POLITICS - money, or lack thereof

Is it me, or is stuff going up in price all the time? I'm not an expert on economics, far from it, but let's take rice for example. A Tesco Value 1kg bag of rice costing 45p in April now costs 95p, and in the Philippines in May, the Thai Prime Minister visited the President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at Malacañang Palace to discuss supplies of rice, and also visited the Rice Institute in Laguna Province in the Philippines. Now two rice producing countries getting together to discuss this must mean something's up, and it's going to affect the world economy.

Most everything else is going up as well, fuel prices making it more expensive just to get to work, and bus fares and train fares rocketing.

In the US, the housing market has apparently gone pear-shaped (not that I follow that sort of thing much), and it's having a knock-on effect here in the UK. Northern Rock has effectively become a nationalised bank, with billions of tax-payers' money propping up a bank that's likely to fold/be taken/over/merged anyway.

The only thing I've noticed going down are property prices. Various figures I've seen quoted are that housing prices may fall by 5% or 9% by the end of the year. Let me cite however an example of a house I recently spotted in the window of an Estate Agent in a normal shire town in England; it was put on the market recently with an initial asking price of £295,000, slashed to £275,000, then subsequently to £235,000 and is now displayed at £215,000. I'm not a mathematician, but that's way more than 9%. Other houses similarly had thousands slashed off the prices. And it's not good for estate agents generally. Overheard on the train a couple of days ago: an estate agent for a well-known and wide-spread chain of estate agents on the phone to his colleague, explaining that although they were the best performing branch in the area, they are under immense pressure from head office as they have only got four sales since the beginning of the month, and some of the other branches have struggled to get one. And the way it's going, it's really the wrong time to be shopping around for a house anyway, as it's nigh impossible to get a mortgage, as the banks close ranks.

The only property that'll carry on as normal at the moment will be domain names, I presume. Some people make money through cybersquatting, and though it's ethically not necessarily a nice thing to do, I have hedged my bets and have acquired www.damonlord.co.uk and www.damonmlord.co.uk in the hope there will be another similarly monikered person like me who might want to make an offer for the domain names.

I sometimes what Gordon Brown's government is supposed to be doing to help the cash-strapped Brits of this country; after all, he's supposed to have been the Iron Chancellor. But I see no support from the Government apart from please to business not to put up wages. I honestly don't understand macro-economics, but I would have thought putting up wages would put more money into the economy, revitalising it.

My advice? Budget very carefully, if shopping, shop around for bargains (eBay and other such sites will be markets that'll ride this economic crisis out), and tighten the belts. I'm starting to get a little portly, so I might lose this beer belly yet, and it'll be the economy that'll do it. Give it two or three years if looking for a house as hopefully the markets will have settled down by then, and banks will start to loosen up and maybe consider mortgages to mere mortals.

In the meantime, we're in for a tough couple of years.

Good luck.

Now, where can I register petermartinovic dot SK in order to sell it on to Peter Martinovic at a profit? (evil laugh)