MISSED THE BOAT...

In January I was given a gift. It came in the form of two words = Baillie Gifford

Their share price was touted around in early 2013 as one to watch or, if you had the balls/foresight, to invest in. At the time it was 150p per share.

Baillie Gifford Japan Trust plc are a securities house that invest funds across a range of Japanese companies, property and other investments to make other people money and themselves a good cut of the profit. Despite my interest in Japan and things Japanese (and I don't just mean the japanese girls comments I've made in the past!) I didn't do anything about it.

Lately though, the news has been full of the turnaround in the Japanese economy that has been made in the last 5 months, mainly being attributed to the new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - last weeks' Economist magazine even hailed him a Superman!

The Nikkei Index, Tokyo's main stock tracker index has gone up in value by 55% in the last 5 months.

So, I checked the stock price for Baillie Gifford again today. Rightly enough it has gone up. But I wasn't quite ready for the magnitude of the gain.

Currently priced at 312p per share, a gain had I had the balls (?) of 108%, dwarfing the 55% general index increase...

Sat here in May those two words have turned into one.

Balls...
 

CANCER RESEARCH UK

January. That time when everyone flails around trying to stick to New Year's Resolutions.

I've been here before. I'm sure you have too?

This year is different though.

I noticed on my facebook page that a few people had been joining up to a new drive by Cancer Research UK called the DryAthlon. Simple idea. For the month of January, Go Dry. No alcohol. Get friends to sponsor the effort and maybe ask people in your local or out and about for donations.

I'm in.

Here's my page

Polko's Dryathlon

A good idea. And this year I will stick to my resolve. The support from the DryAthlon team is brilliant - earning badges for sticking to the plan. Regular emails to keep the momentum going - the first weekend is nearly over and I'm happily drinking lots of tea. Discovering new ones in fact. And happy to be away from the alcohol for at least the month.

I set a modest target of £200 and I'm 59% of the way there. I suspect it'll get harder as the month goes on but I'll be posting to facebook and twitter regularly to nudge a few people - some may call it pain in the bum, I call it money for a good cause!

So, I'll update soon.

For now, many thanks to those that have already seen fit to donate.

And just in case you want to - follow the link above or simply text to 70070 (free) with the following format in your SMS message:

POLK99 £x where x is the donation amount. I'd be happy with a £1!

If you want to join in, here's the Cancer Research UK Dryathlon info page

P

BRICKS OR HORSES...

Here’s an interesting detail. Since the early 1970s what happens in the bloodstock market is mirrored by the property market and wider economy 18 months later.  By that I mean the sale values of unbroken, unraced yearlings.  When they reach a peak, the property market runs ahead for a year and a half and then tops out.

The last boom for yearling sales reached its peak during 2006.  During that year property investor John Magnier bid $16m for a colt named The Green Monkey. The horse proved hopeless and values tailed off. So too, did the economy and had a disastrous year in 2008.

And the good news is...

...at end 2011 the bloodstock market is buoyant again!

Prices achieved at Tattersall's October sale in Newmarket were up 35% year on year.  Property investor Sir Robert Ogden bought a filly for £900,000.

So, in 18 months will the property market and fortunes be booming again?  On the strength of the econometric analysis you wouldn't lay odds much higher than 2:1 or maybe even odds on?

RULE BRITTANIA?

   
So, here I sit after a night out with a few clients and ready to sleep in a hotel in the City of London - Financial Capital of the world (95% of all non-ferrous metal trades done in this city, 70% of all private equity fund managed from here...da da da)

And here is my hotel's internet speed rating...

What a complete joke?  260k download less than one mile from the UK Stock Exchange!!!

The stats I've quoted above were part of William Hague's speech tonight at the Honourable Artillery Company HQ in the Barbican, just north of all this so called action.  And I'm sat in my hotel, just round the corner.  So why is my internet connection so crap?

Because Britain ain't so great, that's why.  Because Britain ruled the waves a long long time ago.

We have a lot to wake up to....

..and very soon.

October 20th looms large.

I'll give you a hint.. but you can also look it up for yourself - or buy a paper on October 21st.  A good paper that is.  Not some sensationalist shite like most people will read and carry on their lives like nothing is changed.  Paying taxes, moaning about the price of things. Watching shite TV.

