My wife and I moved one step closer to total non verbal communication this weekend. We, or rather she, installed a wireless router meaning that we can sit in separate rooms, surf the net and send each other emails. Despite this new found virtual freedom we haven't completely ex communicated each other, we've made plans to meet in a chat room during the week.
Having wireless Internet means you really can take the laptop anywhere. Why right at this very moment I am taking a loaf out of the oven and I'm not even in the kitchen. Luckily for you the reader that this laptop doesn't have a web cam aye?
Going wireless is all about convenience isn't it? Well that's what they - those that make money from you buying their wireless router - would very much like you to believe. And in a way it is, but me being able to check the overnight soccer results in bed this morning and not five metres down the hall in the study is not so much convenience as it is just plain laziness.
Isn't it interesting how the definition of the term 'convenience' has changed since our parents day? Back then it was convenient that the corner store stayed open to lunch time on Saturdays, not that anybody ever went to the shop on Saturdays because the weekend was time for spending with families and relaxing after a week of work. Now days we see convenience as the entire family being able to waste their days away on wireless Internet all at the same time.
There is no bigger bastardisation of the idea of convenience than the fast food chain and there is no bigger bastard than McDonald's who, despite a recession, have decided to open more stores across New Zealand, 30 in fact. Now it's not like we don't need more Golden Tits around the place, why even this week a study conducted by Stats NZ showed that consumption of takeaways has increased by $10.5 million. Now that's convenience for you alright. Convenient for the bastards at McDonald's.
Yes buying the family dinner from Maccas is handy, especially on that week night when the kids had soccer practice and you worked late and traffic is shit, but 10.5 million is a lot of those nights. I think people misconstrue just what Maccas and their brethren offer in these difficult economic times. A normal sized meal will cost you $8 - $10 which I would wager is actually more than it would cost to make a homemade equivalent, unless of course your idea of a meal is a 1kg block of cheese. And lets not forget about the nutritional content of the Big Mac vs the seasonal stir-fry...
Don't you just love the way chefs tell you that their creations are 'fantastic dishes'? Well they would - they're not likely to tell you it's shit are they? Never trust anyone with a vested interest I say.
There is a less obvious downside to convenience, especially when the consumption of food and drink is involved; the rubbish it produces. I challenge anyone, even a blind man, to drive down any suburban street in this clean green country of ours and count how many fast food wrappers, empty coffee cups or squashed water bottles they see. A cup of watery coffee from the servo might be convenient on the way to work but the global warming that the empty will add to isn't.
Maccas might very well create 4000 new jobs with their expansion, all of which will be taken up by teenagers who will finally be able to buy the P and booze they've been gagging to experiment with, that's a plus, but they'll just add to the avalanche of crap that already has a stranglehold on our stretched infrastructure and choking ecosystem. And who has to pay to clean this ever increasing pile of convenience up? You and I do, through our taxes and rates. Now how convenient is it that we pay twice for convenience whilst the likes of Macca's not only don't pay nuffink, but actually make money out of our laziness? Dang. That shit is whack.
This blog is fantastic, by the way. And fresh. And not at all detrimental to the environment despite being terribly convenient.
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Algebra + Economics = Rubber Fist In Anus
Funny isn’t it, that when the price of petrol rockets up it’s always because of just the one reason, but yet there are thousands of reasons offered as to why it never drops in price just as quickly. Dang, that’s whack.
It’s a bit like getting money out of the IRD when it’s owed to you. They purposely try and bore you into submission by having you fill out a huge mountain of paper based bureaucracy, in triplicate, in the hope that you’ll get pissed off and forget about it. But when the role is reversed and you owe them money then shit gets real simple; pay up or we kill you. Geez even the mafia are discreet about the ramifications of not paying what is owed by the time it’s owed.
