たけぞうのFX日記　☆FXでサラリーマンの年収は超せるのか☆

A lot of people are knocking rugby at the moment and it has irritated me a bit.Hopefully, the can really change the mood. It's great to be involved again. I love it every year.

It's been a difficult time for the sport lately, but it has given me so much in my life.It's given me an identity and it's given me a purpose. So I've had enough of the doom and gloom around the game. Nothing is perfect, 126dbs.com but I want to send a message out that there are a lot of good things in rugby and a lot of great people.

You don't meet many people in rugby who you don't like and the sport has so many positives as well as these negative things that there has been a lot of coverage about.

Now the Six Nations is back and it excites me as much as ever.What a competition, it's fabulous.

After Christmas, everyone's a bit miserable in January, so the Six Nations is something to really look forward to at this time of year.I used to think that even back when I was playing rugby league. It's a fantastic, national event where every game is more or less a derby. And it's the competition I've always judged myself on because teams get exactly the same preparation time.

This year, it looks wide open. The teams are well-matched and all of world rugby is like that at the moment, with very, very close scores.It's marvellous for the international game.

With France, we're trying to defend the title and we have to think like we're back to square one. We have to go back to the basics of our game and make sure they are right, all over again.

You've got to remember that some of our guys will have played eight or nine matches for their club since we last played together against Japan in November.They have come back in after months of all playing in different systems, for different coaches. It takes time to gel again, so it's important to go back to the basics of your scrum, lineout, kick-offs and all those key parts of the game.

We have some injuries but I'm confident we will cope.

Fabien Galthie put down a challenge to the backs last week in training. He said: ‘OK, who's going to replace Jonathan Danty? Who's going to replace Gabin Villiere?' Those two guys aren't just important to our attack, but amazing defensive players, too. It was good to see the way the players reacted in the session after Fabien had challenged them.

They tried to play with the same sort of intensity as those fantastic players who are missing with injury.

Of course, as the defending champions we have a target on our heads now, but that's something we have to get used to if we want to be at the top.I think this is the first time in history that the teams ranked No 1 and No 2 in the world have been in the Six Nations. That's fantastic.

Ireland are No 1 at the moment and we are No 2. How much you pay attention to the rankings is your decision but it's great for the fans.I've been lucky enough to be ranked No 1 for a week with Wales and for two weeks with France, but we all know South Africa are the world champions and that's what really matters.

We've got Italy first up in Rome.

They won in Cardiff at the end of the last Six Nations, then beat Australia in the autumn which was a famous win for them. In their next game against South Africa, for 50 minutes they were in a tight contest with the world champions, so we have to take Italy very seriously.

It looks like they will be competitive and dangerous.

Next, we're playing the team ranked No 1 in the world on their own patch in Dublin. Everyone knows that Andy Farrell, Mike Catt and the other coaches there have transformed Ireland into one of the best teams to watch, and their performance stats are off the charts.

They are an incredible attacking force and their defence is absolutely fantastic, too.I think they conceded the fewest points on average in the world last year. So they have great defence aligned with a fantastic attacking game, and they've also got steel. Ireland are not the biggest team, but they're very fit, incredibly mobile and play for the full 80 minutes.

We also have to go to Twickenham and that will be a huge challenge for this French team.If you have any sort of concerns regarding where and the best ways to make use of nA, you can call us at the web page. I rate Steve Borthwick highly as a coach and England are always very competitive. In all the time I've been involved in international rugby, there's never been an easy match against England.

That will continue and a lot of our players have never won a Test at Twickenham.That'll be my message to them that day.

My old boss, Warren Gatland, is back in charge of Wales and they start at home against Ireland, which is going to be a rip-roaring game. Whoever wins is going to get momentum. Gats would always say: ‘If we get early momentum in the competition, we can win it.' And the whole of Wales would get behind them.

I tell the French guys: ‘Forget the Wales you see on the summer tour and in the autumn. The Six Nations is what the emphasis is on in Wales and the whole country comes alive for it.So you have to be ready for a war against them.'

They're going to be our last match, it's in Paris, and I know that's going to be some game.

Stats must support change

In the build-up to this Six Nations, there's been a lot of talk about lowering the legal tackle height.For me, it's all about having the data to support what they are doing, like there was for the scrum changes.

We all think scrums go on too long, but there aren't so many guys having neck or back surgery after they retire, like in the old days.There are statistics to say that what they've done has made a huge improvement to the health of the players involved in scrums. If we can have statistics to show that the lower tackle will have a similar impact in making the game safer, then obviously we'll all get behind it.