October 20th = UK government's Comprehensive (?) Spending Review day....

Watch this space... as in some way it WILL affect you...

LEPers Day!

  
Tomorrow, 3rd September, is LEP day in the UK.

Let me explain. Since the change in government here during the Spring the coalition, led firmly by the Conservatives and with little real influence from the Liberal Democrat Party, have engaged on a de-construction exercise of the public sector.  This would have probably happened anyway given that the Labour Party had spent so much money - even they didn't realise exactly how much - on boosting public sector employment and influence over things economic in the past 10 years or so.

A little diagram will suffice - the expansion of public sector employment in total employment 1998 to 2008.  A jump that equates to 1.3 million more people employed by public sector organisations.  At some point during 2002 the public sector became the largest employer type in the UK economy, surpassing even 'distribution, hotels and restaurants' which has always been a big employing sector given the number of part time jobs that it provides.

'nuff said.

I will not be drawn into the debate on whether this was good, bad or indifferent.  But the key thing right now is that the country cannot afford to employ such a large scale public sector workforce as the tax take from other activities is not high enough and fewer people are now in work in non-public sector organisations.  Added to that, the government is finding it more difficult to borrow ever increasing amounts of money to fund such a public expansion in today's credit crunch climate.

So what about LEPers?

Local Economic Partnerships LEPs are the dynamic new buzzword on the block since the coalition government came into power.  The LEP movement (don't look for any real movement.. not yet.. they're still drawing up their plans and Word documents!) is essentially a nice way of combining some powers from local authorities and other public sector organisations into (hopefully) smaller organisations that cover a large area somewhere between local and regional - i.e. cost cutting in the main.

There are plenty of reasons why this is a good idea - joint buying power will help drive down costs where the same work is required across a wider than local authority geography for example.  The main and immediate casualties of the new LEPers will be the demise of the Regional Development Agencies, organisations that have had a massive allocation of money from the central government budget and who have been the focus of much criticism for the way in which they have operated / boosted staff numbers / become political / opened international offices / duplicated work of other organisations despite also ploughing (tens of) millions into each of the regions of England and Wales. It is unfortunately in vogue to give them a good kicking right now rather than assess the many things they did right in each region.  And they did. But don't quote me on that one.

But there are also many reasons to be suspicious about LEPs becoming just a re-branding exercise rather than a re-construction.  More of that in a later blog. Perhaps.

So why LEP Day?

3rd September is the first deadline set by government for the receipt of initial LEP plans.  There are so many flavours coming out of the various parts of the country that it is impossible to see the new shape of economic development as yet.  What is clear is that the government have been trying to make LEP authors work hard at defining what it is they want to do in future.

Some areas have found this very hard indeed, lacking clarity among groups of local bodies or simply lacking the intellect to put together anything but a document that contains all the buzzwords.  This is exactly what a lot of public sector management staff have been busy (possibly the wrong word?) doing for far too long to be honest.

Other areas have everything in place already.  Manchester, ever a pioneer in things economic development, were the first to announce a coalition of ten local authority areas and a Shadow Board to drive it forward within weeks of the call for LEP proposals.

One thing is for sure.

It's all change at Regeneration Grand Central...
 

WOW! I'M RICH!

  
Another great junk e-mail rolled into my inbox this morning..

02/06/2010.
Your Email ID has won (1,500,000.00) EUROS
2010 EURO MILLION PROMOTION.
In the first category of our computer ballot email lottery.
No ticket was sold but it is to encourage EMAIL users.
For further development for Clarification and procedures
Contact:Tel: +34-673-096-835
        Fax: +34-917-692-914.
Tic Nr: 6460DGH,Lucky Numbers:ES/9420X2/68
Full names,Address,Age,Occupation,Phone/ numbers.
All Response Sent Via Email: ibagazaanarosateresa@yahoo.com.hk

Now I already knew I was rich, what with a bunch of great friends to lean on and laugh with
that I have gathered through my 40+ years, but having financial wealth like this
is going to be great.

