LoungingLinda

I heart the Bank of England.

A couple of months back i was so worried that our mortgage fixed-term period was coming to an end (4.39%) and that all the newer rates available to us were at the 6.5+%.

Thanks to the ever-changing Bank of England base rate drops, my Standard Variable Rate will switch to NOT 7.5% (which is what it was originally), NOT 6.0% which they indicated in a letter a month ago, but 4.75%! Haha. That is even better than any mortgage deal i could currently sign up to, and with talk of interest rates dropping even further, sitting on a Standard Variable Rate is a bit like sitting on a tracker mortgage.

If you have a UK mortgage, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
If you don't, then let's just say I'm looking at around £50 per month more to pay on my mortgage instead of around £300. Yeehar.

I  have saved up £700 towards this baby, but as i want the 24", 3.06ghz, 750GB variety, i have about half of what I need... roll on xmas money (which incidentally still won't cover it... so I just need to be patient. Sell more stuff, save more money.

I was way tempted to buy it on hire-purchase, but this is hardly the time to be making additional monthly financial commitments.

*sits on hands*

"It works like this: if you use Flickr, go to the sixth page of your photostream and pick the sixth picture there, then post it to your blog, and pass it on to six other people."





I tag rhibops</a> ,</div>fabrabbit , lala_a_gogo , tinyredrobot , michellembelle , minniepigeon 

This is NOT a good time for the 4.39% fixed interest rate on my mortgage to be coming to an end.

We have about 86% LTV - if you know anything about mortgages. And unless you've had your head buried in the sand regarding the credit crunch and general economic gloom and doom, you'd know that anyone with more than 70% LTV is NOT going to get a competitive mortgage deal. All the deals around for me are 6.5% with fees of £1500+, not to mention the hike in my mortgage payments and the deals with cheaper fees seems to be around 7%+. The bank of england dropped the base rate to 4.5% this week, and if it gets passed onto consumers at all, i've no doubt it will be to the lower risk  with 70% LTV. oy vey.

I've been seriously depressing myself this weekend, reading up about The Great Depression and what caused it and i really worry we are headed in the same direction.

who is your secret crush? I want names and pictures...

guess who mine is...

A while back I posted about a TV idea I was pitching to one of my clients that was inspired by the big choreographed set-pieces of old Busby Berkley Hollywood films. Thankfully they bought the idea and we are soon going into production. Our producer put the script out to a number of directors who specialise in liveaction/animation styles and to my utmost pleasure we have bagged the director who produced Strict Machine for Goldfrapp!

Happy Birthday to my favourite dolly couturier. Hope you're having a 'trif time on holiday (emo hair and all lol)
Let's have another dolly picnic when you're back on Ole Blighty. xx

Friday will forever be etched in my mind as one of my most memorable life experiences. The meeting with the Dalai Lama took place in Oxford with other families of British who were in Tibet before the Chinese Occupation in 1950.

My grandfather was part of a British Mission that travelled to Lhasa in Tibet in the 1930s. He was stationed in Lhasa as  Radio Operator, reading Tibetan news in English for the outside world as well as bringing news to the Tibetan people. Interestingly, he is described by the Chinese as an imperialist and a British Spy which he was not. In Tibet he met a young Tibetan girl - my grandmother whom he married and had 5 children with including my father. My family left Tibet just before the invasion and settled in Kalimpong, India, where my grandfather died not long after as he was crippled with arthritis.