Tesco is taking over the world, apparently...

Tesco is building houses now, yes, that is right, they are building thousands of houses in the South East. So soon you will be able to buy a Tesco House on a Tesco Bank Mortgage, kit it out with Tesco Home goods on a Tesco Credit Card. You may be surprised to know, the Tesco bit, I couldn't care less about.

I know the obvious thing is to take shots at how Tesco is taking over the world and how they will have more information on you than the government, etc etc. But frankly it just doesn't bother me at the moment. Tesco doesn't rule to world, it rules the UK. Which frankly is just a slice of the world (even if it is the best slice) the world has many huge retailers and Tesco is just one of them. If it doesn't grow just like the rest of them, it will be taken over by Wall Mart or Macro or something and then everyone in the UK will be out of a job. Not good.

No what I think is idiocy is building houses in the South East... yes, the South East, one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, and they want to put MORE houses in. Presumable they have found a patch of green that still exists.

But this is just the underlying problem. The reason everyone goes to the South East is two fold:

1) all the good jobs are there;

2) because then you can make fun of Northerners.

Usually people go there for one of those two reasons, or a mix of both. And don't get me wrong, we all know bashing Northerners is good fun (in a light hearted manner). You've all heard the jibes... you live in the North if you live anywhere North of Luton and all that.

But mainly people go for the work. All the best jobs go to the South this draws everyone with a brain from the rest of the UK and so as a result everyone in the South can feel like an elite little club and look down on everyone else. But there is a problem, namely this is truely, monumentally idiotic, on a Gordon Brown scale!

The South East has all the good jobs so you HAVE to go there if you want one. This means that the house prices shoot up, because whether you like the place or not you HAVE to live there if you want to earn over £3.50 per annum.

As a result houses all cost £7,000,000 even if it is for a complete dive, it could be a one bedroom flat and it would still cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. This means employers have to pay more and crucially... my main point more of your wage goes on rent/mortgage payments.

So lets look at what would happen if all the jobs were not focused in the SE. Well, your company can afford to pay you ££55,000 per year. They must be able to, because they do. Of this £55, most of it will go on your mortgage, in fact if you had a £600,000 house and you were paying it off over 20 years (interest at 3%) your annual repayments would be £39,931.08. That's right £40,000 of your Great British Pounds just to like in bricks and mortar.

That is £40,000 that you could be spending on real things, but instead you are spending on a roof, that is before you've got to higher council tax, rates, etc.

If however jobs were spread out over the whole country that means there would be less demand for houses and prices would go down. If you buy a house in Wales, the West Country or the North it would cost you a fraction of the price and you would be able to buy somewhere twice as big and twice as nice. More to the point your company is going to be paying you the same amount of money. Lets remember there is no conversion rate for taking your money to Yorkshire, you'll still be on £55,000 per year. The difference is now your house costs £300,000 so your annual mortgage bill is £19,965.48.

So lets sum up, you have the same wage, you have a bigger house, you have more room, your garden is huge, the drive to work involved less congestion (so you have more time) and you now have an extra £20,000 per year to spend on whatever your heart desires! That is a new BMW 3 series every year!

The only people who would lose out are those who have paid off their whole house in the South East already, and lets face it, they are going to be rich enough and probably own a couple of houses in the provinces anyway (which will go up in value) so everyone is a winner.

Finally, I hear you nasally whine "but then I'd have to live in the North". Well even if you do want to assume the North is a dive, filled with the tasteless and the toothless (which I'm not saying it is) as soon as the jobs are moved then the intelligent and the refined will be moving with them... all the fun of the South, but for half the cost. Frankly, I have no idea why someone hasn't done all this before.

Hurray for debates... oh wait, no BOOOO!

The first UK election TV debate ever! How exciting! 10 millions people tuned in, making the first one, the most watched program for the whole channel that night. How exciting, what a way to inspire interest into the election!

Then, Nick Clegg won. I think I was quite interested to see what happened in the debate. But after seeing what happened, I think that they are a bad idea... yes I know, that is because I'm massively bias. That is true, I'll be up front and say that I'm a Tory (despite being of a throughly working class background).

The reason why I don't like the debates (after seeing one) is because of my old simple complaint. Nick Clegg won, no, that isn't the complaint. Why did he win? He won the first debate because no one knew or cared about him. He was a nobody and so when he said something no one really criticised it, because they didn't know enough about him to know all the really stupid things that his manifesto contains. Is that his fault, not at all. But is that a good reason for someone to succeed, not really.

Let me put it this way, the policies that he made were the same ones that existed before when no one would bother voting for him. What changed was that he looked good in the debate. No new policy, no change in substance, just he looked good, he looked new.

