one restaurant outlet open, staffed by three men in their sixties. The queue for bad food and expensive drinks tailed off into the endless expanse of chairs. Plates and trays piled up, uncollected on tables.

As each successive wave of zombified transit passengers converged on this lone oasis, it resembled a well-heeled refugee camp rather than a high-tech airport lounge.

Take a moment to absorb the absolute and total disgrace of this scene. Then remember that Spain has a youth unemployment rate of 60%. This pointlessly over-engineered, over-sized, under-used  building must have cost their taxpayers billions of Euros. I say cost the taxpayers; what that means in reality is the Spanish government will have borrowed the money with little if any chance of paying it all back. At some point, the good citizens of Germany will be footing the bill for this monstrosity.

Billions spent on this terminal, 60% youth unemployment, and the only people collecting salaries there were a trio of portly pensioners, whilst hundreds of people waited for service.

Work that needs doing. Young people without jobs. Massive empty building.

That's why Madrid T4 is the perfect summary of the failure of the European Project.

Drug Laws

David Cameron has rejected the call for a Royal Commission on the UK's drugs laws. This request did not come from a bleary-eyed,  teen stoner sporting a T-shirt that with an alien head and the logo 'Take Me to Your Dealer', which might explain his refusal. No, this proposal came from a House of Commons select committee on home affairs, none of whose members wore T-shirts saying 'Adihash', 'Coke Is It' or 'Marijuana - Millions stoned' in the style of the McDonald's logo. One MP was wearing a T-shirt under his business shirt with a picture of a small fat-faced dog with a diagonal red line through it, strapline 'Say No Pugs'. What that proves is anyone's guess, perhaps that this MP genuinely thinks comedy tees are funny or that he failed to do the washing and had to substitute this weak dog joke top for a vest.

Whatever the select committee may or may not have been wearing, under or over their business dress, did not apparently influence Dave's decision to dismiss this plea out of hand. He gave three reasons in a short interview. As he was pressed for time, I have helpfully filled in what he was trying to express.

1. 'We have a policy and it's working, drug use is coming down'

What I meant to say was the government has a policy of ignoring its own scientific advice and that of  senior police officers. We prefer instead to stick with prohibition because we are terrified of hostile articles by the likes of Melanie Philips or Richard Littlejohn in the tabloids. Strangely despite my obsession with opinion polls, in the case of drugs' laws, I prefer to ignore the views of over 70% of the population.

Drug usage has come down a little bit,  so I will pretend that there's some connection between our policy and the outcome. Quite why it's taken 30 years for the identical policies to have effect I won't bother to explain and if drug use were to go up again, I will be very quick to deny any link between consumption and policy. As I have conveniently avoided discussing the counterfactual, you don't have a chance to compare what might have happened in the UK with different policies. I won't do this, because the example of Portugal in recent years disproves my original point.

2. 'We need to do more to keep drugs out of our prisons'

Rather than answer your question about the need for a Royal Commission, I  have instead mentioned an different issue which is the systemic smuggling perpetrated by our prison officers. This relates to drugs prohibition in exactly the opposite way I'm suggesting, as were drugs decriminalised, no prison warder need smuggle the substances inside nor would there be any inflated profits by virtue of their illegality.

Not letting facts or logic upset my polemic, I have instead used the simple, yet effective, trick of saying certain words close to each other. This creates an entirely artificial and fallacious choice in your mind thanks to verbal proximity: support for a Royal Commission equates with supporting more drugs in prisons. This is absolute nonsense, but as I've said it with the sort of serious face usually reserved for the death of an elderly family pet you might just buy it. To be honest, the only kind of person who would actually support the crazy idea of more drugs in prisons would be a prison officer. He's hoping to save enough to buy that static caravan he's always dreamed of the Pembrokeshire coast.

3. 'We need to focus on [the above] than a very long term Royal Commission'.

I'm going to stick with the same basic formula for point 1 and 2, which is to say things one after another   which have no connection in the belief that most people are too stupid to spot logical flaws. This is pretty much what passes for serious debate in this country about drug policy.

You might have thought that as a rightwing free-market advocate running a Coalition that desperately needs to raise runds the pure economics of legalisation might appeal to me. Nope. I would much rather be consistently and hopelessly wrong that embrace any hint of the complexity such issues present in the real world.

And I won't trouble myself with the inconvenient fact that if the UK drug laws were as rigorously enforced on rich white males as they are on poor black males, yours truly along with many of his cabinet colleagues and associates would have a criminal record.

Now if you'll excuse me George Osborne and I are rather busy at the moment trying to do more damage to the UK economy than any other individual in the last 100 years. We are currently joint 3rd with Goering.

