19 August 2007
Desperate home sellers, desperate tactics
Filed in: Ed's blog spot
Ed the Editor's personal blog corner
In these volatile times of housing market woes, stock plunges and knee jerk feeding frenzies, some home owners are adopting desperate measures to sell their properties.
Yeast affection?
I understand how baking cakes and bread would lure buyers into a feeling of homeliness when they walk in the door, but surely the savvy buyers would just look around at over-priced square rooms with no character and wake up smelling the roses. "I can't bake bread to save my life, it will never smell homely if I move in, next property, please."
East affliction?
Feng Shui was all the rage once upon a con time in the orient, but enlightened specialists are now flogging this unsubstantiated dead horse in the west. Dressed in black and white and looking deadly serious, the gurus end up placing your sofa north, and your coffee table facing west. On receiving a check, they then leave expectant sellers to stand and wait for offers that come pouring in, usually 25% south of the asking price.
Last rites
Over the centuries, desperation and fear have become synonymous with catholicism, and none so fearful and desperate are believers who think a sale is theirs after burying St Joseph on his head in the garden! Are these the same people who go to Lourdes in wheelchairs, enter the church to partake of holy water - and trundle out the other side, still in their wheelchairs? To cut out the faith element, I would tend to be more visual. Cut the cat's head off and stick it on a stake in the garden. "Buy our house or you're next."
Is my home-selling deconstruction too harsh?
There is nothing wrong with dressing your home to look its best, and believe what you want to believe, but the bottom line is, housing is a commercial irreligious business. Glorified prayers have no place in the process, I think. If god did work in mysterious and positive ways in housing, surely he would start bombarding the Church of England with visions to make their huge inventory of empty property available to thousands of homeless. Or the Vatican would see the light and sell off a few jewels and offer subsidised housing to those in need.
By all means bake pray and bury to your heart's content, but the best tactic for most home owners is to sit tight till prices rise again, slap a coat of paint on the walls, give each room its proper identity, and then praise all that is holy when you get a sale at a fair price.
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. Dentists and Sicko
Filed in: Ed's blog spot
Ed the Editor's personal blog corner
After a trip to the dentist and a trip to the movies to see "Sicko", I have to say I am feeling a little sorry for myself. My teeth hurt, my wallet aches and my heart bleeds for the American population living a total health care nightmare and scam.
In the scheme of things, $1200 isn't a lot for my dental treatment. At $1 per month for 100 hundred years, the work will ensure my teeth stay in my head for a few more years. I am happy, I guess, and Mrs Ed is thrilled, because now she won't be gummed to death any time soon in a fit of passion. But whereas I am happy to defray the costs over a century, the dentist keeps on charging $300 for every hour of his time crouched over my, and every other patient's gaping mouth.
Doubly screwed without insurance
This is where my trip to Sicko made sense of the immoral scenario I was faced with at the dentist. I pay $1200 without cover, but if I'd had cover, the dentist would receive maybe $500 for the work, because that is the ceiling the insurance companies have placed on the procedure. I subsidise the privileged. Cool, innit.
But what do you do? Go without dental treatment? Yeah right! If there is one ache even numb nuts Ed can't abide, it is tooth-related agony. Bottom line, you have to go see a dental guy, and live by the rules.
Break the cycle?
Is there an alternative to rolling over to exorbitant bills or slavery to a job offering free dental health care? Actually, there is an alternative in America. Ed will tie a string round your tooth and yank like hell when you least expect it. Also you could wait in line for some up-and-coming dental student to find a spot in their training schedule to practice on you. Oh the irony of being a guinea pig to yet another up-and-coming health "care" professional investing a fortune so they can perpetuate the gold mine that is the private health care system.
Maybe you think the current rules are acceptable and fair. You know, why should you pay for some other person's health care?
Is it sicko everywhere?
