Here is an example of Neal Stephenson’s writing style that illustrates why I find him so entertaining. It’s taken from Quicksilver, which is a 17th century historical romp scattered with such characters as Newton and Charles II. Here the fictional Jack Shaftoe has signed up to do battle with the Turks who are besieging Vienna, and since they have routed, is doing a spot of looting. A Polish warlord gives him a horse to look after, using him as, “a sort of flesh and blood hitching-post. Jack’s job was to stand still holding these reins until the Winged Hussar came back — all day if need be” when, “the strangest thing Jack had ever seen, certainly one for the book of Revelations: two-legged, feathered, therefore, arguably, a bird” ran past, chased by, “a small mob of infantrymen”.
The bird had gone by very fast, easily out-loping the scrambling, miserably shod pursuers. They’d never catch it. On the other hand, Jack was holding the reins of a horse, and (he began to notice) a magnificent horse it was, with a saddle the likes he’d never seen, decorated in golden thread.
It probably had not even occurred to that Winged Hussar that Jack would know how to ride. In his part of the world, a serf could no more ride on horseback than he could speak Latin or dance a minuet. And disobeying the command of an armed lord was even less likely than riding around on a horse.
But Jack was not Polish scum of the earth, barefoot and chained to the ground, or even French scum of the earth, in wooden clogs and in thrall to the priest and tax-farmer, but English scum of the earth in good boots, equipped with certain God-given rights that were (as rumor had it) written down in a Charter somewhere, and armed with a loaded gun. He mounted the horse like a lord, spun it round smartly, reached back and slapped it on the ass, and he was off. In a few moments he had ridden through the knot of men who were hoping to catch the giant bird. Their only hope had been that their prey would forget that it was being chased, and stop running. Jack had no intention of letting that happen and so he jabbed his boot-heels into his mount’s sides and lit out after the bird in a way that was calculated to make it run like hell. Which it did, and Jack gallopped after it, far outdistancing his competition. But the bird was outstandingly swift. As it ran, its wings splayed this way and that like an acrobat’s balancing-pole. Seiing into those wings from behind, Jack was reminded of decorations he’d seen in the hats of fine French gentlemen, and their mistresses, during military parades: those were the plumes of the, what’s it called the, the … the ostrich.
The reason for this merry chase was plain now: the ostrich, if caught, could be plucked, and its plumes taken to markets where fine things from exotic lands were sold, and exchanged for silver.
I noticed, while preparing this post, that Stephenson writes very economically. It was impossible to edit this quote in any way, and this was the shortest quote from this bit of the story than made sense on its own (and even then I had to introduce the setting). Stephenson makes every word, sentence and paragraph count. There is no filler here. He brings to life a battle scene in a way that dry, historical battle writing never does with its “siezing” of land and “capturing” of cities. He is aware of the importance of the development of freedom and rights that many today take for granted. And he fills his books with characters who make a living by being aware of markets and economics in general. So not only is the setting interesting, he takes interest in, and writes about, the things about it that I am interested in.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Reviews at 7:10 PM EST
No Comments »
The big scandal of the day is that the BBC has aired a documentary about how corrupt and dishonest estate agents are. Try as I might, I can’t bring myself to get very whelmed about it.
I didn’t see the documentary, but luckily the BBC has summarised it in a news article.
My boss congratulates me on getting an offer on a flat that has been overvalued by £60,000. The newly-wed young couple viewing the property are stretched to their financial limit. But my manager is happy.
Who says the property has been overvalued by £60,000? How is that even possible? The value of something is just what people are prepared to pay for it, and this couple were clearly prepared to pay that amount of money. Finding out just how much a buyer is willing to pay is surely the estate agent’s job. If they take any less, they’re surely failing in their duty to their client, the seller.
He takes me aside and explains how to convince a surveyor that the flat in London’s fashionable Notting Hill is worth more than it is.
Isn’t the scandal here that the surveyor, i.e. the person whose job it is to report his opinion of the market value of a property, is so easily influenced by a bit of estate agent patter?
Under-performers are heckled and those who have done the most deals are applauded and given champagne and £50. Young agents in Foxtons exchange high-fives as they swap tales of gazumping and over-valuing.