BBC Bashing

BBC bashing is a favoured activity by certain sectors of the media in recent days: the Murdoch press enjoying a chance to switch the focus away from the criminal phone-hacking to a cover-up. The Daily Mail, of course, never loses an opportunity to work itself into a frothy, semi-rabid rage about the moral decline of Britain caused by the metrosexual liberals at the Beeb, whilst constantly refreshing the sideboard of their website with pictures of scantily clad women or girls who have only just passed the age of consent. It all started with the ITV Saville documentary, or did it start with Andrew Gilligan accusing Tony Blair of lying to the House of Commons on live radio or should we go back in time to the first BBC executive who gave Jimmy Saville a job?

Now I should express a vested interest here, I'm not an impartial when it comes to the BBC: they hired me as a junior producer, they did not fire me as a junior producer when I was said lots of things I shouldn't an internet message board. It all happened one Friday afternoon and I remain very sorry, not necessarily as sorry as George Monbiot, Sally Bercow and the former editor of Newsnight are at the moment, but still very sorry. My gratitude to the organisation goes further than simply not sacking me; from that initial trainee producer job I went onto to produce many radio comedy shows, children's TV comedy and when they weren't supervising me too closely I even got to produce a little of bit of proper telly (a BBC 3 sitcom pilot - so sort of proper). So my experience of my nine years there was generally very positive, it offered me unique opportunities that no other broadcasting organisation or company could have done. Outside the BBC, it remains fiendishly difficult to gain experience in TV or radio as you stay trapped in the permanent Catch 22 loop that you can't produce or direct a show until you have the experience of producing or directing shows.

But... and there's always a but, in my narrow window into this vast organisation , the dysfunctional management that we have witnessed in recent days seems fairly typical. George Orwell described the BBC as a cross between a lunatic asylum and a girls's boarding school, oddly enough that sixty year old metaphor holds true today. The strangest thing is that you could take an excellent producer, promote them to head of department and they would then spend most of them time dealing with mind-numbing bureaucracy that had nothing to do with the making of programmes. In hindsight, the best boss I worked for was one who came from the independent sector, took one look at the list of silly meetings he was expected to attend and never bothered. Under his regime of benign neglect, the department had a golden era of award winning shows and fantastic creativity, none of this seemed to matter to the more senior managers who made sure that his successor did attend these meetings and do the paperwork. I watched this other boss slowly lose the will to live until he escaped the role at the earliest opportunity.

Great shows are made by the BBC and there are many talented people working there; too often that excellent programme making occurs in spite of the system rather than because of itt. In my area of expertise such as comedy, it's fascinating to see how many commissioners and channel controllers claim credit for hit shows they either rejected first time or said during their run that the programmes were not working. A couple of personal highlights of Beeb management  are being told we had to make radio more accessible for the deaf or attending a seminar on the future of broadcasting where some consultant put a slide on the wall that was one of the most complex things I have ever seen, including an article on particle physics in The New Scientist. To this day, I have no idea what that consultant was taking about, I remember there being mentions of gatekeepers and platforms and wondering if we were taking about role playing games. My guess is she had no idea what she was taking about either. Let's keep it those two examples, suitably vague and distant, as I may still want to produce a show, if the chance comes my way.

As someone who greatly values the BBC not as institution but as a source of creative output, here's three simple suggestions to get out of their current funk  that do not involve endless navel gazing and self-criticism:

1. Sack 25% of the staff using a simple test.

Go round every BBC building, grab each employee in turn, put them in headlock (whilst observing correct health and safety protocols). Ask them what their job is. Anyone who cannot give you a simple answer e.g. producer, engineer, researcher, head of department etc. is fired on the spot. At stroke you remove about 1 in 4 non-jobs that add no value. So goodbye to Client Solutions Executive, Head of Audiences and Change Management Lead. Spend every £1 saved on new programmes immediately.

(the above suggestion is thanks to Jeff Randall).

2. Adopt William Goldman's quotation as the sole BBC value.

'Nobody knows anything' said the brilliant Goldman of the film business. The same holds true for broadcasting. In the past decade hits have come the most unexpected of places, whether its Strictly Come Dancing, Miranda, The Thick of It and Springwatch. The glorious wonder of the creative industry is that is the precise opposite of normal business, you really cannot predict where the next genius show will come from. All you can do as an organisation is stay open to ideas, remain ready to go against the flow and remind yourself that nobody knows anything. A bit like the slave whispering in the Roman general's ear as he parades through Rome, reminding him that all this world is ashes and dust, keep that motto in mind and you maximise your chances of success. (Okay maybe not the ashes and dust bit).

3. Copy HBO

They make some of the finest television ever seen, copy their approach. Empower your creative heads and let them take risks. The Americans do it better, do what they do. Simples.

It would be a terrible tragedy if the vile sociopath Saville managed to cause mayhem beyond the grave. Whatever mistakes were made in the 70s or were made in recent months, don't let the bastard screw it up for everyone else. No matter how bad the BBC faults might be, the alternatives are worse, just watch Italian TV if you don't believe me.

Oh and one final thought... if you find that your selection of senior managers means that Tim Davie, a Pepsi marketing executive who has never made a programme, ends up temporary Director-General then  maybe, just maybe, you're promoting the wrong people.

