Snouts in the Trough

How to lose £50,000 to £100,000 in one day

My mother is considering buying a retirement flat, so I thought I’d check a few prices. After talking to the main developers, I was struck by the apparently large difference in prices between newly-built flats and flats that were just a few years old. For example, in one town new one-bedroom retirement flats are selling for between £210,000 and £225,000. Yet one-bedroom flats that are less than ten years old, built in the same style to the same specifications by the same developer, often within a couple of miles of the new-builds, were only fetching £80,000 to £130,000. I found a similar situation with two-bedroom flats. New ones were priced from £270,000 to £320,000, yet resales were down in the £150,000 to £200,000 range.

Of course, you could argue that new-builds should cost more as they would be in much better condition than resales and have longer leases. But in some cases, the resales were actually more inviting as they were built when land was cheaper and so had larger gardens and grounds. From comparing over twenty developments, I discovered that a retirement flat bought new, straight from the developer will lose around a third of its value – up to £100,000 – as soon as it has had just one owner. The main reason new builds are so expensive may be that developers know their customers will probably not be particularly price sensitive as they may be moving from larger detached houses into their retirement flats and may well have sold their former family homes for considerably more than they’ll be paying for their retirement flat.

Pensioners with large amounts of ready cash are usually ripe for plucking. So a jolly salesperson rabbiting on about how wonderful retired life will be with the security of an on-site warden and such exciting activities as weekly bingo, bridge evenings and excursions to the theatre can easily gloss over the fact that new retirement flats are frequently hideously expensive.

On the other hand, resales may be more modestly priced as they tend to go for a price that is closer to general market rates for similar properties. Moreover, they will often be sold by owners moving out into care homes who may be under pressure to sell fairly quickly to get money to fund their care home fees of up to £30,000 a year. Or else they may be put up for sale by families of owners who have died. These families may be interested in getting a reasonably rapid sale to avoid paying service charges for the six months or more it can often take to sell a previously-occupied retirement flat.

One flat I saw was sold for £179,950 as a new build and then three years later it had to be reduced to £99,950 to sell – a price reduction of about 45% – £80,000 lost in just 3 years.

I asked two experts why new retirement flats were so expensive – one was an estate agent and the other a person working as a seller for one of the largest retirement flat development companies. The estate agent said that in her opinion new retirement flats were a complete rip-off and only a fool would pay the prices demanded by the developers. The salesperson seemed a bit embarrassed at the question and had to think for quite some time before admitting she didn’t really have an explanation but that lots of her customers were very happy with their properties.

New retirement flats are almost as much a scam as timeshares.

The bottom line is that any new-build retirement home can easily lose £50,000 to £100,000 of its value as soon as the buyer has signed the contract to take it. So, buying a resale from a previous owner or their family can save your parents, other relatives or you an awful lot of money – just something to bear in mind should anyone in your family or social circle start thinking about moving into a retirement property.

Our EU-rulers don’t like democracy. Democracy – what we ordinary people want – can get in the way of our EU-rulers’ grand project of wiping out national borders and identities to turn Europe into a single, socialist Superstate dominated by Germany and run by an unelected elite of komissars. A mixture between a EUSSR and a Fourth Reich

In 2001, only the Irish were allowed to vote on the Treaty of Nice. The Irish ‘stupidly’ voted the wrong way and so were given another chance to vote in 2002. This time they got the ‘right’ answer.

Then in 2005 came the big one. The 160,000-word EU Constitution (in comparison the constitution of the USA – perhaps the most successful country in history – is only 4,600 words). When the Dutch and French voted against their Constitution, our EU-rulers were not impressed. Jean Claude Juncker, who was then Luxembourg’s PM explained “if it’s a Yes, we will say ‘on we go’: and if it’s a No we will say ‘we continue'”. And the man responsible for the Constitution – former French President Giscard D’Estaing showed his contempt for democracy “The rejection of the Constitution was a mistake which will have to be corrected. It was a mistake to use the referendum process, but when you make a mistake you can correct it”.

Sure enough, the Constitution was hastily rewritten, rechristened as the Lisbon Treaty and approved by all EU countries without any attempt to check that their people really wanted to hand over their countries to central German control

This weekend, our EU-rulers reacted with undisguised fury at Greek PM Tsipras’s decision to hold a referendum on the terms of the bailout of Greece.

As the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers held a crunch meeting in Brussels, their Dutch leader Jeroen Dijsselbloem said he was “very negatively surprised” by the Greek referendum decision. “That is a sad decision for Greece because it has closed the door for further talks where the door was still open in my mind,” Dijsselbloem said. Germany’s hardline pro-austerity finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble fumed the Greek government had “ended the negotiations unilaterally.”

I know many people will believe that the Greeks should repay all the money they have borrowed and then wasted or allowed to be stolen by the ruling elites. But the whole Greece situation has been a massive fraud for at least 15 years. Our EU-rulers have been fully aware for years that Greece has been bankrupt and was only able to get into the euro by fiddling its finances. Moreover, the French and German banks that loaned most of the money to Greece knew the country would never be able to pay it back and assumed (correctly) EU taxpayers would bail them out when the ‘s’ hit the ‘f’.

