williamonthehill

House Price Slump? Or Market regulating itself?

Reports today talk of a housing market 'slump' of 20%, with house prices falling by up to £15,000. Is this actually what is happening? Or is the market, at last belatedly correcting itself after what has been a near 18 year hyperinflated market place. Are house prices going to fall to the point where they actually reflect their real value? I.E structures of brick and mortar as opposed to pieces of financial equity? 

An example: in 1993 we bought a house in SE4. Two up -two down terrace house of the sort that would be called a "workingman's cottage". We paid £63,000, about 2 K more than the then market price but the sellers were a bit 'hard arsed' and we had fallen in love with the place. Today the same house is valued at £290,000, The same house with hardly a thing done to it other than a revamped kitchen. Ridiculous.

Governments need to break the link and change the culture regarding houses in this country. Over the past thirty years we have been educated to believe that a house, far from being a place where we live, is actually a piece of financial "Equity". Rather than a family home a house (or apartment, or whatever) is now a vital part of your pension portfolio. Indeed, we are in the financial recession we are in precisely because of bad borrowing and speculation on mortgages and property buying. The other side of the coin is that the idea of renting a property carries a bit of a stigma. Yet once upon a time, in 1871 to be exact, 97% of property was rented. Even quite wealthy people rented their houses. This is still the most common way of getting housing right across Europe, north America, Renting.

More and more people are being locked out of the housing market. Perhaps this isn't important right now, but; thirty years time? Where are the nurses, teachers, nursery carers, street cleaners, garbage collectors, etc, etc. going to live?

I predict that within the next twenty years shanty towns will start to appear around London, built to house the poor workers who service London and the middle class Londoners.

One way that the culture of houses as profitable piggy banks might be broken is if a future government were to actively encourage a situation where 50 % of all new homes were built for rent. This would almost certainly ruin the housing 'market'. It will never happen of course since no government ever elected to govern the UK will ever have the balls to challenge the city and other vested interests in this way.

I'm Back!!!

Well, Ireland was magnificent and interesting and almost rain free! I will say that again, barely a drop of rain for two weeks. We had a few grey, murky days that sent the odd spit and spat of rain on the car windscreen but that was it. In Kerry we had days when the clouds were nearly down on the ground and the mountains were totally wreathed in grey and white.

More on the holiday later.

I can truly claim that I know little of what has been going on in the world as a whole. The media in Ireland, especially the TV appears to be almost entirely parochial. So I can tell you that Monsieur Sarkozy got a thoroughly hostile reception during his trip to Dublin. If there were any doubt about the legitimacy of the recent 'NO' vote on the Lisbon treaty there could be none after Sarkozy stuck his oar in to the local debate. Hostile? You bet! Never a kind word for the man and his delightful wife and her charming beauty could not snatch the situation back. The response of Ireland to Sarkozy's suggestion that, perhaps, the recent Referendum Vote on the treaty had been a "mistake" brought about through ignorance was thoroughly demolished. It has to be said that Monsieur Sarkozy hardly helped his own case by appearing to patronise the Irish and seeming to infer that the Irish had lived up to their stereotype of being, really rather stupid.

Obama in Europe: I only picked up the 'flavour' of this news item. I am afraid that in Ireland it came across rather like a lap of honour for someone who already believes that he has won the Presidential election. This signal lack of humility on his part may yet prove to be his undoing.

I have returned recharged and reinspired and the novel is begun. Only 900 words yesterday but I already have a head spinning with words and phrases and plots and I have only been up an hour!

Check-In

As I have just checked in electronically I will make this my last post before Ireland.I intend to enjoy myself immensely and to enjoy Liam's company as well.

A busy day today. Lots of cleaning and tidying, changing bedding, laundry. Attending Mass obviously. Finished packing. I never am sure about the clothes I pack but, what is packed, is packed. Anything not there. Tough!. 

Cooking my dinner and will have a bath before going to bed. Need an early night as tomorrow will be a long day. I enjoy flying but I always get anxious about the airport side of things. The checks, Immigration and Customs and all that stuff. Then there will be the driving and a new car to get used to on foreign roads. 

Sea Sunday

Today is "Sea Sunday" in the Catholic Church. It is the day that we pray for the work of the Apostleship of the Sea, the Catholic Church's Mission to Seamen, ports and shipping. AoS is a part of a world-wide network of Catholic Chaplains, ship visitors and supporters who give spiritual and practical aid and succour to seamen all over the world.