I was once overpaid by Income Support back in the day when my life revolved around reading the morning paper cover to cover just in time to do the same with the evening paper. By then it was all old news so I often wonder why I bothered but hey, what else was I going to do? I was unemployed for all of a month after I left college and in between reading the papers, masturbating my brains out and coming up with funny voices so as to ring up the talkback and pretend I was someone I wasn’t in order to pass off my extremist views on pressing social issues like the use of apostrophes in public signage, I collected the dole for a short period.
The government gave me a $110 in the hand each week, no questions asked. I had bugger all rent to pay because I was still living with the old man. Man I was living the dream. Well, not really, but I did buy a lot of comics with what I had left over after paying my rent and buying my papers. Life didn’t get any better than that.
Then I got a job and forgot to cancel my dole the first week I was working and subsequently got overpaid. Seeing as I was now a high roller, earning $12 an hour at Hallensteins I decided to play hardball when they rung me to tell me I owed them and arranged repayments of $2 a week. Fuck that told them – when you mess with bull, you get the horns.
I paid back all of it bar about $4. I couldn’t be arsed walking down the road to the grotty welfare office to pay the money so I never did. They kept ringing and I kept ignoring them because I was hardcore. Unbeknownst to me they passed the massive debt of mine onto Baycorp and that was the end of my credit rating for six long years. Four bucks for crying out loud! It probably cost more for the letter and envelope they sent me the debt collection notice on! But I blame myself. Not for the first time I had failed to heed dear old Grandma Eve’s advice when she always said ‘Smarty gave a party and no-one came’.
Maybe that’s the reason I hate game shows. I don’t know about you cats but I take no delight in watching someone win free money on TV. In fact quite the opposite, I would like to see a game show where they take money off you – IRD style - if you don’t get the question right. Now that would make for interesting viewing. Certainly better than the NZ version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where they seem to ask extraordinary hard questions like ‘How do you spell RSVP?’.
See money management is not something they ever taught me at school. They spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to teach me how to math with letters – something that no prick ever used after they left school – but not essential life skills like how to avoid having the financial equivalent of a rubber fist shoved up your jacksee. Economics seemed like a good place to have learnt that shit but I did it for two years and I can’t remember what the hell I did there the entire time, other than take the piss out of Mr Moriaty, an intelligent yet small man who didn’t like me or my wingman, Coops.
Of course we didn’t help matters by doing things like placing the duster just out of reach – even if he jumped – atop the blackboard before the start of each lesson, or making outrageous claims that just couldn’t be left unchallenged like that it was we that had invented the question mark. He disliked Coops particularly, but that was probably because Coops countered everything he said with a very open ended, but insightful “But what’s the point?”
It was of course a rhetorical question. There is no point of learning economics because the Arabs own and run everything and Asia consumes everything. Lesson over. That’s why the price of petrol goes up like a rubber fist up the chocolate starfish, but never down.
It’s a bit like getting money out of the IRD when it’s owed to you. They purposely try and bore you into submission by having you fill out a huge mountain of paper based bureaucracy, in triplicate, in the hope that you’ll get pissed off and forget about it. But when the role is reversed and you owe them money then shit gets real simple; pay up or we kill you. Geez even the mafia are discreet about the ramifications of not paying what is owed by the time it’s owed.
I was once overpaid by Income Support back in the day when my life revolved around reading the morning paper cover to cover just in time to do the same with the evening paper. By then it was all old news so I often wonder why I bothered but hey, what else was I going to do? I was unemployed for all of a month after I left college and in between reading the papers, masturbating my brains out and coming up with funny voices so as to ring up the talkback and pretend I was someone I wasn’t in order to pass off my extremist views on pressing social issues like the use of apostrophes in public signage, I collected the dole for a short period.
The government gave me a $110 in the hand each week, no questions asked. I had bugger all rent to pay because I was still living with the old man. Man I was living the dream. Well, not really, but I did buy a lot of comics with what I had left over after paying my rent and buying my papers. Life didn’t get any better than that.