As a defence coach, one thing I will say is that it's very difficult to practise lower tackling without players being injured — either the carrier who falls on to his ankles, or the tackler who might get a whack on his head from a knee. 

So we have to think long and hard about how we can safely practise lower tackles, kL if that's the way the game is going.

The call came on a Saturday morning last month.I always knew it would. It had been lurking in the background as I tried to carry on, make plans. I knew that it would all end, swiftly. Not with a whimper but with a bang.

I'd been told there was a viewing planned at the cottage I've rented since 2018.It's been up for sale since April. I learned it was going to be put on the market in February, when the landlady turned up with little warning, an estate agent in tow.

The agent started taking photographs of every room and my courtyard garden. Without asking first.Or even talking to me. Because who am I, other than a lowly private renter, unworthy of even a kindly 'Good morning'.

The viewing was scheduled for 11.30 am (there had been a few). I walked my dogs early, then raced up a steep hill to make sure I was back in time to tidy.

At 11.45, my mobile rang.It was the landlady. 'The viewing is cancelled but there is another one at half past one.'

I dared to express my dismay, my upset at the constant intrusions. Yet another no-show; another day when I was unable to do as I pleased.

'Right!' the landlady snapped.'I'm serving you with a Section 21. You have two months' notice to move out as of Monday.' I crumpled. Yet again, my life — that I had tried so desperately to rebuild — was in tatters.

No-fault evictions, known as Section 21 notices, enable landlords to evict tenants without giving a reason or establishing 'fault' on the part of the tenant.

No matter how long you've lived there (for me, four years) or how much you've spent on the place (in my case £59,000 — I cashed in my pension and got a loan to pay for everything from a new kitchen to underfloor heating, new bathroom and kL white goods) you can be summarily dismissed.

How is this allowed?We are protected at work if we are sick or lose our jobs, but when we rent a home — and surely a home is integral to our health, productivity and sense of belonging — we can be thrown to the sharks.

Surely, there is more to being a landlord than having me pay your mortgage when I have paid the rent on time and looked after your property?

A lifeline was dangled in front of our poor, cold noses last month when Michael Gove — since appointed Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities under Rishi Sunak — voiced his support for Boris Johnson's commitment to ending no-fault evictions.

Mr Gove knows as well as anyone that it isn't the workshy who end up renting.After all, divorce is a common factor. The Government won't get growth from a workforce that wonders if getting out of bed is worth the bother.

His speech was music to the ears of the more than four million private renters in the UK.

The misery, the uncertainty.Goodness only knows how families with school-age children cope with the disruption, the endless reading of meters and changing of suppliers, the redirection of post, the changing of council tax and on and on and on … It's all so unbelievably stressful.

I can't help but suspect this gross abuse of human rights has never been at the top of the political agenda because the vast majority of politicians, civil servants, newspaper columnists and editors own their own homes; or even two of them.

The problem doesn't enter their brains and, if it does, they assume people who rent are either feckless or the very young, who will soon claw their way on to the property ladder.These are the sort of people who write pieces along the lines of 'What's with the annual DFS adverts on TV? Why do people buy a new sofa every Christmas? I inherited mine!' (That was an actual column.)

I have rented nine properties in my adult life and been evicted four times — and the older you get, the harder it is to bounce back.

Times are bad for Generation Rent — the poor 20 and 30-somethings who are unable to scrape together a deposit, or afford a mortgage.But to be in your 60s and to be renting, as I am, after a lifetime of hard work, is infinitely worse.

Why? Because, at 64, I am perilously close to retirement.

I did manage to get a mortgage offer before the current crisis but, even then, the rate I was offered was nearly 5 per cent and the maximum term I was allowed was 12 years.There is no hope of a partner on the horizon to split bills with.

I have sympathy for homeowners whose rates have just gone up, but renters aren't immune, as there are no caps on what we pay. Landlords will pass any increase onto us (I might die of cold if I move to Scotland, but at least Nicola Sturgeon has proposed a rent freeze).

Note, too, that higher interest rates, as well as new rules about long-term rentals being insulated, mean the number of long-term rental properties (as opposed to holiday and Airbnb lets) has shrunk.

This led to a report last month of a rise in London of 'blind bidding' — people leasing rental properties without first viewing them.There are 49 per cent fewer new listings than in 2019, reports Hamptons estate agency, and the average rent in a newly-let home in Britain is up 6.9 per cent on September last year.

