And now the fuse is lit...

Karmacat wrote: »

A helpful GP is worth their weight in gold. It's great if you think you've landed a good'un

I'm not quite that confident yet. But it certainly was a change to have someone real answer the phone straight away when I rang (the first time it was engaged). The GP seemed nice enough as well - though with a sample size of 1, it's possible I just hit lucky.

Previous practice was: "You are call 754 of 2,178. Your will-to-live is on a bearing of 2-1-8 and a distance of 714 miles, rising to an altitude of 37,000 feet... You've been on this phone way past the time any appointments will still be left... Your call is important to us..."

Once you take into account "practice groups" and catchment areas - "Yes we serve your town, but not your part of your town..." there is surprising little choice in GP practices in a lot of areas.

Butti wrote: »

I have no doubt you have planned for this Mr Z.

Why do you think that? I'm surely not giving out "organised" vibes am I? :eek::eek::shocked::eek::eek:

It's still irritating though...

beanielou wrote: »

I am sure that you are on a fix.

No, I'm not. I looked at the fixes and decided that a fixed 3 years at 1.75% followed by a variable 4.5% (:eek:) was far less preferable to a variable of 1.85% for 25 years.

It actually doesn't end up as that, as it's an offset anyway.

To be fair, I did expect this, as I am of the opinion that Carney is a moron.

edinburgher wrote: »

The impact of the interest rate rise on the cost of :spam:

I would like to be optimistic that we're in a world where interest rates will normalise

Oooh hell no!

If interest rates normalise, we'll be looking around us and saying "This handbasket gives a really comfortable ride." and "Does anyone smell smoke?"

These are the days of putting off the day of reckoning for as long as humanly possible. Normal is dead.

edinburgher wrote: »

and things will all tick along merrily, but reading articles about UK plc's !!!! poor productivity and the joy of Brexit still to come, I cannot help but feel that we are going to go the other way soon enough.

I would act defensivly about brexit, i.e. not get into loads of debt etc, but I would be very hesitant to make predictions about it. After all, the only real thing which actually happened after the vote (as opposed to "the great and the good" shrieking around like young girls meeting a spider) was that the Italian banking system promptly caved in.

Nobody predicted that one.

What makes it even worse in terms of prediction is that many things are dependent on "installed" bureaucrats who don't have to listen to people who work for a living. People in fantasy land make poor decisions. What may crimp their style is losing preferential access to the capital markets, which Carney made a very veiled hint about a couple of weeks ago.