Then I got a job and forgot to cancel my dole the first week I was working and subsequently got overpaid. Seeing as I was now a high roller, earning $12 an hour at Hallensteins I decided to play hardball when they rung me to tell me I owed them and arranged repayments of $2 a week. Fuck that told them – when you mess with bull, you get the horns.
I paid back all of it bar about $4. I couldn’t be arsed walking down the road to the grotty welfare office to pay the money so I never did. They kept ringing and I kept ignoring them because I was hardcore. Unbeknownst to me they passed the massive debt of mine onto Baycorp and that was the end of my credit rating for six long years. Four bucks for crying out loud! It probably cost more for the letter and envelope they sent me the debt collection notice on! But I blame myself. Not for the first time I had failed to heed dear old Grandma Eve’s advice when she always said ‘Smarty gave a party and no-one came’.
Maybe that’s the reason I hate game shows. I don’t know about you cats but I take no delight in watching someone win free money on TV. In fact quite the opposite, I would like to see a game show where they take money off you – IRD style - if you don’t get the question right. Now that would make for interesting viewing. Certainly better than the NZ version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where they seem to ask extraordinary hard questions like ‘How do you spell RSVP?’.
See money management is not something they ever taught me at school. They spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to teach me how to math with letters – something that no prick ever used after they left school – but not essential life skills like how to avoid having the financial equivalent of a rubber fist shoved up your jacksee. Economics seemed like a good place to have learnt that shit but I did it for two years and I can’t remember what the hell I did there the entire time, other than take the piss out of Mr Moriaty, an intelligent yet small man who didn’t like me or my wingman, Coops.
Of course we didn’t help matters by doing things like placing the duster just out of reach – even if he jumped – atop the blackboard before the start of each lesson, or making outrageous claims that just couldn’t be left unchallenged like that it was we that had invented the question mark. He disliked Coops particularly, but that was probably because Coops countered everything he said with a very open ended, but insightful “But what’s the point?”
It was of course a rhetorical question. There is no point of learning economics because the Arabs own and run everything and Asia consumes everything. Lesson over. That’s why the price of petrol goes up like a rubber fist up the chocolate starfish, but never down.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Helicopters and Wheelchairs
My god, aren’t helicopters magnificent? Now that’s usually only a call I’d make when describing two horses mating or voluptuous young breasts, but helicopters are right up there in terms of choiceness.
Choppers - as we ex-army types refer to them - could quite possibly be the best invention ever. Tanks would be a close second and fighter planes third, but choppers are the business. They’ve been using them every day at my place of work all this week which has pretty much meant an eight hour woody for me and Dougs each and every day.
Of course we had a lot of choppers in Nam, the place was full of them. There was so many that Lancey once woke up in the morning - after a night out looking for five dollar boom boom - in bed with one. Only our side had them, the Vietcong never did which was a good thing because it’s a little known fact that Asians don’t like heights or flying and that’s the reason why most of them are shorter than your average Caucasian. We loved riding in the choppers and there’s nothing quite exhilarating as taking a whizz from a chopper as it rips across the tree tops I can tell you. That's what really caused the deforestation in Nam, not that Agent Orange shit.
Have you been watching the Paralympics in China? Probably not, because most of the Western media packed up when the able bodied athletes did and got the hell out of Dodge. Admittedly I haven’t watched much but only because I can’t help but see the funny side of the Paralympics – which is terrible I know - but hey, at least I’m watching!
Take for instance the Woman’s 200 metres final. The leader arsed it about 20 metres from the end and given that she had a prosthetic leg fell in such a way that she spread herself across two lanes and scuttled the second place getter too. Third and fourth – a NZ girl – who thought they were long gone 20 metres from the end eventually finished in the medals! If that wasn’t mildly amusing (and it was) then the 5000 metres wheelchair race featured a 6 chair pile up on the home straight. Only five athletes finished the race and the medals were given out before the tournament committee decided to scrap the race and do it again later in the week.
