I spend a lot of time alone. I like to observe people and places and figure out what's going on under the surface of things.
Today for example I was wondering around the canals and back streets of the midlands town of Walsall. There were some beautiful canals full of water lilies ... and black bags of rubbish. Maybe that's a nice symbol for Walsall!
There's plenty of beautiful old buildings around and it has plenty of history (apparently it originally meant 'valley of the Welsh speakers'), there's been a market here since at least 1220. But it would be fair to say that (like much of the West Midlands) it has seen better days. Again like much of the surrounding areas, it had it's most prosperous time during the 1800 & the first half of 1900s. Lot's of industry, lots of grand Victorian buildings.... and now we're in a long decline.
There's lots of empty shops, abandoned factories and the denizens walking around often seem like extras from a zombie apocalypse movie. Here's an example of an empty building:
It's the old Guildhall, & I'm writing this from the first floor of that nice pub just down the hill. Can you see me waving?
The building has been unoccupied a few years at least. So how much do you think the rent of this (shabby) building would be in a town referred to by its own local government as 'deprived'? That's right, you can rent this little fixer-upper for 'only' £5,400....a month + local taxes. This seems a little (ahem) high to me...for a dilapidated building in a dilapidated town full of empty shops (and zombies with no disposable income). And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why this country is fu**ed. Any questions? Ok ok, I'll explain my reasoning a little more.
I watch very little TV, but occasionally I'll be forced to endure some. It struck me a few weeks ago how they are attempting to program us. There is SO much nostalgia-porn. Nice fluffy programs 'celebrating' something about the UK. There were two eeejits the other week that started off their cookery show by claiming that 'Britain has the best cuisine in the world'. I nearly spat my Pot-Noodle over the scream. One 'delicious' dish was potato pie. Yup pastry with potato inside it.
The world war 2 nostalgia is endless of course, repeating the same propaganda to stir national pride. 'We stood alone against the might of the German army, the most fearsome fighting force ever assembled. Alone on our rainy islands we stood firm against evil and would not bend our knees' ...I made that up, but you know the guff I'm talking about. Conveniently forgetting that the UK controlled a MASSIVE empire and had committed (many) atrocities during the proceeding few centuries to millions of people around the world....and the only reason Germany seemed so formidable was because the UK's own armed forces had been incompetently lead, trained and equipped during the preceding 20 years. I'm on a rant, the point is... there's lots of fluffy nostalgia programming going on to give us feelings of nostalgia for a golden age (that never existed, except for a very few).
The point I'm getting to is, it seems important to keep us trapped in our past. There's no vim & vigour. There's no creativity, positive yearning for the future, regrowth. We are like the survivors of an apocalypse living in the decaying buildings of a long-gone empire....but with really high property prices.
Which leads me back to that expensive building from earlier. We are trapped in a country stuck in, and yearning for, it's past. The extremely high property prices in the UK are really damaging. They trap people, they stifle creativity, enterprise, experimenting. In a functioning free market, prices should fluctuate as the market changed. Property rents in Walsall should decline until it's economic to start businesses in them. Instead we get a crumbling town centre (with zombies) and a new retail space with only national/international chain shops in them (Nandos, Primark, H&M etc).
But where will new wealth creation come from? Not from someone working in Nandos for £8.50-an-hour. There's not a single large tech firm that's come out of the UK in the last 20 years (Amstrad?!!). Contrast this with the unbelievable explosion of creativity coming out of this place in the 1700s, 1800s, early 1900s. How do we get this back?
I hold the government responsible for this disaster. Both sides of the pretend left/right nonsense have propped up the property market for most of my lifetime. Property can't fall in value. If it rises, the voters feel rich and spend spend spend. But now we're trapped. One generation in their houses worth twenty times what they paid for it, the younger generation stuck renting, not able to take risks and start businesses (or have families). Look at the rates of entrepreneurship and the birth rate, both are declining rapidly. That's NOT the sign of a vigorous country.
They will do ANYTHING to keep property prices high, they deliberately kept the rate of building way below what we needed. They've dropped the interest rates to 0% for years, they come up with endless initiatives to 'help you get on the ladder' (which immediately increase the cost of a house by the same amount as the 'help'). The media celebrates each increase. Average house in England now: £230,000 (much higher in London & surrounding areas of course). So that mortgage will cost around £500,000 (capital + interest) over 25 years. That's £20,000 (of already taxed income) per year for an average house. Average wages around £25,000, so that £20,000-a-year is a big expense for the average couple. High property is like a leech sucking the life-blood out of the country.
...and this is before I mention the unmitigated disaster that Brexit is turning out to be, with both puppets of left & right showing themselves to be utterly inept. The UK would be in a better position if that final scene in 'V for Vendetta' actually happened and parliament was blown up (and then not replaced).
Solutions please.
My solution would be: rents in places dropping so low that people could start risking, experimenting, failing & trying again, collaborating, building. £50-a-week and suddenly two 19 year old pals can open up their dream vegan sandal shop (or whatever), or the 53-year-old accountant recently laid-off can re-invent himself as a chair-maker. Come and watch him as he works in his little £45-a-week unit in the old shopping centre.
