The divorce crunch hits home

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Increasing numbers of divorced couples are being forced to remain under the same roof as the house price crisis makes it difficult to sell their marital home.

The credit crunch is discouraging many from entering into expensive divorce proceedings, but those couples who do go ahead are finding themselves unable to sell their shared homes and unable to afford to rent alternative accommodation.

Mark Keenan of Divorce Online said: “If no-one is buying your house, then you either have to stick it out until the house gets sold, or one of you has to move out.

“It’s the expense that’s the problem. Divorced couples are having to stay together unless they can afford to move out.”

Veronica Rose, 51, is in just that situation. Her £450,000 North London home has sat unsold on the market since July last year, forcing her to remain at home with her now ex-husband, whom she divorced five months ago in April.

“I have my daughter’s bedroom now since she went to university,” she explained. “We’ve become quite territorial. The kitchen is my space and the living room is his space. But I feel my space is invaded, which is ridiculous. There is nowhere that’s just yours.

“If I hear him coming into the kitchen I go upstairs to my cell - it is like a cell. If I go to my mum’s I get a sense of dread when I have to go back, like going back to prison. Being away is like being on parole.”

Ms Rose has had to reduce the asking price on her house, which she owns jointly with her ex-husband, from £450,000 to £420,000, and she says she is tempted to reduce this even further if it will facilitate a quicker sale.

But until the house is sold, she cannot move out or move on.

“I want to start a new life, but I’m stuck in the past. All other areas of my life have moved on. This is the key. It’s the bane of my life.”

Many have not followed Ms Rose into divorce proceedings in the current uncertain economic climate, according to research by property experts Savills.

Findings reveal that, over the last 10 years, the rate of divorce in the UK shows a very strong correlation with the average house price, suggesting that many couples are choosing not to divorce at a time when house prices are low.

However, a report published today by relationship support charity Relate puts financial considerations seventh on a list of the top ten causes couples cite in relationship breakdown, behind affairs and violence, but two places above “excessive use of internet”.

Nevertheless, divorce accounts for 6% of house sales in the prime property market, 13% of sales of properties worth between £1-2million, and 18% of houses valued at more than £2million, according to Savills.

Lucian Cook, Research Director at Savills, said: “Finances are clearly a consideration in seeing whether individuals in a couple have the equity to be able to set themselves up as individuals.”

But for individuals like Veronica Rose, they may have to wait for a revival in the housing market before they can hope to move on with life after divorce.

The age of the wiki-media

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If this article were a Wikipedia entry, you could change it if you didn’t like it. Anyone who disputed its veracity, didn’t like its wording, or just downright disagreed with it could simply log in and edit this whole page from top to bottom.

This is what happened to the Wikipedia page of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in the days leading up to and the days following her nomination to the election ticket.

Sarah Palin’s nomination to be John McCain’s running mate was announced on August 29, 2008. In the two whole years leading up to that date, her Wikipedia page was edited about 1000 times. In the single week that has elapsed since, it has been edited nearly 4000 times.

Online logs of edits, stored in Wikipedia’s archive, reveal that mysterious users with names like ‘Young Trigg’ and ‘Ferrylodge’ have spent hours at a time poring over every comma and every fact on Mrs Palin’s page, tidying up and clarifying her information like virtual housekeepers.

Speculation abounds as to the identity of these wikipedian editors, whose overwhelmingly favourable edits suggest they are the work of partisans, if not insiders.

The user 'Young Trigg' – Trig is the name of Mrs Palin’s youngest son – admitted to being a volunteer in the McCain campaign, but denied working for Sarah Palin, despite many of his edits being made in the hours before her nomination was announced.

The user 'Ferrylodge' has also edited Sarah Palin's page, as well as the pages of Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney, as well as the encyclopaedic entries for Republican policy stalwarts such as ‘Abortion in the United States’ and ‘Fetal Pain’. But there is no evidence to suggest that he is a party insider, or anything more than an enthusiastic amateur.

But Sarah Palin (pictured above in a widely-circulated fake picture) is not the only one to have received a Wikipedia makeover.

Two years ago, the page about prospective First Lady Cindy McCain was very sparse, with mention of her adopted Bangladeshi daughter buried among other biographical information. Two years on, now that her husband is running for President, and now that her adopted daughter has been rather shamelessly paraded to the Republican faithful, her Wikipedia page is a lengthy treatise on the many successes of Cindy Lou Hensley McCain, and the adoption of Bridget McCain has its own proud section.

Wiki-policing

Further digging into the bowels of Wikipedia reveals an entire sub-community of online users with weird and wonderful usernames who hold sprawling discussions (pictured, right) about where semi-colons should go on Barack Obama’s page or the quality of the photos on John McCain’s.

Many of these users are self-appointed guardians of truth and neutrality who police the pages of Wikipedia looking for disreputable sources or informational vandalism. Some of these mysterious truth-defenders have been scrupulously editing the pages of both Republicans and Democrats, apparently without bias.

One user, the seemingly neutral ‘Justmeherenow’, has been editing the pages of Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin, adding Obama family photos, helpful maps of Alaska, and links to McCain campaign articles.

Another user, ‘Kelly’, has been defending the neutrality and reliability of both Sarah Palin’s page and that of one time Democrat candidate John Edwards, so much so that she has received an award from fellow wikipedians for her persistence.

