I have considerable sympathy for people who want to get onto the property ladder and buy their own home, only to find they are priced out of the market.
As usual greed has taken over and as in many other countries, Spain has found house prices soaring because of rents being pushed up by gentrification and landlords shifting to more lucrative, short-term tourist rentals.
It’s the same sorry story in the UK, but I do take exception to what the Spanish government is discussing – to impose a 100% tax rise on non EU people trying to buy in Spain.
Why pick on the Brits? The British have poured billions into Spain over the years and many Spanish have got very rich as a result.
Why should someone living in say Poland or Germany get preferential treatment over Brits – or are we for ever going to be punished for Brexit, which the majority of British now do not want.
What’s needed is severe restrictions on holiday rentals, on line holiday rental companies – another wretched import from money-mad America – have been responsible for pushing up house prices, especially in tourist hot-spots.
In my book people who want to holiday abroad should stay in hotels, which have been built for them. And those on urbanisations who choose to rent out their homes for months on end should be hit with massive additional urbanisation fees or for urbanisations to order a total ban.
After all it’s holiday makers coming to residential areas which cause the most disturbance – and house owners who find they can’t make mega bucks renting out perhaps should sell up and go.
THE FOLLY OF WOODEN HOMES
I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to watch a house you have spent years turning into a lovely home burn to the ground, with nothing you can do to stop it.
The dreadful fires in California which has cost many lives, and made many thousands homeless is heart wrenching.
But there are several lessons to be learned from this horror and the first is that when a politician starts campaigning for budget cuts they should be ignored and never voted for.
Just one month before the Los Angeles fires broke out the fire chief warned that budget cuts were hampering the department’s ability to respond to emergencies, a department memo shows.
Funding for the city’s fire department decreased by $17.6 million, or 2%, between the 2024-25 fiscal year and the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to city budget documents.
However, the city council in November approved a four-year $203 million contract with the firefighter’s union to help boost wages and health benefits for staff, drawing from the budget’s general fund.
Cutting budgets for essential public services is stupid, irresponsible, and in my book, criminal.
Britain has had a gut full of it for 14 years under the Tories who believed that what the public wanted was budget cuts to give people tax cuts.
Of course, tax cuts benefit the rich far more than the poor, and we have seen the result in the UK – a health service on its knees, schools and hospitals falling to bits, social care dreadfully underfunded to the extent that people dread getting old and fearful of losing their homes to pay for sky high social care costs.
And let’s not forget the stupidity of letting private companies run water and sewage services, the railways, bus services and selling off land where once we had gas holders, so that now Britain is at risk of the lights going out when temperatures fall below freezing.
And now the super-rich in Los Angeles are getting a taste of the stupidity of cutting budgets of essential services. I heard a report saying that one super rich family had lost a $14.5m mansion in the fire and that it was uninsured. They had not bothered about insurance because they were so rich they could simply build another home.
No doubt this is another example of people who would spend a fortune on employing accountants to come up with tax avoidance schemes. It’s obscene, totally selfish and should be utterly condemned.
The fires should teach Americans another lesson. Looking at the pictures of the houses reduced to ash makes it clear that most are made of wood. All that remains is a brick built chimney and a brick facade. It’s stupid building properties made mostly of wood in dry areas.
When we were holidaying in America we saw an end of terrace house on fire and fire fighters trying to contain it. When we passed by hours later the entire row of houses were gone – because they were made of wood.
We went driving around in Maine into forested areas with many houses surrounded by trees.
Yes, wood is cheap but it’s a case of ‘penny-wise, pound foolish.’
TRUMP’S FROZEN OBSESSION
Still on the subject of America, we hear that crazy “America first” president banging on about wanting to take control of Greenland. It’s all about the fact that under all the ice there are huge reserves of gas and minerals. America is about to get four years with a selfish and ruthless president putting money first and anything and everyone a poor second. If he doesn’t cause WW3 it will be a miracle.
EARTH’S INFERNO
A few weeks ago you read it here first – before it was officially announced by the Met Office – that the world had exceeded the 1.5 degree increase in global temperatures which scientists warned would be the trigger for global weather disasters.
The actual figure is 1.6 degree increase and the prediction now is that temperatures will go on rising for at least another decade unless the world’s biggest polluters, China and India, seriously cut their emissions.
OUTSMARTING THE FLU
There are some nasty bugs doing the rounds this winter – both in Spain and in the UK and it’s important for people to have the relevant jabs when they are offered.
I think it is both arrogant and stupid for people to ignore medical advice and I welcome a statement from Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie begging people to get the flu jab after she spent almost a week in hospital with a chest infection that left her “struggling to breathe”.
Having ‘flu is bad enough but it can turn to pneumonia and UK and Spanish hospitals are stacked with people with serious complications. So…get jabbed!
AUSTRALIAN BUG
Spare a thought for our UK tennis star, Emma Raducanu who has refused to use an antiseptic spray to treat insect bites for fear of failing a drug test before the Australian Open.
The 22-year-old British tennis star said her hand and ankle swelled up but she refused the treatment in case contamination led to a positive doping test.
Can you imagine trying to be your best in a top tournament when you are itching to death from wretched insect bites. Surely medical science can come up with something better than this.
Good for her getting through the first round, despite her bites!
THE SHAME OF LOOKING AWAY
The scandal of the Pakistani grooming gangs who were left virtually unchecked for years to abuse and rape white, vulnerable girls has continued to be very widely reported since the Labour government refused to conduct a full public inquiry.
It has been stated that in more than 50 UK towns and cities, men, mainly of Pakistani descent, carried out appalling abuse of girls, plying them with drink and drugs and forcing them to have sex with countless men.
It has become quite apparent that police, councils and relevant local and national bodies turned a blind eye to the abuse, pretending the girls were the guilty ones because they were promiscuous.
It was convenient to turn a blind eye because they wanted to further the myth that Britain was a successful multi-cultural society. It is now apparent it is far from that.
I was appalled to hear a TV interview with an Iranian woman now living in the UK, who said that she heard what an Imam at a local Mosque was telling young men. That Imam told men that they had a religious responsibility to protect all Muslim women and to ensure they always dressed modestly in public. But scantily dressed white women made it obvious that they were promiscuous, and it was acceptable for a man to abuse them.
This too should be the subject of a public inquiry, and in my view there should be far more control over what is preached in all religious places.