Now a couple of questions remain unanswered regarding that balls up; Firstly those wheelchairs are like those all-terrain-take-up-the-whole-damn-footpath baby buggies that posh pricks buy and are almost virtually impossible to roll. So how did the first chick to crash get it oh so horribly wrong? Secondly if this happened in an able bodied cycle race would they have scratched the result and raced it again? No. It would have been oh dear, how sad, stiff shit.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse than being the cause of the biggest wheelchair pile up since Auschwitz, the girl who eventually got disqualified (even from the rerun) because she fell in the path of everybody else gets penalised twice – once for falling and twice for having no legs and thus being unable to roll anywhere but in the way of the chasing peloton!
I’ll tell you who should be disabled, at least financially, are those rich pricks who run finance companies into the ground and walk away with their assets untouched. Man that’s just not right in my book. I was reading about the guy who was in charge of Lombard Finance, a failed company that owes its investors $127 million. This guy pulled down a salary of $400,000 a year. How the hell do you spend that much money let alone earn it? This guy didn’t spend his on luxury cars, he didn’t need to, they were part of his remuneration package – he got a new one every year!
I think the law needs to be changed so guys like this – who live blatant extravagant lifestyles before and after their companies collapse – should be accountable right up till the day every investor gets every cent back and if that takes years then so be it. He can start by cashing in on everything he bought with their money in the first place.
After all, if I went and took the prize money we’ve gathered for the winner of the Help Desk Massive Pool Comp and put it on some horse down at the TAB with long odds and lost, who should get indiscriminately pushed down four flights of stairs by assailant unknown; me or the nag?
Choppers - as we ex-army types refer to them - could quite possibly be the best invention ever. Tanks would be a close second and fighter planes third, but choppers are the business. They’ve been using them every day at my place of work all this week which has pretty much meant an eight hour woody for me and Dougs each and every day.
Of course we had a lot of choppers in Nam, the place was full of them. There was so many that Lancey once woke up in the morning - after a night out looking for five dollar boom boom - in bed with one. Only our side had them, the Vietcong never did which was a good thing because it’s a little known fact that Asians don’t like heights or flying and that’s the reason why most of them are shorter than your average Caucasian. We loved riding in the choppers and there’s nothing quite exhilarating as taking a whizz from a chopper as it rips across the tree tops I can tell you. That's what really caused the deforestation in Nam, not that Agent Orange shit.
Have you been watching the Paralympics in China? Probably not, because most of the Western media packed up when the able bodied athletes did and got the hell out of Dodge. Admittedly I haven’t watched much but only because I can’t help but see the funny side of the Paralympics – which is terrible I know - but hey, at least I’m watching!
Take for instance the Woman’s 200 metres final. The leader arsed it about 20 metres from the end and given that she had a prosthetic leg fell in such a way that she spread herself across two lanes and scuttled the second place getter too. Third and fourth – a NZ girl – who thought they were long gone 20 metres from the end eventually finished in the medals! If that wasn’t mildly amusing (and it was) then the 5000 metres wheelchair race featured a 6 chair pile up on the home straight. Only five athletes finished the race and the medals were given out before the tournament committee decided to scrap the race and do it again later in the week.
Now a couple of questions remain unanswered regarding that balls up; Firstly those wheelchairs are like those all-terrain-take-up-the-whole-damn-footpath baby buggies that posh pricks buy and are almost virtually impossible to roll. So how did the first chick to crash get it oh so horribly wrong? Secondly if this happened in an able bodied cycle race would they have scratched the result and raced it again? No. It would have been oh dear, how sad, stiff shit.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse than being the cause of the biggest wheelchair pile up since Auschwitz, the girl who eventually got disqualified (even from the rerun) because she fell in the path of everybody else gets penalised twice – once for falling and twice for having no legs and thus being unable to roll anywhere but in the way of the chasing peloton!