So, this is going to be a very short blog today as there are quite a few things scattered
around the internet that I want to go and buy..

oh, and I hope the email address provided in the junk mail gets picked up by various
blog-crawling bots and gets more junk mail from others. Just doing my bit..

;-)
  

MO' MONEY THAN BRAINS?

This beats my entry last year about the Candy Brothers...

By a long way!

PAY DAY OR NOT?

Sorry, am I going mad?

Are we rapidly heading towards Winston Smith's future world of getting up, doing our exercises in front of a big flat screen on the wall, trudging to work for little or no pay that is dictated to by someone else with little or no chance of doing anything different, all the time watched by CCTV cameras and being pacified by cheap alcohol and films about a war somewhere else where some unknown figure is trying to harm us all?

ah..

but today's BBC carries the news that more "public figures" have added their name to a list of campaigners for a cap on relative wage levels and rewards for people who earn more than the average.. I quote, "The government must now take decisive action on excessive pay at the top when it has had such a damaging and corrosive effect on the real economy and wider society."

In the same way the Low Pay Commission was set up in 1997 to advise on the minimum wage, a High Pay Commission was needed to introduce "a wide-ranging review" of pay at the top and bring in new measures to curb excessive remuneration, it said."

Excessive pay? What does that phrase mean exactly? One person's excess is another's normal isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, rewards going to those who mess up I'm certainly against. I have one or two old friends - shall we call them acquaintances? yes, that's better - who earn 6 figure salaries with final salary pension schemes that will be larger than any of my other friends standard salaries and they certainly don't deserve them just for echoiing what others have said to them and generally licking butt for a few years before moving on ahead of the shite hitting the air con unit. But, let's just break this beying for high paid blood down a little shall we?

The Low Pay Commission and thereafter the Equal Pay Commission was based on a sound psychological and equitable basis that a minimum level of pay for anybody is a just and grown up thing to strive for. The psychology is simple, pay that is too low creates a vacuum among people that are not working who basically think, "I can't be arsed working, after all what additional benefit is there in it for me?" To a point I would agree and thus a minimum wage is something that makes sound economic, ethical and psychological sense.

Now maximum wage levels? What piece of psychology or market efficiency is that based on? Tell you what, why doesn't everybody get up today and work as hard as possible for their employer in the knowledge that you'll only ever be able to earn a fixed amount. It won't put you off working harder tomorrow or the next day 'cos you love your job and the company.. I think not.

Maximum pay has of course already been experimented with in a different economic system, in the former Soviet Union. Factory Managers and the equivalent of our Fat Cats were paid bonuses according to quantitative targets (in a similar vein to the financial scene of the City of London). However, targets were set with the bosses around the table and whilst discussing the resources needed to achieve them (ring any bells?) and so targets were not particularly demanding. The other aspect of the system (and the one we should take heed of now) was that it didn't matter whether a factory hit 101% or 1001% of its target, the bonus was the same amount. Fixed maximum pay, fixed bonus structures. There are many documented examples of factories working until target +1% then all the workers downing tools and drinking cheap alcohol (or more often making something else that wasn't in the plan for the factory boss to sell out the back door).

Maximum pay? Kiss goodbye to the work ethic then. Kiss goodbye to building a better Britain. I run my own business. What point is there in doing any more for it than reaching the maximum return point for my own salary? No more employment for others, no re-investment into the economy. Sod England, I'm off elsewhere Jack. Nice society. Not. I think Compass (the pressure group behind the calls) have got their needle bent, else they are being pulled by a different magnetic field to everyone else. Which might well be the case.

So, what should you make of maximum pay schemes?

You make of it what you will. Me, I feel like Winston pushing his chin further into his jacket as the chill winds of 1984 come in faster than anybody expected at the turn of the 21st Century... Please strike out at any hint of a totalitarian society coming to a pavement near you today.

NEXT GENERATION

The BBC is running a story of a reporter who has sat with some nine year olds and asked them about money and their future. Interesting enough. Worth a read. It's here.

The final section is very illuminating though. A question is asked about what would you do if you didn't have enough money to live.. The responses are worrying. Click here for the entire page but here's the end section:

If you had children but not enough money to feed them, what would you do?

V: Go to my parents, or an older brother or sister, or a good friend.

