I’ve just read an article on popular UK personal finance site www.thisismoney.co.uk with the headline ‘The House That Lost 40% in Four Months‘.

Sounds ominous doesn’t it.

The headline suggests that a house has decreased by 40% in value in just four months.

But it hasn’t!

Firstly, house prices you see in estate agents are not usually the prices buyers pay.

Estate agents will always inflate the true value of the property slightly so that after some negotiating the vendor gets the price they actually wanted and the buyer thinks they’ve got a good deal.

Someone I know recently paid £205,000 for a house that was on the market for £230,000. That’s over 10% less and surprisingly when the house was valued by the mortgage lender the figure came back as £205,000.

Reading further down the article on www.thisismoney.co.uk it is clear the original asking price of the ‘40%’ property was excessively optimistic.

I would suggest it’s possible the original asking price was 20% more than the actual value and house prices may have dropped by up to 20% in some areas which would lead to a figure 40% lower than the original asking price.

So when an established and much read website suggests such a drastic decline in the value of a London property it’s tantamount to scaremongering.

The article also mentions: ‘Dozens of other London properties have had 20 to 30% carved from their original asking prices after failing to attract interest. ‘

This does not mean they have suddenly lost 20 – 30% of their value, it just means they were overpriced and people just didn’t think they were worth the money.

What this suggests is the house prices could be moving back into the buyers playing field with vendors forced to be much more realistic with their expectations.

I’m what is known as a ‘pescatarian’. I don’t eat meat apart from fish. I’m not a vegetarian or a vegan but I do try to only eat fish from sustainable resources or farms (if you shop at Waitrose, that’s all they sell…).

I don’t make a fuss when I go to friends BBQ’s and I don’t ever try to force my way of eating or thinking onto anyone else.

Strangely, it’s the other way around. My friends often offer me meat and make little jokes about it. After years of outwitting them though, most of my friends leave well alone for fear of being made to look stupid.

Generally I feel good. Healthy, happy, balanced etc. I do exercise regularly and drink plenty of water which most definitely helps (just 2% loss in body water can lead to a 20% reduction in energy!!)

Where is this going? You may ask…

Most Omnivores I know would fight for their right to eat meat. They couldn’t imagine life without it and think it’s just odd for someone to not eat it.

Is this because their mothers fed them meat and two veg for every meal and so they are now adamant it must be the right way to eat?

Is it because Vegetarians have often been portrayed as tree-hugging 9st weakling hippies and no ‘real man’ should be a veggie?

Is meat eating a kind of penis extension?

Hunter gatherers/Neanderthal cavemen may have once been celebrated for ‘bringing home the bacon’ in the form of some giant dead prehistoric beast that was able to feed their families for weeks but in this day and age, there’s nothing big or clever about picking up a slab of beef from a fridge! (OK, shopping is a nightmare and a battle at times but not on the same page as killing for food).

If you research eating meat and the health implications there are plenty of arguments for and against it.

There’s the issue of red meat rotting in the body whereas others claim meat encourages good digestion. Some say we’ve not fully evolved into carnivores whereas others have evidence to the contrary.

One REALLY good argument however, for eating LESS meat is the effect livestock farming is having on OUR WORLD.

Not MY world, not THEIR world but OUR world. Yours and mine and every other bugger under the sun.

If by eating half as much meat as we (as a species, not a race) do now we could help eliminate food shortages and reduce global warming.

Livestock farming is responsible for nearly 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Of the 2 Billion tonnes of grain produced each year globally (in a good year) 760 Million tonnes are used to feed animals! That’s not far off HALF of ALL the grain produced! 

100 Million tonnes has now also been diverted for the production of Biofuels.

‘It turns out that growing corn in the American Midwest takes about as much energy – for making fertilisers and processing the crop – as is saved by replacing petrol on the forecourt.’ (Telegraph)

In fact, I encourage you to read the Telegraph article. It’s quite frightening the double standards in play over biofuels and emissions.

Peat Bogs are being cleared to grow crops for biofuels. By clearing these Bogs, more CO2 is being released than will be reduced by the use of the subsequently produced biofuels burned in engines but because it’s only car emissions that are measured and not the release of CO2 in the process, this absurd practice continues!

For short trips, ride a bike!