Gambling Addiction
There has been an article on BBC Breakfast this morning talking about on-line gambling.
In a piece entitled Gambling, Zopa and On-Line Bots, I wrote.
A strange thing is that since I’ve been using Zopa, I have cut down my gambling on things like horse racing.
I think that using Zopa is a bit like on-line gambling with a bit of the same buzz, as you check the results of what has happened every day about 10:30 at night. Or it certainly seems so to me. But perhaps I’m more an information man, than a true gambler.
I can’t remember the last time I had a bet. In fact since I started doing detailed accounts with my new software product, there is nothing in the column marked, Gambling.
So perhaps we all need the buzz of gambling, but we need to channel it into something less risky and perhaps even productive.
North-South Divide
They are discussing the North-South divide on BBC Breakfast this morning.
What about the East-West divide?
Here in East Anglia, we have an economy about the size of Scotland, but we rely on much less government subsidy, we export more and we have higher unemployment.
But what do we get in return for looking after our economy and contributing to the well-being of the whole of the UK?
Not a lot really!
We have some of the worst roads and transport systems in the UK.
- The A14 past Cambridge and Huntingdon is one of the most overcrowded roads in Europe.
- Norwich is isolated from the rest of the country, by the gap in dual-carriageway of the A11 at Elveden and no proper route along the A47 to the Midlands.
- Yarmouth is in desperate need to be connected to Norwich by a decent road.
- Ipswich-Norwich links are virtually non-existent, unless you go by train
- There is the missing link of the A120 from Braintree to Marks Tey.
- Most of the trains in East Anglia are cast-offs from other networks and trains from east to west and on to the Midlands and the North are poor to say the least.
- Very few stations anyway have adequate parking places.
Many of these problems have been down to be solved for years, but they always get delayed. But then there are few Labour MPs and votes in East Anglia.
But still we manage and expand. Today, Glaxo Smith Kline has announced a large expansion of research in Stevenage and Cambridge is still growing.
We need the investment on infrastructure here in East Anglia, so that can create wealth for others in the UK.
A Real Soap Opera
Last week, in Waitrose I bought some liquid soap for the kitchen. It was organic and it was in rather a plain bottle. But it was made in Chorley in Lancashire, by a company called Droyt.
And then my housekeeper raved about it!
As the bottle had a small symbol that said Minsk 1893, the company needed a bit of investigation. Did they have a tale to tell?
Yes! And how!
The history is detailed in the Lancashine Evening Post.
The business prospered in Minsk under the name of The Victoria Fine Soap Works, the name reflecting the close ties Russia had with England at the time through its royal families.
It grew over the succeeding years and in 1913 a new factory was established in Saratov, on the banks of the Volga River.
Current managing director Chris Effendowicz remembers the tales his great uncle Pavel would regale them with, of standing as a child in Moscow and watching as Lenin and Trotsky swept past.
After the revolution, the factory workers were allowed to vote on who should continue to run the business and they elected to keep the family in charge.
That didn’t go down well with the revolutionaries and in 1921 the Danischewskys were forced to flee for their lives.
They perhaps didn’t make the best choice in that they chose to go to Germany.
With historical hindsight, and as the family were Jewish, Germany wasn’t a safe place to be. Particularly as Chris’s great aunt Helena, a journalist, wrote articles in the 1930s of the truth about the rise of Nazism and Hitler’s true plans. She was on his personal hitlist but despite this, was the only political correspondent of the time to have a one-to-one interview with Italian Fascist leader Mussolini.
The family came under increasing threat from the Nazi authorities. As Jewish employers they found themselves under more and more Gestapo checks.
So they moved to Chorley just before the Second World War and have been there ever since.
I hadn’t come across the company before, but as a child I did have one of their PC49 novelty soaps. Many kids did! One is shown on Droyt’s history page.
Saying Sorry is Good for Your Business
I first heard this story on Radio 5 and it’s here in full in the Daily Mail.
Nottingham University does a lot of excellent research and this detailed study shows how a simple apology can be better than offering unsatisfied customers a cash payout. The experiment was interesting too, in that it was carried out using a company that made sales on eBay. I wonder how much other good research can be performed in this manner?
The levels of satisfaction were actually 42% with an apology and 23% when a cash payout was offered. So it wasn’t just a small difference!
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post talking about the service I got with a freezer from John Lewis.
So perhaps things are getting a lot better.
They may be in commercial companies, but we will really only have completed the customer-relations revolution, when the various Agencies of the Government get their customer focus perfect. There are ones that are good, but there are others that are terrible.
Get it right and it could help the next government govern for a long time.
An interesting aside to saying sorry, is that an old friend used to run a large hospital department. They implimented an immediate sorry-policy and it cut the level of complaints drammatically.
A Double Cliche
Someone said something like this on the radio, when discussing their predictions for the recession.
We think it will be a saxophone shaped curve, but that would be blowing our own trumpet.
I bet that was pre-planned.
A New Variety of Dead Parrot Sketch
I liked this comment from The Times on Thursday.
“I wish to register a complaint.” Britain’s financial services industry heard this refrain nine million times over the past three years, according to new figures from the Financial Services Authority.
This sounds like an awful lot of unhappiness. Dissatisfied customers are now returning their dead parrots at the rate of more than 8,000 a day.
This is the first two paragraphs and it continues in the same vein.
But doing simple maths says that we complain about 3,000,000 times a year about the financial services industry. That probably means it’s about one complaint for every six or seven houses in the UK. As probably only half the houses do anything governed by the FSA, that’s one hell of a level of complaints. So it’s nearer one-in-three!