E: I would first of all start begging on the streets, secondly start praying, and thirdly, ask my friends for some money.

G: I'd make sure I looked good so I could get a very rich husband who could pay for things.

Not one mention of going out and getting a job, working harder, buying and selling anything, going off and getting training to earn more in the future. Three responses that are, from where I'm sat, all too typical of the generation that is coming up (and I don't just mean 9 yr olds). That's where I'm going wrong. I'm still sat here in my pyjamas and need to go and make myself look good so I can get a wife that has loadsa money.

I can't help but think the BBC edited this section, but if they didn't God help us all. Whoever he is.

EXPENSIVE MISTAKES..

Another day, another MP's expenses claim leak. Today's include Bill Wiggin, a Shadow Minister who claims to have put down the wrong address on his expenses form by mistake and therefore claimed mortgage interest on his family home that he hasn't even got a mortgage on the lucky man (lucky for having no mortgage obviously, not so lucky for being found out!). Of course Bill, we all know you meant to put the London apartment address down but got confused by the oh-so-difficult PAAE form filling exercise (see common sense in my last blog). He seems to have claimed up to £20k a year since 2001/02 based on the info at theyworkforyou.com. Useful error to have made.

On the subject of this mistake, let's have a look at Bill's past life - might he be an ordinary bloke from the street that found himself elected as an MP and therefore prone to making adminstrative mistakes? Here's his wiki entry:
Wiggin is the son of former MP Jerry Wiggin.. He attended Eton and later read Economics at the University of Wales, Bangor. He also served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers in the TA, being a platoon commander for Holyhead, Bangor and Caernarfon. Following this, Wiggin worked as a Trader in Foreign Exchange Options for UBS from 1991-3, then was an Associate Director of Kleinwort Benson from 1994-98, then as a manager in the Foreign Exchange department of Commerzbank from 1998..

But, just one minute! It might not be Bill's fault! This is from the House of Commons guidance on filling out PAAE2 forms: If you have a mortgage, a copy of your annual statement of interest must be provided each year to the Department. If it is not clear from this documentation what the amount of interest payable is on the property, further evidence may be required. You must also inform the Department of any alterations to the terms of your mortgage.

How could this mistake have gone un-noticed if he was being asked to provide a mortgage statement of interest based on a home that had no mortgage on it? The system was not exactly well policed? Maybe we have been paying an extortionate amount to some private consultancy company (insert any big name here) to 'audit' the process. Maybe this is the next scandal? One whose Board is made up of senior former MPs or is advised by current MPs?

At the moment it would seem the whole UK political stack is about to tumble. Some of my more left wing friends are calling for the next Guy Fawkes and looking forward to an entirely new political process to replace what can only be described as the pile of poo that we have right now. I'm not so optimistic about it all really. If you scan the websites of the popluar newspapers - NOTW, Sun etc they do mention political troubles. But todays for example also mention in as many column inches, if not more;

1. Some guy off The Apprentice who allegedly swallowed a hamster at a party?
2 Some woman off The Apprentice who stripped for some photos?
(note: both of the above come above the MPs expenses story)
3 Some woman with fake tits (who Polko actually likes for her menipulation [sic] of the media) who has thrown out her husband and his personal chattels - including a first copy of his CD single, Mysterious Girl - what's he going to do without it I ask?

etc

etc

And of course, there's a whole dollop of football news in there too.

God save us all. If only you were real God.

Which brings me to football. Well, almost. This Friday sees the release of a movie that is based on a book that has been wallowing around for some years. The movie is called Away Days. Great website. Really well thought out write up about football hooligan fashion at the turn of the 1980s. Shame that the fashion world is trying to jump on the bandwagon and re-release all those clothes all over again. Don't get me wrong, I would love to buy another blue benetton rugby shirt, but people are going to look prize dicks walking around in Sergio Tacchini tracksuits and Kappa roll-necks in the 21st Century. I cannot believe the amount of people that have started speaking about various items of retro dresser wear - like the book's author I find it hard to talk about the cult as 'football casuals' as there was nothing casual about the £200+ Valentino and Armani jumpers I was wearing in the early 80s, or the trainers that cost then what they do now. How did we all afford it? That's for another blog methinks :-)

So, to all those people who claim to have been there in the thick of it - you weren't there mate, you couldn't have been, otherwise I'd know ya! (my sense of humour knows no bounds?)

