According to Reddit, "The actual story here when you dig into it is that letting agents fees ‘soared’ according to the Macraes, so they sacked them and do the maintenance on 60 properties themselves. They probably are leveraged to the hilt, so need to save every penny, but nobody is ‘forcing’ them to work full time - they are working at their own business"
Fellas. Sell the properties. Stop fixing leaky taps in your seventies and have some fun jesus christ.
Usually they wheel out that Fergus wanker down in Kent, perhaps he’s gone to the great property empire in the sky?
Seriously even if they were only clearing £100 a month from each property after mortgages and everything (and I'm sure they're getting much more than that from most of them), that would still be £6000 a month? Average property price in Colchester is about £300k, so even if heavily mortgaged they'd clear a nice profit selling 2 or 3 a year which will more than last them the rest of their lives and not flood the market?Looked it up, and it is real:
‘Labour has put the fear of God in everyone’: the pensioners dreading Reeves’s Budget
Growing number of older Britons feel their generation has been ‘hung out to dry’www.telegraph.co.uk
The full article does not explain their "woes" in a way that actually makes sense, either. Essentially they might have to sell some of their dozens of buy-to-let properties.
They'll strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then be heard no more
More likely under the patio
'Passive income' capitalism.
“I know houses, I’ve lived in them all my life. And I’m handy, have decorated and done DIY all my life”
Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with that contextual analysis, I can't help reflecting that rentiers have always been attracted to the notion of unearned income, irrespective of political discourse. My forebears all lived in property owned by someone else, mostly farmers' tied cottages and more latterly in rented urban terraces. My bet is that few, if any, of these landlords believed there was anything wrong with how they benefited from their ownership of land/property.
That was what prompted my middle daughter and her now husband to buy a house. The boiler in their rented flat packed up in Nov and it took 6 weeks for the landlord to get it fixed apparently because he spent most of that time shopping around for the cheapest quote.
Yes, I get that completely; in my family there was always a natural antipathy to landlords ranging from resentment and dissatisfaction to outright hated, but never any admiration or aspiration to become one. Landlords like the Macraes certainly appear shameless and, as you say, obviously feel emboldened by the dominant political narrative of the last 4 decades.
Fergus Wilson, nope he's still around but he and his wife have sold loads of their properties now, they've apparently had the odd legal battle with the council recently as well over their laissez-faire attitude to maintenance.
This is why coaches are better than trains. More legroom and you don’t have to look at anyone.
I cba looking up stats but coaches definitely don't feel like they have more legroom ime
They definitely do - legroom on trains has shrunk and has grown on coaches. I have more room to stretch out and there’s more room for my backpack.I cba looking up stats but coaches definitely don't feel like they have more legroom ime
Maybe it's partly a height thing? I have short legs, so I'm more likely to notice distance to the next seat in front at knee height (can comfortably sit with my legs crossed - shoes off obvs - on trains but sometimes can't on coaches) than overall space.