I’ll tell you who should be disabled, at least financially, are those rich pricks who run finance companies into the ground and walk away with their assets untouched. Man that’s just not right in my book. I was reading about the guy who was in charge of Lombard Finance, a failed company that owes its investors $127 million. This guy pulled down a salary of $400,000 a year. How the hell do you spend that much money let alone earn it? This guy didn’t spend his on luxury cars, he didn’t need to, they were part of his remuneration package – he got a new one every year!
I think the law needs to be changed so guys like this – who live blatant extravagant lifestyles before and after their companies collapse – should be accountable right up till the day every investor gets every cent back and if that takes years then so be it. He can start by cashing in on everything he bought with their money in the first place.
After all, if I went and took the prize money we’ve gathered for the winner of the Help Desk Massive Pool Comp and put it on some horse down at the TAB with long odds and lost, who should get indiscriminately pushed down four flights of stairs by assailant unknown; me or the nag?
Friday, June 20, 2008
The Guide to Good Present Buying
One of my son’s mates has invited him to a birthday party next week and I have the perfect present already in mind – a 1kg block of cheese!
At $15 a kg that’s edible gold - and the minimum going rate for a present for a 10 year old - so either way he’s a winner. Now my only concern is do I get this kid Mild or Colby cause kids can be fussy with cheese. Man he’s going to have so much fun with it and if he’s smart he’ll make that block last a whole week, so long as he doesn’t whip up a quiche over the weekend or something. I get these little individually wrapped blocks of cheese with morning and afternoon teas here in hozzie and I for one am not eating them. No, I’m saving them for the day when cheese is like smokes in prison – a cold hard currency.
My mother was shit at present giving incidentally so I was determined that I would be an ace present giver when I grew up. I still have nightmares over the time she sent me to Kenny Wrigley’s 10th birthday party with a matching set of undies and a singlet wrapped up to resemble an Action Man. I didn’t know what was in the present so any initial thoughts I might of had of Kenny joining me in the Matching Grundy Club as the package was ripped open were quickly dispelled when a hushed silence fell upon the party at the sight of them. The membership of that particular club was to remain at one for some time I can tell you.
My shame was not confined to just the party either. The following Monday Kenny was called up at the full school assembly and asked what he got for his birthday. Whether he had a memory like an elephant is a moot point because he was hardly going to forget my gift in a hurry and neither was the school once he’d told them. Needless to say the list of birthday parties where my attendance was required was pretty small after that, I wonder why?
How long is it before people start giving flagons of gas as a present? I mean really. I don’t want to start being one of those bloggers that rolls out all these facts and figures that he’s pinched off someone else’s page because we all know that shit is boring to read and 47% of all percentages are made up. But bear with me just this one time:
Remember when the price of petrol was $1.68 a litre? The Government take on that was 50.54 cents, plus the GST on the retail price, a further 18.77 cents, all adding up to a total of 69.3 cents. 41% of that $1.68 went to Aunty Helen. But wait there’s more – let’s not forget that as wage earners you and I also pay 23 cents of every dollar we make so that meant back then we were effectively paying $1.08 for a litre of the devils semen.
What that equates to now with Lucifer’s jizz prices now around $2.12 a litre I don’t know. No really I don’t. I pinched those figures from an old car mag I was given to read. I tried working it out but math was never my forte at school. Art was though, particularly anatomical drawings. Why even today I can still draw a pretty good cock, as DG Macca can attest after having found the A3 rendition I left for him in his top draw one time whilst he was away on leave. It was a scale drawing too.
