FOR anyone tempted by our endless winter to dream of a holiday home on the sun-kissed Mediterranean, it’s a buyers’ market right now.

Agents are offering seaside villas, flats and timeshares at the lowest prices for years.
But don’t rush, folks. They have a lot further to drop.
The Great Cyprus Bank Robbery has unleashed a property crisis which threatens to engulf not just the siesta states of Southern Europe but the entire eurozone and beyond.
Next in a densely-packed field is Spain with its bankrupt housing, followed by Portugal and Italy. Greece is already a fire sale.
More than four million Brits live in these and other EU countries. Many who swapped their life savings for sun on their backs are now heading home and selling at a loss.
The Cyprus crisis is alarming those in power who hoped the worst was over after five years of belt-tightening austerity.
Instead arrogant Brussels has sparked panic by confiscating cash from ordinary savers, leaving citizens across the EU to ask themselves urgent questions: Who will be next? Is my bank safe? Is my pension safe? Where do I put my money? And could it happen here, in Britain?
The answer is yes.
Indeed, in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis, it nearly did.
Ministers were on the brink of shutting cash machines and freezing accounts to avert a disastrous bank run.
We are still struggling under a mountain of debt.
European leaders hope the price being imposed so publicly and humiliatingly on Cyprus last week will discourage other chaotic eurozone economies.
But by promising more of the same if they fail, Brussels has sent a shiver of fear through the savers in those troubled states where the writing is already on the wall.
Why would they sit back like the Cypriots and wait for their money to be stolen?
For Britain, this is good news and bad news. Much of this capital flight will end up in London because we are still seen as a safe haven. But for how much longer?
Giant banks are little more than zombies... the living dead. Major institutions in France, Italy, Germany —and Britain — would be crippled by a domino-style collapse in Portugal or Spain.
At that point, everything would change. In what would be a financial firestorm, it would be every nation for itself.
In Britain, as in Europe, savings up to £85,000 in any one bank are guaranteed by the Treasury. Anything more is at your own risk.
But those with more than £85k are not necessarily rich. It might be their life savings, to keep them in old age. It could be money for buying and selling a home.
More worryingly, it could be the cash firms need to buy stock and pay our wages.
Thanks to the EU, nobody can bank on savings being safe.
“Cyprus represents a sea change,” says Rob Burgeman, who advises investors. “This is the first time ordinary savers have lost money.
“Britain is not in that world yet but savers in Spain, Italy and Portugal will be thinking about where to keep their money.”
This is the price we are all paying for the great euro gamble. Countries unsuited to a one-size-fits-all economy have been encouraged to break the rules and borrow beyond their means.
Greece, Cyprus and others should never have been admitted.
But Brussels turned a blind eye as Russian oligarchs used fragile Cypriot banks to launder dodgy roubles.
Today we are seeing the consequences in lost jobs, hunger, destitution, ruined lives and increasingly bloody street violence.
Cyprus will not be the last economy to be crushed by the single currency.
Unemployment in the eurozone is 12 per cent and rising. That’s 19million people, many under 25 and unlikely ever to find work.
Is this what the founders of this European colossus, spawned from the wreckage of the Second World War, intended when they promised peace, prosperity and an end to all conflict?
AARTI
PGDM 2ND SEM