Boiler Room Scams on BBC Radio Tonight
They are investigating boiler room scams on the Adrian Goldberg program tonight on BBC Radio 5 Live at 21:00!
A Warning About On-Line Loan Brokers
The BBC is today warning about on-line loan brokers, who take up-front fees and then don’t give you a loan. Apparently, there has been a large rise in complaints to the Office of Fair Trading.
Verified By Visa
I’m all for good Internet security, but this system on my Visa card is totally useless.
The reason is that I can never remember the password and as it has to be entered,partly in upper and partly in lower-case, even if I do, it is a nightmare to type in with my gammy left hand. So inevitably, I end up having to create a new password, which surely defeats the system in the first place.
Thinking laterally, if American Express can get their security right in a much simpler way and in many years of using their card on-line, I’ve never had a problem, then surely Verified By Visa in its current form is a waste of space.
I’ve just started to get spam from someone claiming to be verifbyvisa.com. Because of my problems in using the system, I was quite worried, but on checking, there was no problem.
Bank Margins
The margins banks are charging on lending are being criticised. And rightly so!
It’s actually all our fault. We borrow too much to on things like credit cards and always go the conservative route about how we borrow and invest. We also don’t shop around with our banking and change when we should!
So don’t complain about the banks, look for sensible alternatives.
As I’ve said before, I lend money through Zopa. I also know of people, who’ve used the company for a loan. I’ve not heard any complaints yet. So it does appear there are alternatives out there! But be prudent! It’s just a pity that Prudence wasn’t, or we’d all be in a better state.
Boxing Clever
Boxing Clever is the title of two articles in September’s edition of Modern Railways magazine. They detail the works being done to upgrade the major freight lines of Felixstowe to Nuneaton and Southampton to Birmingham, so that they can take the larger 9 ft 6 in high containers (boxes) from the ports to and from industrial centres. In times of austerity and climate change, it is interesting to see how these projects which will cut out hundreds of thousands of lorry journeys are being carried out and managed using some very innovative solutions. So much so,m that it appears that the second project might be £10m under its £70.7m budget.
It is an example of very good project management and shows how by spending money wisely to remove freight bottle-necks is to the good of us all. You could argue for instance that Felixstowe to Nuneaton enhancement might be the equivalent of adding extra capacity to the A14, which is a road, that really can’t be widened too easily, as the Orwell bridge was only built for two lanes each way.
I particularly liked the way that the 1847 Southampton Tunnel was made larger. Rather than use the traditional approach and closing the tunnel for two to three months, as they did when they upgraded Ipswich Tunnel, they did it a track at a time closing for only three weekends and over Christmas 2009, saving a year on the project.
It is my belief that we can save a lot of money on infrastructure projects, like roads, railways, hospitals ands schools by thinking things through with a great deal more innovation, enterprise and by borrowing good and proven ideas and methods from other countries and industries.
Would a Private Firm Ever Buy Anything with Something Like PFI?
It’s grim reading about the problems the NHS is facing over bloated PFI deals.
No-one with any sense would ever have locked themsaelves into such deals. I’m sure people like Tesco have probably used design, build and maintain for stores and depots, but they wouldn’t have ended up paying six times the cost of the building. They’d have also used standard designs to save building costs. I bet each hospital is very different.
The problem is not with PFI, but with the politicians, civil servants and administrators, who pushed these deal through. In a banana republic, I would be smelling the pungent smell of bungs, bribery and favours. But here it’s just bad economics and incompetence. And who was in charge of the country’s finance at the time? So add this to a list of his big mistakes, like pensions, banks, renewing Trident etc. Gordon Brown must rank as the worst Prime Minister any country in Europe has ever had. let lone the UK!
Are Redundancies Responsible for a Surge in New Companies?
This was posed by Robert Watts in today’s Sunday Times, but I can’t find it on-line. Is this because The Times are restricting what they put on-line?
But it’s not even mentioned in othe web sites, that we are now having a real surge in new company registrations.
But this is understandable as recessions are one of the best times to start a business, as companies are trying to outsource goods and services, there is a good supply of quality people, machinery, premises and other things available. Often from companies that have gone bust! We started Metier in the depth of a recession and you can’t say, that that wasn’t a success!
The only problem with this recession, is the attitude of the banks, but then, it would appear that many are using redundancy money as seed capital for their businesses.
Annuity Rules to be Scrapped
You save all your life and create an adequate pension pot and then at 75, you have to turn it into an annuity, ehich in many cases would be like using twenty pound notes to keep warm in winter. But now the government has stated that it will abolish this rule according to the BBC.
The government has outlined its plans to scrap the long-standing compulsory deadline for people buying an annuity.
Present rules state that those with a personal or company money purchase pension must buy an annuity once they hit the age of 75.
In the Budget, the government changed this age from 75 to 77, and now it has outlined plans to abolish the deadline.
I’ll believe it when and if I get to 80. Remember that this change will mean all those commissions and charges that insurance companies and pension funds will lose. They’ll try all they can to stop the rule changes. After all government needs their services like the rest of us.
Hotel Chocolat
It has just been announced on the local news, that Hotel Chocolat is expanding and creating 250 new jobs in Huntingdon and at its chocolate factory in St. Lucia. I checked their web site to see if they do gluten-free, as I am partial to the occassional bit of chocolate. Now that Cadbury’s have been taken over by Kraft, I worry that their products will end up contaminated by wheat maltodextrin to save money. I just can’t take the chance and so I was pleased to see that Hotel Chocolat have a gluten-free page on their web site.
I have sent a comment to Hotel Chocolat to query the level of gluten, as they say the odd contamination might happen.
I am a coeliac and also I monitor a Yahoo group for others. I haven’t tried your gluten-free products, but some coeliacs won’t as they are very sensitive to gluten. I myself am not, but I do react to wheat maltodextrin. What’s wrong with Demerara sugar? I think you may find that there is a lot of demand for a simple guaranteed gluten-free product, especially since G&B are now part of Kraft and US companies seem to have a fetish for wheat maltodextrin.
I shall await their reply.
what is interesting, is how they have raised the money for the expansion. They have raised it from their tasting club and will pay the interest in chocolate, as described here in The Telegraph.That sounds a model, that might work with a lot of food and drink products, especially where you are dealing with a specific group of people like coeliacs.
An Advantage for the Zopa Borrower
I recently had an e-mail from Zopa, asking if I’d mind if one of my borrowers could change their repayment day, as they had changed jobs and now got their salary on a different day of the month.
How civilised? And of course I had no reason at all to object.
I wonder how Big Bank plc would have responded to the same request! They would probably have charged you for the privilege!
It all illustrates how banking will change in the next few years, driven by innovators like Zopa.
The Anonymous Widower 