Sofa Spud

I might auction the rights for someone to buy me all my groceries for the next 3 years.

Bear at the moment as the downward pressures on house prices seem to be stronger than the upward ones. If there is a real recession as well, prices will probably go way down. If it's just a 'slowdown', I don't think prices will fall much beyond 30%. That's just my guess.

He's onto a loser there! A poll of the population of Berwick on Tweed found the 80% of the residents wanted to return to being part of Scotland. A village in Cheshire wants to become part of Wales. Cornwall arguably has never been part of England since no decree of Act of Union ever occurred.

An investment company buying into a falling market? Unless they're so huge they can buy enough properties single-handedly to turn the market!!! LOL

I think whoever the PM is will make little difference. It looks like things are going to get worse for some time, and then after that they'll probably get better again.

* Net migration - down * Unemployment - up * Inflation of essential cost of living - up a bit * Taxation (esp. council tax) - not much change

OK, so the EAs were empty last property crash in the early 90's - don't remember it being as sudden or extreme as we seem to be hearing now, though.

I don't remember a spectacular lack of sales like this during the last property crash around 1991. If I remember right, then, high interest rates and redundancies forced a lot of people to give up their houses, which went to auction to be sold at knockdown prices. As well as that, the general economic deterioration forced a gradual decline in prices asked for properties placed on the market - but they did continue to sell. Were the estate agents empty and houses not selling last time round?

It would be very difficult for any country to leave the Euro. They'd either have to invent a new currency, complete with new notes and coins, or use another existing currency..... like the US Dollar or the Pound??? (!!!!). We should join the Euro - hopefully if the exchange rate reaches 1:1 we can do so fairly simply just by locking the 1:1 rate, making the euro legal tender alongside the pound and phasing out the sterling notes and coins and gradually topping up with euro ones. The fewer currencies there are, the smaller the scope for currency speculators.

Downside? There's actually a place called Downside not far from where I live! A lot of the South is nice - it's not all covered by London!!!

But only if you're a man. Saudi Arabia operates a system of apartheid as women are not allowed to drive, travel without permission of a male or do many other things.

Rubbish! Mussolini's Italy was a fascist state. Where are the EU prison camps, interrogation and torture centres, execution sites? Where are the EU brownshirts knocking on doors in the middle of the night and 'disappearing' people? Fascism and Nazism are specific terms that apply to extremely unpleasant totalitarian systems that killed millions. The EU is no more 'fascist' than the X-factor - in fact probably less so!

On the subject of war but going a bit off-topic..... We don't hear much about how much the wars in in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to cost the USA ultimately. One would have to subtract from that total the amount it would have cost to keep the same forces in peacetime, training etc. Without going into the rights or wrongs of these two military adventures, which is another separate issue, what are they costing the US economy? I'm assuming that the effect of the British economy of British deployments is less, and has just filled a gap left by the run down of operations in Northern Ireland.

Possibly if the economy gets worse I can see the government cutting fuel duty to commercial transport companies, or alternatively issuing rebates. I can see no reason why they'd reduce it for private motorists, though. I used to run a car that could just about manage 20 mpg . For the last 4 years I've run one that does 50+ mpg. I've saved thousands of pounds in fuel costs. My next car will be in the 50 - 55 mpg bracket. Fuel costs aren't high if you run an economical car.

Has anyone else come across people saying: "Property crash - what property crash? Look at the number of houses for sale!" ???