AMLinington

The bit I am referring to is the very very opening scene where Pre-Robocop' and his partner are investigating that factory and he gets caught by that gang and murdered. I always found that scene quite brutal and sad. That being said, I should imagine that if I saw it now I'd probably not feel the same, but the first time I saw it I was about 12 and it had a big effect on me at the time and the way I felt about it has stayed with me. Having watched both seasons of Spartacus my tolerance for gore is improving, but Spartacus-level over-the-top-fake gore is about all I can handle. Realistic gore still has me switching off. The episode of the Borgias last night where those torturers were stripping the face off a victim had me shrieking 'turn it off turn it off' at LeBoyfriend.

Argh Misery is horrible (in the most correct way)! The Hobbling scene was evil and the bit where she hammered his knee *vomits*. Having read the book I am still no clearer on whether she survived and killed him or whether his mind was broken by the whole event causing him to hallucinate her beheading him. Mark of a good suspense writer I suppose that I can finish the whole book and still wonder what happened at the end.

Oh yeah, the opening Scene in Robocop is horrifying!

I have to agree - Event Horizon scares the wotsits out of me. Every time I see it I know it terrifies me but can't tear my eyes away from the screen. I'm not a fan of violent or gory films and I'd run a mile from anything relating to Saw, but Event Horizon is just about within my tolerance levels and I love how messed up it is. The airlock scene is the worst I'd say and Sam Neill's approximation of Pinhead is pretty freakish. The hanging skin in the med bay... I could go on, but to me this is everything a horror movie needs to be. The original 'The Thing' had me sleepless for days. Also, bizarrely, I had nightmares about Velociraptors for weeks after seeing Jurassic Park.

It's badly written ex-twilight fanfic! What more needs to be said. 50 Shades of Grey IS the joke. I could write better smutfic rolling my face over the keyboard. Edited to add that if the original inspiration was that garbage Twilight, then standards are low indeed. I had the misfortune to come home from Archery to find LeBoyfriend watching 'Breaking Dawn'. It was the worst thing I've ever seen and I'm told the movies are less painful than the books!

I totally agree - the mortgage advisor is a brilliant idea! Best thing we ever did. We decided not to go with the insurance as the 'core bills' can be covered by 1 salary in our household so worst case scenario we'd be able to manage a couple of months on 1 salary (bear in mind the 'core bills' includes our monthly food budget so we won't starve!) but we DID decide to go with a life insurance policy that will pay out specified sums in the event of one of us dying or having a terminal illness. Limb amputation is covered as is Breast cancer and loss of an eye although the payouts for those are much smaller and would not pay off the mortgage - I think if I lost a breast due to cancer I'd get 25,000 from the policy IIRC. I believe our policy also pays off the mortgage in the event of us contracting certain types of non-terminal cancer provided that the cancer is of a certain severity level/stage (morbid I know) as life expectancy is low. So whilst we didn't go with payment protection, we did go with the life insurance and our advisor really helped us to work out which policy we wanted and what was best.

Mortgages and their deposits are based on 'Loan to Value'. The lower the LTV (loan to value) %, the lower the interest rate. You very rarely see 95% LTV mortgages now. Usually the best you will get is a 90% LTV which means you need 10% of the purchase price. So, if you buy a house that is 150,000 with a 90% LTV Mortgage, you will need to put in 15,000 and the bank will loan you the 135,000. This means that on the day you buy, you OWN 10% of that house, you OWE the bank 90% of that value. If the value of your house then drops below 135,000 you enter what is known as 'negative equity' because the house is not worth the amount you owe on it. The lower the % LTV (eg. 80% LTV meaning you need to put in 20%) the better the interest rate and lower the repayments. There are lots of types of mortgage but most commonly people have repayment mortgages meaning you repay both the capital and the interest. Interest can be fixed or variable but usually fixed rates are only fixed for a certain period after that the variable rate goes up and down in line with inflation. Most people like us with limited incomes tend to prefer the higher cost but better stability of fixed rate and will 'remortgage' at the end of the fixed term. Definitely speak to a mortgage broker - they are GREAT. We used 'Town and Country Mortgage services' and Gary was wonderful, but they are the best people to help you decide. It is worth speaking to banks directly though as they might offer a better deal but usually brokers have better access to rates.