Anyway, it was great. It is over. Let's leave it at that. And a picture.

NO MORE..

I am not going to say any more about swine flu on my blog for now. The whole episode / pandemic is just getting too much exposure. The BBC led their news site this morning with the main WHO story plus eight more pages that you could dig into and freak yourself out about. Enough. Let's just have the news, I don't want a "Pandemic in Pictures" or "Mapping The Pandemic" site, nor do I want fancy graphics that show me the various levels of the WHO Pandemic Rating System.

Enough.

My only comment will come, appropriately, in 28 Days from the first announcement of the cross-border problem at Level 5 (April 23). So, til 21 May. Zip. Nothing. Nada.

On another note, I enjoyed plotting my day on the blog yesterday. It didn't really surprise me. My days are pretty similar from one to the next at the moment. Polko's world of work has been busy busy busy for ten years but is now suffering like everyone else's (outside of the public sector where Polko says, "busy does not really apply"). Even then, those in the public sector are now beginning to worry about some of their positions. As we should all be aware, it's just not possible to pay that kind of public sector wage bill each month when the government have just given away billions to the banking sector and the private sector isn't exactly generating large tax revenues. There is now talk of final salary pension schemes being 'amended', 'revised', cut and/or suspended for some in the public sector. Welcome to the real world people! Just when you thought it was safe to stay in public sector waters..


Whilst googling for the Jaws Poster (lovingly re-interpreted by Mrs Polko - thank you!) I came across an interesting concept on someone else's blog (Spectacular Attractions - film in all its forms). Basically, take three screen grabs of a film from 10, 40 and 70 minute points and analyse the essence of the film from just those three. Nicholas Rombes, a University of Detroit Mercy prof, called this idea "freedom through constraint" in his book A Cultural Dictionary of Punk. I like the idea and will try it out. Watch out some time soon for the first.

Now I have those expenses hanging over from yesterday to sort out. And maybe one or two skirmishes in Azerbaijan on Call of Duty 4. Today will be more freedom than constraint methinks?

A DAY IN THE LIFE..

Thought I'd do something slightly different today. The blog will grow by the hour (or thereabouts) as I step through today, a Wednesday, a pretty typical middle of the week day looking forward. So, here's a day in the life of.. Polko. Much for my own benefit as anybody else's. I am pretty lucky as I live in a great, quiet place, work from home with only the odd trip out to see my clients and - thanks to the global financial crisis - have a little more time on my hands than usual (given that a lot of what I do relies on the property market and funding).

08:35. Polko's cat has had his tablets, squeezed in tuna so he definitely takes them. Mrs Polko is outside letting our chickens out to free range, probably getting attacked by our cockerel who, given it is Spring, has become a bit of a nutter again. Breakfast at desk = vanilla coffee and cinnamon and raisin muffin. I may go back for a bowl of cereals. BBC News website to check how many more people have died from flu overnight (see last post!) and read about Brown & Co's latest stunt - every home in the UK to receive a leaflet about how to cut down the risk of contracting flu? hmmm. One thing did catch my eye on the news given that most holiday companies and regular airlines are being sensible and cancelling flights, etc.. British Airways, which has four flights a week to Mexico City, said it would not be cancelling any flights. Very sensible.

11:00. Started a new job file for a contract won yesterday. Responded to a few emails, most importantly to a good friend in Hungary who thinks the flu issue may have a more sinister raison d'etre - maybe just maybe the virus or at least the advice to stop international travel is related to the fact that those in power (who have recently been pocketing millions if not billions of dollars of government financial sector handouts... where has that money gone?) don't want us bumping into them as they wander the globe spending their not so hard earned new fortunes... Maybe?

Surfed the web for a new bathroom radiator - dark metal tubular model that has varied in price between £505 and £395 delivered, illustrating the power of the web to grab a keen price. Then surfed to www.edmistoncompany.com to gaze at the yachts that are still being bought, presumably by those in receipt of aforementioned government money. Another coffee just appeared on my desk, with a Pecan pastry courtesy of Mrs Polko. Nice.


