Society

Saturday

20 Oct 2007

Property porn

I need help. I’ve got an addiction. It’s reading property magazines and newspaper supplements and watching property programmes on television. I’m not looking for a new flat or house to buy so there’s really no excuse for this time-consuming passion. The compulsion started some two years ago when I was looking for a flat to buy. So, like many addictions, mine started through necessity but has grown into something uncontrollable. It took me more than six months to find my flat (on the internet) and in that time I had become an expert on reading floorplans, unravelling estate-agent-speak and knowing the minimum square footage I could live in. I should

Mira Barhillel

Flippin’ amazing

Here is the scientific formula for calculating London’s top property prices: think of a figure, double it, add a few noughts, and voila! — or should I say nazdarovie, of whatever it is that oligarchs say when toasting a deal. Ordinary mortals nowadays are worried sick about their mortgage repayments, set to rocket when their short-term fixes come to an end and real-interest rates kick in. They lie awake at night with images of Northern Rock queues flashing before their eyes and wonder why Mr Darling, whose eyebrows failed to reassure over that issue, also failed to do anything for first-time buyers since taking office. But meanwhile, in a place

Edie Lush

Prime time

‘London House Prices Set to Crash! The Capital’s Property Boom Finally Ends! London Housing Bubble Pops!’ As the reality of the US sub-prime property story leaks across the Atlantic, headline writers are gearing themselves to tell the end of the ten-year fairy tale of almost uninterrupted growth in property values in the UK, and specifically the end of the skyrocketing cost of housing in London. But is that it? If you bought your ideal Kensington gaff in the last decade, are you going to spend the next few years regretting your decision, unable to cash in and stuck in a stagnant market? And if you were still thinking of buying,

Harriet Marrjohnson

Invest in Budapest

On a crisp, clear autumn day in Budapest the sun streamed in through tall windows on to the splendid parquet floor of an elegant flat on the east bank of Budapest. The flat was late 19th-century but spacious and in good condition — three large bedrooms, high ceilings, original features, hand-painted floor tiles. I looked out over the city, at the broad avenues and grassy parks of ‘Pest’, at the glinting Danube, and at the hills of ‘Buda’ in the west, and wondered whether to buy it. Am I a millionaire? Far from it. I’m just a regular Londoner with some money to invest. I’m not looking at anything worth

Ross Clark

Losing our heritage

Surely, I said, the RAF cannot have bombed them all. No, she said: it was the ‘economic miracle’ which had done for them. Wealthy West Germans had spent the 1960s bulldozing fuddy-duddy old houses and building nice modern chalet bungalows in their place. Soon we will be able to give the same answer in response to the question, why is there not a single fireplace or original architrave left in the whole of Chelsea, Kensington or Hampstead? The answer is London’s own economic ‘miracle’. The City is so wealthy now that you cannot show off your wealth simply by buying a nice house and living in it: you have to

Sinclair McKay

Live and let let

When you tell people, they recoil as though jabbed with a lavatory brush. ‘You mean you still actually pay rent?’ is, in middle-class terms, a question akin to: ‘You mean you still actually listen to Boney M?’ But with this impending property collapse that we keep on scaring each other with — just the other day, a team of expert economists predicted that prices will fall by more than 6 per cent over the next two years — you might soon be hearing a lot more about people like me. People who rent, that is. I will admit that the image of renting a flat is a bad one. One

Alex Massie

NBC continues its mission to destroy its best show

Great. Not content with introducing one ridiculous, potentially series-killing storyline (the whole Landry killing a man and dumping the body in the river thing, you know) Friday Night Lights decides it needs a second: hence this evening’s nonsense about Street seeking a miracle cure in Mexico so he may walk again*. This is schlock. And bad, tedious schlock at that made worse by the fact there are compelling storylines all over Dillon as the football team falls apart, as the Taylor family disintegrates, as Saracen ties to make sense of his life etc etc. Heck, even the Landry-Tyra relationship is fun and sweet and touching and great to watch –

Alex Massie

Serge Toujours

Sweet, sweet piece on the great Serge Gainsbourg in Vanity Fair. Jane Birkin describes their daily routine in the 1970s as follows: they woke up at three in the afternoon; she picked up the children at school and took them to the park, brought them home for a children’s dinner, the au pair would give them a bath, and when the children went to bed she and Serge would kiss them good night and go out on the town. They’d come back “with the dustman,” wait until the children woke up at 7:30, then go to sleep. Their alcohol-fueled nights would often turn, as Jane puts it, “barmy.” Once, at

Alex Massie

Who dares say the Japanese are odd?

The New York Times’ Martin Fackler has your most entertaining story of the day. Magnificent stuff, and oddly charming too: On a narrow Tokyo street, near a beef bowl restaurant and a pachinko parlor, Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hopes will ease Japan’s growing fears of crime. Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as

James Forsyth

A moral nation?