Interestingly I was reading something about the socio-economic changes that have taken place in our cities and one of the major points was that back in the olden days (industrial revolution right through to pre and post WWII) very few 'common' people owned houses. They rented from their employer or the gentry land-owners. Society has changed in such a way that we've gone from predominantly renting to owning. The reasons being that back in the olden days 'commoners' didn't earn enough to own their own homes, but similarly they tended to live close to their workplaces and large industrial complexes had a housing structure around them that was owned or managed by the company themselves or in co-operation with them (I'm thinking of old mining villages etc). But our society has changed so much that the class boundaries are no longer clear - they've become blurred and the trend towards owning houses is part of this. In the olden times, the manual workers rented homes from their employers, the employers, landowners, managers etc were the ones that owned things. Jobs and hierarchical structures are so different now that there is no division between the common worker and the managers - there is a gradient of roles and responsibilities in between. The same can be said of the trend towards owning houses - as the division between classes has blurred, so, too, has the housing structure. You can still (to some degree) measure a persons economic success by the size and location of their home - someone on a minimum wage job is hardly going to own a 7 bedroom detached mansion in the country unless they're living off the social and have been rehomed there by the council (I refer you to several news articles this year in which newspapers have scandalised the nation by reporting how councils are paying extortionate rents to private landlords to accommodate large families in 'luxury' housing). Renting is unpopular because of the way landlords are poorly regulated and have a tendancy to extort their tennents. I'm certain the same was true back in the olden days but people didn't have a choice. Mortgages weren't given to the common man. Perhaps we as a society DO need to rethink our stance on renting, but if this is the case, then the government needs to step in and regulate landlords more effectively. They should not be allowed to exploit tennents and there should be a specific set of rules governing how they deal with faulty appliances or problems in the property. Similarly many landlords have been burned by poor tennants - perhaps if tennents were vetted better then landlords wouldn't need to come down hard on everyone else. I don't know, I don't know how it works but I do hear my friends complaining constantly about their ineffectual and dismissive landlords - you pay good money for a service - they should damn well provide you with one! I've lost count of the number of people I know that complain of broken appliances and end up buying their own when the landlord refuses to replace it. If renting was a more stable option then perhaps more people would do it, but when landlords can suddenly decide to sell the property and give you 3 weeks notice to find a new home I certainly find that kind of uncertainty too stressful!

'Pay as you go' sounds too good to be true. Friend or no friend make sure something is written down on paper and legal contracts are exchanged or you could end up shafted. I wouldn't agree to anything until contracts have been exchanged. The payment details are up to you and the seller, but they must exchange contracts and 'agree to sell' before you pay them a penny. Also, if you have the readies for the rennovation then go for it! Nothing quite as satisfying as having a blank slate to do whatever you like with! Only difficulty is affording the new kitchen and bathroom and whatever you need. IF you're handy with DIY or have friends/family in the trade that are willing to help then it's great, but if you have to get contractors in it could prove expensive. Although 'live there rent-free' is a real deal-sweetner as that will give you a good £700 a month to play with! Just make sure to cover yourselves legally as you don't want to pay for all the work then get shafted by the seller and having no logal docs to fall back on. My dad always says never mix friends and money and I think he has a point. Also re: The damp - how old is the property and what is the construction? No-fines are terribly prone to damp by virtue of the metal structural supports encouraging condensation and drops of concrete bridging the damp-proofing. You could tour a street full of no-fines houses and find that perhaps 3 or 4 in 20 of them will have damp somewhere in the lower half. Our house is no-fines and I discovered these delightful little problems after discussing some issues with a neighbour who has been plagued by damp for years. Luckily our house doesn't suffer with this (although some of you may be familiar with the tissue-paper-party-wall situation) but I know of at least 1 other house in our row of 14 that suffers. So that is worth bearing in mind when you have the place surveyed. I have to say that it's pretty hard not to take it personally when a) I'm the only person to have posted such an opinion in such depth and b) you quote my posts directly then proceed to pass comment on the post directly and criticise people that do exactly as I have done in the way I have done it - sounds pretty personal to me. If it's so non-personal, why quote the post? Why not just say 'as others have pointed out' or 'as I'm sure a majority of posters have done' rather than specifically target examples? Also I'd say that a specifically targetted personal response wouldn't you? It is referring to me and my situation directly and making a targetted judgement implying that I am not eligable to comment on responsible home ownership by virtue of how I raised my deposit. It's pretty hard not to take something personally when given context like that wouldn't you say?