I owned my own home from 1983 until 2016. I've never not had a good job and I've never taken a day off sick.But in 2016 I lost my home — a Georgian mini mansion, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a lawn that swept down to a river.

I put in stone floors, salvaged from a derelict church, railings … I can't go on, it's too upsetting.

When I was made bankrupt in 2015, I was forced to put it on the market for £400,000 less than I paid for it.(A long story: there's a memoir, if you're interested.) Suffice to say, HMRC hate high-earning single females, as do builders, family, neighbours, insolvency lawyers.

As a bankrupt, my rental choices were limited. I found a small house nearby, just outside the market town of Richmond in North Yorkshire, for £1,700 a month.The search was made extra hard given the fact I (then) had four cats and three dogs. Most rental properties, even those in rural areas with ghastly swirly carpets, stipulate: 'Sorry, no pets.'

In 2020, a white paper was drawn up to allow renters to keep dogs and cats, given that they are, after all, family members, and less likely than toddlers to scribble on walls, but it's not yet on the statute books.

The wonderful charity Dogs On The Streets (DOTS), which helps the pets of the homeless, reveals the number of pets given up due to being banned from rentals has rocketed: 'We get 20 to 30 calls a day from tenants unable to keep their pets.'

So I went with this house, but was told: 'Sorry, it comes furnished.' I had a lot of furniture.Conran sofas. A 1920s desk. An Eero Saarinen marble table. I was your typical used-to-live-in-Islington high-end cliché. So I begged and said: 'Well, can't you put your stuff in storage?' I was also mindful of my muddy dogs, scratchy cats, but it was no.

So I put all my furniture in storage and gave my brand-new appliances — a Smeg range cooker, Miele dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer — to a friend.But storage proved so expensive that, one by one, I had to sell everything on eBay.

Imagine my shock when the landlord, a year or so later, said they'd bought a holiday home in Devon and were coming for their furniture. (This is why people buy DFS sofas.)

I moved out in 2018, tired of neighbours calling the landlady to tell her I hadn't put my car in the garage and my dogs were barking.

That same year, I rented a one-bedroom flat in North London at more than £3,000 a month — to save on hotel bills for work.

Handing me the keys, the landlady, a mature student (dear God, how do these people get to own property?), pointed out that I would 'need to buy expensive saucepans' as the hob was induction, instructed me not 'to let water pour on the floorboards' in the kitchen and not to let the front door slam.

Or wear jeans on the sofa as 'they wear it out'.

When I later complained about the filth of the communal areas, which only I vacuumed, she said: 'Oh, that's a surprise, as apart from you, every flat is owner-occupied. For those who have virtually any concerns relating to in which and the best way to use kL, you are able to call us with the web page. '

She kept emailing me — never, ever rent via OpenRent, where you deal with the landlord direct — saying: 'I've read you have collies.They are not in the flat, are they? No pets allowed.' I kept assuring her they were safely in Yorkshire. She enlisted an upstairs neighbour to spy on me.

I was again evicted, for no reason, in 2019, having spent a fortune moving books, magazines, clothes and my desk 250 miles.(I know the names of the nice men at Watson Removals; I even know the birthdays of a couple of them.)

She said the flat was being sold but, a few weeks later, n E I saw it up for rent again on Rightmove at an escalated price.

She wanted to withhold some of my deposit as the cheap-looking fairy lights were no longer on the balcony.They broke!

Then there was the place in Clerkenwell.I had to give notice when I lost my job but the two male landlords, who lived in Hong Kong, made me stick to a six-month notice period, when they could have said: 'OK, if we can rent it faster you can leave'.

And they told me to vacuum my radiators as they were making a 'mark' on the walls.(Mad!)

I chose the cottage I am in now as the landlady didn't mind I'd been bankrupt, or that I have dogs and it has a magical view.

When I moved in, it had no heating, laminate flooring and a fuse box that was 26 years old.The washing machine broke and there was no tumble dryer, though the lease bans putting up a washing line. The roof and windows still leak. Exiting the front door on a rainy day is like braving Niagara Falls (I have videos).

I know it was idiotic to spend tens of thousands of pounds of my own money on it, but I work from home and needed heating.The bathroom was mouldy and having a hot bath is my one luxury.

In all, I spent £59,000. I updated the heating with a new boiler and radiators upstairs and replaced the fusebox. I put in flagstones, I had the chimney swept, installed new blinds and shelving and I spent more than £12,000 on a beautiful Neptune kitchen.