Street Photography

Yesterday a friend of mine took  a picture of a derelict house in Finsbury Square in the City, when a security guard tried to prevent him from doing so. This guard was employed by UBS, that Swiss bank fined $740 million for a tax fraud in the States. They are set to shed 10,000 jobs by 2015, as it turns out their ability to make real profits when not involved in a massive criminal conspiracy that would make Tony Soprano blush was illusory. Presumably the guard was trying to preserve his job by showing his zeal in stopping rogue photography. Unfortunately, he has committed the cardinal sin of being born not-white and not from public school so his efforts are mostly likely in vain.

The high-vis jobsworth's behaviour does highlight a worrying trend in modern Britain, where someone taking a picture in a public place which they have an absolute legal right to do may be prevented by any  number of martinets in day-glo yellow ranging from security guards, community support officers (or plastic filth as da yoof round my way terms them) and genuine not plastic, bona fide police officers.

In any debate about civil liberties, the temptation is to refer to slippery slopes and Nazi Germany, conjuring up images of Gestapo officers whizzing down waterslides (at least that's what it does in my head). I've already given in you see, by referencing Nazis in the previous sentence; sadly I have all the self-control of a dog caught short on a bowling green so it was bound to happen.

Interfering with street photography is  a rare occasion when the slippery slope cliche applies.  We are all entitled to take photos in a public place and letting self-appointed control freaks who do not know the law intimidate us means we lose a small but important freedom. Blame the 'war on terror' or rather blame the mindset that comes with such a stupid and self-defeating concept. Before the Trade Centre attacks and the July bombings on the tube, no one bothered about who was taking a photo of what. Why? Because trying to prevent a terrorist attack by stopping people taking pictures of landmarks or buildings is about as sensible as building a dam made of Disprin.

One way of preventing terror attacks is specific intelligence of radical groups. Another way of preventing atrocities is this: when a man arrives at the UK borders with hooks for hands, who preaches the destruction of Western civilisation, do not let him in the country. Simple really. Sadly common sense and government were last seen together under a bridge, where government was witnessed brutally shoeing common sense in a sickening re-creation of the underpass scene in A Clockwork Orange.

We are not powerless though and the only cure for this attempt to remove of our freedom by stealth is to take as many photos as possible of everything. Don't take pictures of serving police officers because thanks to Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act, that actually is an offence and I suppose if I encourage you, I could be guilty of some kind of terrorist conspiracy. Everything else is fine, especially if it's got a security guard in the frame and even better if its a bank recently found guilty of criminal activities (which is all of them isn't it?).

Let's hear those digital cameras make the simulated sound of a shutter releasing.

European Separation

In the digital age, a Dear John letter is most likely an email or a text, ending a failing relationship. With Britain and Europe drifting apart economically and politically, we should do the decent thing and send that message. It might read as follows:

Dear Europe,

I think it's best you and go our separate ways, as this is just not working any more.

When we first got together in the 1970s, there was a real spark. You were sophisticated and exotic, you took naps in the afternoon, ate dinner late made from strange products like squid or sausages with actual meat in them. All I had was strikes, Heinz hoops and fried Spam served at 5 p.m. Without your influence, I would never have discovered the joys of sex with the lights on or driving cars that could make it out of the factory gate without breaking down.

In recent years, though, we have grown apart. You have become very controlling, trying to dictate whether I am allowed to deport terrorists for fear of breaching their human rights, banning the WI from selling home-made jam as a breach of health and safety laws or even mandating what tax rates my government may charge. I did not sign up to this Fifty Shades-inspired slave contract, to have every aspect of my national life be dictated by your mother-in-law, Germany. 

All of this might not matter so much if I felt you respected or valued me. Every year 100,00s of your inhabitants head to my shores to seek opportunities they are unable to find at home, yet you treat me like some kind of  pirate lurking on your coastline ready to undo your good works.   

What a pity you do not want to learn from my political and cultural heritage. At the risk of picking at old wounds, the recent histories of your member states include (to name but a few) one genocidal dictatorship, five fascist states, two military juntas, three Nazi collaborators and two nations who stayed neutral in the greatest conflict in human history.

My background, in contrast, is a stable government under the rule of the law, where the rights of the individual were advanced and the role of free enterprise cherished. Of course we have made mistakes and are far from perfect. At least we take responsibility for our affairs rather than imagining an unelected bureaucracy might be the solution to our chronic corruption, cultural torpor and serial incompetence. You may learn a thing or two about civil society from me if you once listened. 

I did warn you about the Euro and you branded me xenophobic. It is possible to value and respect European cultures and nation states without signing up to a masochistic, wealth-destroying currency union that benefits no one save the Bundesbank. 

A divorce would be best for us both, custody of the children (Scotland  and Wales)  is perhaps best left to them to decide. Alex Salmond you are welcome to keep.

Love

Great Britain