The problem I had was with your dismissive and insulting attitude towards me and my opinions and the way you imply that I am not worthy to share advice because I happened to borrow some deposit. What you choose to do yourselves is your affair, but consider this: Realistically the practicalities of waiting too long to get on the property ladder will make it hard for you. Age, for example, is a surprisingly important point. Mortgages taken over 30 years have the best interest rates and obviously the lowest repayments (assuming you have a repayment mortgage not an interest-only, the prospect of which terrifies me). But to qualify for a 30 year mortgage at the current time with the current guidelines (and these may be subject to change), men must be under 35 and women must be under 30 as the bank will only lend over 30 years if you have 30 years of potential employment and stable income (yeah yeah we all know that this isn't realistic in this economic climate but thats the way banks are) blah blah blah retirement age, blah blah blah. So the government do away with retirement - how many 63yos do you know that are on the scrap heap now after being made redundant? I know a few. Regardless of what happens in the REAL WORLD, the banks still assume that you will retire at 65 or 60 and will only lend to you based on that. So if you're 40 you can say goodbye to any chance of a 30 year mortgage. You'll need a 20 or 25 year one in which case say hello to higher interest rates and higher repayments. This is why I believe it is so crucial to get on the property ladder however you can as early as possible even if it means organising 'private finance deals' with relatives. So if you borrow now and pay back your benefactor later on, you can get a mortgage over a longer term thus reducing the costs. If you bravely solider on saving by yourselves and not borrowing anything, every year that passes over the age of 30/35 is another year less they will lend over and the repayments and interest rates start to climb until you get to a point where you just can't afford it! Surely it is better to jump on that ladder as soon as you can to secure the longer mortgage term even if that means borrowing now and repaying that deposit later?