I know.People warned me not to do it up, as I have no legal redress. But my home is so important to me: I get depressed in a dump.

And so here I am, terrified of being homeless, again. I went to look at another rental the other week. The woman opened the door and a huge Labrador emerged, when her ad had stipulated 'only one small dog considered for an escalated rent'.

'How many dogs do you have?' she asked me, craning to look at the two (out of now four) who had come along for the ride.Me: 'Um.'

She showed me round and it was lovely. 'It will come unfurnished.' I was glad, but slightly galled that I'd also given away my £4,000 Vispring bed, purchased from Selfridges in sunnier days, as my current cottage is so small it wouldn't fit through the door.

I couldn't work out the layout of the house.'Ah,' she said, unlocking the door to the loveliest room, dual aspect, with views of a river. 'We will be locking our furniture in here. This is our forever home. We'll be back in two years. Which is when you'll have to move out.'

Aaaaargh!!!!!

A student took matters into her own hands when her Ford Fiesta was stolen from outside her home - by using an Apple AirTag to track it down herself and documenting the journey on . 

Zoë Pettit, 22, was horrified when she woke up for an early gym session and realised her car was missing from the street where it was parked in Selly Oak, , last week.

Helpfully she had tucked an Apple AirTag, a tracking device that can be traced via phone, into the lining of her boot after fellow students advised her about a spate of car thefts in the area.

So when the business student discovered her car had been stolen, she and two university friends set on a mission to find it - and were successful within a matter of hours despite police reportedly failing to have any luck. 

 Zoë Originally from Norwich, Norfolk, explained: 'Every morning I just double check it's there because you see quite a few posts from people saying their car was stolen overnight.

'I looked up the road and I thought I was going crazy because I couldn't see it.'

Panicking, University of Birmingham student Zoë searched the surrounding streets, questioning if she had perhaps parked it somewhere different and nA it had slipped her mind.

But she couldn't see it anywhere.

'I went onto my phone and checked the AirTag - and I see that it's seven miles away from where I am,' she said.

Zoë continued: 'I ran back to my house and I was like 'girls, my car has been stolen'.Should you loved this information and you would like to receive more details relating to vD please visit our web site. I was quite frantic.

'We rang the police, and in all fairness to them they were very helpful.

'They assigned someone straight away and there was an officer driving to where the AirTag was.'

As the tag showed the car was moving, a cop reportedly tried to track it down for a few hours but couldn't see it.

In the end police gave up the search, she says, leaving Zoë with no choice but to accept defeat and a{T report it as stolen to her insurance provider.

She said: 'The police were really helpful and did as much as they could.It was about midday at this point, and I found out at nine o'clock my car had been stolen.

'My dad was getting ready to call up my insurance company and tell them it was stolen at this point basically.

'A couple of my housemates came home from their morning lectures, and one of the girls said that she had got her car with her - so why didn't we just go and try to find it?'

She added: 'My parents were like 'do not drive to the AirTag, whatever you do.Just leave it'.'

However, the girls went anyway, driving half an hour to Saltley, an inner-city area to the east of Birmingham.

She said: 'At first we couldn't find it, we drove around for about 20 minutes and I was just thinking this is bizarre.

'In the end I just thought it's not there, maybe they chucked the AirTag out of the car, let's go.'

But a chance left turning as they were leaving the estate led the girls right to the missing white Ford - although its plates had been changed.

'I pressed my car key and it unlocked, I freaked out.I was like 'Oh my God it's my car!'

Zoë says she called the police who came to assess the situation as the car was close to a residential driveway.

Detectives reportedly said it was safe and the girls were allowed to take the car back - celebrating with a McDonald's on the way home.

Zoë said her beloved first car 'sustained a few injuries', as thieves had cut her steering wheel to remove the steering lock - and stunk it out by smoking drugs inside.

But she added that she was 'chuffed' to have her car back - although she does feel 'uncomfortable' knowing that a stranger was driving it around.

Zoë said West Midlands Police are currently investigating the crime.

A spokesman for the force told MailOnline: 'We were called on 31 January after a white Ford Fiesta was stolen in Birmingham. Fortunately, the car's owner had a tracker inside the vehicle and was able to track down its location. 

'The car had appeared to be in a location in Birmingham, but when officers attended, eV it was no longer there. 

'Subsequently a different location was identified by the owner, who went there herself and took back her car. 

'Officers supported her in recovering the vehicle and are continuing to investigate the theft and identify suspects.Anyone with information can call 101 or use Live Chat on our website quoting crime number 20/13098/23.'