It’s a lot of wedge, whatever the figure is and not surprisingly the Government has a huge surplus stuffed under the mattress, but they’re not about to cut the levy on gas anytime soon so I’m picking that the top choice of pressie for Secret Santas this year will be $5 worth of gas – not that that is going to be a huge present the way the cost of oil is rising. As a result, death by accidental inflammation of Secret Santa pressies by intoxicated staff after the office Chrissie party will skyrocket. You don’t get a lot of that happening presently, because KY – the ultimate in Secret Santa pressies - is not flammable. A pack of nudie playing cards is, but thankfully everyone has grabbed and kept their favourite shaven haven by evenings end, thus nullifying the chance of an accidental incineration.
A matching set of y-fronts and singlet are flammable incidentally, but only when set alight by a 10 year old boy who was given them by somebody else’s mother.
At $15 a kg that’s edible gold - and the minimum going rate for a present for a 10 year old - so either way he’s a winner. Now my only concern is do I get this kid Mild or Colby cause kids can be fussy with cheese. Man he’s going to have so much fun with it and if he’s smart he’ll make that block last a whole week, so long as he doesn’t whip up a quiche over the weekend or something. I get these little individually wrapped blocks of cheese with morning and afternoon teas here in hozzie and I for one am not eating them. No, I’m saving them for the day when cheese is like smokes in prison – a cold hard currency.
My mother was shit at present giving incidentally so I was determined that I would be an ace present giver when I grew up. I still have nightmares over the time she sent me to Kenny Wrigley’s 10th birthday party with a matching set of undies and a singlet wrapped up to resemble an Action Man. I didn’t know what was in the present so any initial thoughts I might of had of Kenny joining me in the Matching Grundy Club as the package was ripped open were quickly dispelled when a hushed silence fell upon the party at the sight of them. The membership of that particular club was to remain at one for some time I can tell you.
My shame was not confined to just the party either. The following Monday Kenny was called up at the full school assembly and asked what he got for his birthday. Whether he had a memory like an elephant is a moot point because he was hardly going to forget my gift in a hurry and neither was the school once he’d told them. Needless to say the list of birthday parties where my attendance was required was pretty small after that, I wonder why?
How long is it before people start giving flagons of gas as a present? I mean really. I don’t want to start being one of those bloggers that rolls out all these facts and figures that he’s pinched off someone else’s page because we all know that shit is boring to read and 47% of all percentages are made up. But bear with me just this one time:
Remember when the price of petrol was $1.68 a litre? The Government take on that was 50.54 cents, plus the GST on the retail price, a further 18.77 cents, all adding up to a total of 69.3 cents. 41% of that $1.68 went to Aunty Helen. But wait there’s more – let’s not forget that as wage earners you and I also pay 23 cents of every dollar we make so that meant back then we were effectively paying $1.08 for a litre of the devils semen.
What that equates to now with Lucifer’s jizz prices now around $2.12 a litre I don’t know. No really I don’t. I pinched those figures from an old car mag I was given to read. I tried working it out but math was never my forte at school. Art was though, particularly anatomical drawings. Why even today I can still draw a pretty good cock, as DG Macca can attest after having found the A3 rendition I left for him in his top draw one time whilst he was away on leave. It was a scale drawing too.
It’s a lot of wedge, whatever the figure is and not surprisingly the Government has a huge surplus stuffed under the mattress, but they’re not about to cut the levy on gas anytime soon so I’m picking that the top choice of pressie for Secret Santas this year will be $5 worth of gas – not that that is going to be a huge present the way the cost of oil is rising. As a result, death by accidental inflammation of Secret Santa pressies by intoxicated staff after the office Chrissie party will skyrocket. You don’t get a lot of that happening presently, because KY – the ultimate in Secret Santa pressies - is not flammable. A pack of nudie playing cards is, but thankfully everyone has grabbed and kept their favourite shaven haven by evenings end, thus nullifying the chance of an accidental incineration.
A matching set of y-fronts and singlet are flammable incidentally, but only when set alight by a 10 year old boy who was given them by somebody else’s mother.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Cheese or Sky TV?
I’ll be the first to admit that one of my weaknesses is that on the odd occasion, I have been known to jump to the wrong conclusion about someone and misjudged them unfairly.