So that makes our experiences and opinions less valid? It makes my observation that it is WORTH looking at shared ownership worthless? We looked at it. We did the maths and had the meetings. It is always worth doing the exercise as you cannot make an informed decision without having done the exercise. Getting on the property ladder isn't easy, but if you have the opportunity DO. If you are going to rent anyway, yes, shared ownership shaft you, but IMO it is better to have some equity than none at all, but there are caveats and you have to be cautious - we learned a valuable lesson and nearly got stitched up and I feel that my experience is worth sharing. As for 'these aren't personal comments', that sounds pretty personal to me. I want to make it clear that NO-ONE 'put me there'. That implies that a relative died and left me their house in their will and here I am having inherited a house pontificating sanctimoniously at non-home owners. That is offensive and cheapens the work we have done and the effort we have put into getting on the property ladder. It makes me out to be greedy and grasping when the very opposite is true. LeBoyfriend and I were lucky enough to have parents in the position to help us buy our house, but it is not without cost. As it happens, 2 years ago my parents paid nearly £10,000 for my sister's wedding - does that make her greedy and grasping too? Instead of paying for a big ol' party, my parents lent me my 'wedding fund' to help me buy a house, but I have to pay it back one way or another (as I said, the full details are private and I shan't be divulging them). LeBoyfriend's parents have also helped us, but that doesn't mean that it's 'free money' either! The point I was making to the OP was that there are always options to look at. It seems desparate but there are lots of schemes out there to help you get on the ladder, you just have to be careful. As it happened, we nearly ended up in a Taylor Wimpey scheme but my father was horrified so they got together with the Inlaws and worked something out for us. If they hadn't been able to, they would not have, and we would have been living in the Taylor Wimpey house instead of the bigger, cheaper, slightly neglected, fixer-upper that we ended up with. Indeed - I am under no illusions that when my children come to buy a property they will turn to me and LeBoyfriend for help. Even if it just means getting a loan on their behalf using the benefit of our much better credit rating to get a lower interest rate. When my parents were starting out, 100% mortgages still existed! My dad didn't NEED a deposit for his house! He worked hard and paid it all off. But the world changed. My Grandfather paid £3000 for a 3 storey townhouse in Goodmayes, London back in the late 40s/early 50's. My father bought his house for £70,000. It is now worth over £200,000!!! Perhaps the 'RELATIVE' worth hasn't changed, but it is still hard to get a £15,000 lump sum in todays world! They don't even do 95% LTV mortgages anymore unless you buy a newbuild and this is another thing that is worth looking at - bovis and taylor wimpey subsidise you to buy their new houses so you put in 5% and they put in 5% and you get a 10% LTV then depending on the scheme, either you repay it or they 'gift' it (i.e inflate the house price). That means you only need £7,500 which is more reasonable, but it's still pretty hard to have that sort of lump sum just 'lying around' when you're in your 20s. Exactly. By the time you've saved enough for a deposit for the price of a house NOW, that house will have doubled in cost and you'll still be in the same position. That £15,000 you saved is now only a 5% deposit (obviously inflation dependant). Now assuming you get out of Uni at 21 and get a job and start saving that £150 IMMEDIATELY (which ofc no 21yo will - you have a life to live!), you'll still be 35 by the time you have anywhere near enough money and that is assuming that you don't live your life, go on holiday, get a car, get made redundant, have emergencies that end up costing a lot of money. Wow, that sounds like a THRILLING life to me!

Our bills (all of them, including the food budget but excluding car loans) are almost exactly 50% of our respective monthly incomes each, or 100% of a single income. That being said, the mortgage is still 25% of our income (or 50% of one persons)... Eurgh, I'd not looked at it that way before. Begone vile cold maths!

