BigZopa.com
I’m convinced that Zopa is working. I get a good return and judging by the number of people who apply for loans who have good credit ratings, it provides a service for discriminating people who need to borrow money. I tend to think that anybody can lend money to those with bad credit ratings.
At present Zopa has a borrowing limit of £15,000, but what if you created BigZopa.com and had a limit of £1,000,000. You would obviously need a lot more money to be paid in, but it would be an interesting place to put corporate money.
The economies of scale would mean that the system would cost about the same to run as the current system. But it would obviously cost a lot more for the due diligence.
But BigZopa.com will come.
Incidentally, BigZopa.com is available to register. Try Low Cost Names.
Travelling in Style
This picture shows the typical way I travel.
Lotus Elan, Brompton Bicycle and a Paul Smith Case
The Elan was built in 1991-92, whilst the Brompton was made around the turn of the millennium. The case is newer and was a present from my son.
There is space in the boot of the Elan for a lot more than just the Paul Smith case and the Brompton. I actually think that you might get two Bromptons into one Elan.
What is my next trip? Not sure, but I really would like to circumnavigate the Baltic, taking in St. Petersburg.
Ryanair Cuts Flights at Stansted
Ryanair has announced that it is cutting flights at London Stansted this winter.
Michael O’Leary blames the British Government’s Air Passenger Duty and high charges at the airport. He’s probably right to a certain degree, but in the statements of his, I’ve heard, he doesn’t blame the recession.
I do!
I also think that people are thinking much more about their holidays and travel plans. I travel to Holland quite a bit and although, I can fly, I prefer to drive using Norfolk Line from Dover to Dunkirk. It takes a few hours longer, but then I live alone and enjoy a restful drive through the countryside. And if I pick my times right, I can even get across the Dartford Crossing with ease.
You have also to look at the economics.
A typical low-cost flight on Ryanair or EasyJet costs about £70 return, which is about the same as the cost of the ferry. So with the ferry I have to drive perhaps another 600 miles, which costs me about another £70 for diesel. But then it costs me at least £30-40 to park at the airport and then there is the train trip at the other end.
So although the low-cost flight is nominally cheaper, it’s unlikely there is more than about £30 in it. And of course the whole thing is blown apart if I need to hire a car at the other end.
It does take longer, but then I’m in comfort and I haven’t had to get to the airport and wait for a flight at some time that is inconvenient to everyone.
But where it gets interesting is that in my last trip to Holland, the car was quite full, in that I had a couple of boxes and my Brompton bicycle.
Try taking that on Ryanair with their 10Kg limit!
Petition to Number 10
SAF on the UK-Coeliac list has posted this.
I have composed a new petition to the prime minister to deal with.
This petition requires 500 signatures to be effective so looking for a lot of support.
The petition can be found on http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/allergenlabels
If the EU has its way, then such things as maltodextrin will be considered gluten-free, for labelling purposes. That may be so, but it still doesn’t alter the fact that I react to it.
So please sign the petition. After all the next ingredient foisted on you might be something that you object to!
Forty Years On
It was enlightening to get The Times out for Monday, the 21st July,1969.
The edition is historic because of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon and now that I have yesterday’s reprint of the 5 a.m. edition of parts of the paper, I now have three different copies with different headlines.
- Man lands on the moon with perfect touchdown
- Man walks on the moon after Eagle’s perfect landing
- Man takes first steps on the moon
But what of the other less well-known stories in the paper.
Before I start, I should say that The Times in 1969 cost just six old pence or 2.5 pence in today’s coinage. Well, not really today’s coinage as the halfpence was abolished in 1984. Today paper costs 90 pence, whereas adjusting for inflation the 1969 edition would cost just 32 pence.
So it now costs almost three times as much.
But perhaps it is bigger. Yesterday’s paper was 104 tabloid pages and the one forty years ago was 26 broadsheet pages, which equates to 52 tabloid. So the modern paper is twice the size, but not three times. I should say that I have ignored the extra supplement in the older paper, as this by chance happened to turn up on the 21st July, 1969.
I’ll start with that supplement. It is a very interesting document as it is a special report on Decimal Currency and Metrication. Some points from the document.
