By Lynda Clark, First Time Buyer Magazine With the Halifax having just announced that first time buyers in the Capital will need a £100,000 deposit to get onto the housing ladder, many Londoners may be left wondering how they will ever be able to secure their first home.  There are, in fact, many different ways that first time buyers might be able to find a way to buy a home of their own for less but they may need to...

The safety curtains part the stage like an eyelid. A spotlight flicks on and a woman, barely recognisable from her face or from her tight bandage wrapped body, stands awkwardly and unevenly, gripping her support frame for all she is worth. A voice (Buffy Davis), like the computerised Siri, takes her through the Virtual Reality (VR) world she is about to enter and which may be able to ease the pain from her burns by at least 60%. This is...

By Rebecca Benson Just when I thought women were making some progress towards equality in society I turned on the TV and accidentally came across the behaviour of Stephen Bear on the show Celebs Go Dating. Also known as, People You’ve Never Heard Of Date Other People You’ve Never Heard Of, the programme involves a group of z-listers – 99 per cent reality TV alumni – who join The Celebrity Dating Agency in search of ‘the one’. Over the course of...

Well blow me down and call me Charlie, I think I’m going to have to sell my soul to the devil. When the classist, sexist and maybe xenophobic Satanic antagonist of a show is the only thing that makes it remotely interesting, all my morals go out the window – along with half the cast (more on that later). The Sorrows of Satan is a play within a play, following the eternally broke writer Geoffrey Tempest and his new musical...

Last week, the inevitable happened. The latest figures released by the Office of National Statistics showed that net migration to the UK now stands at 273,000 for the year to September, a massive drop of almost 50,000 from the previous year. In truth, these results should surprise no one. Given the result of the Brexit vote, the endless negative migration headlines in the press and the increasing levels of xenophobia, it’s fair to say that the UK isn’t exactly rolling...

There have been countless columns written about pollinators and their importance and impact on our daily lives and why they should not be underestimated. This topic has become more and more imperative as pollinator numbers have seen a dramatic decline. Over the past fifty years we have seen the localised disappearance of the large garden bumblebee, Bombus ruderatus from Devon, Dorset and Cornwall. The first of this year’s busy bees are beginning to emerge, so what can we do in...

A Freedom of Information request has revealed there has been a massive rise in the number of London’s hungry who have been criminalised and jailed for stealing in order to eat, with the majority of cases pertain to the hungry and homeless taking waste food from supermarket bins. Where will this end? It is only a matter of time before the homeless are jailed and criminalised for their failure to find a home and for causing an offence by sleeping on...

This adorable seal spends its days cuddling — a stuffed toy that looks like a “mini me” version of itself. The seal, believed to be called Hiyori, was given the plushie toy by zoo staff and it was clearly love at first sight as he couldn’t stop hugging it. Super cute photos have surfaced on the internet of the smitten seal holding his new best friend in a loving embrace, and letting the miniature toy ride on its back. The...

By Michael McNulty Maybe you run a weekly Friday Film Night round your place where you invite your friends and screen a film. Only problem is you haven’t got a clue what to screen tonight. Well, worry not, here’s this week’s Forgotten Film Friday pick and it’s a good’un. The Motorcycle Boy Reigns sprayed across a brick wall squeezed between shots of passing clouds opens Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film, Rumble Fish. Coppola jokingly dubbed it an art film for...