Off-licence booze is cheaper in France, especially wine for obvious reasons, but then they don't have the pub culture that we do. Also I'm reliably informed that wine in restaurants there is horribly overpriced (much moreso than over here, even). Basically the way to eat and drink well in France without taking out a second mortgage is to buy good ingredients and wine in a supermarket and cook at home.
It's another case where it feels a lot like a ladder being pulled up. Looking around Cambridge, you really get the feeling that to own some of the reasonably nice victorian terraces you either have to be super rich or just have bought it thirty years ago. And I can't imagine that it's going to be long before a lot of young people start to ask why they're working their guts out and making big sacrifices to be able to afford half as much space as the old lady next door has...Young people in this country (incl. me) are fucked...
Drinkin ur wine.In your cheaper flat...
It's another case where it feels a lot like a ladder being pulled up. Looking around Cambridge, you really get the feeling that to own some of the reasonably nice victorian terraces you either have to be super rich or just have bought it thirty years ago. And I can't imagine that it's going to be long before a lot of young people start to ask why they're working their guts out and making big sacrifices to be able to afford half as much space as the old lady next door has...
Drinkin ur wine.
I guess this could be three things: regulation of private rent so that you can't charge more than a going rate for a certain size of property in a certain area; abundant social housing (as a percentage of the fixed total number of flats) that keeps private rental rates in check by competition; or simply far fewer super-rich people in Paris than there are in London. Or some combination of the three.
And the incongruous thing is, houses are the only commodity that have increased massively in value over the last generation or so without either getting appreciably 'better'
Actually houses are getting worse- average square footage has decreased for many new builds whilst number of bedrooms (which developers use as a key guide to price- estate agents use square footage) has gone up.
We've just moved out of our Victorian terrace into a 1970s house and the difference in build design aesthetic is alarming (low ceilings, room compromised due to poorly designed stairwell, box like rooms).
It has got even worse since then (up to the late 1950s were the golden age iirc).
The commodification of house buying has driven rising prices as well as the fact that people don't understand how the house market works and feel that increased equity in current house= £££££ (hence increased household debt), without understanding that all houses are rising in price and if they move the debt is transferred to the new house rather than paid back.
Banks, of course, don't mind this one bit as they have the property as security (we don't have the subprime issues the USA does).
It also had those infuriating little windows above each internal door (what *exactly* is the point of them, does anyone know?).
Maybe in some cases, but I grew up in a house built in the 70s that had these windows. I think their real purpose is to alert parents to their offspring's status of awakeness/asleepness, thereby allowing them to exercise further draconian control over them.
Warm air systems are mainly found in 1970s homes, fact fans
Really? OK, I'm sure the house was fitted with radiators from when my parents bought it though. Maybe not.
They don't build houses any more, only units.
I thought those windows are for letting light into windowless hallways.
See also: very loud extractor fans that come on when the bathroom light is switched on and stay on for about an ice age after it's been turned off.