by Henry VIII live at the Glee Club Cardiff: the full set on flipping eight hundred monasteries and the deposit as the modern dowry
Cardiff! Croeso! Settle, settle, I have news. I am WELSH. Technically! The Tudors came out of Anglesey. My grandfather was Owen Tudor of Penmynydd. I have come HOME, Cardiff. And like every Welshman returning from London, I have arrived with no money and ENORMOUS opinions.
I toured your castle this morning. Lovely walls. Drafty. I have stayed in worse and I have confiscated better. They told me it now belongs to the people of Cardiff, and I said that is the most radical redistribution since MINE, and mine at least kept the lead roofs.
The Original Property Developer
You have a housing crisis. I know. And I have come tonight to take responsibility, because I invented the business model. In the 1530s I acquired eight hundred monasteries. I evicted the tenants. I stripped the assets. I sold the sites to men with connections at court, and within a generation they had turned abbeys into private mansions. I did not dissolve the monasteries, Cardiff. I FLIPPED them. I was the first man in Britain to look at a place of worship and think: en suite.
Every landlord you have ever emailed is my spiritual heir. The buy-to-let portfolio. The luxury conversion of a building that used to serve the community. The sitting tenant problem, solved with muscular efficiency. It is all in my paperwork first. When a developer says he is UNLOCKING a site: my phrase. I unlocked Fountains Abbey with a crowbar and a royal commission.
I saw a listing this week. A studio flat. Nine hundred pounds a month. And the studio was a converted CHAPEL, and the agent called it a development opportunity with original features, and the original feature was God’s disappointment. I recognised the wording, Cardiff. It was MINE.
Debasement For Beginners
Money. I debased the coinage. Proudly! I took the silver out of the shilling, replaced it with copper, and the copper wore through on my nose on the coin, and the people called me OLD COPPERNOSE. Disrespectful. Accurate. And the last honest financial journalism this island ever produced.
But I look at your economy and I BOW. I debased the currency once, with a hammer, and history calls me a villain. Your institutions found a way to do it continuously, politely, at two percent a year, and they call it a TARGET. I called it an emergency. You call it Tuesday. I stole the silver like an amateur. You did it with a spreadsheet. And nobody even got a nickname.
The deposit is the modern dowry. Hear me. In my age, a family saved for years to present a dowry and secure a child’s future. In yours, a family saves for years to present a deposit and secure a one-bedroom flat above a vape shop. And the dowry came with an ALLIANCE. The flat comes with a service charge. At least the alliance was fixed rate.
I attended a flat viewing. Research. Thirty people. One staircase. A room the size of my second-best wardrobe. And a child in a suit invites us to submit best and final offers by five o’clock. BEST AND FINAL? I have besieged TOWNS with that phrase. A sealed-bid process for a one-bed flat is siege warfare with laminate flooring. And the defenders had already sold to a cash buyer from London, which is also, historically, how most of my sieges ended.
And renting! You pay a lord monthly for land you will never own. You request permission to hang a picture. You fear the inspection. You can be removed with two months’ notice. In 1530 we called this VILLEINAGE and even the reformers were ashamed of it. You call it the rental market, and there is an app. The app is new. The rest of it my lawyers largely drafted.
Homecoming Terms
But Wales, you played the long game and I am here to declare you the winner. Your castles were built by my English predecessors to hold this country DOWN. And now England maintains them, at ruinous expense, as tourist attractions. Wales has made England pay for its own occupation, one gift shop at a time. Shrewdest settlement in British history. I claim it for the family.
A man in the third row is whispering that his landlord is actually very fair. Sir. SIR. That is what we called a good lord in 1520 as well, and we still built the castles facing his house. Fairness with a break clause is a truce, not a peace. I signed truces with France that lasted longer than your tenancy agreement, and at least France never kept my deposit over a mark on the wall that was, and I quote five centuries of tenants, ALREADY THERE.
A Word From Our Sponsor
Tonight’s sponsor is The London Prat, the only London property you can still get into for FREE. No sealed bids. No best and final. No chain. Original features throughout. And yes, this week I visited a mortgage broker. Name: Tudor. Occupation: king, retired, returned. Previous address: Whitehall, deceased. The rate he offered was so high I asked if he trained under Thomas Cromwell. He said no. Cromwell trained under THEM. Bohiney Magazine rang the man to confirm the quote. He stood by it.
Cardiff, nos da! I am off to confiscate the bar. Old habits. GOODNIGHT!
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