The life of a seafarer is hard and very difficult. These days, when time is money and a modern Container ship can be loaded and unloaded in less than ten hours a seaman would be lucky to go ashore even once in a typical 12 month contract. Isolation and lonliness are the lot of many seamen, most of whom come from third world countries. The Philipines supply approximately 45% of the world's seamen. Some of the contracts of these seamen are little better than Indentured labour. Many seamen are working for much less than £1 a day. Accidents in port, at sea are common. Storms, badly maintained ships, Pirates are routine challenges for seamen. Away from home for months, even years at a time, with no chance to worship and receive Communion.

Back in February one may remember the terrible storms which swept around our coasts. There was a ship, a 50,000 Ton fruit ship, Registered in Dover which was making its way up the South Western Approaches to Dover. Near to the Scillies the storm struck. The weather was awesome and fierce. The ship was confronted by 60 and 80 foot waves. The Captain had never seen anything like this before and nor had the crew. A wave topped over the ship, may be 70 or 80 feeet high. The wave smashed over and onto the ship. The force of the wave ws so great that the wheelhouse was smashed. The watch, including the Captain were swept out of the wheelhouse and down the steps. The Captain broke his back. The ship nearly broached. Later Irish Coastguard helicopters managed to take the Captain and another injured crewman, off the ship. A few days later she was safely in Port at Dover and the Port Chaplain and his team of ship visitors were there to welcome her and to give comfort to the crew.

The AoS exists to do something about these situations. They help seamen to stay in touch with family. They give communion where it is possible, and pray for the crews. Prayer cards, Bibles, othewr spiritual reading, DVD's and music CDs are often given to crews by ship visitors, together with knitted woolen hats and mittens and gloves and scarves. They comfort distressed crews, aid the sick, visit the sick if they need to go to hospital. Please pray for their work and give generously to the cause today.

Map Reading

Nearly packed, just a few small things to put in the suitcase. About thirty hours before take-off now. Its all getting very exciting.

Yesterday I paid a visit to the excellent map shop, Standfords in Long acre. So now I have Irish OS maps of Athlone (47& 48), and the Killarney National Park and Central Dublin. I also have a map of Kerry. I love maps, especially 25,000 and 50,000 scale maps. I could read a map all day. One can discover such a lot abourt the topography, land use and history of a place just from studying a sufficiently large scale map.

While I was at Standfords and as they seemed to have the complete set of Irish OS maps (often not the case as they sell out so quickly) I looked up the maps for Galway City. I wanted to see if Renmore barracks was still extant.They are. Galway will not be a place we can visit this trip. However it is a city I want to visit because Renmore barracks was once the Regimental depot of the Connaught Rangers and the place where William, my grandfather enlisted and did his basic Infantry training. I would like to go and walk over the training grounds and the live firing ranges to get a 'feel' of the terrain over which William marched and ran and crawled and shot.

I intend to write to the Department of Defence to see if it is possible to arrange to see the old Victorian Barracks (if they still stand) and to walk over the training grounds.

What would Jesus do...

Although the implosion of the Anglican Communion is a private grief I have noted how the Secularists of the "chattering classes" can't help but have their say.

Like on today's "Any Questions" (BBC Radio 4) when one of the panel suggested that Jesus wouldn't care about the issue of women Bishops or civil partnerships for Homosexuals. He would be more concerned about the starving of the world and knife crime among Britain's teenagers...

This tendency to try and put words into the mouth of Jesus, or attribute certain actions to him is always a dangerous game to play. This is a game one can only really play if one is concerned not to read the Gospels ( or to read them like a Protestant).

Actually, we already know what Jesus would say because he has already said it.The reason that the Catholic Church has no intention to Ordain women is because Our Lord never did. No. Not ever. Yes, women played an important part in his ministry but they were not entrusted with the major mission of the Church. Mary and the others, they were not made Bishops.

A Pre Holiday Ponder

" The day passed on; and again the wide stare stared itself out; and the hot night was on Marseilles; and through it the caravan of the morning, all dispersed, went their appointed ways. And thus ever, by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life."

Charles Dickens - Little Dorrit

A Soldier of the Great War

What is an Irishman doing being buried in a small Norfolk seaside village? A long story.

