No thanks St George.

As if a raging hangover wasn't enough to deal with, yesterday I had the annual misfortune of witnessing the sorry sight of the so-called 'March for England' spilling onto the streets of Brighton. They don't have any support in such a diverse city as ours so I don't understand why they do this - they mostly arrive on the train from elsewhere so I suspect they choose Brighton for their march because they know there'll be a lively counter protest and because they're looking for a fist fight in the name of 'patriotism'.

Perhaps now it's best for all concerned that St George's Day slipped away quietly into the history books and the red and white bunting was popped into that box in the loft along with the fondue set and the Betamax player. I am not in any way trying to imply that all those who want to celebrate St George's Day have the same motives as those who march for the EDL or other such groups - I am just suggesting that the very notion of St George's Day has been used and probably forever tainted with images of drunken shaven-headed men with iron cross tattoos swaggering their way through the streets at 11am and yelling racist abuse at anyone they deem not to be 'English' enough.

For a national day to be successful and to not be given a lingering air of jingoistic racism by extreme groups it needs to be whole-heartedly embraced and promoted by the government of that country - and preferably have some sort of unofficial booze-related sponsor, other than lager that is. Perhaps if St George's Day had received this treatment for the last twenty years or so then these comparatively tiny actions by groups such as the EDL would hardly be noticed. However, instead they make headline news because nothing else of note is happening.

Because its name has been dragged through the mud somewhat, I wonder if St George's Day might simply be a bit of a write-off. A bit like the whole Dwain Chambers argument making headlines at the moment - is it really worth the hassle of tarting up a previously disgraced drug cheat to represent your nation in the Olympics, or would we just be better off telling him "thanks but no thanks" and finding someone with a less sullied image to run for us? The latter would probably be better all round.

The other trouble with St George's Day is that it tends to conjure up images of middle aged, middle class, flag-waving twits - commonly seen sobbing on the Last Night of the Proms passing little hankies around and lamenting the departure of days when schoolroom globes were largely pink and Britannia ruled the waves whilst helping to spreading our sturdy railway systems (and syphilis) around the ungrateful colonies. Actually, those days possibly aren't something to be too proud of depending on your viewpoint. Also, it really doesn't help that as a nation we have largely disgraced ourselves in the international football arena - the seemingly endless World Cup footage of groups of 20+ stone men with their faces painted white and red yelling abuse at foreign policemen before throwing up the lager they had for breakfast into the gutter can't really be classed as A1 promotional material. Nor does the fact that to the outside world, a 'holiday' for many English people seems to involve putting on their best England football shirts and gold chains, hopping on an Easyjet flight to some used and abused Spanish seaside resort before tying a St George's cross towel to the hotel balcony and then spending the whole week wandering between numerous English bars (but only after sampling some of the finest English breakfasts that "Dave's British Cafe" has to offer). Of course this isn't true for most people but it is unfortunately the image we have acquired.

 

What works for shiny new countries like Australia, or the historical underdog countries such as Ireland won't necessarily work for an aging colonial power with an arguably chequered past like the UK or, if you want to be specific, England. If we have to have a national day then it needs to have some damn clever marketing behind it to avoid it looking a bit like one of those YouTube videos of laughing American soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of Afghan villagers. For example, is it really St Paddy's Day that most people care about, or is it just a brilliantly fun excuse for a midweek piss up that might as well be renamed International Guinness and Leprechaun Hat Day? Maybe a 'let's all leave work just after lunchtime for a belly full of gin and little triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off day' would work well for us on the international market?

I'm not sure how much of a place that nationalism really has in an ever diversifying world. I find it ridiculous that so many Brits are so impulsively set against the idea of a unified Europe when history has so horrifically proven what can happen when it exists as a collection of nations. Plus, culturally we have so much in common with our European neighbours that most of the nationalistic arguments just don't make sense. Massive countries like China, India, Brazil and Argentina are all steadily growing in power and influence so Britain and, even more so England, are becoming smaller and even less significant as each year passes. Perhaps our time as an individual nation is coming to an end and a far more prosperous and secure future exists as a fully committed member of a reworked European Union (once they've sorted out the financial mess that is).

Just my personal view of course - Happy St George's Day if that's your cup of tea. I think I'd rather stick with an actual cup of tea and an episode of Murder She Wrote. Today Jessica visits the Amish to buy a quilt and finds they are not immune to murder...

A plague on all our houses?

So the government has a new plan to "help" first-time buyers - by using public funds to underwrite part of their mortgages thus allowing them to borrow up to 95% of the value of a new house. I can't help questioning where the sense lies in encouraging an already financially-stretched generation living in the aftermath of the recent shattered credit bubble to borrow yet more money against what is arguably a vastly overvalued investment. Especially when many economists believe there is a significant likelihood of further, perhaps sharp, falls in house prices in the near future.