My wife thinks this and is always reminding me that it’s an ‘area I can improve on’ which is a polite way of saying it’s high on the list of ‘things I hate about you’. She might have a point, but I doubt it. There have only been two recorded instances of me misjudging someone and with a margin of error of plus or minus two even that number is in question.
Like the couple I watched lay it on nice and thick on the news the other night. They were talking about how the cost of living and shit has made it hard for them to raise their young family. Man it was emotional TV I can tell you. At least it would have been had I not spent the entire two minutes staring at the big fuck off shiny wide screen TV they had behind them in their lounge. I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt at this stage until I noticed the mega stereo draped alongside it, the Sky decoder and both the Xbox and PS consoles they had strewn across the lounge floor. You know – the necessities of life.
Both smoked, another accidental caught-on-camera revelation that they obviously neglected to think would reflect badly on them prior to letting the news crew inside and yet here they were, lips quivering over the price of a block of cheese! Now I’m not an unsympathetic man but this is the classic example of a couple having absolutely no idea of how to prioritise 'need' over 'want' and then trying to blame their shortcomings on someone else. Who knows, maybe they won the lot in a meat raffle some where but I’m guessing the prize that day was a tray of meat, not some $7000 home entertainment system. I’ve run a few dodgy raffles in my time but I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.
I’m all for helping out people who actually struggle to make ends meet because their needs exceed the income they have. If they’re making every possible sacrifice and still struggling to make ends meet than society should help them out, that’s what our taxes are for, but when you struggle to make the connection that the difference between having two litres of milk, a loaf of bread and a block of cheese each week lies in you giving up your Sky subscription, or not, then alarm bells are ringing I reckon. When you can’t pay the power bill that shot up the very day after you bought that LCD flat screen on lay-by, then I’m willing to bet that the advice you need is more than financial.
And who’s going to top up Mr & Mrs Fiscal Responsibility so that they can have cheese and Sky? That’s right, you and I. Mr & Mrs Taxpayer.
I’ve also got no time for first time home buyers who are now crying that they now can’t pay their mortgage because the big bad bank put its interest rates up. These are the noddy’s who got caught up in the whole Mitre 10 Dream Home type wave of bullshit that had people buying the worst house in the best street that they couldn’t really afford to impress folk who didn’t really care.
They followed the advice of the highly paid property guru on the show who’s been in the ‘biz’ for 30 years and has allegedly made shitloads as a result, when he told them to buy high and sell higher. The show didn’t actually mention that he’s probably been bankrupt twice in that time but who needs details at a time when ridiculously easy money is just gagging to be made huh? Mitre 10 sure weren’t going to tell them, they wanted the suckers to buy all the DIY crap from them that they were going to need after buying the worst house in the worst street. Funny that.
Trade Me, the housing market is not. There’s no buying it at the Warehouse for a fiver and flogging it off for $50 in housing, contrary to what you might see on TV. You would think that the small matter of there being 6 figures in the price tag would make people a bit wary, but apparently here in NZ there’s a sucker born every minute. Buying a house means entering into a world where market forces can shaft you quicker than a sneaky one with the missus while the kids are playing next door and it’s not like hard times in housing is new phenomenon either, infact it’s frighteningly frequent in its regularity. Something Mum and Dad probably could have attested to if Mr & Mrs SuckedInBigTime had taken the time to ask them.
But they didn’t and they too are looking for someone else to blame and anyone will do really; The Government, Graham Henry for not winning the World Cup, Al-Qaeda, perhaps even the 47 Asians living in the one house next door. Whatever. We all know there's only one group controlling the worlds finances anyway; Ninjas. Blaming someone else isn’t going to change the fact that you’re in up to your balls in mortgage nor is it going to make it go away, so get over it. As Tana Umaga once said “we’re not playing tiddlywinks here’.
Looks like the worst house in the best street just got a whole lot cheaper.