A set of teeth in America belong to a bottomless gougable wallet, not to a fellow human being in need. It doesn't seem to be like that anywhere else. Time and again, Michael Moore's bias came down on the side of health care professionals around the world, where, for some baffling reason, doctors and dentists, by and large put their patients' well-being ahead of accountants' demands. American ex-pats in socialist France were embarrassed to have such freely available health care, while family back home lived the American dream. In the UK, doctors even get a bonus for stopping people smoking, losing weight... And they don't rely on the bonuses to make ends meet. They earn good money, great money in fact under socialised medicine, just not as much money as US doctors.
In the US, socialised medicine has been demonised, but it isn't all glamor for dentists under the current private system! Poor saps have to maintain $2m dollar homes and service 5 cars. All that paperwork and admin, what a bind. And I expect most dentists feel a bit of a dick wearing latex gloves and a goofy green suit while people at normal jobs get to dress up a bit. And all that tax to pay.
I don't deny dentists are valued members of society, but when you analyse the importance of the service being administered to fellow men in need, the practices going on in dentistry across America is legalised gouging. Not much to shout about in a civilised society.
And after Sicko, one of Moore's least biased shows, US health care is not a good reflection of a society that has it right in so many ways. Regardless of what fit young professionals like to believe, when you haven't got your health, or your teeth, you haven't got much. And if you live in a system where you can't afford to access the skills of people who can keep you healthy, (or your HMO blocks you from treatment even when you have paid for insurance) then whatever you have accumulated in material terms is completely worthless. Pretty much only America makes you pay through the nose for your health, one way or another, potentially for your whole miserable life.
What do you think?
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Crazy TV interviews
Filed in: Ed's blog spot
Ed the Editor's personal blog corner
Did you see the infamous They Know Nothing rant by stock guru, Jim Cramer? It was the loudest answer ever given to a simple question.
Although it was played throughout Wall Street, mainly to cheers, the video per se did not prompt the Fed to change course. They did it all on their own.The bottom line is, the Fed aren't doing much to bail out the 7 million sub-prime borrowers soon to be squatting before being thrown out out on the street. But relax, the money institutions have been given a breathing space, and at least if you have no home, rest assured, the economy isn't going bankrupt and your place of work will be open for the forseeable future.
Another famous TV interview was Jeremy Paxman's grilling of weasly Michael Howard. Paxman is the pioneer of tough questioning on BBC TV at least, and he asked the same question, Did you threaten to overrule him? I don't know how many times. Each time the politician gave a different answer. It was absorbing viewing, and total proof that you can't trust a politician as far as you can spit them.
If you care to ask Ed a question, feel free. I won't shout and scream, but I may not give you a serious answer. At least you know where you stand!
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MyBlogLog Sunday 20
Filed in: MBL sunday
Good to see so many new faces. Must be the early risers sneaking to their computers before the kids get up and monopolise them for games and zwinky toolbar construction.
Just to remind today's featured bloggers that if you leave a link in the comments to your best post of the week before 6pm Eastern time, I will also stumble the post. (One more touch to make MyBloglog Sundays a super special link love extravaganza that you can't fail to miss.)
Permalink is permanent
As usual, all mini reviews from today will stay on the homepage (PR5) all week and are instantly added to the archives, so you can get a permanent back link to your mini review when it appears later.
MyBlogLog Sunday info links
All hot mini reviews on MyBloglog Sunday!
Internet buzz on MyBloglog Sunday!
How to participate in MyBloglog Sunday!
Weekly round-up of MyBloglog Sunday!
Internet buzz on MyBloglog Sunday!
How to participate in MyBloglog Sunday!
Weekly round-up of MyBloglog Sunday!
Be back later.
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Funny junk notice
Filed in: Ed's blog spot
You might want to waste a few hours / seconds this week checking out some funny junk that has been lying dormant elsewhere on the site. Loads of deep questions to ponder over your corn flakes; links to satire news from all over the internet; solitaire unveiled in its myriad mind-numbing forms, and a couple of contests.
Never let it be said there is nothing new to see hear from one day to the next!
Never let it be said there is nothing new to see hear from one day to the next!
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