A Discussion About the Falklands
During part of the Falklands War or soon afterwards, I was at an Artemis Users Conference in Denver Colorado.
After dinner one night, four of us, got together and had a few drinks. The other guys were the Project Manager of the McDonnell Douglas Harrier program, a guy with a similar position at Long Beach Naval Shipyard and a banker from New York.
The banker kept on about us needing a nice big flat-top (aircraft-carrier) with a few Tomcats and that would have dealt with the Argentines. I wanted to stand my British corner, but really didn’t know what to say. In the end the other two Americans, just let him have enough rope and then they played their card; the awful weather. One said that the weather reports from the Falklands, they’d seen, were so bad, that the only aircraft you could take-off and land back again was a Harrier.
The banker wasn’t seen again that evening,
Top Cat Returns
It would appear that the latest film is a remake of the kids’ cartoon, Top Cat. It’s so old, I used to watch it as a child. Although, they had to call it Boss Cat to avoid conflict with a tinned cat food of the same name.
Top Cat Returns
Judging by the number of buses, they’re advertising it on, it isn’t going to do very well.
Ivan Massow Joins Peer-to-Peer Lending
Peer-to-peer lending is growing fast, with new companies starting up seemingly every week.
Now entrepreneur, Ivan Massow has joined the party with a company called Massow’s Angels.
This was reported in the Independent yesterday, under a title of How Peers Can Solve Borrowing Headaches.
This is part of the report.
Funding Circle recently reported that its customers invested £6.1m in the first two months of this year and the total amount saved and borrowed at Zopa, the UK’s first peer-to-peer website, passed the £200m mark last week. Such growth prompted Andy Haldane, the head of policy at the Bank of England, to say that such peer-to-peer lenders could ultimately replace high street banks.
As if the banks hadn’t got enough problems.
Note that the Indie talks about the Peer-to-Peer Finance Association, which is a trade body created to ensure standards in the industry.
I have lent money through Zopa for several years now and get a reasonable return. In some ways though, my guarantee is in the figures, that I track every day in a spreadsheet and the fact that the company is totally open about the processes it uses. The processes must work, as at the end of May 2011, I’d earned 6 % since the start of that year. The figure is now 9.3 % for 2012, with ten days to go of the month of May.
The Anonymous Widower 