I'm quite envious actually. Think of how much sooner you'll have paid off that mortgage! But I can see how owning a house would really interfere with your life in your early 20's. That being said, I guess it largely depends on personality and lifestyle. I've never been one for socialising or 'living it up', I've always been a bit on the boring side and the idea of owning a home at 22 is my idea of heaven! I totally agree that "everytime I get a decent amount the house seems to suck it up" - I am certain that non-home owners cannot possibly appreciate the full extent to which this is the case, as really big things are covered (or should be) by the landlord. Which I suppose is partially an attraction of renting. If you rent you don't have to worry about paying for new kitchens, or replacing the Oven (if this is included as part of the deal - I don't know) or the boiler. LeBoyfriend and I are finding that all the grand dreams we had when we bought our fixer-upper have had to be scaled back and the timescales RADICALLY reassessed. The hallway with the artex walls and holes and asbestos panels is looking AMAZING! But it has taken much longer than we would have liked. The asbestos has been removed and the walls sanded down and smoothed over and we're at the wallpaper hanging phase. But the soil stack cracked some more over winter, so now THAT needs doing, and the toilet is busted so THAT needs doing. Bye-bye £400 :-S. The pressure gauge in the boiler failing in march was a PITA and was another £100 (would have been £300 if we didn't know the plumber) and the Oven exploding was another £200 I didn't want to have to spend. Oh look, I've just spent nearly £1000 without even trying! I also have a similar situation with my car. Every time I get a month free of hefty bills, something dies either at home or on the car. I was hoping June would be a cheap month for me. No such luck. Home insurance was up for renewal and my back box blew on the car. It's been going for a while, just bad timing really. But equally, we all KNOW how ridiculous the housing market is, being responsible with money is a very different matter to having to come up with a massive lump sum like £15,000. It takes years and years to save that sort of cash - it's not something easily put together in 2 or 3 years. Especially when you've been at Uni and working poorly salaried jobs (rather than not work at all). IMO A person can be responsible with money but still need to borrow. It's not about not borrowing, to me it's about what you are borrowing for and whether you can pay it back. Borrowing £15,000 from our parents for a luxury holiday is obscene, borrowing it to buy a house can still be 'responsible' as long as you manage your finances correctly and don't lose the house through irresponsible spending (and I don't mean losing the house because you've been made redundant and get repossessed - I feel desperately sorry for people that suffer this), I'm talking about people that live beyond their means, live a luxury life with cedit cards and holidays and gambling then whine to the bankruptcy judge about their poor hard-done-by childhood! That is not to say that a person cannot still be responsible and have holidays, as long as they can afford them. IMO a person can still be responsible and have a credit card - it is more about their attitude to what they do with it and how they pay it back that defines responsibility or not. The only way a person will EVER be 100% self-sufficient is if they win or inherit a LOT of money. Not having a lot of money and having to borrow doesn't automatically equate to irresponsible. Perhaps there is a fundamental difference in understanding of the term 'irresponsible' when applied to money? In which case is anyone with a student loan, an arranged overdraft, a mortgage, a car loan etc therefore automatically irresponsible? I certainly don't think so! Someone that is raping their elderly mother's bank account to fund their 4 horses who then whines to the bankruptcy judge about how they 'struggled' to keep a roof over their elderly mothers head (who is in a nursing home) is irresponsible! 'Main chunk' - hardly. The private loan arrangement we have with our parents is certainly no-ones business. You seem to be under the impression that we were 'given' the money? This is incorrect. We DO have to pay it back, and the terms of this long-term loan are private but suffice it to say that ultimately, we will have paid that deposit ourselves. The problem was not the 'being able to afford' it, the problem was the 'not having that lump sum readily available'. Since we didn't have the lump sum, and they did, we borrowed it from them. With the emphasis on borrow, implying repayment. FTR The OP was venting about the frustrations of affording a house, and having been there and done that and having surveyed several options taking into consideration our lack of lump-sum deposit I thought I'd share the things I did. It is really worth going to a homebuyer show - mostly it's rubbish but there are occasional helpful hints and tips and you can get a financial advisor to give you a quick rundown for free in lots of cases and it was really worth getting a professional opinion (even if you don't go with them). We looked at shared-ownership and my Father was horrified at the terms, which is how we ended up arranging the deposit loan in the first place. We looked at a lot of options but the local HA rejected us on the grounds that we earned too much and didn't have any children. Apparently, if we had a child, we'd qualify for a house. Because we didn't and I wasn't pregnant they would only help us buy a flat. The price of the flat was the same as what we ended up paying for our house!!