12:30. Few games on Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare (of course). Skimmed the UK Inward Investment 2007/08 report from UKTI. Riveting. Not riveting as in engineering wise, just an interesting read. Honest. Filled out my 5 Best Rap albums on a facebook app - very hard to pick only 5 of anything but listed 1 x BDP, 1 x EPMD, 2 x Braintax and a Poor Righteous Teachers album I love. Good distribution of the types of rap I like I guess - all saying a lot more than guns and ho's ovr a bassline. I did try to list Hijack (an old South London rap crew) but couldn't as this is probably as rare as a rare thing.. but much better than anything that I've heard since 1990!

13:30. Lunch at desk - mackerel, baked potato and cheddar with a glass of water. Quickly stripped air horns off my old (as in 47 years old) car as Mrs Polko micro-baked the spuds - having a radiator re-cored and so the chance is here to take apart, clean paint and make tidy various bits at the front of the bonnet. My baby is getting there.. More surfing around. Need a funky toilet for my bathroom project and maybe one or two youtube comedy videos to lighten the lunch half hour.

15:00. A few emails sorted out, two meetings set for London in two weeks time. Interspersed with another few games of Call of Duty 4. I am clearly not in an aggressive mood today as I keep losing or winning the coveted award of least kills in the online games (usually of around 12 players). 4pm sees me finishing early today to watch the final game in the quarter final series (game 7 if you're that interested) of New York Rangers' attempt at winning the Stanley Cup. Sadly, my team (New York Islanders) didn't even make it to the playoffs - much the same as me today on COD4 they managed to come lowest of all NHL teams this year. But hey! There's always next year! Some light has started to shine at the end of the economic tunnel - HMV have been cleared to take over 15 Zavvi music stores and one of my clients has just secured funding to build some more data centres (big sheds, super-cooled, served by multiple power units, full of server racks essentially). Sadly, we don't get involved in this type of work so nothing much in it for me.

15:30. More COD4 for me. Mrs Polko is far more energetic and is cutting grass outside. First US death from swine flu is a young Mexican child on holiday apparently. All is good on our hill, clearly not so elsewhere. But, what hype this virus is gettin'!

17:30. I have a bad back at the moment and so instead of sitting for long periods in front of a TV watching ice hockey (see above) I have to get up and do something else to ensure I am not crippled when it comes time to get off the sofa. I either have a very badly strained lower back muscle or Hodgkin's Disease (which ain't nice believe me). I am sincerely hoping it's the former. So, back at desk surfing the web (again) for more information or in the blind hope of finding a website that says, if this is happening it can't be that Disease and must be something less serious. I need to book in with the doctor sort it all out for once and for all. Tomorrow. Honest. (those that know me know I hate anything to do with order, appointments and medical personnel - except sister-in-law of Polko who is a nurse and is therefore ok). Also need to sort out my expenses forms as I have been travelling a lot recently and the receipts are piling up in my in-tray and I'm owed a fair amount of money by my employer. Which is me. So, that's sort of ok then? More ice hockey in a mo'


19:00. My son's favourite team are now out of the Stanley Cup. He won't be happy - I'll text him. He won't reply. He rarely does. Even if I fund his mobile phone top-up... How quick this time has come round - especially when memories of him being 3 and taking his clothes off in Kendals Manchester, calmly sat on a sofa while I was buying some clothes seem only yesterday... Also managed to squeeze in 15 minutes of shooting outside - still hitting right of target - need to adjust my scope I think - before setting to and making some Pecorino and Mozarella Ravioli for Mrs Polko to come home from her horse riding to. Switching to kitchen computer to update the rest of today's blog.