As for the last Greek bailout. Over 90% of the money never went anywhere near Greece. It went straight into the German and French banks that would have been destroyed if Greece had reneged on its debts. Moreover, Greece’s debts were passed from banks onto Eurozone taxpayers.

Greece owes €322bn. That’s over €80,000 for each Greek in work. If the Greeks are paying just 2% interest on their debt, that’s about €6.5bn a year – €2,200 a year for every working Greek.

The country is bankrupt and can only survive with some form of debt forgiveness as the IMF have been saying all along. But our EU-rulers are afraid to give any debt forgiveness as their taxpayers might suddenly realise how much money they’re about to lose due to the bungling of their empire-building politicians. Moreover, if the Greeks succeeded in their rebellion against their EU-rulers, that would give a huge boost to anti-EU parties in other economically-savaged Club Med countries.

I have huge respect for Greek PM Tsipras. He was elected on his promises that he would fight to get a better deal for Greece and prevent the economic asphyxiation of his country. Part of that deal included some form of debt write-off. When he failed to get a deal that would allow the Greek economy to return to growth, rather than clinging to power by doing a Dodgy Dave Cameron-style U-turn on his ‘cast-iron promises’, Tsipras has gone back to the Greek people and asked them to vote of the deal proposed by his EU-masters.

Democracy has suddenly appeared in Greece and our EU-rulers don’t like it one bit. We can expect some brutal EU attacks on the Greeks and the Greek banking system in the week leading up to the referendum as our EU-rulers try to terrify the Greeks into submission.

What fun to watch our useless EU rulers in complete confusion. The Greek debacle and the African/Arab invasion have exposed the massive gulf between what we the people of Europe want and the self-interest of our snouts-in-the-trough rulers.

The people of Europe couldn’t give a toss whether Greece stays in the euro or not. In fact, most of us would probably prefer Greece to go back to the drachma then we could go there for nice cheap holidays. But our EU-rulers are desperate to keep their United States of Europe project on the rails and cannot allow the Greeks to slip away from their control. After all, imagine the popular rebellions against the EU in Spain, Portugal and Italy if the Greeks abandoned the euro, re-adopted the drachma and Greece’s economy started growing again precisely because it had left the Eurozone and the crushing hand of German-backed economic asphyxiation.

As for the invasion from Africa and the Middle East, this has exposed the stupidity of the United States of Europe’s freedom of movement rules which our rulers have used to try to wipe out national borders and nation states to replace them by their great single Europe empire controlled by German-dominated Brussels. Last night our EU-rulers decided to start distributing tens of thousands of primitive, religiously-bigoted, Western-hating  Third-Worlders around Europe against the will of most Europeans. We’re told that only 50,000 or 60,000 will be spread throughout our continent of 500 million. We’re assured that this is just a one-off and that our masters know what’s best for us.

But we know that this is just the thin edge of the wedge. After all, there are another 500,000 dirt-poor migrants already en route to Europe. Then there will be at least a million next year and the year after that and the year after that. No doubt they will also be distributed around Europe turning our cities and towns into stinking, impoverished, Third World slums.

Paris already looks more like an Arab or African city than a European one:

Where Paris has gone, the rest of our cities will follow.

Moreover, as the African/Arab invasion accelerates, all the Third-Worlders will send for their extended families – brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and the rest will be heading our way.

The populations of Europe have had enough. Even the Scandinavians and the Dutch are rebelling. A couple of weeks ago Denmark elected a new government that wants immigration controlled just at the same time as our EU-rulers are increasing it in their bid to wipe out national identity. Once the Germans decide enough is enough and don’t want their country turned into a cross between Syria and Sierra Leone, we all know from history that it will turn very nasty very quickly.

In the UK , when Africans are sleeping on the streets of Notting Hill and Syrians are building their first Mosque in Chipping Norton, the political class may begin to realise that the horrors they have inflicted on much of our country are coming to a street near them.

But because the EU elites are more interested building their own single superstate and in their own prospects which are best served by keeping their oppressive, bureaucratic juggernaut on the road, they are deaf and blind to the catastrophe they are inflicting on Europe. After all, they can never admit they got it wrong and a United States of Europe is completely unworkable.

However, with their massive salaries and pensions paid for by us, they can always retreat to safe, gated, guarded communities where they’ll be protected from the Third-World violence, crime, squalor  and misery for which they are responsible.

The trough is always greater than the Truth

Equatorial Guinea is a wonderful country. Why? Because it’s a perfect example of everything that is wrong with that blighted, poverty-stricken sewer of a continent – Africa. It’s an example of why more than a million Africans a year will head for Europe, swamping our countries and turning our cities into stinking, crowded, crime-ridden, diseased, foul Third-World slums.

Equatorial Guinea is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. In fact it’s one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It has a GDP of over $20bn and a population of just 700,000. The country is ranked 20th in the world in terms of GDP per capita, ahead of Iceland and the UK.

