After Payday Loans, We Now Have Payday Sales!
I buy my Sloggi knickers from Figleaves, as it is so much easier to buy them there than in a real store, as most never have my style or anything smaller than medium. And as they are just a few miles down the road in Haverhill, they usually arrive in the post the next morning!
Today, I received an e-mail from them with a new twist. The title was “20% off at figleaves.com – Payday treat!”
I like that and it is very much the acceptable face of the Internet, as opposed to some of the payday loan companies.
Farewell Bernard Matthews
It has been announced today that Bernard Matthews has died at the age of 80 on Thanksgiving Day. Rather appropriate in that his company is one of the largest producers of turkeys in Europe. I think it is true to say, that we’ll never see another like him, which is a pity! His company may have sold the infamous turkey twizzlers, but that is more than offset many times by his charity work.
The Masons Arms
This pub in Devonshire Street played a major part in my life in the 1970s.
The Masons Arms
It was just round the corner from the offices of Time Sharing Ltd., the company we were all associated with in the early 1970s, so often if you needed anyone they were drinking in the Masons, as it was always called. One of our staff, who later joined Metier, even developed a long-term relationship with the landlord, which still flourishes today.
But it’s not just me, that has pleasant memories of the pub One of my friends, who sadly died a few years ago, had a part-time job in the pub, whilst he worked for AEI. He claimed that someone from AEI New Zealand, the landlord of the Mason’s and himself, enjoyed themselves immensely on a spree in London. Now this was after AEI had been taken over by GEC and all expenses had to be approved by Arnold Weinstock‘s office. It was queried by asking who they had taken out for the evening. The reply was that it was the New Zealand High Commissioner. And to prove it he gave the office, the personal telephone number of the Commissioner. The expenses were paid.
Business is very different these days, but I’ll always remember the Masons Arms with fondness.
The Kitsch is Here
BBC Breakfast has a piece from the Royal Crown Derby works showing some of the kitsch that is being produced for the wedding next year.
One piece actualy had an entwined W and C on it. She should have stuck to Kate, rather than Catherine.
The only thing to be said for it, is that it gives employment to people and creates a bit of money for the company.
What Do We Do With the Irish Problem?
At times, I think the euro is a good idea. But to be fair, it will only work, if everybody acts as a team and plays the same way and to the same objectives. But Greece and now Ireland have taken advantage of the rules to play the game their way. Robert Peston wrote a very good piece on his blog yesterday and got right to the point.
Ireland has got itself in this mess by pursuing an unsubstanable property bubble and then bailing out the banks and the builders with loans from the European Central Bank.
But what started it?
For more years than I can remember, Irish thoroughbred breeders got it easy in the region of taxes. There were so many crazy rules, such as stallion fees being except of tax and that is why all the best stallions outside Middle Eastern ownership are in Ireland. And when it came to sell yearings and fials, did English breeders get the price their horse deserved? Sometimes but not always! In fact because of the racehorse tax situation, Tattersalls, the auctioneers, thought about moving to Ireland.
In fact you might argue, that the parlous state of racing and breeding in the UK, France, Germany and Italy, is down to the Irish and their feather-bedded industry!
But it’s not just horse owners and breeders, that get this treatment.
Irish corporate taxes are out of line with the rest of Europe and consequently, many companies use Ireland as a legal way of minimising taxes.
This is wrong and European finances will not return to sanity until we all play by similar rules in the areas of budget deficits, corporate taxes, working practices andpensions.
But it will not be easy, as look at the problems, France has been having trying to put a modicum of sense into its pensions.
So to repeat Gladstone’s famous question. which of course was part of “If you solve the Irish question, the Irish change the question!”
So Ireland, you must change the question! Ireland has one of the most educated populations in the EU. perhaps their insistence on not needing the bailout is a good policy and the start of this process.
But remember too, we have extensive investments in the country and they have a lot in the UK, so perhaps if we worked together more in all sorts of areas, we might both do each other some good, despite past troubles.
More Players in Peer-to-Peer Lending
This article should be read before you delve into something like Zopa, as it gives a good summary of how the peer-to-peer market works and who the players are.
I think I’ll stick with Zopa for the time being.
Trying to Stop Inevitable Decline
There are two related stories today about improving the lot of rail passengers and improving the Royal Mail.
The Royal Mail is probably past saving especially if they raise prices, as people will not be prepared to spend more to get letters delivered, when e-mail and the telephone is there. After all phone charges are dropping because of competition and the Royal Mail will only compete by dropping prices.
As to improving trains, we need to replace some old stock like the Pacers, but many are saying they’ve had enough with commuting five days a week and are using the Internet to cut some of those journeys. We are also getting to a point, where people won’t pay more to commute, if stories about low-ridership on the fast commute lines to St. Pancras are true. So perhaps we might see some strategic spending on the worst parts of the network, but the grandiose plans of some are surely dead in these austere times.
Is This Platform the Future for Offshore Oil and Gas?
As Deepwater Horizon and Piper Alpha have shown, trying to get offshore oil and gas wells working properly can be a hazardous business.
I was converted to the idea and the economics of reuseable platforms many years ago, when I did the calculations for Balaena Structures in Cambridge.
A few days ago I was watching BBC Breakfast, when they had an item about F3-FA, which is a reuseable gas platform. It may have cost £200million, but it is intended to drain up to four or five smaller gas fields during ts working life.
The article says this about the costs of the design.
“Most platforms are permanently installed on the seabed, they are used for a number of years, after which they are decommissioned and brought back onshore,” he says.
“This platform is self-installing, which means it comes out on a barge, you put the legs down to the sea bed, you exploit the oil and gas out of the field and when the field is finished you do it in reverse and take it to the next field.
Just seven or eight people are needed to run the 9,000-tonnes facility“And you do that three or four times, thus reducing the cost.”
Note that statement about the platform needing a small crew. It must surely have safety and accommodation implications as well as cost.
Incidentally, it is very different to the Balaena I worked on. One day, I’ll put the details of that on this blog.
The New Waitrose Credit Card Machines
They obviously weren’t designed by someone with a gammy hand. The old one where you just pushed the card into the slot worked well for me, but I can’t slide my card through the reader with the left.
I bet the system wasn’t designed by someone with a brain.
Incidentally, the script on many card machines says “Do not remove the card” and then changes it to “Remove the card”. If your eyesight isn’t good, like mine is at times, you can get a bit mixed-up and take the card out too early, as you see the word “Remove”.
Reasons To Be Hopeful
This was the headline across the front page of The Times today. They gave it three sub-titles :-
- Growth surprises City
- Advertising soars
- Strongest ewbound since the War
They also talked about how a new shopping centre at One New Change in the City of London, nicknamed the Stealth Bomber is virtually fully let to retailers.
Let’s hope that this is not a false dawn! But visiting Cambridge as I do regularly, I have a feeling that it is not!
The Anonymous Widower 