William Fagan was born in County Offally 1887. He took the Kings Shilling (when?) and enlisted in the Connaught Rangers. He was sent to the 2nd Battalion, then in Garrison at Aldershot. So it was that he was mobilised and landed in France on 18th August 1914. Part of the 2nd Division of the 1st Corps BEF, It was the night of 25th August before the Connaughts saw action but it was a nasty night attack which cost them 300 men.Thereafter they retreated with the rest of the army, but not taking any real losses until they stood on the Marne and beat the Germans back to Flanders.

It was tough. It was bloody. By the time that the Connaughts stood in the line outside Ypres that first wet autumn of the war there were perhaps about 100 men left. During the skirmishes and the artillery fire fights through those wet, dripping woods and flooded ditches and dykes of late October William was blown up by a shell. He received severe chest and leg wounds and became so traumatised that he became detached from his mind (shellshock). His war was over. And less than a month later, with only 19 men left, the 2nd Battalion was absorbed into the 1st Battalion, just back from India.

William went from one military hospital to another. He spent time in the asylum at Maghill Hospital, Merseyside and is shown to be on the strength of the Kings Regiment. In July 1916 he was finally discharged from service. He was not in his right mind. He returned to Ireland. Ireland post the Easter 1916 Rising was not the land he had left as a young man. And even in his Navy Blue serge convalescence uniform William was not a hero to his fellow Irishmen. Rather, he was despised, spat at, worse.

William was not a well man. His psyche was very fragile. Too fragile to cope with 'real life'. By the time his daughter, my mum was born in 1927 it was obvious that William needed to be in an asylum for his own protection. It is entirely possible that William was a Pensioner Inmate of the Royal Naval Hospital, Great Yarmouth by the early 1930's.

The RN Hospital, Great Yarmouth was established in 1881 as the Lunatic Asylum of the Naval Medical services. Then it was filled with Matelots and officers who had lost their minds through alcohol abuse or Venereal Disease. During the War it began taking a new and at that time misunderstood phenomena - 'shell shock' victims. By the end of the war nearly all the wards of the RN hospital were full of the so called 'intractable' shell shock cases. Other centres that dealt with shell shock had good records for successfuk treatment. Maghill was one such place and I assume that the doctors must have felt at one time that William was amenable to treatment. But alas...

Right through to the end of the hospital, in 1962, there were two whole wards that housed shell shocked veterans of the great war. William Fagan, Private, Connaught Rangers, died on 23rd June 1957. He was 70 years of age.

Grave Location

I would like to publically thank Mr. George Beale, a humble public servant who knows how to serve his public well.

Mr. Beale is assistant manager, bereavement services at Great Yarmouth Corporation. He has sent me a map of the location of my Grand Pa's grave in Caister-on-Sea New Municipal Cemetery. This means such a lot to me especially as part of the purpose for the holiday in Ireland is to discover roots. We intend visiting the small town where my mother was born, Clara, County Offally.So this is good news at the right time. 

Anglican Woes

I can't get excited about whatever is going on down in Canterbury. Its not my fight. If the Anglicans split, they split. Splitting and factionalism is built into Protestantism. Was from the start. When you reject central authority (The Pope and the Magisterium) for Biblical authority (Sola Scriptura - scripture alone) then you open up a can of worms. Without any guidance who is to say what this or that passage really means? So you end up, as Lwis Carrol said: it means exactly whatever I say it means.

Somone once observed, "In the sixteenth century the Protestants threw out the authority of the Pope in favor of the authority of the Bible. In the twentieth century their own liberal scholars undermined the authority of the Bible. Now they have nothing left but their own opinions."

This is exactly what we are witnessing in Canterbury at the moment. Expressions of personal opinion sometimes hiding behind this theological arguement or another.

Purely from a Utiltarian point of view: in 1993 the Synod voted to Ordain women. But in order to ensure Unity a very bad fudge (Compromise) was made. That women could become Priests but not Bishops; not immediately anyway. Perhaps some of those who accepted and voted for the fudge really believed that women priests would never catch on. Who knows? But immediately they Oked women priests then they also Oked women Bishops. It makes no logical sense not to have also women Bishops if you have women Priests.

Biblically of course it cannot be done. Jesus did not commission women to go to the four corners of the world and "Baptise in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." And bear this in mind also. That alone of all the nations in the Middle East at that time, the Jews alone did not allow women priestesses. And we, the Gentiles are the adopted children of the Jewish God  and therefore are the Elected of God.