Since the start of oil production in the mid-nineties, Equatorial Guinea has become Africa’s wealthiest nation on a per-capita basis ($29,940); for comparison, South Africa’s is $7,336, Nigeria’s $3,000. The country is the third-largest oil producing country in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, Equatorial Guinea produces so much oil that it has been called “Africa’s Kuwait”

So it should be a great place to live. Yet most of the population lives on little more than $1 a day. Average life expectancy barely reaches 55 and it has one of the highest rates of child mortality in the world:

So, if the GDP per capita is $29,940 and the earnings per person of most of the population is less than $365 a year, then where does all the money go? Here are just a few of the sports cars belonging to the vice president of Equatorial Guinea, who also happens to be the son of the president (Teodoro Obiang Nguema), being confiscated in 2011 as part of corruption investigations in Paris.

Some of the cars were worth €1 million each. The cars were auctioned off for €3.1 million

Yup, you guessed it. The country’s massive wealth is being siphoned off by the ruling family and a few of their cronies. The president came to power by way of a coup against his own uncle some 36 years ago – he’s been suspicious of all political opposition ever since. The president regularly is re-elected with somewhere between 97% and 100% of the vote so must be very popular indeed.

He’s so popular that in July 2003, state-operated radio declared Obiang “the country’s god” and had “all power over men and things.” It added that the president was “in permanent contact with the Almighty” and “can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell.” He personally made similar comments in 1993.

Internal critics and human rights activists who become troublesome are invited to reflect on their disloyalty in Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Black Beach prison. Many opponents have been accused of conspiring with foreign powers to bring down the government.

The 2004 failed coup attempt led by the British mercenary Simon Mann (allegedly funded in part by Mark Thatcher, son of Margaret Thatcher, the former UK Prime Minister), served to fuel President Obiang’s paranoia that everyone is out to get him.

How rich is the ruling family? $1bn? £5bn? $10bn? Who knows. The country is ranked 163rd out of 176 in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index. When asked about corruption in his country, the president displayed his sense of humour: “No-one steals here… On the contrary, what my government has done to this country is to increase the living standards of the people and provide better infrastructure”.

Here’s Obummer grovelling to Obiang when he should be sending in the marines to kill the thieving scumbag to free Equatorial Guinea’s people from their impoverishment:

The tragedy is that the ruling elites could have used just a little of their country’s wealth to put into development – schools, hospitals, power stations, water supply, universities etc – and still stolen billions. But like almost all African leaders, the ruling kleptocracy had to have it all and have totally  and unnecessarily impoverished their people.

Equatorial Guinea is not an exception in Africa. It is Africa. And until Western governments act by closing down any banks handling the money stolen by Africa’s kleptocrats, the impoverished masses will continue to flood into Europe condemning us to the same misery they are escaping from:

And what are our leaders doing? Acting to cut corruption in Africa? Nope we’re giving billions in aid to be stolen by Africa’s elites and we’re providing free ferry services across the Med for anyone who wants to come to Europe!

And for those who haven’t seen it, here’s my short (3 mins) YouTube video showing what really happens to the billions in aid we send to Africa. Enjoy and please send the link to all your contacts so we can spread the truth that the mainstream media refuses to mention because of political correctness and fear of being called “waaaccciiiissssttt”

As readers will know, the British navy, while cutting its strength from 37,500 to 29,000 in order to save money, has been busy making people traffickers rich by providing free ferry services for any African or Arab who feels like moving to Europe to live off crime and/or benefits.

So far this year at least 60,000 migrants have decided that, having destroyed their own countries through stupidity, religious intolerance, corruption, laziness and incompetence, they’d rather like to move to Europe and do to our countries what they’ve done to their own blighted, hell-hole homelands:

And, of course, the politically correct and self-appointed, self-righteous opinion leaders tell us that it’s our humanitarian duty to help the African and Arab swarms. But how many can we cope with?

Here’s a chart of the change in population of Europe and Africa over the last 65 years:

Am I really the only person who can see a small problem? Every year another few hundred thousand babies are born in wealthy Europe. Every year around another 30 million babies are born in stinking, excrement-covered, diseased, poverty-stricken Africa.

Every 25 years, the population of Europe goes up by around 3%. Every 25 years the population of Africa doubles.

About 600,000 babies are born in hell-hole Africa every week. More babies are born in Africa each week than are born in Europe each year.

The massive, explosive, uncontrolled population growth in impoverished Africa is something the charities never mention when they show their sad pictures of starving black babies. And no politician or journalist dares talk about this as they’d immediately be branded a “waaaacccciiisssstt” and lose their well-paid jobs.

What Africa needs is population control, not aid.

So, how many Africans are we going to bring to Europe each year? One million? Five million? Ten million? I doubt any of our rulers would like to answer that question.

Looking at Africa’s population growth, if you think 10,000 Africans and Arabs moving to Europe each month seems rather a lot, then in the immortal words of Bachman Turner Overdrive “b..b…b…baby you ain’t seen nothing yet, here’s something you’ll never forget, you just ain’t been around”