A Walk In Hyde Park
I went for a walk this afternoon in Hyde Park.
I had gone to see the awful statue that someone had put in the Serpentine to publicise a new TV channel. But I couldn’t find it. There’s a picture here from the Belfast Telegraph.
But I did take a few pictures.
It turned out that the statue had been removed. Judging by the quality of the statue, I hope it’s been recycled.
I did have a very nice ice cream in the Lido Cafe by the Serpentine. I t might have been a bit expensive, but it was good. And I had it in a tub.
Thinking about the walk later, I reckon it must be nearly forty years since I have been to that part of Hyde Park. We occasionally used to go swimming in the Serpentine with the boys, although, I don’t think I ever ventured in. But C did, as she was a manic swimmer. I don’t have any pictures of that time, but the park has been spruced up a lot since.
They were difficult but happy times!
What Do You Get When You Cross Zopa With Wonga?
At a first glance Zopa and Wonga are at the two ends of the financial spectrum, when it comes to borrowing and lending money.
Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter, and probably a few other peer-to-peer lenders in the UK and around the rest of the world, take in money from those who want a bit more interest on their savings and lend it out to those who after a series of rigorous checks, look like they might be able to repay it.
I have seen figures which show that peer-to-peer lending grew by 300% in the last year and has now lent over half a billion pounds. So they must be doing something right! On a personal note, although my return has dropped a bit in the last year, I still get nearly five percent on my money invested in Zopa before tax, after taking into account all charges and bad debts.
Wonga and the other payday lenders probably lend a lot of their money to people who’d never qualify for a loan from Zopa and their peers. The interest rates are a lot higher and the terms are generally not as favourable as those offered by Zopa.
In some ways what unites Wonga and Zopa is their efficient systems, backed by state-of-the-art computing. Robert Peston talked about Wonga’s systems in this article.
eMoneyUnion is a new peer-to-peer lender, which could be thought as a company, that takes the best practice of Zopa and Wonga and combines them to create a company that can lend to those who wouldn’t get a Zopa loan, but also gives a good return to its investors. This article is about the launch of the company.
So it would appear that eMoneyUnion could be the cross between Zopa and Wonga!
Let’s hope it all works out well. I shall be investing.
Abbey Wood To Get a Striking Station
Abbey Wood station in South East London is one of the termini of Crossrail. The drawings and concept have now been released and don’t look boring.
The best place to see the concept is here on the Fereday Pollard web site.
Miliband Gets The Digger Out
In East London, there is TUCA, which I call London’s University of Hole Digging.
Judging my Ed Miliband’s pronouncement in the last few minutes on his party’s relationship with the Trade Unions, he has certainly done the first part of the course at that University.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have done part two, where you learn how to get out of hole, you’ve just dug!
I Didn’t Think They Used Buses In Hampstead
You can easily make the assumption, that those upmarket people in Hampstead don’t use buses, as why would they travel with their inferiors, when you can drive or use a taxi. So this story from the Ham and High is very surprising. The headline in the paper says it all.
C11 bus driver asks passenger ‘Where’s Hampstead?
For those unfamiliar with the C11, it’s one of a series of single deck buses that meander all over London boroughs to provide local transport and fill-in for the Underground and the major bus routes. They’re almost like rural buses in Central London.
The Anonymous Widower 