Just today, I had a long-awaited meeting with three accomplished and professional property people. It had taken me three weeks to get these people together.
It was a sparse lunch, yeah, a couple of tinctures, but the theme was still exasperation, and severe angst at the failure of this blasted government with their lackey banks, to bring it on.
We discussed seven schemes. Seven big building projects, ranging from, roughly - £6m to £15 million pounds.
Each one, when costed, appraised and verified, (RICS standards I might add) showed a minimal profit for us, but, 10% of fees going to other starving businesses, like architects, engineers, builders etc. There was a huge element of 'funding' expectation (i.e. what the banks will rake in for their ludicrous 'risk'), but this stupid administration are getting as bad as the last lot. You'd expect a nulabour crowd to be incompetent and clueless where commercial expertise is required, but the piddling about we're coping with right now is insufferable.
That 10% going to others, (forget the banks' take, they'll stuff you anyway) therefore amounts to about £7,000,000 pounds, which will be used up by waiting, desperate, consultants, builders, sub-contractors etc. The figures are all calculated correctly, and they meet normal financial requirements for funding. There would also be approximately 425 jobs created from our schemes.
From now on in, we are forced to 'negotiate' with councils for planning permission. We're not digging out green belt land, despoiling the parks etc, we're commercial people, making jobs in business areas etc. Councils prefer to prevaricate for months, while the meter clocks up thousands of pounds in interest (banks again), and of course, they might well charge for their 'advice'. It's an utter disgrace that these little twerps can hold so much business to ransom, sit on their hands, and try to apply an obscure policy which is beyond his/her understanding, or they go on paternity leave.
So Scrobs is feeling a bit let down by Cameron and his bunch of wandering people. At this rate, he'll be asking the Hon Prospective Member for UKIP a few serious questions, like, 'If you get in, how will you look after your own country first...?'
Top post, Scrobs. People need to know these things, know what really goes on. Otherwise allwe have are newspapers and they won't print such realities. They prefer giving space to whicj celeb is shagging who and how such-and-such looks in a bikini. Oh my goodness, some celeb is over 50 and doesn't look like a fat cow, hold the front page!
ReplyDeleteI realise that front pages have featured the awful killing and torture of Gadaffi recently, but there's room for home truths. Sadly thy never feature and reading your post I think they should. One thing I don't understand:
"You'd expect a nulabour crowd to be incompetent and clueless where commercial expertise is required, but the piddling about we're coping with right now is insufferable."
Why would you expect NuLab to be clueless where commercial expertise is required? Tony Bliar is very rich. A lot of them are. Very cleverly very rich.
It's totally shite, Scrobs. I have been wondering how your poor head was given that you have to spend so much time banging it against a brick wall. I will help you out when I win the Euromillions. I thought these buggers wanted growth?
ReplyDeleteOK then, but only because you asked so nicely......
ReplyDeleteI have already commented elsewhere on your rant so no more to say except poor you and I hope you feel better for getting it all out of your system. I hope you follow my recommendation for wider circulation though.
I had a quick glance through some of your recent stuff and just thought I'd mention that the missus and her sister both renewed their passports a couple of weeks ago - one hour from start to finish. Go in, give in your old passport and the application form freely available on the net, get given a number, toddle along to the cash counter at the end to pay, sit around at the snack counter for 59 and a half minutes, Ding dong come and get it - and off we went.
Now then if the passport office of some useless third world country like where we live can do it, why can't your lot? It seems a week is the standard for HMG whether in Britain or overseas. Nowadays us expats have to send our passports to the nearest regional "centre" for renewal as the local embassy is no longer permitted to do it for you. And you have to pay the courier charges both ways!
What takes them so long? Probably trying to get the little radio chip installed in the back page to keep tabs on where you are to work properly.
A couple of years ago when I went into Oz, the immig officer had never seen one of these radio-tagged Brit passports before and was hugely suspicious of the bump the chip creates in the back cover, so he started to tear it apart until I yelled at him not to do that. He called his boss over and they had a big conflab before agreeing that it might just possibly have an outside chance of actually being a genuine British passport. Going again in a few days' time so I wonder if I'll have a repeat!
Anyway, see you later alligator.
PS: It was our 25th a couple of days before yours. Where did all those years go?
Yer right Pips...
ReplyDeleteReevers (see later), said on Fawksey, that I should send it to the Daily Mail, and I'm wondering who to send it to for the best impact. Unlike you, I have a problem with mist in front of the eyes when I get a rant on, but somehow, I think it just may be the one to go.
There again, I'm there to be spiked like the rest of 'em, so don't expect too many mentions in despatches...
'part from that, Blar has made his money from pure networking, which I totally agree with, but also he's done it on my money, which I don't agree with.
It's the arseholes like Prescott, Balls, Cooper etc who are brain dead commercially, and made life a misery for commerce, who should be pilloried, but there are better men and women than me to do this.