So you're saying that just because I didn't have £15,000 lying around at the age of 24 that I am fiscally irresponsible? Seriously? Do me a favour! A person can be responsible with their money but still not be in a position to save. I left university at the age of 21 - up until that point I'd only had a weekend/part time job - certainly not a salary. It was only enough to keep me going at University, run my car and buy my textbooks. However I left university with minimal student debt - my student loan is very nearly paid off. Does that sound like someone financially irresponsible to you? When I left university I (like thousands of others) struggled to find a job, so rather than sit on my ar$e and claim off the social, I took a minimum wage job. This was barely enough to live on but it was enough to cover my various outgoings. Not enough to save though. But still, I was responsible, didn't get into debt, didn't buy things I couldn't afford or go on holidays I couldn't afford (backpacking in the aolian islands was hardly luxury 5*). I'm still struggling to see how I could have saved £15,000 though. So having worked this minimum wage job and stuggling to get a job without practical experience, I took another job opportunity with a MINOR salary increase. I was now only slightly above minimum wage. I did this job for a year before I was MADE REDUNDANT. Yeah, I sound really fiscally irresponsible right now. So instead of moping about on the social or going back to a min wage role, I took the oppotunity to do my PGCE. This was grant funded but not salaried. So how am I supposed to be saving my £15,000 CPLTD? The grant barely covered living expenses. It was only when I moved into IT that I started earning anything approaching a reasonable salary. At this point I started saving what I could (once living and travelling expenses were taken into account), but my first IT job still wasn't brilliantly paid. So far I am a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG way off my £15,000 and I am 25 at this point and LeBoyfriend and I had only just met and were in no way ready to move in together. There are a LOT of costs associated with buying a house. What makes you think that just because our parents helped us with the deposit that we didn't plough our savings into the other costs - the solicitors fees, the furniture, the survey, etc? These little costs eat money really quickly. I find your comment offensive, actually. Suggesting that we are irresponsible with money simply because we needed help with the deposit. There is a HUGE difference between needing help with the deposit and being fiscally irresponsible. An irresponsible person is a person who fritters their money away on pointless things, expensive holidays they can't afford, running up credit card bills, living beyond their means. A Responsible person is a person that lives within their means and saves for their luxuries and only has what they can afford. We couldn't afford to have a holiday AT ALL this year, so we didn't. We've been saving specially and can afford a week in Andorra in January. This doesn't make us irresponsible. If I was constantly crying to Mum and Dad whinging about not having any money and asking for handouts, I'd say I was irresponsible. But we don't. We live within our means and have a modest amount left after all the bills are paid to invest in the house (there is a lot of work to do and we'd rather do the house up and increase our equity share than 'save' it) and to save for a little holiday. I'm quite angry now. I assume that was your intention with your offensive little jibe.

No they wouldn't. The developers profit margin would be greater. You don't REALLY think they'd pass the savings onto the consumer do you?

Funnily enough this is spot on - It sounds counterintuitive but it's true! I have always prided myself on never being in debt. Never had a loan, paid my credit card bill on time. LeBoyfriend has a long string of car and motorbike loans in his past and now another fresh one for his current car, plenty of overdraft action and credit cards and the mortgage broker said to us that he was concerned about my rating! Luckily I came in just inside the threshold (*Phew*). I both agree and disagree here. Owning your own property isn't just about 'achievement' - it is also about security. When landlords encourage obnoxious neighbours to force their tennants to break contract (I read something shocking about a landlord that made a habit of doing this in order to make a profit) and where renting a property is so costly, owning is sometimes the CHEAPER option. It is also nice to know that you aren't going to get home and find an 'I'm selling the house, you have 3 weeks to move' letter on the door mat (I've lost count of the number of friends that have had this done to them). I don't need that sort of uncertainty and stress in my life. I also want to be able to do what I like, how I like in my own home. If I accidently put a hole in the wall LeBoyfriend and I giggle about it, sort out a fix and get on with it. Or live with it. In the case of our house: Old 1950's houses have a tendancy to have rubbish upstairs interior walls and a previous owner decided it was easier to dot-and-dab stick thin plasterboard everywhere than to fix or level them off but the 'dot-and-dab' is too thick creating 'danger zones' in the walls where an accidental impact can leave a large hole that needs filling and plastering over... That being said, home ownership is not for the fiscally irresponsible. My grandfather always says that a roof over your head is more important than anything else. You can live without Sky, you can live without the internet and you can get a pay-as-you-go SIM card - but to have your own roof over your head is a security like no other. But if you are frivilous with money renting is the best option as owning a home is a huge responsibility and commitment on your finances. You also cannot move as easily if you hate your neighbours - at least if you rent and your neighbours are a nightmare you can report them to the landlord and then start looking. It's just a lot of upheaval. Also, why SHOULDN'T we own our own homes? Why should we work hard to line the pockets of some greedy grasping property-hogging landlord? We work hard for our money and why shouldn't we reach the end of 30 years of paying £800 a month with something to show for it? When you rent you have nothing to show for it. No equity to fall back on in your twilight years. Lets look at this in a mercenary way. When I get to the end of my 30 year mortgage term, I will have a 3 bedroom semi-detached house (or better, depending on if we move, but for the purposes of this illustration let us assume I don't). I will OWN this house outright, so whatever it is worth (regardless of whether that is more or less than what I paid for it in relative terms) is MINE. If I need nursing care in my dottage or need to downsize to a smaller place, I can sell my big old family home and use that equity to support myself. When a renter has worked 30 years and paid out the same or MORE than I paid for my mortgage, what do they have to show for it? Do they have any savings? Investments? All things being equal, let us assume that me and renter are in the same situation. We don't earn enough to have sufficient disposable income to properly save and invest. But in my case, my payments ARE investments - I get to own a house. What does renter have? Nothing. Nothing to show for that big ol' chunk of money paid out every month. THAT is why there is so much 'drive' to own a house. Not because of 'achievement' or some other obnoxious reason, but because ultimately, mortgages and rents are more or less equal, except if you're paying a mortgage you at least get some of that back in equity. Renters get nothing but a cheeful F-off you old fart - can't pay the rent, can't live here.