I'm 31 and in a slightly above average paid job, but with no capital behind me I am nowhere near able to afford to buy my own home. I always thought that the day would come when I could climb aboard the glistening property ladder but I am fast beginning to accept the fact that it might not.

At present my wages cover my rent, food and bills plus, with the price of beer as high as it is, an increasingly modest social life. I could live like a hermit for 5 years and still not really save enough for a useful deposit.

My parents do not have the money to lend me for a deposit, nor would I ever ask them to - I feel that as they get older they should be able to spend the small amount of spare cash they have in order to live their lives as best as they can. They've worked hard over the years so why shouldn't they?

So, I'm fast preparing to resign myself to a lifetime of renting. Not the end of the world by any means but it certainly has many disadvantages. For example, twice in the last seven years I've been essentially ejected from my own home when the landlords decided it was time to sell up and cash in on their 'investment'. This was stressful (not to mention expensive) enough as a young single bloke - I can't begin to imagine how this would affect a family or an elderly person.

Whilst on one hand it is reassuring to know that if the roof blew off in a storm it would be someone else's responsibility to fix it, on the other hand it is somewhat disconcerting that I have no control over the speed or quality of repairs. In the depths of last winter my housemates and I lived without heating or hot water for four days because it took our landlord so long to get someone round to fix our broken boiler. Yes, we probably could have hassled her continuously in an attempt to get someone round sooner but then that's more easily said than done when you work full time - plus no-one wants to get on the wrong side of their landlord.

I also have to resign myself to a lifetime of living with someone else's taste in bathrooms, kitchens, carpets and interior decoration - no home modifications or extensions for me. Carpets will be replaced and rooms repainted only when the landlord deems truly necessary - which, seeing as they don't have to live with it, will be somewhere in the region of every 10 years at best. Yes, some landlords will allow you to repaint if you wish - but then this could easily be money down the drain when they ask you to move out a couple of months later. If you are lucky enough to have a more accepting landlord then they are still likely to limit the colours you can choose and they certainly won't be happy about you ripping out the bathtub and installing a power shower instead.

I know this isn't exactly homelessness but it's a very different existence to the one my parents know. Now in their mid-fifties they are approaching being mortgage-free and are ready for a secure and comfortable retirement in a house that they have made truly their own and can continue to modify as they age. When they bought their house, by the way, it cost approximately 3 times my dad's modest salary. Their house today would cost me approximately 12 times my slightly above average salary.

I look around at my friends - all in their late twenties/early thirties and mostly in fairly well paid professional jobs. Of my group of 15-20 close friends, only four have managed to start to buy their own places.

Through work I have met several landlords who own properties similar to the ones that the rest of us rent. Some of them have portfolios of 10+ properties - many they bought at auction and have barely even set foot in (other than to give instructions to builders about how to renovate cheaply to minimum rental standards). Granted, a stock of private rental properties is required to house all of the people who can't afford to buy, but it cannot be denied that the buy-to-let gravy train is a significant cause of the prices being prohibitively expensive in the first place. Of course, once a landlord owns and has built up some capital in one property they can borrow against it to buy the next one - further increasing demand and raising the height of that first rung of the ladder so many are trying to reach.

Still, at least those in a worse position than me have a sturdy social housing system to fall back on. Oh no, how absent minded of me - most of that was sold off years ago. And now it appears that someone's come up with a fantastic plan to sell off the rest of it. I can't help but wonder how many of these properties will end up in the hands of buy-to-let investors in a few years time earning someone a healthy profit. Surely at a time when unemployment is rising and affordable housing is somewhat conspicuous by its absence we should be rapidly increasing the availability of well-maintained and secure social housing not only through new building schemes undertaken with quality and living standards put before profit but also through urgently addressing the shocking fact that nearly half a million homes in Britain are lying empty - often because someone is waiting for the right time to cash in on them...

I can't help thinking it's a sorry state of affairs when as a society we have let one of the most basic requirements of human existence - a home - become a commodity which earns so much money for the few, but makes life so expensive and compromised for the many. There's no human requirement to own more than one home but our collective greedy nature and lack of regulation of this fundamentally important resource has made it impossible for so many of us to afford this basic asset.

I've never aspired to make money from property, nor do I think I would if I had the chance (although granted, this is easy to say when I don't have the financial means for one, let alone a portfolio of houses). All I hope to be able to afford one day is a modest sized home for me and, possibly, a family - which we can make our own and live out our days in relative security. As sad as it would be for existing mortgage holders, a sharp correction (i.e. a 90's style collapse) of the housing market would probably be my only hope of achieving this - other than marrying a filthy rich wife.

Sadly, it doesn't seem either is likely to happen... 