I don't really expect the investigation into why enraged men decided to physically destruct a tyrant like Gadaffi will get much further than expending a few thousand pounds of gift-aid to try and find who dunnit. Yup, nasty, but if your family had been mutilated by that bastard, well, I'd be on an early train to do something simliar to them.
Lils, this poor head seems to be rising above the froth as we speak, but one door has opened this evening, while another has slammed in my face...
ReplyDeleteName of the game.
So tomorrow, the septic tank will be mended (hopefully), and life will return to normal...
(Is Elbers, or you, TWT... - Bless...?)
Reevers! A star you are, and thank you so uch for getting back, I was mortified when a tincture induced post I made resulted in such a loss of a good friend - and I was trying to be funny too!
ReplyDeleteThis passport business is a strange phenomenon. Why are so many undesirables with dubious creds getting here(about 1.5mill since nulab eased the rules), while innocent, hard working, tax invigorating business people get shagged at every turn?
Havr to confess, that we let our passports lapse this year, as they want a bit too much for renewal, and anyway, with our beloved JRT, we don't feel lke leaving her while we jolly about abroad.
Rather get pissed here...
And finally, 'all those years' are still in front, not behind...!
Come back when you want Reevers!
TWT?
ReplyDeleteSomeone on Guido told Billy Bowden to back off after my rant - very nicely!
ReplyDeleteThat poster was someone called 'Time will tell', and I immediately thought of good friends who know me!
So there were you, at the top of the list!
You have a lot of mates rooting for you out here in the ether Scrobs :-)
ReplyDeleteMr S, I think you might be pointing the finger at the wrong person. Dave and George and Eric have said what they want to with the planning system. It's the short-sighted Great British Public who have become anti-business, anti-development and, actually, anti-bloody-everything.
ReplyDeleteLook how much anger there has been about concreting the green belt when the proposed reforms say NOTHING about the green belt.
This country is f^cked, pardon my French, because the actual people in the country want it to be f^cked.
Three years after the Great Recession started people STILL don't understand how precarious the situation is. They still think that growth will come by magic even if they oppose every opportunity to generate some wealth.
ReplyDeleteI would heartily recommend that any self-respecting self-appointed opinion-former should spend some time in the developing world. I don't mean what use to be euphemistically called the "developing world" because it wasn't I mean the bits of the world which really are developing.
People need to wake up.
Thanks Blues, for coming and commenting.
ReplyDeleteMy defence is that the three Boys could easily (?) stop barriers being placed in front of perfectly legit developments, such as those we do, by curbing the power of 1)the planners, where they just create obstacles, 2) the banks who just will not lend under any circumstances 3) the expensive EU lobby wanting green this and that and adding huge unneccesary costs.
I respect your views Blues, because you clearly know much more about the 'system', and are smart enough to be able to see various points of view. I reckon we agree for most of 99%!
If you ever want to, email me at scroblene@gmail.com, and we can always chat, I always keep such discussions private, it makes sense!
Lils, you are a sweetheart, and that little post has brought tears to these grey (Grey? Brown you silly old twit) eyes...!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much.
;0)
Actually Blues, you've awakened a long-held theory of mine.
ReplyDeleteWhy cannot the countries with sever climatic conditions, just set themselves out to become tourist destinations.
Sorry, this is not a chuck-away remark at all, there's sun, sand, etc, and money from leisure entrepreneurs. It's happened in other places, why can't Africa get it's arse in gear?
Despots? Communists? Illness? Malaria?
Well, if you buy enough land at a premium, you get isolation from all that, and the sea is the biggest soak of them all!
And the 'powers' there be can have even bigger palaces, but who cares if the revenue comes in from Mr and Mrs Selwyn Boggis from Droitwich?
Just think 'development', forget nimbys for the moment.
Mr S, the problem is that Cameron and his Drinks Cabinet don't have the power to simply tell the "planners" to sod off. The idiots in the town halls think they are guarding against forces of evil and enforce their version of the law with zeal.
ReplyDeleteA classic example is around the corner from where I live. A developer which is helping the council redevelop a down-at-heel area applied for permission to build a nice big tower block of flats on the site of a nasty big office block. The development might just have got through except a ragtag band of self-appointed amenity groups and general busybodies and a rapidly-going-bust nightclub over the road - the owners of which want to develop the site themselves - came up with all sorts of specious arguments as to why a nice job-and-home-creating enterprise should be stopped in its tracks.
So for another several years that piece of prime edge-of-centre real estate will stay unused.
Cameron can't change the law on development of brownfield sites in the inner city because of the hysteria about the green belt. He is stuffed whatever he tries to do.
Nobody will really see the effects of this decline until it is too late.
Of course, you're right Blues.
ReplyDeleteWhat really needs to be done, is get someone to clamp down on future time wasting by councils and afficialdom. The expectation of success situation in planning, recently being bandied about, is a good start.
Sorry to hear about your site locally though. One problem will also be that the economics may well have shifted to the 'not worth doing' stage now. We've had direct experience of losing a commercial slot, because of planners' laziness and mistakes.