Aspiration morphed into entitlement and lenders fell over
each other to pull ever more risky rabbits from the hat. The earlier lending limits
of two-and-a-half times main salary and a sizeable deposit soon became three
times joint salary, married or not and later increased to four or even five
times and 100%-plus as market values soared. And somewhere in that lot was born
the endowment mortgage. Money for nothing. We should have seen the signs.
Every month you only pay off that month’s interest and
rely on the endowment portion – no need for you to understand whatever the hell
that is - to mature at more than enough to pay off the remaining capital. Hah! Look
at those boring idiots being prudent and using repayment mortgages. Hell, we’re
off on holiday again, buying a new car, improving our lives and it costs us
nothing because it’s property, right? We can keep borrowing against our rising
capital value and not only will our endowment pay off the capital debt, there’ll even be a surplus. Bonus!
Except today, people are still trying to get compensation
for miss-sold endowment mortgages when the small print was there all along;
they have only themselves to blame. Those who prudently stuck with the boring
old buy-what-you-can-afford philosophy are slowly paying off that burden. The
difference? At the end of the term you own your house outright, while the
endowment owners have to borrow still more to make up the shortfall on their expectations.
Sounds familiar? Being in the European Union is like having
an endowment mortgage and the slippery snake oil salesman for the project
promised us something for nothing. One
of them even said , it can ONLY get better. But nobody ever tells you where
this magic ‘better’ is going to come from. It’s like an Ed Miliband ‘policy’,
all hollow words and talk of wondrous things in some far off future to conceal
the lie that a united Europe is impossible without the costly paper tyranny the
unelected in Brussels impose on us all.
British exit from the EU – Brexit – will be like making
the switch to a repayment mortgage. It may cost a little more in the short
term but in the end we will actually be the proud possessors of a sovereign
country. It was never just a common market. Leaving it is just common sense.
