I don’t know about boom, but we’re certainly going bust

Unfortunately, the grip of winter is still with us. This morning, I ventured out and into the cold and very nearly slipped on some black ice at the side of a road junction. What a shame that out of all the money our local council demands from us in the form of council tax, they can’t spare some of it to make our roads and pavements a little safer to walk on. But I guess that while council workers are paying themselves such high wages with their jobs for life, there’s nothing left with which to consider the safety and welfare of the people it’s supposed to be serving.

Well done, President Obama, it’s honestly good to see you in office at long last. I have to echo Froggy’s sentiments here, it’s even better to see that Bush has finally gone, and about time too. Whatever happens now, mister Obama, don’t do as Bush did and go and let your people down. The whole world needs good leaders, and you appear to be one of them. But unlike your people, we here in Britain have to put up with a bunch of no-hopers to do our bidding for us.

This week saw the arrival of my latest gas bill. Now I don’t know about you, but as I’m retired I tend to spend a whole lot of my time here at home, though not always in the house. However, because the price of gas has reached profiteering levels again, I realised through using the figures on my bill, that in order to have my heating on for just three to four hours a day, especially as it’s so cold this winter, it would cost me £250 just for a single quarter alone.

Just like many in Britain today, this is way above my being able to afford such exorbitant costs, and even though I suffer with Rheumatoid Arthritis, I’m having to endure regular temperatures that are nearly always below 18C during the daytime, and more so at night. I get no extra money for having to endure pain 24/7, something that could quite easily be alleviated in living in a warm house and not a damned cold one. There are at least 500,000 of us who have RA, so if you don’t believe what I say about the pain, try asking one of the others who have to suffer, often in silence.

Remember, I’m like the rest of you. I pay my taxes, my VAT, my council tax and just about every other damned tax you can think of. I’m not asking for charity, but I am asking that the British government respects my needs as one of its senior citizens, and not to treat me like some money grabbing financier who thinks of nothing more than to bring this country down around its knees.

I’ve just picked up on something that Froggy talked about a while ago. This concerns the behaviour of the former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Despite that we have just learnt of the £28bn losses made by this bank in the last year, this same former boss was given a bonus of £2.8m for his excellent ‘sic’ work within this company. How on earth is it right to pay enormous bonuses to people like him, when they have quite obviously done more harm than good? Must I remind you all that Britain is on the verge of bankruptcy, so why are we rewarding these dimwits for pulling this country down around our necks?

It seems to me that even though millions will lose their jobs because of a few greedy financiers, we British are prepared to forgive and forget, well not me. All I see around me, it’s the constant notion of being crapped upon. We have a government that is next to being bloody useless, no I correct myself, it is bloody useless. And what’s worst of all, they have no real incentive to pull this country off its feet.

MPs and virtually all other government ministers, are paid far too much for what they give back to Britain and those they represent, in return. Where is the incentive to do any better, when these people are paid enormous salaries no matter how badly they do in representing us?

That’s it, I’m off to try and do something constructive around my garden. Politics does my head in. Until next time, take care of yourselves…

Bob, standing in for Froggy

Housey, housey…

All is very well for me in the garden lately. However, as Bob told me early today, a whole lot of you humans are being put through the grinder, and all because of the greed and selfishness that pervades a certain level of humanity. You may not think so, but I truly sympathise with the predicament you find yourselves in today. Being a frog, this allows me to view life through different eyes and perhaps it’s just as well that I can. Ribbit!!!

Quite unlike Bob, I’m not able to watch what you call television. Why, I hear some of you asking? Well, it’s because I tend to leave a filthy mess in Bob’s living room if I go in his house, something that derives from my living in the garden. But hey ho, that’s how things are and I enjoy it this way. Ribbit!!!

Anyway, had I been able to watch this television, I may have been able to warn you of your calamity much earlier than I did. Sorry! You must have realised by now that those of you who bought houses and thought that their value could only go up, had unfortunately made the biggest mistake of your miserable lives. This came about because of a sinister plot perpetrated by a few unscrupulous financiers. They developed a way to help themselves make personal fortunes and laugh at you all the way to their bank in the Caymans, or wherever. They didn’t give Toad’s crap whether it would help you to lose your homes when the bubble burst. You could have avoided this if you hadn’t believed all that hype spun at you by so many of those house selling television programmes. Bob tells me that they still show these on a daily basis, so it came as a surprise to learn that you lot still think that paying a quarter of a million for a house that’s worth fifty thousand squid, is still a good bet. Hey! Shake those cobwebs from what you call a brain! Croak!!!

What still amazes me after these past years of learning about you humans, it’s that Bankers fell for buying up all these mortgages hook, line and sinker from the American market, Why??? Great horny toads, Bob told me that normally you lot have to move heaven and earth to get them to lend money to you, and even when they do, you have to give them something that will make them have trust in your being able to pay them back. So why did they trust the American Financiers and Bankers when it was quite obvious to a blind man that what goes up in value, also goes down? And why give out one hundred percent plus mortgages to British buyers, when the market quite obviously couldn’t afford to keep up the payments when the interest rates went up? One of your children could have spelled that out to them. Croak!!!

Bob tells me that you lot are laying the blame for what’s now happening, the credit crunch and the housing crisis, onto the shoulders of your Gordon Brown. Get real! This isn’t his fault. If you must blame somebody for the falling markets and the credit crunch, lay the blame squarely where it truly belongs: on the shoulders of those greedy financiers, top bankers and all those dumb enough to want to buy houses with a mortgage much bigger than they could comfortably afford to take on. If this is you, then accept the blame for yourself and stop blaming others for your pathetic mistakes. Croak!!!

Did you know that nobody else in the whole world looks at houses in quite the same way as the British? It staggers me to think that you lot are prepared to mortgage your lives to the hilt, just so that you can show and tell everyone how much of a pratt you are. Bob says that you frown on renting a house, possibly because it’s never yours. But the way I see it, many of you who bought your houses in the current financial climate, are destined to lose them anyway. And even if you don’t, you’ll spend your life shelling out piles of money to put on a new roof when it gives up the ghost, as it will, and all along with countless other repairs that will want doing and paying for. Do you think that those who rent are concerned with these kinds of crippling costs? I know what I’d prefer, and this is to rent. Even rented accommodation can be passed on to your children when you die. Of course, I’m forgetting that the Brits love to sell their homes every few years, so, how is this saving money? When I look at the current market, those who rent have the least to worry themselves about. Ribbit!!!

Oh! And I forgot your obsession for buying more than one house to live in, not forgetting all of those holiday homes you seem to go crazy for. You know what? Bob would rather go to a hundred destinations for his holidays and stay in five star accommodation, not forgetting those who will wait on him hand and foot, thereby making his holidays all the more memorable, than buy some pathetic holiday home. Whose is going to watch your holiday homes while you’re not there to do it? Okay, so you can rent it out to holidaymakers for part of the rest of the year, that’s assuming that somebody doesn’t break in and squat on your precious property while you’re away. It’s little wonder that humans are so messed up today. Croak!!!

One last thing that has been on my mind for some time. Why is it that you Brits cannot do anything without that the Americans have tried and tested it first? Their latest mistake is a dandy…. Croak!!!

Well, I have to go, so, if you haven’t been kicked out of your job, and haven’t lost your home either, I’ll see you all again next time. I may seem harsh at times, but someone has to drill some sense into you, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s me…

Froggy :-)