I’ve already explained why over-valuing is not really possible. What’s this gazumping, then? Wikipedia says, “The verb “gazump” means to ditch a sale agreement at the last minute in order to accept an higher offer. […] When the owner accepts the offer on a property, the buyer has to spend money on a survey and on their solicitor’s conveyancing work, but until contracts are exchanged either party can pull out at any time. Buyers have to wait on average 10-12 weeks to get the deeds to the property, and if the seller is tempted by a higher offer during this period it leaves the buyer disappointed and out of pocket.”
So I can’t bring myself to see how a gazumper is so evil, either. If no contracts have been signed, so no actual commitment to a sale made, you’d have to be stupid not to accept a higher offer when it came through. The fact that the former prospective buyer has wasted money on surveys and whatnot is just tough luck. It was a known risk willingly entered into.
What I want to know is (and this is a genuine request for information if anyone knows): what stops the buyer asking the seller to sign a contract agreeing not to accept further offers for a specified period? That this is not a commonplace solution to the problem of gazumping suggests to me that government regulations (on which more below) are at play.
For BBC One’s Whistleblower programme, I spent eight months investigating the murky world of the estate agent.
This involved spending time in five very different agencies and within days, I got a shocking glimpse inside this largely unregulated industry.
Here we get a first glimpse of Anna Adams’ agenda: estate agents aren’t regulated enough and Something Must Be Done About It!
Together with a BBC colleague, Emma Clarke, I spent three months in Foxtons. Londoners will know the brand by its ubiquitous fleet of branded Minis and the trendy high-street offices that look more like wine bars than estate agencies.
But behind the stylish facade it is easy to see why the company has made its owner Jon Hunt one of the wealthiest estate agents in Britain.
I’m told he encourages his agents to adopt the mantra: “Our clients expect us to go to war for them!” - so it’s hardly surprising the lengths his staff will go to keep the deals coming in.
According to the Sunday Times Rich List, Jon Hunt is worth £345m and also owns independent mortgage brokers Alexander Hall.
So, cutting through the shrillness, Jon Hunt is rich because he encourages his staff to do the best possible job on behalf of their clients. I’m not sure I see the scandal there, either.
I soon discovered his mortgage brokers work closely with Foxtons’ agents. They openly discuss potential buyers’ budgets so they can squeeze as much money out of them as possible.
Some buyers have no idea that the Foxtons agents showing them around properties already know exactly what they can afford.
On the face of it this would appear to be a breach of client confidentiality by the mortgage broker, in which case this is a fair and worthwhile bit of reporting and I expect to see a flurry of lawsuits against the mortgage brokers in question. It’s still not quite a problem with the estate agents, though. My advice would be to select your mortgage broker carefully and not use one that’s associated with an estate agent. It’s quite possible that the buyers signed a contract allowing their brokers to share such information with estate agents, in which case there’s not much of a scandal at all — just a little scandal about sneaking in contract clauses that no-one in their right mind would sign up to. Again, my advice would be to read contracts carefully, especially when hundreds of thousands of pounds are involved, duh!
After an excruciatingly intense two-hour job interview
Well, diddums.
when I tell one of the directors that “failure is not an option”, he looks thrilled.
Hold the front page! Foxtons employ people who don’t like to fail!
Life as an estate agent is arduous. We work six days a week, 12 hours a day. We work together and socialise together, but we are also pitted against one another as we battle for deals. It’s a punishing regime and the pressure is palpable.
Some Foxtons agents earn a basic salary of £10,000 - nowhere near enough to live in this trendy hub of west London populated by City high-fliers and celebrities.
The company demand that you live close to your office and they tell you it should take no longer than 40 minutes to get to work. Clinching a deal is a necessity if you are to survive, and some agents will do whatever it takes.
Yet more whinging from Ms. Adams about what hard work being an estate agent is. I think I’m supposed to get the impression that because they are paid a low basic salary and the rest of their income is based on performance, estate agents will therefore inevitably lie and cheat and scheme, and that it’s therefore all Foxtons’ fault for setting things up this way.
This is the kind of victim mentality that pervades the entire article. The Foxtons employees have choices here. If they find the work too tough they can go and find other work. They aren’t forced into lying, cheating and scheming. “Just following the incentive structure” has got to be an even weaker excuse than “just following orders”.
So what dodgy business have these estate agents been up to, anyway? (Let me remind you that so far the only charge against actual estate agents is working hard on behalf of the client.)