A bewildering array of jargon crops up in all these forums and debates. 'Young Trigg' was accused by some of being a ‘sockpuppet’. This is not, as it may seem, a slightly cute, rather arcane insult, but is rather a term denoting someone who creates an online identity “for the purposes of deception within an internet community”, as the glossary explains.

And the glossary goes on. And on.

‘Astroturfing’, for example, is the act of creating the impression that something or someone has more support that it really has by creating false links and references to that page. As well as this ‘deletionists’ can ‘esperanzify’ a ‘stub’, but should be careful (somewhat terrifyingly) of being guilty of ‘autofellatio’.

None of the above bears repeating, let alone explaining…

Inconvenient truths

Wikipedia has grown into an astounding source of information and has become, for many, a bible of encyclopaedic information. As all material is user-generated- that is to say, contributed and edited by layman members of the public – doubts remain about the reliability of information found on the site.

The journalistic world was left red-faced last year when BBC theme-tune composer Ronnie Hazelhurst died. More than a few of the national newspapers cited in his obituary that he was, unbeknownst to many, the composer of pop hit Reach For The Stars by teeny-boppers SClub7. It soon emerged, however, that this was in fact complete nonsense, and had been put on Ronnie Hazelhurst’s Wikipedia entry by a rogue joker, thus revealing the great dependence of modern journalists on Wikipedia over real research.

But most of what appears on Wikipedia about the Sarah Palins and Barack Obamas of this world is probably true. It is doubtful that Ronnie Hazelhurst spent much time checking his Wikipedia page, but it would be naïve to assume that the political big-wigs are equally as ignorant about their own pages, especially when they are running for office in a country as obsessed with the superficial as America. You can be sure that, among the legions of campaign staff at party HQ, there are a few bespectacled internetites who have been tasked to keep the Wikipedia entries of the McCains, Palins, Obamas and Bidens free from scandal and slander.

For example, ‘Kevin0320’, the self-proclaimed “greatest wikipedia person ever”, deleted all the information on Barack Obama’s page and replaced it with a single phrase reading: “Vote for me so I can take away your liberty and capitalism”. This edit was, however, undone within just 30 seconds by an eagle-eyed user.

Who knows what other bits of information have been deleted (or repressed) from Wikipedia’s pages? Were they libellous tirades or inconvenient truths? Were they too far off the mark or too close to home?

Either way, the propaganda machine is always spinning to sweep undesirable truths under the vast rug of history, so when it comes to user-generated information of dubious provenance, be well advised to take whatever Wikipedia has to say on the forthcoming US elections with a pinch or two of salty scepticism.

Gang war claims another life in Birmingham

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The mother of a teenager murdered in a drive-by shooting urged against any revenge attacks for her son’s death yesterday after an escalation of gang-related violence in Birmingham.

Maxine Sharp, whose son Stephon Davidson, 19, died after being shot during a rush-hour car-chase on Monument Road in the city centre, attended a police press conference to appeal for calm.

Ms Sharp, 41, said: “His family wish to make clear that we do not wish to see any form of revenge. One life lost is too many. What we would like to see is those involved in his death brought to justice.”

Stephon’s death is the fourth in a series of gang-related shootings and stabbings in the Birmingham area in the past month in what police are calling “tit for tat” killings.

Detective Chief Inspector Tim Bacon echoed Ms Sharp’s plea for calm, and added: “In any incident of this type, wherever firearms are used, there is always a possibility that people might seek to take the law into their own hands.”

Stephon died in hospital on Tuesday almost a month after the shooting. The investigation is focusing on a silver Toyota Avensis car from which the fatal shots were fired in rush-hour traffic on August 5.

Mr Bacon stressed that the car, which has been recently used in the Birmingham, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire areas, may now be in the possession of “innocent parties”, adding: “We must find this car and find it quickly.”

A major policing operation has been launched in the city to increase police numbers and close clubs earlier in response to increasing levels of gang-related violent crime in the city.

Matthew Sutherland, 29, died after being stabbed outside a Birmingham nightclub on August 17. Marlon Morris, 21, was fatally stabbed in Wolverhampton on August 23, the same night that Dmitri Foskin, 24, was gunned down in the Newton area of Birmingham.

Police believe these incidents are the latest in a lengthening history of gang-related violence in the area.

Two gangs in particular, the Johnson Crew and the Burger Bar Boys, have for many years been fighting a turf war on Birmingham’s streets, which cost the lives of Letisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis, who were shot dead in a botched gang attack at a New Year’s party in 2003.

Mr Bacon said that Stephon had a number of “friends and associates” who belonged to local gangs, but would not speculate on whether he was himself a gang member.

His death on Tuesday coincided with the launch of a trust fund for bereaved victims of violent crime, set up by the families of Letisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis.

At its launch, the local council announced that Birmingham businesses would be urged to offer apprenticeships to gang members in an effort to give the city’s youngsters an “exit route” from crime.

The scheme will initially provide apprenticeships to six young people who have become embroiled in gang and gun culture and will be extended further if it proves successful.

Councillor Alan Rudge of Birmingham City Council asked employers to overcome their “prejudices” and help to steer youngsters away from the “evil people” who control gang-related crime in the city.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith praised the scheme as a “good example” of an alternative way to discourage crime.