Enjoy the holidays

Seriously, do.

Eat, drink and be merry. Be nice to family and friends if you can. Get over the cloying schmaltz of the season and roll with it. Allow yourself to be suffused with fellow-feeling.

Because I am fearful that this could be the last opportunity for some indulgence for a little while.

Next year we'll see jobs lost. Many of them. Houses repo-ed. A spike in the dole, the homeless, deprivation and poverty in general.

The credit bubble is over and now the bill's arrived. Many people literally won't be able to pay.

It would be nice to think that as a society we can look after the less fortunate in hard times. But that's not the sort of society Ireland is today. Perhaps it was once. If so, that was quite a while ago, and to be honest, I don't remember.

After a decade of gombeen government and PD-brand Thatcherism, we're all out for ourselves now. I've already overheard conversations between people discussing where they hope to buy repossessed houses on the cheap. It's sickening, but that's life today in Ireland.

It will get worse before it gets better. That's the nature of these cycles.

I really hope people throw themselves into Christmas this year, learn to reconnect with each other and get a perspective on true value in society. It might turn out to be the difference in how we survive this depression.

I also hope that people push the boat out one last time this year. A little irresponsible indulgence on top of the already preposterous national credit bill won't make a massive difference. And it might keep a few people in jobs who'd lose them otherwise.

See ya next year. Be good.

Thanks for the Emo, Chum

A little light relief from the ongoing abortion compromise debate.

Fianna Fail's token West Brit Martin Mansergh issued a press release a few days ago on the death of some old lad who had once upon a time handed over his stately home to the Irish nation.

Fair play to him. It's the rare person would give their home to the state. You'd always be fearful that Bertie Ahern might set Celia up in it or Brian Cowen would move into it, or the Greens would turn it into affordable housing for asylum seekers or something..

I'm showing my immaturity here but I'm not the only one to find the concept of a gaff called Emo Court amusing, I reckon.

But the best bit is the name of the former owner. You couldn't make it up:

It is with deep regret that Dr Martin Mansergh, T.D. Minster of State at the Department of Finance with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works and the Arts, heard of the death of Mr Cholmeley* D. Cholmeley-Harrison of Emo Court, Emo, Co Laois. In an act of great generosity, he donated Emo Court and Park to the people of Ireland in 1994.

Imagine Mr Cholmeley meets Ms Harrison. They fall in love, and have a son together, born of their love.

"What shall we call our darling boy?" asks Mrs Cholmeley-Harrrison.

"Why, Cholmeley, of course!" replies Mr Cholmeley-Harrison.

Major Cholmeley Dering Cholmeley-Harrison.

Is there a crazier name in Ireland, I want to know? Of course, it's still nowhere near as mental as these loopers.





*Cholmeley is of course pronounced 'Chumly'.

And so it begins

Yes, people. The peace dividend has arrived.

450 public sector jobs to go in the Housing Executive. That's nearly five hundred people sacked from only one state agency.

How many do you think will be sacked overall, once this wave of 'rationalisation' is complete?

See, what people never realised was that there was in reality a civil war dividend in Northern Ireland.

The stipend from the UK to the province was estimated conservatively at £6 billion. It didn't all go on security. It also went on the most bloated civil service in the Western world.

That's coming to an end. For sure, in order to bribe everyone to stay inside Stormont, there will be a few hand-outs from London, Dublin, even from America and the EU.

But in the long run, this is the future. The over-reliance on state and semi-state sector jobs is a thing of the past.

Expect much weeping and gnashing of teeth across the six counties as people are weaned off the teat of cushy state jobs for life.

It's not going to be pretty.

Top Quality Property Porn

I love property porn. You know the stuff: it comes in a colour supplement in your weekly regional paper that's longer than the paper itself is.

Before they get to the actual adverts, which funds the whole thing, there's a few pages of blatant fluff masquerading as reviews of newly available property.

No matter what the economic climate, never mind if there is an enormous property bubble popping around your ears, what you'll read in property porn is always universally positive.

If prices are collapsing, then property porn will tell you 'this house should be of interest to investors and first time buyers, offering unprecedented affordability in this much sought-after area."

If it's a derelict flat in a slum redlight district, it will be described as "offering a unique opportunity for a developer in an up-and-coming area of town."

If you're particularly gullible or unintelligent, you may not have worked out that all this property porn is either directly written by the estate agents themselves or else has been lightly adapted by hacks and shills masquerading as journalists.

But most of us are a lot smarter than to be taken in by this gushing, lying, overwritten shite about shoddy, sub-standard, overpriced housing.

It's a lot of fun noting how shrill and desperate the tone of property porn has become, how the page lengths are dropping alongside the prices, and how terrifyingly upbeat the tone remains, reminiscent of the grin on the face of a Club Med holiday rep watching helpless as a load of boozed-up lager louts pick her up to throw her into the pool.

But even more fun is this hilarious pastiche of a contemporary property ad, produced by Maxdiver, one of the regular posters on HousePriceCrash:

Great new property investment schemes now available. You've seen it on TV - now experience the joys of Property Investment.