In another Foxtons office, lettings staff jump up and down in delight after they successfully fake a signature on an absent landlord’s paperwork.
Faking documents is something of a habit in the St John’s Wood office, where Emma Clarke worked undercover in the lettings department.
I was shocked when she played me her secret footage which showed staff cutting, pasting and gluing signatures onto contracts. They call it “chop chop”.
I find it interesting that there is no mention of what documents were faked. Surely if it was so terrible, we should know? Could it be that the absent landlord consented to his signature being faked to save him the time and trouble? Still a bit dodgy, but a world away from, say, signing up for a mortgage in his name, in which case surely we (and he) would have heard about it.
Nothing prepared me for working at Foxtons. It’s not just a job - it’s a way of life. Rewards include booze-filled weekends away with management and a weekly breakfast club where you have the dubious pleasure of dining at 7.30am with your bosses.
Oh, the humanity!
The pressure is relentless and even on your one day off, your company mobile buzzes as head office texts you new property details.
Staff turnover is high and new recruits quickly burn out. The staff are young and keen and usually straight out of university - happy to get a job and drive a company car.
So they get what they think is a cushy job, make a bit of money for a while, then realise what hard work it is and quit. They don’t sound like victims to me. This also illustrates that they have choices apart from lying, stealing and cheating.
The maverick owner of T2M, Bruce Burkitt, was fined last year by the Office of Fair Trading after he failed to disclose that a member of his family had purchased a property.
That actually is a bit scandalous, because he might not have acted in his client’s best interests if his family member was a buyer. He was fined for it, though, which is interesting given that the industry is, “largely unregulated”.
I got a job and within an hour of joining T2M, I was shown exactly how they sold their properties. It was simple. Once they value a property and get the owner to use their services, they then lie about offers they haven’t had.
Then after a while, when the owner is utterly desperate to sell, they make up false offers well below the original valuation so the owner reduces the price. The manager called it “price reduction hour” and “vendor care” - everyone else calls it lying.
Finally, a real scandal! Lying to your clients is definitely not acting in their interests. But, once again, the seller should know how much they want for their house. T2M presumably aren’t turning buyers away, so if the seller wants to sell fast then lowering the price is how to do it.
What’s interesting here is the contrast between Foxtons’ and T2M’s approach to business. T2M want to lower prices for fast turnover. Foxtons want to get the highest price possible. If they didn’t, they’d be guilty of what T2M are doing. But Anna Adams criticizes both.
She would no doubt argue that it is dishonesty she is criticizing. In T2M’s case it looks like a fair cop. Making up fake offers to clients who have paid you for their services is surely a breach of contract.
I then joined ranks with a property developer who taught me some other tricks of the trade. It wasn’t long before I found agents asking for cash backhanders in return for cheating owners out of tens of thousands of pounds.
He told me lots of agents would take a cash bung in return for getting properties at knock-down prices.
After just a few days trawling the high street agencies, we found one unscrupulous agent who asked for a £10,000 backhander to cheat a pensioner out of more than £50,000.
This seems like another genuine sccop. It’s not actually said, but presumably the estate agent, who is supposed to be working for the pensioner, told the pensioner, “you’ll never sell at that price, you should take this offer of £50,000 less.” Note that the pensioner still must be prepared to sell at that price, but the agent’s duty is to act in the pensioner’s best interests (whether those interests be a fast sale or a high price). The backhander suggests that the agent has sold out on his client.
The manager of a Chard estate agency branch in Fulham, west London, showed us round a flat worth more than £190,000. Yet if our developer was happy to grease his palm to the tune of £10,000, he’d tell the owner to take the offer of £140,000.
Once again, that £10,000 should rightly be in the hands of the seller, so it’s a fair cop. But the seller doesn’t have to be a victim, he can turn down that £140,000 offer if it’s not acceptible to him.
Months later, we found an agent willing to go to even further. I was totally shocked when we were offered a fake identity in order to get a fraudulent mortgage.
We visited Primetime Mortgage and Property in north London and within minutes of our meeting we were offered a fake British passport, P60 forms and forged utility bills.
I still wasn’t convinced that he’d be able to come through with the passport. But after one more meeting and £550, we had a fake British passport in my name.
It’s interesting that an estate agent would perform this service, but not very scary. The person using the fake credentials to get a mortgage is even more at fault than the estate agent. I can’t imagine the cost of such practices to mortgage lenders being high enough to affect the cost of my mortgage at all. Nope, I can’t bring myself to care about this at all.
