Make it stop!

So there was I, innocently trying to watch the Channel 4 News yesterday, as you do, when in the middle ad break came a trailer for a new series of Location, Location, Location.  No!  For the love of god NO!  I thought they would have had the good grace to lie low for a while.

But no, not a bit of it.  Not only are they so shameless and unself-aware that they're coming back, but they're taking a very radical fingers-in-ears-going-la-la-la approach.  Here was everyone thinking property prices were falling at a record rate, with a forthcoming recession and a record low for mortgage approvals indicating such falls would continue for the forseeable future; but thankfully the trailer corrected this misapprehension, no everyone's trying to buy, but they're suffering for "confusing information about the housing market."  Thank the lord for Phil Spencer setting us right on that one, good one Phil, please take one of my kidneys while you're at it.

But the trailer wasn't at it's worst yet, that was still to come, and it came in the ample shape of Kirstie Allsopp standing there with a complete deadpan facial expression; she then said: "If you don't buy a house in the next three months you never will."

This is now, officially, beyond a joke.  They have been plying these scare tactics for years, using a variety of emotional tactics to get their way.  Some choice quotes:

• "not buying is just putting your life on hold" (yeah, having north of £1,000 per month disposable income is really fucking my life up, if only I could get a mortgage... just think of all the things I could do then!)
• "first time buyers this year are going to be the last generation to own property" (the fact that prices have fallen back to 2005 levels show this to have been false for at least the last three years; give it another few months and it'll have been wrong for even longer)
• "like all good parents, I have a buy-to-let flat, I'm going to give it to my daughter, I don't want her to be homeless like everyone else from her generation" (this was during an edition of "best places to invest" - I was dumbstruck, I still am, this was a low blow, a very low blow to so many people... and to make matters worse it has royally screwed over the future for the young families that were gullible enough to take action based on it)

I don't know how either of them can sleep at night.  They must know that literally tens of thousands of people made decisions based on their "advice", they wouldn't be giving if they weren't; that's thousands of people who are now: bankrupt, reposessed, in negative equity or dead.

It's a bit morbid to bring up the subject of death, but it's a fact that there's a correlation between bankruptcy, repossession and suicide; a fact that shows how serious this issue is.   Kirstie Allsop, Phil Spencer, everyone that works on Location, Location, Location, and Channel 4 all have blood on their hands.

These two shysters have to be stopped.  (Actually perhaps I'm giving them too much credit by calling them 'shysters', perhaps they genuinely believe what they say?  If so then they're not qualified to give advice to anybody, least of all the entire nation on T.V.)  If two hedge fund managers were given airtime to ramp their chosen investments there would be criminal enquiries and questions asked in parliament; the same thing happens to property and nothing happens. 

If these people don't have the good grace to finally accept the property market was a bubble, and just let it go, then we need regulatory intervention.  The rules that govern insider dealing should be extended to property, and estate agents needs to be regulated in the same way stockbrokers are.  The fact that we're falling headlong into a Japan-esque deflationary slump just shows what happens when you let unqualified people loose on something so serious.

It's time someone in government took this seriously, but for them to do that they'd have to accept that the recession is at least partially home grown.  "This problem grew entirely out of the sub-prime market in America" - (c) Gordon (the moron) Brown.  So it's not going to happen.  The various property vested intrests have royally ass-fucked the entire country, and they're being given airtime to keep on ramming!

So what's the answer?  Vote Tory?  Perhaps, who's the Conservative Party adviser on housing and mortgages?  Let me look it up, it's someone called Kirstie Allso... damnit!

Right, I'm going to buy as much gold as I can get my hands on and emigrate to the moon.  Or perhaps I'll just go and negotiate myself a nice rent decrease!