- Britain thought about going to decimal currency in the nineteenth century.
- The Board of Trade recommended going decimal in 1951.
- Patrick O’Leary made the prediction that the half penny will be unpopular. He was right there.
But it is in the field of metrication that the document is most interesting, with this paragraph.
The change to the metric system is more profound and complex than decimalizing the coinage. There is no simple way of saying that such-and-such will happen: it certainly cannot be done by diktat. The impact of the change will be spread widely through the economy and widely through time. Nevertheless, the Government has set a target date – the end of 1975.
So we’re still waiting for the abolition of Imperial units, thirty nine years later. I used to work for ICI and they went metric in 1955. It may be a hobby horse of mine, but in a few days I will return to this scandal.
Note too in the quote the ‘z’ in decimalizing and the colon. English has changed.
So what else can I find in the old newspaper.
The only other story on the front page concerns Senator Edward Kennedy and his involvement in the death of Mary-Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. He is still in the Senate.
There was the usual crop of stories about NHS problems, strikes, celebrities and politicians. John “Reggie Perrin” Stonehouse was the Postmaster General was arguing against more hours for ITV, as this might harm the BBC, Myra Hindley had just got an O level and the usual crop of dictators were featured. So little has changed.
But I did like the story about the “Tyres slashed on 40 cars”. There wasn’t any vandalism in the 1960s was there? In this case it was in Fowey in Cornwall.
And the one on the sports pages entitled “Racecourse managers need a new image”. Some still haven’t got the message. There was also an encouraging report on how, Britain’s Davis Cup team should get to the final! So we’ve got worse at tennis! What’s new? The great Ron Hill was running marathons, like I think he still runs regularly.
If you ever get a chance to read papers like these do. It’s the nuggets that amuse and educate.
Upward Mobility
There is a lot of talk on the news today about how there is less social mobility. The first paragraph on a BBC report says.
Top professions such as medicine and law are increasingly being closed off to all but the most affluent families, a report into social mobility will say.
I came from what would be described as a strong middle-class family, with both Jewish and Huguenote roots. Both my parents were reasonably intelligent and they had a very strong work ethic. I certainly have the latter and wouldn’t have got where I have, without masses of long and hard work. Now, I did go to a very good grammar school and this helped, by giving me a strong believe in myself and also some very sound career advice in choosing engineering.
The latter choice I’ve never regretted and I would recommend it to anybody, who is that way inclined, as it is often a pathway into all sorts of related careers, if after training, you find you don’t like getting your hands dirty! I’ve also heard stories of how people with engineering degrees have got golden hellos to join various companies. Surely a bonus in times like these, where students leave university with large debts in addition to their qualifications.
My late wife actually had two first degrees; Politics from Liverpool University and Law from UCL. She then went on to be a successful barrister.
Her parents did own their own house, but could never be described as well-off. If she hadn’t been able to get into the local grammar school and then get a full grant to go to university, she would not have gone. She said so very often, as the government brought in loans so that they could spread higher education thinner and thinner.
I do find it strange that this government, many of whom got their start in life because of the system of grammar schools and university grants in the thirty years after the wars, have destroyed the system that gave them their start in life.
Apollo 11 Lands
Exactly forty years ago today, Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
My wife was still in the Middlesex Hospital with our first son, who had been born on the 16th. There was no reason for them to stay that long, except that partly that was the way it was done in those days and also the hospital was rather short of clients. They were actually phoning round other hospitals and it appeared that everybody was holding back giving birth, as they were waiting for the landing.
My wife and everybody else in the maternity unit actually crowded round the television to watch the landing. I think that some of them actually watched the moonwalk later.
Immediately, the landing was over, the phones started ringing and all hell broke out in the unit and by the morning they had beds in corridors.
We’d also put his birth in The Times and I still have two copies of the paper for that day.
The Times - July 20th, 1969
He is still the only birth I have seen in The Times, out of alphabetical order.
The paper on the left is actually a 4 a.m. edition. Does The Times still have one now?
One little incident that a friend remembered was that they interviewed a mother, whose baby was born on the 21st and they asked her if she was calling her son, Apollo. She said she was going to call him Paul.
The Anonymous Widower 