Under the arresting headline “Wanted: a national culture”, The Times carries an extract from the Chief Rabbi’s new book. Here’s the key section of Jonathan Sack’s argument: “In 1961, suicide ceased to be a crime. This might seem a minor and obviously humane measure, but it was the beginning of the end of England as a Christian country; that is, one in which Christian ethics was reflected in law. It was a prelude to other and more significant reforms. In 1967 abortion was legalised, as was homosexual behaviour. Collectively these changes represented a decisive move away from the idea that society had, or was entitled to have, a moral code

Tamzin Lightwater

Notting Hill Nobody | 20 October 2007

Sunday Bonjour, mes amis! Am in Paris for Compassionate Conservative hen weekend! All the girls from the office are here giving Abby from Dave’s team a Right-Of-Centre-Yet-Modern send-off. Staying in what Poppy describes as a dump, but is actually a boho chic boutique hotel (I checked the brochure). We were going to stay at a place called the George but it flooded, or something. Every time we drive down the Champs Elysées everyone sighs, and says, ‘Ah, the George sank’. V odd. Also, what is ‘Urmeez’ — and what does it have to do with scarves? Anyway, big party tonight. We are dressing up as blue bunny girls and going

Hugo Rifkind

By the time they stop being mad, politicians are the right age for the House

This is a column about the reform of the House of Lords. I have a hunch it might not look like one, probably until pretty much the end, but that is what it is. Try to remember this if, at times, it appears to be about something else. ‘They should just clone ministers,’ says the Hugh Abbott character in The Thick Of It (2005), ‘so we’re born at 55 with no past and no flats and no genitals.’ How dated that seems, already. Flats, pasts and genitals remain problematic, true enough, but 55 has become unacceptably ancient. What is a suitable age, these days, for a senior MP? Fortyish? David

Martin Jacomb

Northern Rock: a day to remember

It was not an iceberg that caused the crash of Northern Rock and fortunately there was no loss of life; but it will be remembered, like the sinking of the Titanic, for years to come. None of us had seen queues of worried depositors outside bank branches before. We can remember it happening in It’s a Wonderful Life, but this was real life; and the pictures went round the world. The affair must have damaged the Bank of England’s standing among other central banks. People say it is the first such event since Overend, Gurney in 1866. Although there have been numerous bank failures since then, none has involved queues

Judi Bevan

‘Emotions are key. It’s not just about sandwiches’

A tiny door marked ‘Pret a Manger Academy’ in the back wall of Victoria station leads up two narrow flights of metal stairs to a warm, colourful room where rock music is playing softly. Strangely shaped leather chairs scattered with fluffy cushions give the faint air of a bordello. This is the headquarters of Pret a Manger, the sandwich chain which owns 164 shops in Britain, and others in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore. So far, so surreal. Julian Metcalfe, the co-founder of the sandwich chain, appears almost in a puff of smoke. An arresting presence, he would make a good wizard. He’s dressed in a tailored slate-blue jacket

Allister Heath

Darling must scrap his tax attack on entrepreneurs

Gordon Brown can’t stop himself from meddling, even with his own good ideas. Soon after he moved into No 11 Downing Street, he introduced one of the best pro-growth capital gains tax regimes in the world. Last week his Chancellor Alistair Darling, with Brown grinning approval beside him, undid much of that good work in one fell swoop. Their primary target was the City’s private equity industry; but their destructive 80 per cent tax hike will also ensnare farmers, entrepreneurs, small companies quoted on the Aim market, life assurance companies, 1.7 million employees who participate in company share schemes, business angels and venture capital funds, to name but a few.

Martin Vander Weyer

Piggy in the middle between the grain speculators and the supermarkets

The concentrated aroma of — how shall I put it — deep piggy doo-doo that wafts through your car window as you motor up the A1 through North Yorkshire is, in normal times, nothing more nor less than the smell of money. So I was taken aback to hear a farmer from that part of the county declare that if prices carry on the way they’re going, ‘it’ll be time to shoot the pigs’. We will hear shortly from Merryn Somerset Webb, in our Investment column, about how to make money in ‘soft commodities’ — in which dabbling by you and me does no harm if it boosts farmers’ income

Fraser Nelson

Once again, Europe threatens to devour another British PM

In British politics, the Europe question always comes to embody the problems that a Prime Minister faces. So Gordon Brown will fly back from Lisbon with a treaty that emphasises that he is scared of putting things to the country and that he spins just as much as his predecessor ever did. With the ratification process expected to run for six months, Mr. Brown faces prolonged trouble over this document and maybe even his first large scale Labour rebellion. Only last month, the European Union Reform Treaty seemed to pose little problem for Gordon Brown. He had enough political capital to sign and dispose of this unwanted inheritance from Tony

Matthew Dancona

Brick Lane’s queen strikes gold on the silver screen

Four years ago I published a book set in the East End, about a troubled young woman who lives and works in the vibrant multiethnic community of Bethnal Green. It was fun to write, and reasonably well-reviewed. But just before publication I turned around and saw a magnificent tidal wave filling the literary horizon, and approaching fast. ‘Another book about the East End,’ I thought to myself. ‘Wow, that looks rather impressive. I wonder what it is? . . . Glug. Glug. Glug.’ The tidal wave was a debut novel of stunning confidence and elegance called Brick Lane and, four years on, I am sitting in a Dulwich bistro with

Piers Paul-Read

The Muslims’ letter to the Pope is not all it seems

The Muslims’ letter to the Pope is not all it seems At first sight the letter from 138 prominent Muslim scholars and imams to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders published last week, ‘A Common Word Between Us and You’, is a welcome statement of a number of obvious truths — that Christianity and Islam worship one God; that both religions enjoin truth, justice and love of neighbour; and that if these two great monotheistic religions fight one another, then there is little chance of peace in the world. The letter, issued by the Royal Aaal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Jordan, had among its signatories grand muftis

Norman Stone

What has this ‘genocide’ to do with Congress?

Istanbul Two elderly shoe-shiners were shouting with rage outside my local in Istanbul. The subject was America, and they ranted on and on — first about the disaster in Iraq, then about the stirring up of the Kurds, and then about the latest effort in Congress to ‘recognise the Armenian genocide’. What is so very strange about all of this is that American relations with Turkey have generally been very good. In a sense, modern Turkey belongs with Germany and Japan as the most successful creation of the United States after the second world war. In any year, there are 25,000 Turks at American universities, some of them sprigs of