Be Excellent To Each Other

It's an interesting philosophical question. Because they don't get banged up once they've killed someone. So can't be murder.

It depends quite a lot on whether they fought for the winning side.

Went to the Christening of the son of one of the NCT group. It was proper good AND there was a bar. Might go over to someone's house later as a party is brewing it seems. Hymns were good as well. No communion though.

... Annnnd the kidnapped British man has been executed by those ISIS cunts.

It's starting to get cold up here again now. I'm even getting ill

That helicopter crash is 1/2 a mile from where I was stopping this weekend. Mskov is still up there.

hopefully her helicopter doesn't crash.

"Saving gamings relics"

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2 ... elics.html

Now they have ripped off TheVision's BeeX WeeX!

5 years until Blade Runner happens!

Just in time for them to film the sequel.

Heh.

I've noticed that future-set sci-fi films now tend to be set a "safer" distance in the future.

That's ok as I ripped off Harry Hills TV burp in the first place.

Those of you who have the pleasure of 'knowing' me on Facebook would have perhaps seen the picture of an old brochure for my university that I shared earlier today. It featured a picture of a certain disgraced Australian celebrity in a promotional context. Much retrospective chuckles were had.

However, the head of marketing just rang me and asked me to round up any remaining copies and burn them, just in case anyone sees it and thinks it's a current document. She was quite serious

Oh, that's special.

It just occurred to me that I'm not Facebook friends with her

You may want to remove said post from Facebook.

You may be right

1) Seems wife can do compressed hours at her work AND still have time to do nursery pick ups and drop offs.

2) I am 90% sure I am in W2 end of next week. Will confirm.

No, you cunt! Come the week after!

Will try and reschedule. Might argue for an overnight.

They've given me a surprisingly good offer as part-ex, interesting...

Wooton, baby!
We're totally going to hang out.

Party on!

I hope you like bread and water though, as if we do go for it I'll be broke

You should all move to the Cotswolds.

I like the Cotswolds. I managed to navigate up a big hill road where my ears pop. The river in Boughton On The Water is as clear as glass with very happy ducks

Bourton, but yes, it's lovely! If slightly full of tourists...

Ooops, Bourton! I can't remember how many tourists were there when we (tourists) visited, but I have a vague recollection that we went mid-week, when it was a bit quieter. I loved the little bridges, and the ducks!

It is a genuinely lovely little place; it's rather an archetypal English village to me. I love places with water in or near them!

oh, me too. Because water often means ducks.

Bonus points for: little bridges (luckily often near water), occasional swans, tea shops, tomato and/or red pepper soup with a crusty brown roll, boutique indie craft shops, small art supplies stores and toy shops. A stretch of grass to enjoy public where people smile is an obvious must. Every bicycle with a wicker basket earns an extra 2 points.

Have you been to Hay on Wye? Outside of the Festival period it's about as close to heaven as one can get - your list plus all the second hand bookshops you can shake a stick at.

No, I've heard of it due to the festival but never been. Five more days at work and I have a week off, Autumn approaches and I need to get outside so I think that sounds like a must-do. Thanks x

Mortgages are really fucking annoying!

House move is still possible, but depends on whether I can get the mortgage, but the house up north is making things tricky...

Can't you part ex that as well?

Doubt they would like that, they don't really want one part ex let alone two! Plus the dude in it has the lease till April.

The part-ex part isn't the issue, it's getting a 95% mortgage on a new build with another property in the background.

Yes they are.

The best offer we got was for an 80% mortgage, the rest would give us anything up to 60%. The property is only worth £227,000 but over 15 years the repayments are quite a lot. The affordability test they do these days tripped us up, they were strict with the percentage of your income they like you to have left after everything goes out of your account, and got hung up on the fact we'd have less than 15% of our net income left a month after all our outgoings. They didn't seem to take much account of the fact that that percentage equated to over £800. I thought a +£800/month buffer was pretty bloody good! We reduced our savings and holiday budget per month to zero in order to secure the 80% mortgage after going through the process with the first bank we spoke to.

In my case the tame mortgage broker for the builders is insisting that it is impossible to get a 95% mortgage on a new build unless you go with either NewBuy or Help-to-buy, and I can't do either of those schemes due to either the second house or the want to part-ex. Apparently they are whole-of-market brokers and there aren't any mortgages out there for me in the whole marketplace. Which is strange as my broker has a couple he is going to put me forward for, and another broker I called up to check has 5 different mortgages on his system that would work in my situation too!

At least their broker has confirmed my affordability, now I just need to get a mortgage offer in principle before I can get back into negotiations with the builders, as they are understandably jittery due to the moronic advice they have been given by their broker. Unfortunately my broker is off on hols till wednesday, so it's all on pause for now.

Worst case is that I try and do a private sale and then go through NewBuy, but the part ex offer is actually more than I expect to be able to get on the open market, and with NewBuy the builder can't top up the deficit with money, as that isn't allowed on the scheme.

I didn't think Help to Buy was bothered about owning a second property? When I was buying this house I was still the owner of my flat (well, still am) and the mortgage companies were falling over themselves to give me 95% Help To Buy mortgages.

(well, until they realised my credit line was knackered thanks to the M5 )

Strange, did you tell them about the other flat? It's one of the first conditions of Help-to-buy, that you don't have interest in more than one property.

Maybe it's because it was up for sale at the time that they ignored it.

If they expected you to sell it to get the house, then that's normal. If you hadn't sold it by the time contracts were exchanged, they wouldn't have allowed you to proceed!

Managed to come down with man-flu this weekend, right before I'm about to spend a week covering our Dublin office. I'm currently sat in Departures at Terminal 2 in Heathrow waiting for my flight. All the other people here are wearing coats and jumpers and I'm in a t-shirt sweating my nuts off. I get the feeling this could be a long day.

Over the weekend I started playing Fallout 1 again (the Fallout Classic Collection was going for 3 quid on Steam)...it really is marvelous, like going back somewhere you've not been for years, fearing it won't be the same but on your return you find it's not changed a bit.

Splendid all round.

It really is so good.

Been off work for a week; now back at work. I don't like work.

Check out the wallpaper on Bing today. It's lovely!

Same here. Had the best week off too, spent nearly all of it in Langdale up in the Lakes in September sunshine. First weekend with Zardoz, Wullie, Pupil and other mates at a music festival up there then home for a few days and went back for a few days more with my wife and daughter. You know you've had a good time when you can get all dewey-eyed with nostalgia for things that only happened a few days ago.

Why aren't the rocks moving?

Bing wallpaper is always lovely. Its my favourite thing about bing and us synced across all my desktops and phone lock screen.