 

The nudge-nudge, wink-wink...

Greetings humans.

The wheels of diplomatic-based administration seem to be slowly turning and things are finally progressing - we have received the secret coded email stating that "no further information is required" from us. This is great news as the only other option would have been for them to tell us politely but firmly to fuck off. Option A is therefore much more conducive to our overall plans - which rely quite heavily on not being told to fuck off.

On careful inspection it was apparent that we also received a further coded message that "the visa should be granted by 29th January" which, when deciphered, indicates that the visa should be granted by 29th January. 

This means we have some planning to do. However I am not very good at planning, nor do I like thinking very much, so instead I have wisely chosen to watch a documentary about a horse that fell down a hole in the ground. I am certain that this will somehow help the process of overseas travel enormously and should not be construed as idle loafing.

This has, however, imparted upon me a nagging uncertainty about what to do with all of my stuff when we embark on our travels. I've accumulated quite a lot of shit over the years (more affectionately known as my 'garments') but I'm not sure my parents will aprove of me shoving it all into their loft - mainly due to the fact that it's already full of all of my other garments. Besides, I am pretty sure domestic ceilings are not engineered to carry a 4-tonne dead load. 

I will therefore have to have a good think about either selling/burning it off - whichever is easier really. If anyone would like to buy a cello please let me know...

Case officer assigned...

Well, speak of the devil - we have a case officer. Now I have to go to be prodded by doctors. I do hope they don't require the full internal investigation. If they do I hope they're gentle.

I have the choice between clinics in Maidenhead or London. London is nearer but £70 more expensive (£270 instead of £200). On the other hand, it's hard to make a 'day' out of travelling to Maidenhead - I'm not sure they have a big wheel or aquarium....

Greetings blog reader(s)....

Welcome to the first of the forthcoming plethora of ramblings spouted directly from my mind cavity which have been carefully tailored to keep you fully up to date with the "thrilling" adventures of myself and my wiley life colleague The Gemmatron.

As many of you will know, Gemma hails from the sordid and dysfunctional part of the world which many refer to as "The Land Down Udder" or something similar (presumably because it hangs from the nether regions of the Earth like a lady cow's milk orbs). Having spent nearly four years in the luxuriant Northern hemisphere she is likely to eventually become eager to return to the Motherland for a while to regail her kind with tales of "Marmite" and the sheer thrill of using toilets situated inside the house.

After literally months spent putting the thing together, last week we finally submitted our very bulky and complex application for a partner visa so that we can enjoy this trip together. Since then, the Australian Government has thoughtfully deducted £1350 from my bank account for processing fees so the application is now officially pending with their embassy in London. Hopefully, it will be granted in January/February next year, and after we've activated it we'll have five years to head over - dates for blast-off are therefore flexible at this stage. If you have any exciting events planned for the future please let us know now so we can factor these in.

Unless you've been through a similar process, you might be surprised just exactly how much paperwork is required for such an application. To give you an idea - the pile of paper we eventually submitted was 8 inches high and postage to the embassy in London cost a smidgen under £25. However, I guess that for many people the process can be seen as a fast track for citizenship so it makes sense that the DIAC (Department for Immigration and Citizenship) wants to ensure all applications are genuine.

The application looks at a number of factors - mainly regarding the length and nature of our relationship. We had to submit extensive evidence that we had been living together as a genuine couple for a period of 12 months or more. Gemma moved in with me back in October 2009 so we had quite a lot of general admin-style stuff to hand such as joint bank accounts, insurance policies, photos etc as well as the various application forms completed by both of us. On top of this we've had to collect legal declarations from a selection of friends and family to confirm our situation is as we have stated and that we ain't lying nor nuffink niver. Most of these had to be from Australian citizens so it's been a bit of a mission tracking down various Aussies we know here in the UK as well as posting forms over there for Gemma's family to complete and return to us. All of these declarations had to be countersigned by a solicitor with the author of the declaration also present - so that was a bit of a logistical nightmare (huge thanks to all those involved).

Now the waiting game starts - the money's been taken so any day now we should hopefully be assigned a case officer who'll let us know if they need any other evidence or information from us. If not, I'll then need to go for a medical to ensure I haven't got TB (does that even exist here any more?) and get some police checks done (I'm pretty clean I think - I'm sure they won't hold that speeding ticket I got back in 1998 against me) and then it's normally a 3-4 month wait for it all to be finalised and granted. Then we'll have to make some plans about when to set sail for Antipodean waters.

Once we're over there I'll happily keep you fully updated with my intellectual finds and discoveries - mainly pictures of toilets, supermarkets and breakfast cereals I imagine. Things are very different over there - did you know they call them Rice Bubbles instead of Rice Krispies? The mind boggles.

More to follow if/when I can be bothered and/or something interesting occurs...