Many readers will be aware that being a private sector tenant is quite normal in Germany, without the stigma it carries here. Some may also have heard of recent measures in Berlin to cap private sector rents. In due course we should see their long term impact, but looking at policy over the last 50… Continue reading What Germany can teach us about renting
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A d’Hondt() Excel function
I saw a spreadsheet with some VBA macros recently to calculate numbers of seats awarded in elections conducted using the d’Hondt system, so I thought I’d have a go at a single Excel function to do the same. WordPress doesn’t allow the Excel workbooks with VBA to be uploaded, so the file which can be… Continue reading A d’Hondt() Excel function
A former bond analyst thinks again about house prices
I was going to title this blog ‘house prices, supply, rents, incomes and interest rates‘, but then wondered if any would be readers would still be awake. The background is the discussion which has been going on for a while about whether UK house prices so high because of a lack of supply, but it… Continue reading A former bond analyst thinks again about house prices
Elder Stubbs and Existing Use Value
“Elder Stubbs” is an allotment site in East Oxford owned by a charity rather than the local authority. Something of its history can be found on its website here, but this skips the period in the 1990s when the charity found itself at loggerheads with Oxford City Council. For this I am grateful for the… Continue reading Elder Stubbs and Existing Use Value
How to fix the rental market for real
we need an understanding that better ways are needed for setting rents on longer term tenancies, that these will need the buy in of landlords and their agents, and that they will involve an accurate reflection of local market rents. The history of their development in Germany suggests they were pioneered at a municipal level… Continue reading How to fix the rental market for real
Does @TalkTalkCare?
This is a final attempt to get TalkTalk to contact me, and provide my father with the broadband connection he is paying them for. I struggle to find the words to describe how frustrating it is to talk to TalkTalk, but their customers seem to be locked into a Catch-22 – until the connection is… Continue reading Does @TalkTalkCare?
Solidarity & highway dress code
As I was cycling up Lordship Lane today, a cabbie cheerfully called out of his window to me “Watcha mate, how yer doing?” Would it have been the same if I’d been wearing lycra, rather than dressed for bagging and shifting thirty odd rubble sacks of rotted horse manure?
Perry Vale park trees
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