You are right Janimal "People are excluded from the system" and that is what scares me so simply because for the last eighty years yours and my systems have been "The people." No Real Monarchs, No Dictators but the people have been making the system run like a train on the tracks Democracy made way for the hope that mankind were finally making headway into the future and now only the top two percent really have any say at all?

This cannot and will not stand you do realize that right? Never in the face of history has a dominating force managed to oppress the will of the people and now on a global scale. Always money and power have tried to dominate the world and always the weak have rose up to take their place in history.

I'm sorry to ramble but the look in my grandfather's face when he asked me that just the other day I cannot get out of my head. I myself am not rich and probably would not even qualify for middle class so I have a wife and family to think of.

Those days that will come when if you miss one payment on your mortgage then they default or they cahrge you a thousand dollars as a late fee.

I suppose I worry a litttttttttttle tooooo much.

i don't think so - as i said - landlordism is back, and we'll all soon be modern day equivalents of tenant farmers. except we won't have the sherrifs men stealing our grain and setting fire to the thatch, we'll have banks kicking us out of our homes by way of debt.

have you see john pilgers pieces on the world bank and imf? very illuminating. youtube 'pilger obama' and 'pilger imf'.

the world would be a better place if the pilgers of this world had more of a voice, but of course they are excluded by the likes of the murdoch machine and bbc, because they are now nothing more than mouthpieces of the system. i think the bbc had its last teeth pulled when cameron came into power in the uk. ironically pilger is a german name meaning pilgrim. poignant, eh?

one of my favourite quotes is by one of the instigators of the french revolution:

the people will never be free until the last king is stangled with the entrails of the last priest

slightly different scenario, but the message is the same - its all got to go - leave any remnants of the present unworkable system and it will simply bounce back. thats one of the scary things - it all has to be fundamentally rebuilt from the ground up, and such quantum shifts are hard to achieve.

I cannot think of a way.

Without a sizable deposit, and a good income, it would be impossible for anyone ~ particularly young people ~ to buy property, whether it be just the land or with a ready-built house.

Apart from the actual purchase, there are all the fees: valuers', surveyors', solicitors', planners', etc, etc.

Even well-educated, well-qualified people are often only able to get bar work or the like. Many people now seem to be on part-time contracts, so their guaranteed salary is relatively low.

The only way that young people will get a chance to buy is if they inherit money, or are given a gift by parents ~ but that would only be possible if the family were quite well-off.

My parents were against being in debt, but still had a mortgage, because, unless one was rich enough to be able to afford property it was the only way to buy. They did not want to waste their money renting, when their money could go off the mortgage instead. They paid it off as quickly as they could, though. My Dad built the house my mum lives in now and there is no mortgage on it.

Dear Mongrel -

It must be so hard on your wife to know she is losing her sight and to have the tumor exacerbate things. I cannot even imagine what I would do if I were in that situation. With all the advances they are making there is not some sort of a solution? I guess we are still a long way from an "artificial eye" but it does seem like we are at least taking steps in that direction. It's a shame that the steps she is taking to handle the deterioration may have lead to another issue.

I think there's a substantial difference between the situation in the UK - where so many people are fighting for space on a tiny island - and in the US. In the US we have oodles of land. There are vast wastelands of land. In many towns they are so desperate for residents that they literally give away land as long as you promise to build a house. You could put up a tent for all they care. They just want people.

In the UK it seems that there are so many people - and such little land - that land prices are absolutely astronomical. Only the rich can afford land and even though they get tiny amounts of land. It seems that even a small house can cost a million US dollars, because there is such competition.

And we have to get permission to build, which involves all sorts of fees.

PDM - here's an article on free land -

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/us/26revenue.html

Many towns in the US are vanishing because people are moving to coastal cities. So the inner-country towns are desperate to have people there. If you UK residents moved to the US you could have gigantic plots of land

I'm not sure that they would let us in. And would there be jobs?

Deena's condition is called Retinal Degeneration which means that the Retina eventually gets so thin that it starts to tear, and tear, and tear, and each time it tears it detaches which puts the optic nerve in danger.

We have flew all over the country (Atlanta, Miami, Spokane, Etc) nultiple times until we finally found a little Jewish Doctor named Doctor Aaberg, at Emory, that took apart my wife's eyes and put them back together and saved them. Her left eye had already suffered poor surgery attempts before Dr. AaBerg got ahold of it.

Thank you for your posts.

wow mongrel what a amazing an courageous story ...i certainly will keep positive thoughts for you and yours ...and thanks for sharing the story and info...