With Mulligan Property Investors all your dreams can come true. In the North Coast's most popular investment Village - Causeway Glen a new way of life is coming. A great new development will be opened in 2009 - and it's surely the most popular residential concept Northern Ireland has ever seen.

The demand for these great Nest Egg investments has been extraordinary. With all units having been snapped up within minutes of having been up on sale - we aren't making this up. But don't worry - you can still get in on the action.

To help the savvy beginning professional Property Investor get rich quick we Mulligan Property Investors are giving 1,000 lucky investors who thought they missed out on the bargain of a lifetime - the chance to share in the success of Causeway Glen.

Listen to this great deal: For someone starting out in the making money business, Pay only £500 per month + the cost of the £249,950 loan for a 1 bedroom town house and you will buy this great high quality life-style investment in 2009 when the development is complete for the same £250k.

Prices range from £249,950 for chic 1-bedroom town houses to £1,499,950 for a 6 bedroom Mansion with Double Garage.

You stand to benefit enormously from this limited offer - with house prices having risen and according to respected commentators in the media - to keep on increasing - you need to sign up with us today.

Imagine how great it will feel - knowing that for only £500 per month you can share in ever growing prosperity.

Hurry - this is a limited offer - and any Property Investor worth their salt is rubbing their hands with glee.

And if that isn't enough - all investors will recieve a free iPod shuffle and 10% off the cost of fitting upstairs curtains!

MPI have over 100 years experience in making people fabulously wealthy through property - with over 30 eager staff - give us a call and see if you are the type of person who knows a good deal when they see it. Call us now on 02890-xxxxxx. You'll be glad you did.

The boom keeps getting boomer!

As if the ongoing housing market collapse wasn't enough, now the government have the following little problem of rising unemployment to contend with.

Most concerning is the fact that these jobs are being lost in the services sector, the area we were supposed to excel in after abandoning our manufacturing base and most of our agriculture to elsewhere.

There is now a sizeable segment within Fianna Fail who appear to be unhappy at the prospect of having to clean up the economic mess they themselves created. For them, the smarter move would have been to lose the last election, and then cast Fine Gael and Labour as a bust coalition once again.

Thanks to the hubris of Bertie and his unshakeable desire for a third term, they're now stuck with having to deal with falling house prices and rising unemployment, while trying to keep the three mutually unintelligible aspects of their coalition - the Greens, the PDs and the FF genepool independents - all happy.

It's gonna end in tears.

But for Bertie, sure he can just hand the poisoned chalice over to the anointed successor and vanish, a la Tonee B-liar, off towards a happy twilight on the international statesman equivalent of the chicken and chips circuit.

Rumour is he fancies the Euro-presidency. Nice work if you can get it. So for Bert, the boom just keeps on getting boomer, just as long as he can keep nasty Justice Mahon away from his financial details.

For the rest of us, falling house prices, significant unemployment, inflation and economic difficulties lie ahead.

Direct rule scum start squeezing the pips

It comes as no surprise to see that the direct rule paperpushers are seeking to implement a truly outrageous 20% hike in local housing rates.

This of course comes on the back of a previous 12% hike, and the fact that water charges were removed from the rates to be made their own separate charge, the injustice of which I have previously mentioned in recent times.

By my basic maths, if someone was paying around £500 in rates for their average Belfast house (see image) two years ago, then they're looking at a combined rates and water charges bill of somewhere in the region of £790 this year, a whopping increase of over 50% in only two years for a service no better than it was before.

Oh, and of course that would increase to £1,026 by 2009 (a doubling of costs in only four years), and probably by a minimum of 30% or more again in 2010 when houses are again revalued for purposes of assessing these charges.

These increases are not aimed at providing better services to NI householders. The water charge wheeze in fact will almost definitely result in worse service, according to research into previous examples of water provision privatisation in other locales.

No, these charges are simply aimed at reducing Northern Ireland's resource drain on the British taxpayer. In short, London is tiring of us and intends to tax us out of the United Kingdom if necessary.

However, devolved authority in the Assembly would have the power to overturn these appalling attempts to extort money out of people who simply cannot afford it, especially those who are asset-rich and cash-poor as a result of their family homes rocketing in value in recent times.

It is now essential that all the Northern Irish parties come out and categorically state what they think of these arbitrary and scandalous hikes in charges, and what they'll do about them if elected.

Floating up the Lagan in a bubble market

Just when you thought there was nothing about the Irish property market that could possibly make you raise an eyebrow, along come the kind folks of the University of Ulster with their quarterly house price index to tell you that wartorn backwater Northern Ireland is currently experiencing the kind of precipitous increases last seen when people in Dublin first started talking about tigers.

That's Ulster, you know, the economically bereft, paramilitary plagued zone of bitter religious strife. Where the majority of the GDP is produced by the government paying for state jobs.

Yup, the six counties have apparently managed to move beyond the stereotype by becoming a more expensive place than Wales, Scotland or even Northern England in which to buy a house.

Quoth the good professors, "The average house price now stands at £180,128 up by 32.1% on a year before and up by 11.9% over a quarter."

Rockefeller knew he was in the end of the bull market when his shoeshine boy was offering stock tips.

Surely a bubble market in Belfast is a sure sign that the Irish property bubble is set to pop at last?