Kurtz

Do you remember DYIV? He's a good friend of mine, you know not just on the internet. Well, I said to him to find a nice spot in the world which is stable and likes your passport and save up and buy a house there for retirement, like NZ or somewhere. In the meantime, live cheap, follow the work. He's a GP in Aus now, doing well.

I can't decide whether the right word is powerless or helpless. You can see why the market never tanked.

Quite easily. 6 months of going to court to get a family visitor visa . . . after that humiliation, you know your country hates you. Have you seen that Croydon housing benefits thing. 18.4 million quid a month!!!

It was in an article God knows where, God knows when. Way back.

Yup, still doesn't entitle her to residency. People have turned up with British passports only to be refused entry, they still need visas. Gave up with it, shithole anyway.

How much?

I believe HPC makes around 300k GBP a year.

No doubt. It's a bunch of sexpats pretending not to be sexpats. Ugly.

It was ten years ago. I knew you bought some flats in Honkers, but beyond that . . . Did you sell them? Goldfinger is the best at the gold bug thing, probably because he's called . . . Goldfinger . . . and says things like 'Buy Gold'. CGNAO had a real way with apocalyptic sensationalism along with a nuclear mushroom cloud. Eye catching.

I think many are kicking themselves for not listening to Goldfinger and CGNAO.

No wonder HPC hated goldbugs!

The UK doesn't look after its own, GF. It feeds off them.

Guess you met George then. Huge site. Widespread business interests. Huge membership, 2500 online at any one time. Only thing is, it's about the most miserable site on the planet.

No, no access to the welfare state (SE) or the NHS (out of country too long). On my own. I was a contractor in the UK and would never have used a house there, always lived on site (12 years of that hell), all over the place. UK immigration fought like hell over family moving to the UK, so I gave up with that and built here. I've known plenty of expats in Malaysia, never a bad word for the place.

I've no idea. We talked about it once, his new offices. Very fancy and traditional. He perhaps has a 30+30 year lease on the land and owns the structures upon the land, this is permissible. But even then . . . just rent. Yes, I cringe when he mentions the joys of Chiang Mai's 'nightlife'. Thank God he doesn't live in Pattaya.

How much have UK house prices fallen in real money? Once they started down the road of securitization, let alone QE, measuring house prices in Sterling means nothing. They should be on the floor by now but a big fiddle was done. So, we had an initial fall of some 30%??? Further subtract the fall in the Pound, another 30%. In reality they're already 60% down. Does any of that make sense?

Don't bother with a Thailand thread. You can never own land here as a foreigner. So there's no point. Go on Thai Visa and read countless horror stories, many ending in murder/suicide. It is the best place to rent though. But I still say, Malaysia.

Malaysia's your best bet. Mentioned this to Bubb earlier.

You need both the Pound and land prices to crash and complete default to happen. You need to clean politics of the likes of Ed Balls, George Osborne and the rest. Bizarre ideology meets corrupt vested interests. Interesting anecdote from a friend that owns a carpet shop on the south coast. He says sales are good . . . at the bottom end, the welfare claimant coming in with 250 quid and at the top end, Axminster and Jaccaranda costing thousands for the London elite. Nothing at all in the middle.

I do wish he'd stop going on about bar girls when interviewed in the telly it's embarrassing.

Not brilliant but improving, the five intonations are the killer. All in the kids name. The company thing was always ridiculous. Once that old boy goes, we've got real problems here.

Never underestimate a central bank with a printing press in an economy based on real estate. How much are houses in Zimbabwe, measured in Zim Dollars or whatever they're called?

It would awfully dull. Seriously, nothing happens here. It's sedate beyond comatose. It's development is interesting though. When I first came here near ten years ago it was the third world. Really was. But now the roads are paved (apart from farm tracks), electricity and water show a stable supply where before the electric would be out twice or thrice a day for hours and in the summer we could go a week or so without water. Houses are being built and painted!!! People have trucks and cars (not that keen on that bit). Some people are positively wealthy. Socially, the place has stopped drinking, used to be terrible alcoholism here. We now have weekly waste collection proper bin lorry. It's all quite pleasant. But get this. Up on the hill over yonder a whole bunch of electric wind turbines are planned for local supply. Regionally the Mekong river is being dammed up with some 20 or so 1GW hydroelectric dams. Here's a few pics, I'll add more sometime. Flickr

All these are in THB and correct. Yesterday I got the electric bill, it was 524 Baht.

Real risk of that.