I could add my complaints too. About excessive paperwork for a start. It seems that every time you move or breathe anywhere near any financial company they need everything in triplicate down to your inside leg measurement. You need certificates for this, documents for that. Surely, the fact that I pay my taxes and I only bank with reputable UK banks should be enough and they should guarantee my probity.
Job done!
How many complaints are of this nature?
But just imagine this level of complaints on cars. No-one would ever buy one. So perhaps this is why people don’t buy pensions.
After all if you want to make a small fortune, give a large one to a financial adviser.
BP’s Oil Find
BP seem to have struck oil. Or is it gold? But the technology to get it to market will be awesome.
Many years ago, I remember when they found the Forties Field and how they said they’d never get that oil ashore. They did then and the Project Management System that I wrote at the time, Artemis, was a great help in the planning of the whole of the North Sea. It certainly helped us go from a little company to one with global clout. The strange thing though, is that we probably made a lot of sales because our systems didn’t need the installation of the large mainframe computers everybody used at the time.
So when I see a find like BP have made in the Gulf of Mexico, I smile a bit and thank Aberdeen and its oil industry for my success.
This is what the Guardian said about the find.
BP has reopened the debate on when the “peak oil” supply will be reached by announcing a big new discovery in the Gulf of Mexico which some believe could be as large as the Forties, the biggest field ever found in the North Sea.
The strike comes days after Iran unveiled an even larger find of 8.8bn barrels of crude oil, and the moves have encouraged sceptics of theories which say that peak production has been reached, or soon will be, to hail a new golden age of exploration and supply.
BP, already the largest producer of hydrocarbons in the US, said its “giant” Tiber discovery in 4,100ft (1,250m) of water was particularly exciting because it promised to open up a whole new area.
I tend to agree that the forecast of oil running out is based on doom cults, rather than sensible science.
If you look at a large oil field, it is not actually that large in terms of area, so when you look for it, it’s very very difficult. And in BP’s latest case, even more so, as you are at depths higher than Mount Everest.
So it’s my belief and this has been confirmed by BP and Iran, that there is a lot of coal out there, but we just don’t have the technology to look for it.
As an aside to this, the Selby coalfield was one of the largest in the UK. But it was only discovered in the 1960s and that in a country which is probably the most explored in the world.
No Smoke?
The Megrahi affair refuses to go away.
The Sunday Times says that Jack Straw.
Backed down citing “overwhelming” UK interests. A major oil deal was being discussed at the time.
So how much did Prudence and his cronies really know?
Zopa Returns – August 2009
I posted a graph and explanation of this a few weeks ago.
So have things changed?
Zopa Returns - August 2009
There are various lines shown on the graph.
- Red shows the A* lending rate
- Blue (Earn1) shows the returns discounting for any bad debt, but including accounts in arrears.
- Orange (Earn2) shows the returns discounting for any bad debt and arrears.
- Dark Blue at the bottom, is the OBR or Official Bank Rate
Notes.
- Earn2 is creeping back up towards Earn1. I think this is because after initial hiccups accounts tend to settle down. I also think that Zopa have tightened their lending conditions, which may mean they get less hiccups.
- Earn1 seems to have a sawtooth pattern. This is because, most contracts are from the 25th or one month to the 3rd of the next. At least the monthly peak rate seems to be rising.
- At present the Inland Revenue does not think that bad debts are allowable against tax. Many disagree and my accountant has said that he believes they will be allowed. After all do they want a big fight over £200?
I’m still happy.
Clouds on the Zopa Horizon?
I’ve now got over £30,000 invested in Zopa.
Nothing really untoward has been happening with my money and according to the latest figures, I’m earning a genuine five percent on my money. By a genuine five percent, I mean one that includes all the charges and bad debts. It also takes into account money that is in Zopa, but is not been lent out yet.
Of the 650 or so people I have lent to, only three are in trouble, with one a genuine bad debt and the other two limping along still making payments. That level is below the level forecast by the company and well below the levels experienced by the average finance company.
The graph below shows the rates at which money has been lent out on Zopa.
Zopa Rates to August 2009
Note that since mid-April rates have been rising, but over the last month or so, they have flattened off a bit and they may even have been falling slightly.
The graph below shows the amount of money requested.
Money Requested on Zopa - August 2009
Note how over the last six weeks, the amount of money requested by borrowers has dropped significantly.
Is this and the drop in interest rates linked to the banks being easier places to borrow money or does it reflect a typical lack of business because of the summer holidays? You could argue that the peak in June/July was caused by people borrowing money for holidays or new transport to take them there!
So there could be some fluffy cumulus on the Zopa horizon. We’ll see if business takes off in the autumn.
But a bigger thundery cloud has been seen courtesy of the Office of Fair Trading.
When I first got the letter saying that I must register because of Anti-Money Laundering Regulations, I thought it was a joke or at worst a try-on. Basically, reading the letter it just seems to be a catch-all to raise more money for this beleaguered government.
Why should I pay £115 a year, when my lending is controlled by Zopa and I only transfer money into them, by a straight transfer from my bank account? It is a yearly charge and would cut my rate from five to 4.7 percent.
If every lender on Zopa had to pay this tax, then it would not be the place for lesser mortals to get a decent rate on their money. But then Prudence and his ilk, have never liked private enterprise. Unless of course it benefits themselves!
It could be argued that Zopa is also a competitor to the various State Banks, that Prudence has saddled us with.
But despite all these clouds I will still be putting a percentage of my spare money into Zopa in the future.
The Anonymous Widower 