As a result apparently he has garnered quite a following amount floating voters. He has even got lots of new people to sign up to vote. Great! most people are thinking, he has increased interest in politics.

But why is that great? The people who are voting for him couldn't care enough to be bothered to look at his policies before and yet they now want to vote. He has gathered to himself, those who can't be bothered to put any effort into voting, the 'he looks quite good' vote.

In short this debate has made politics less about policy and more about personality. This is shallow and pointless. Why not just skip out the debate and decide purely on which tie the leaders choose. Make it even more asinine?

I understand why people don't bother voting, the complexities of the economy are so difficult to grasp not even those who are trained in it get it right (inter alia the recession!) so what chance does Joe Bloggs have who doesn't know how the stock exchange works, has no idea what the IMF does and can't manage his own credit card bills let alone understand our countries credit?

I'm not being harsh, I'm not saying people are stupid, it is just a perfectly valid observation. So why do you want such people to then decide who is best to help the economy recover? Everyone is going to say they know best and everyone is going to say the other party will ruin it. How is the public going to decide? Most of them, on personality and class. The Tories are going to look out for toffs, Labour are going to look out for single mothers and Liberals.... no one knows... or should I say knew. Which is why they were failing so badly. They had failed to ally themselves to a class of the population.

Now they have the young and hip vote... anyone who doesn't really care but has decided they don't like the parties in at the moment because they are too 'mainstream'.

So that is what our countries future is going to be decided on... who has a reputation for being nice to their 'class' and who is seen as a bit alternative, a little bit edgey... suffice to say it 'does my head in'.

Independence for Scotland and Wales... just means Dependence on Germany and England.

I'm not English. Not even slightly, I don't have a drop of English blood in me. No matter which line of decent you follow I'm Celtic through and through, which is why it should be all the more notable when I say: devolution for Wales and Scotland is the most stupid idea around and people who adhere to such ideas probably try to go to toilet through their elbow.

I was listening to Radio 4 today while driving through the countryside, windows down and the sun shining like a bucolic dream listening to people ask questions of the two national parties of Scotland and Wales.

People were asking their usual questions like whether council tax could be frozen etc when someone mentioned how pointless 'independence' for Wales and Scotland is when the power of the UK is increasingly being vested in the EU.

HURAH, someone hits the nail on the head. Don't get me wrong I find is all very amusing that Scotland wants independence now that it has realised that it has a couple of million barrels of oil of its coast but what are they going to achieve if they just become a smaller nameless state in the EU.

Lets be frank, the EU cares about the UK because it is in essence a third of its money. Germany, France and the UK power Europe and the rest of Europe tags along because they get something out of it... usually money in the form of billions of Euros of subsides.

However can you really imagine the EU giving a flying' about Scotland? A country where Whiskey makes up 20% of its exports alone. Don't get me wrong I'm sure Scotland is important I'm sure Wales is important (even if it was left out of an EU map once) but they are more important as a United Kingdom, even in the EU.

Outside of the EU they are meaningless. Are we doing to have Scottish embassys across the world? Do you think Wales would make it into the G8? Do you think Scotland is going to fund its own MI6, MI5 and GCHQ? International influence would become practically 0.

As for influence through the EU, how much less influence do you think Scotland would have in the EU... a whole continent as opposed to the UK which is an island. That is like thinking that you can go into a bigger busier room speak at the same level and more people will be able to hear you. It is rubbish, your voice just gets drowned out. Ironically it wouldn't surprise me if Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland had more influence in the EU through bring part of the UK than they did individually. In other words the sum is greater than its parts.

But what is this desire for independence really about? For Scotland they want to spend their own money on themselves, they have realised they have enough oil to go out for a binge drink and they want to get drunk. They don't want to have to hand the cash over to London who will spent it on defending the country or diplomatic relations, or other things that don't seem to have an immediate pay off, but from which we all benefit.

But lets face it, I know my people. The Celts are a hard bunch, you pick any war that Britain has been involved in and it will always be the Welsh, Irish and Scottish who have done the fighting and won. The English, just point us in the direction of whoever they want us to beat. However the Celts have never excelled at ruling themselves.

The problem is if Scotland does get independence they are just going to cock it all up. They will end up like Ireland, they have independence and they have nearly bankrupted themselves and now they are selling their independence to the EU to be bailed out. So what is the point?

Independence from the UK is just dependence of Germany, only real difference is that in becoming so you lose any influence you had. To put it another way, I can name every country in the UK, I can't name every state in the US, and of the 48 I can I know only about 5 of them matter.