I know that pain! Even a pokey little turd of a place in the worst part of town is still £130,000 down here! To buy an older property in a place that isn't necessarily the best area but not the worst you're probably looking at £150,000. How do you manage to save £15,000 when you have cars and kids and rent to cover! It's impossible. You could look at those shared ownership schemes but personally I think they shaft you and you get tied into community charges and things. When we bought our place both sets of parents gave us half the deposit - that was the only way we could afford it. If we start saving now we might just about have enough money to help one of our children buy a house. The whole system is ludicrous! Renting is a joke when the rents are MORE than a mortgage with bills and council tax on top! It's like a punishment! You also can't redecorate :-( Unfortunately the only way you are going to get your own home is to look at the shared ownership and 'affordable housing' schemes. Talk to your local housing authority as 'housing association' doesn't have to mean 'Council house' - when LeBoyfriend and I were looking for a house there were a lot of schemes run by Housing Associations and local authority housing in association with building companies like Taylor Wimpey and Bovis - it is law that a part of any new build estate must be reserved for 'Housing association' use. The problem we had was that we earned TOO MUCH to qualify. It was ridiculous. Either way, they can help you and it is really worth going to a local 'home buyer' event (if for no other reason than free lollipops and jute bags)

I love that film. It was on at the weekend but I never got to see the end (although its not as though I don't know what happens, but still, I like it). :-(

Changing the wiring will make this hard to sell - is there not a 'converter' kit? I have one in my Vectra for my iO play device.

Funny, I was watching the sequel yesterday as it happens! I LOVE Crocodile Dundee (both of them) Punk: What's your chances of getting out of here with that jacket on? *Laughter* Mick: [throws his knife across the room into the punk's mohawk] Better than average Punk: Yeah, I'll go along with that.

"If coincidences are coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?" From the Chief member of the tinhat brigade. I like this quote and use it often when people try to BS me into fixing things that just 'happen' to have 'stopped working' when I'm there. Funny that.

