With 28 minutes to go as I write this, I would hazard a guess that the 7-up gang for tonight’s televised debate are starting to feel just a little nervous. Dave, Ed, Nick, Nige, Nicola (she of the helmet hair), Natalie and Leanne, (go on, a fiver if you can give their surname and political party without a second thought… a fiver my money is safe…) all get to prance and do their own version of Britain’s Got (Limited) Talent this evening. I don’t wish to pin my political colours to the mast, but I do predict that all those taking part will try their hardest not to answer a direct question with a direct answer. I predict that the line, “That is indeed a very serious issue, but first, let me say this…” will be used (or a variant of), with such frequency that by the end of the debate viewers will be willing someone to answer with, “Will you just %^&* off”. For those of us who watched the Jeremy Paxman, “I’m still alive, my…is bigger than yours” Show, that was masquerading under the pretence of being a serious question and answer session allowing the public to make an informed decision come 7 May, I don’t think that I was the only person who longed for the Prime Minister to tell Paxo what a stupid question it was to ask him if he could live on a zero hours contract. No sane person, what ever their political pedigree would choose to do so. Interestingly, the same question was not put to the fratricidal-leaning, honk-nosed one. Incidentally, for all our younger readers, zero hours contracts are not an invention of the current millennium, they are what used to be called casual labour. The main contender for the keys to Number 10 seem to run scared of even possibly causing upset to any fraction of the franchised masses.
What has this got to do with estate agency? Well aside from my forthcoming peerage-Lord Cheshire of Cwmbran- The Big C to those who have known me some time, I remember the days when there were only ever two parties that could be named by the man, woman, child or dog in the street. This was about the same time that there were only three estate agents in Cwmbran. Now we have as many parties as Snow White had Dwarves and there are nine estate agents in Cwmbran. All competing for the same public vote, be it to elect them as leader of a G8 country, or to sell their house. I empathise with our political colleagues because in the beauty parade of estate agents that all vendors are entitled to carry out, no agent really wants to tell the home owner that their property is not worth as much as they thought, and if telling the truth, running the very probable risk of not getting the instruction. Fortune does favour the brave, but as the gang who will have the studio lights blazing down on them as I finish typing this, it is one hell of a gamble to take.
