Ben Reeve Lewis Friday Newsround #184

[Ben Reeve Lewis finds he is a failure ...]

Well its that time again. The last newsround of 2014.

Believe it or not I actually miss writing it at Xmas as its become so much part of my routine and being of a fidgety nature I find it difficult to just sit and watch a film, especially the crap they have on at Xmas. Its all kids stuff, even on Film 4.

Last week I saw a headline in the Mirror which yelled in an outraged way “64% of Xmas TV to be repeats”…….er excuse me???? Hasn’t it been this way since time immemorial?

Morecambe and Wise, Only Fools, The Great Escape. The only film I actually look forward to is “Bad Santa”, because of the way it takes an almighty dump in the middle of the TV schedules, albeit usually about midnight when the kids are in bed.

God bless Billy Bob Thornton.

Tessa is going to do a look back over 2014 so I thought I would get out my crystal ball and take a look forward to 2015.

Ben on the Telly

On a personal level it will mean a lot of TV work. This Thursday I got filmed for a one-off BBC documentary on Generation Rent to air late in January and my team are having to work around a Channel 5 crew filming a 6 part series for Autumn and Panorama, doing a one-off on rogue landlord enforcement.

I also had a meeting at Broadcasting House on Tuesday for Radio 4. It seems the heat is stacking up with so much media interest in PRS land leading up to the election.

Said big election will obviously see all sorts of promises on the rental market front as politicians try to weigh up the voting power of the private tenant-base, a movement I think they have woefully under rated so far.

UKIP’s housing policies (and I use the term in decidedly lower case) will probably consist mainly of “No foreigners-Period!”

Useless politicians

I loved Russell Brand’s description of Farrage on Question Time as a “Pound Shop Enoch Powell”,  followed hot on the heels by the resignation of that idiot Kerry Smith for airing views more redolent of a Benny Hill Show than modern politics, and look forward to the ongoing and flagrantly shameless back-biting as the Tories try to reposition themselves as a moderate right wing voice to claw back the ground being made by UKIP.

Nick Clegg is already distancing himself from Cameron in his statement of the 7th December written up in the Guardian:

“It is impossible to balance the books, remorselessly shrink the state, deliver unfunded tax cuts and protect the public services that people treasure”.

The Scotsman went even further with the headline:

“Coalition at war after Nick Clegg savages the Tories”

Shame he didn’t manage to “Savage the Tories” in the past 4 years. Standing in the wings waiting to see which way the wind was going to blow.

My prediction is we will hear a lot more of these kinds of critical statements as Clegg vies to slough off the image he has gained as a ‘Wotless’ (Frazzy assures me this is a Caribbean term) side-kick and re-brand himself as a credible politician in charge of a credible party.

Sorry if I sound a bit Russell Brand myself but honestly, is there really anything to choose between all these jokers and their tired ideas?

Cameron and his ‘keeping rich mates happy’ policies – re-treads from the years of Thatcher, Major, Ken Clarke etc, or the clueless Miliband?

Come on. He looks like a scared teenager from Dulwich College, being robbed of his ‘Mummy-bought’ top of the range mobile phone in Rye Lane Peckham on a Saturday afternoon. Too dumb to keep it in his pocket.

Can you really imagine him standing up to Putin? Or even the Straw-man Farrage come to that.

Now our Nigel has potential and comedy value.

Funtastic Farage

Could UKIP make more of a pigs ear of it than Labour or Tories? They could make a Jenkins Ear of it though. In the 1700s Britain went to war with Spain for 11 years over a diplomat having his ear cut off.

THAT’S the kind of pointlessly entertaining thing Nigel could drag us into and which is a lot more interesting than the lies and self-serving pigs-trough politics presented by Cameron and Milliband as they try to hoodwink the great British public into thinking that every decision they make is to help the people of the nation whilst in reality ensuring their friends and family are sorted for annual directorship income of a million pound plus for 2 hours work a month.

In fact I may rescind my promise of a few weeks ago to vote Labour and vote UKIP instead, just to watch the unfolding comedy sketch.

Farrage dragging us into war with New Guinea over some international slur on coconuts. Alternatively we could watch as he attempts to annexe Leicester for having an “Excessive turban count”.

Why would you want to face the next 5 years of Labour’s whining and conservative dishonesty when you can have Farrage acting as an international idiot that makes Berlusconi look sane and capable?

The end of letting agents?

My attention was drawn by Tessa’s weekly roundup to an article in the Guardian about the possible death of the high street letting agent in 2115.

Next year will see the introduction of a range of online service that both find tenants for landlords and set up tenancies at a fraction of the cost currently on offer.

Even Easy Jet’s Stelios is getting in on the act.

What surprised me by the article was hearing not just that Foxtons charge £420 to tenants (I already knew this having once made the mistake of walking through their wine bar doors to make an enquiry……”Thanks for your time” being my reply) but that they charge the poor landlords £2,448 for tenant find and management fees.

Well not for much longer. Lest anyone should think that this may be a fashionable blip, read on. The article points out:

“Last month the marketing boss of Confused.com was taken on by PurpleBricks, and industry observers are likening it to the moment when the price comparison sites wiped out the traditional insurance broker.”

Calls by a variety of groups for fairness of letting agent fee structuring will see the industry hoist by their own market force petard. No need for government to step in at all.

Of course lettings agents aren’t going to walk away on such a lucrative market without a fight next year but be prepared for a range of interesting price and service wars until landlords and tenants get the message and break the stranglehold.

Quality Service

Frazzy’s business is a case in point. Expedia et al have seriously dented the high street travel agency business as people book online but she is a personal travel person. She aint cheap but she can get you out of a far flung country on an unknown plane at 2am in an emergency while you continue to sup a cocktail in the bar and find all sorts of nice extras and bonuses unavailable without specialist knowledge.

When the Icelandic ash cloud stranded people all over Europe 4 or 5 years ago she knew a small airport in the south of France that was getting planes up. You don’t get that with E-Bookers.

My prediction is that those that survive in 2015 will do so on quality of service to both landlords and tenants…so maybe there is something to be said for this market forces malarkey after all and I would genuinely like to see the death of high street chains who have too long survived on name alone and the concomitant rise of small, independent local shops, in touch with real landlords and tenants in their community. Stelios aint gonna manage it all by himself and ‘No frills’ isn’t always what people want.

I want to work with agents who don’t hold the view, as one high street chain agent manager said to me whilst negotiating in a dispute “In my opinion all tenants are scum”.

You are a dinosaur my man and I look forward to seeing you queuing up outside the job centre.

What made me smile this week

The Chartered Institute of Housing finally paid me for a consultancy job I began in April and finished in September. There’s nothing like a prompt payment…..and believe me theirs was nothing like it.

I had to threaten to virtually burn their offices down in order to get paid for Xmas. A professionally suicidal move meaning I will never be offered consultancy work with them again, having pissed off their admin manager with threats of a formal complaint but what the hey?

This unexpectedly late yet timely bonus allowed me to buy Frazzy a vintage style Dansette record player and a bunch of soul singles from the 1960s for Xmas. She has always had a passion for vinyl and old school soul and 40s and 50s R&B and is an accomplished Lindy Hop dancer.

Also I learnt to play the deceptively simple and yet tricky turnaround to ZZ Top’s ‘Waiting for the bus’ and ‘Jesus just left Chicago’. Two songs my guitar buddy Andy and I will be debuting at a variety of blues jam nights in the capital as 2015 progresses, regardless of whether or not Nigel Farrage gets to don a purple velvet cloak and wave a constantly inebriated gloved hand at the hoi polio before outlawing people who smell of foreign food.

Have a good new Year