I realised this about 20 minutes into episode 2. The whole series was 'over advertised' - they pretty much gave away the secrets in the adverts which spoiled it for us a bit. I think we stopped watching when that prisoner drowned that kid in the boat. We turned it off at that point and deleted it from Series link. I also REALLY hated how they bring the girl in to help them, then don't tell her anything, and tell her that they aren't telling her anything and constantly make oblique comments that are supposed to be 'clues' but which just serve to annoy me. Grimm - I really got into this. It has it's moments of being a bit cliche and after all the weird and horrible things she's seen, Juliet's 'disbelief' is a bit silly. But I really like it. LeBoyfriend isn't a fan so it's my 'guilty pleasure' series. Awake - I started watching this because my deep and abiding crush on Jason Isaacs (SO much hotness) won't let me bypass anything he is in and I've actually REALLY got into it. I'm loving the whole '2 realities' thing. Every week I swing wildly from 'Wife world is real' to 'I think he's in a coma and neither world is real'. There are a lot more '3rd party' scenes in 'wife world' which lends credence to this being the 'real' world but it's got me hooked and I can't wait for Season 2 Spartacus - Blood and Sand was my favourite as Andy Whitfield (RIP) was brilliant - perfectly cast, but I also love Crixus and enjoyed Ashur's comeuppance so I'm still watching. Suits - I LOVE this. Harvey is brilliant. Can't wait for Season 2 Burn Notice - LeBofriend and I totally love this but we're completely out of sync - we seem to have missed half a season so we've stopped watching and are going to try to pick it up where we left off. We used to be into Sanctuary but again we got out of sync so we need to go back and pick up from where we left off. FRINGE - OMG I love this series so much! To be fair, America has WAY more awesome shows than the UK, but then the audience and budgets are bigger so I would expect that to be the case. Almost all my favourite shows are American. There have been some british shows that I've really gotten into but the majority of our favourites are US. We've started recording Sinbad but really the first episode didn't blow me away. I was a bit 'meh' at the end. The new series of Borgias looks EPIC but then I might only be watching this because of Jeremy Irons. I have a bit of a crush on him too for inexplicable reasons. We're suckers for period dramas - I'm trying to record the rerun of 'The Tudors' on the Sony channel but I put it on series link and nothing happens so it seems like they aren't actually running it as a 'series' more as a 'filler'. Hornblower and Sharpe are faves in our house too. Downton Abbey was boring though. Sorry. The period is too 'recent' for my liking. I prefer Napoleonic war and older. Although American Civil war period is good too (only slightly more recent than the NW). Medieval is my favourite although Tudor and Elizabethan are particular faves. I like Roman and Saxon period stuff too, although I tried to watch 'ROME' and hated it. LeBoyfriend claimed it was brilliant but I got bored halfway through episode 1 and tanked some random Hour of Twilight dungeons instead. Edited to add: OMG OMG GAME OF THRONES! So much love for this series. Just hoping GRRM releases the next book BEFORE I'm a grandmother!

I'm sorry, Alcatraz was AWFUL. I hated it. LeBoyfriend and I gave it a good chance and Sky+ed it but after the first 5 episodes we realised it REALLY wasn't getting any better and ditched it. Personally I don't like either the UK or US 'Office' We thought Newsroom looked funny but the first 5 minutes of the first episode were enough to make me scream 'TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF' at LeBoyfriend - there is something about people all shouting over each other that makes me want to physically vomit. I actually had to leave the room.

I need one of these. One of our engineers insists that the room is a sauna and half of us are shivering. I'd like to blast him with this until he shivers, but having known him for over 12 years and having watched him walk home at 2am on a -3 January night in a T-shirt I shan't hold my breath... You're thinking of 'Cone of Cold' - that will be sufficient also.

Sainsburys do the barcode scanners on the trolleys too but it's a PITA when you get a rescan - my mum used to get rescanned every single time. She made a complaint about it and now her card doesn't work at all! I'd like to invent the 'desk bubble' for people like me that hate the cold and who have colleagues who continually turn the air con to 'refridgerate' - it's colder in our office than it is in the fridge!! I'd like a Plastic desk bubble around my desk to maintain a toasty 24 degrees all year round thanks.