My wife thinks this and is always reminding me that it’s an ‘area I can improve on’ which is a polite way of saying it’s high on the list of ‘things I hate about you’. She might have a point, but I doubt it. There have only been two recorded instances of me misjudging someone and with a margin of error of plus or minus two even that number is in question.
Like the couple I watched lay it on nice and thick on the news the other night. They were talking about how the cost of living and shit has made it hard for them to raise their young family. Man it was emotional TV I can tell you. At least it would have been had I not spent the entire two minutes staring at the big fuck off shiny wide screen TV they had behind them in their lounge. I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt at this stage until I noticed the mega stereo draped alongside it, the Sky decoder and both the Xbox and PS consoles they had strewn across the lounge floor. You know – the necessities of life.
Both smoked, another accidental caught-on-camera revelation that they obviously neglected to think would reflect badly on them prior to letting the news crew inside and yet here they were, lips quivering over the price of a block of cheese! Now I’m not an unsympathetic man but this is the classic example of a couple having absolutely no idea of how to prioritise 'need' over 'want' and then trying to blame their shortcomings on someone else. Who knows, maybe they won the lot in a meat raffle some where but I’m guessing the prize that day was a tray of meat, not some $7000 home entertainment system. I’ve run a few dodgy raffles in my time but I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.
I’m all for helping out people who actually struggle to make ends meet because their needs exceed the income they have. If they’re making every possible sacrifice and still struggling to make ends meet than society should help them out, that’s what our taxes are for, but when you struggle to make the connection that the difference between having two litres of milk, a loaf of bread and a block of cheese each week lies in you giving up your Sky subscription, or not, then alarm bells are ringing I reckon. When you can’t pay the power bill that shot up the very day after you bought that LCD flat screen on lay-by, then I’m willing to bet that the advice you need is more than financial.
And who’s going to top up Mr & Mrs Fiscal Responsibility so that they can have cheese and Sky? That’s right, you and I. Mr & Mrs Taxpayer.
I’ve also got no time for first time home buyers who are now crying that they now can’t pay their mortgage because the big bad bank put its interest rates up. These are the noddy’s who got caught up in the whole Mitre 10 Dream Home type wave of bullshit that had people buying the worst house in the best street that they couldn’t really afford to impress folk who didn’t really care.
They followed the advice of the highly paid property guru on the show who’s been in the ‘biz’ for 30 years and has allegedly made shitloads as a result, when he told them to buy high and sell higher. The show didn’t actually mention that he’s probably been bankrupt twice in that time but who needs details at a time when ridiculously easy money is just gagging to be made huh? Mitre 10 sure weren’t going to tell them, they wanted the suckers to buy all the DIY crap from them that they were going to need after buying the worst house in the worst street. Funny that.
Trade Me, the housing market is not. There’s no buying it at the Warehouse for a fiver and flogging it off for $50 in housing, contrary to what you might see on TV. You would think that the small matter of there being 6 figures in the price tag would make people a bit wary, but apparently here in NZ there’s a sucker born every minute. Buying a house means entering into a world where market forces can shaft you quicker than a sneaky one with the missus while the kids are playing next door and it’s not like hard times in housing is new phenomenon either, infact it’s frighteningly frequent in its regularity. Something Mum and Dad probably could have attested to if Mr & Mrs SuckedInBigTime had taken the time to ask them.
But they didn’t and they too are looking for someone else to blame and anyone will do really; The Government, Graham Henry for not winning the World Cup, Al-Qaeda, perhaps even the 47 Asians living in the one house next door. Whatever. We all know there's only one group controlling the worlds finances anyway; Ninjas. Blaming someone else isn’t going to change the fact that you’re in up to your balls in mortgage nor is it going to make it go away, so get over it. As Tana Umaga once said “we’re not playing tiddlywinks here’.
Looks like the worst house in the best street just got a whole lot cheaper.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)