The industry desperately needs better regulation and perhaps, like in the United States, estate agents should be required to have a qualification other than a sharp suit.
Whoah, back-up there! What started out as a not-terribly-alarming article about some iffy estate agents has become a call for Government Action, and Desperately! While I fully support the idea of shaming dodgy dealers on TV, why does the government have to get involved? Is it because, hired through the pages of the Guardian as they are, no-one at the BBC can imagine a problem that can be solved without government involvement? Are they so subordinate to their masters The Government that they don’t realise that documentaries like this are more powerful than government regulations could ever be? Here is the BBC educating people on what dodgy estate agent tricks to look out for, and regulations will achieve what?
All regulations will do is create a big paper trail and require armies of inspectors to check up on things and follow the paper trail around. The estate agents, meanwhile, will continue to lie, cheat and scheme. They’ll fake the paper trail just like they apparently fake other documents, and they’ll lie to the inspectors just like they apparently lie to their clients. All this charade will achieve is catch the odd particularly foolhardy estate agent, convince the odd particularly foolhardy client that he can trust his estate agent (because they’re regulated, duh!), waste a whole lot of people’s time and a whole lot of taxpayers’ money.
I told the BBC as much. In their, “your comment” box I typed: “What exactly would more government regulations achieve? People need to take control of their own lives. An estate agent can’t force you into handing over more money than a house is worth to you, and it can’t force you to apply for a mortgate with false documents. If people expect the government to do all their critical thinking for them, they are doomed from the outset!”
So far, the BBC have only published comments of people who agree with them that estate agents are evil and Something Must Be Done.
To summarise, all that’s needed is for people to understand a few simple points:
- Buy a house for what it’s worth to you.
- Sell your house for the amount of money you want in exchange for it.
- Humans have been known to lie. If they tell you an offer has been made, it might not really have been.
- Don’t automatically believe anyone who tells you what a house is worth. The value is somewhere between the lowest the seller will accept and the highest the buyer will pay, and only they really know what these figures are.
Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 12:37 AM EST
32 Comments »
This evening I finally got around to watching the DVD I bought several months ago, Michael Moore Hates America. It was fascinating, and often moving, in particular the part in which a National Guardsman vehemently objects to Moore’s use of his injury to make points about the War in Iraq with which he does not agree.
In addition to examining Moore’s dishonesties, such as the edited Charlton Heston speech and the getting-the-gun-from-the-bank incident, the film is very introspective about the nature of documentary making and debate. After interviewing David Horowitz, Michael Wilson becomes concerned at the shrillness of the debate between left and right, with both sides often claiming that the other is evil. An interviewee says,
If we take all the shrillness out of the debate, everyone’s going to be talking like John Kerry. I mean, isn’t that shrillness one of the colours that makes the whole sport so enjoyable? [Here he launches into a sporting analogy to illustrate his point that I was too lazy to transcribe.]
What’s really funny is: I don’t think Michael Moore really does anything to help his side. I don’t think anybody that isn’t predisposed to believe in Michael Moore is going to come out of a Michael Moore film going, “you know, I never looked at it that way.”
The difference is that Michael Moore Hates America is so self-evidently honest, even to the extent of debating and agonising over its own level of honesty right there on the screen, that it will change the minds of people pre-disposed to believe in Michael Moore.
The high point for me was when another interviewee optimistically implied that everything was okay, because:
And I can guarantee you that if there was a right wing version of Farenheit 911, you know, the same reaction would be happening: “You gotta see this movie, it’s telling the truth!” […] Since we’re seeing so many alternate ideas out there, whether it be on Fox News or CNN, and that we’re not just being served up The Truth by Walter Cronkite, it’s basically forcing us to engage; to actually think a little and not allow for people to just hand us what the truth is. And so it may actually bode well for our future that a freak like Michael Moore can, you know, he may become an unlikely American hero for instigating change.
This is very close to something I’ve often said, but never quite got around to applying to Michael Moore: Because there is bias and opinion in everything that’s ever said or written, we should apply critical thinking to everything. By being so obviously biased, Michael Moore makes that point rather well.
Related links: Two previous Michael Moore related articles: One; two.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Reviews at 12:23 AM EST
5 Comments »
The Alan Bown Set Before and Beyond