20:00. Pasta made - a change of mind and the discovery of an old-ish avocado in the fridge has resulted in Avocado & Gorgonzola Ravioli instead. The last hour has been one of new things; Mrs Polko arrived home with some fresh goats cheese made from a friends goat's milk.. yummy, I made pasta to a random soundtrack from youtube - spurred on from my search for a Big B track called Hooligan I found a list including a band called Hed PE and their track Ordo Ab Chao - knew it was going to be good when it started with a quote "The puppetmasters create disorder, so the people will demand 'order'." and then a sample saying "President Bush come out with your hands up, you're under arrest..." Check it out by clicking here. Really not my usual cup of tea guv' what with its thrash guitar chorus (Polko is no fan of guitars - having a range of synths and massive array of Reason 4.0 Refills on the theme 'classic analog synths and drum machines!') but a strange and extremely engaging mix of latin percussion, political statements and thrash. I like. A lot. Anyway, here's Big B - big indeed!


22:00. Dinner was great - Avocado works well with Gorgonzola. Lesson of the day digested. Quite literally. Watched some TV - Victorian Farm and an hour programme about wheat farmers on BBC4 (Polko lives on a farm, so this is in the mould so to speak - although this farm is a sheep farm and not arable.. but hey! who's counting). The news is full of the upscaled Grade 5 threat of the swine flu virus, which makes me ever more suspicious of the political nature of the whole event? A good friend of Polko's has a medical degree and I had a brief text chat with him earlier in which he suggested that the only real threat at this stage is to those who are already low in immuno-reponse.. another friend of Polko is stepping on a plane to NY this Friday & I think all will be well there. Polko is also thinking a trip to US is in order to watch the remainder of the 2009 Stanley Cup in his favourite sports bar (in Santa Barbara). California is so enticing this time of year. Any time of year in fact. Oh, and in other news a great big hole has appeared in Barlow Moor Rd, a road Polko used to know well in South Manchester - see here. Which reminds me of that strange unanswered Beatles line, "how many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall".

23:30. Watched a Newsnight special on Obama's first 100 days in office - court is still out on that one. One last glass of wine. One last game of COD4. Mrs Polko is ascending the stairs. Lava lamp is still doing its thing. Another day in the life of Polko is drawing to a close...

Hope you've enjoyed it.

no more later..

i CANDY ?!

I've commented on the Candy brothers before on my blog. They are a couple of guys who have been developing high profile properties in the UK, Los Angeles and elsewhere in the recent past and have jetted to the top select few in the property world - reputedly being worth hundreds of millions seemingly out of nowhere.

So much mystique surrounds their funding that they have recently opened their accounts to the The Sunday Times - obviously in an attempt to get into the higher eschelons of the Times Top 200 or whatever list... They're not known for their modesty!

The results apparently are (and I quote today's press release)..

Nick Candy and his brother Christian have taken the unusual step of showing The Sunday Times details of how they control their funds through a bank account in Guernsey where £244m is invested. They also gave details of their Monaco penthouse, which they claim could be worth £150m, and their two yachts, Candyscape and Candyscape II, which together are valued at £50m.

The question does remain of where their initial funding for the projects came from? hmmm...

All that is now needed is a fitting pic from one of my favourite websites when I want to dream about a different life (www.edmistoncompany.com)...



Yours for around 30 million euros and moored in Monaco as we speak. What you waiting for?

dream on Polko...

YOU THINK WE GOT IT BAD?

GOING UP! America's Gross National Debt:

...and meanwhile...

Green Energy

CREDIT STARVATION?

A prominent economic adviser has stated recently, "Credit starvation is the biggest problem facing the UK economy and increasing the supply of central bank money via purchases of government securities should help to loosen these restrictions and boost the supply of money and credit."

Polko looks at this from another angle..

Greed and continued access to hard sell/low cost credit by the many has been the biggest problem facing the UK economy for some time now.

As I write this, the Bank of England is expected to drop interest rates again in the next 10 minutes or so, backed by a new form of 'quantiative easing' - increasing the money supply by any other name. Only it's not so new a concept. Take a look in the history books and see the problems that arose in 1797 in the UK when the money supply was expanded by the setting up of a string of new banks all over the country backed by the Bank of England gradually increasing the issue of paper notes. For those not bothered to read up on the period, it was not a pretty picture for the ordinary man who faced prices rising by 7 times their value in the decade before.

The particular strain of 'easing' the Bank of England has been discussing in the last month or so - not just flooding more money into the system but using it to buy up government assets - was also tried in Japan in the early 90s. Now't much happened to help the Japanese economy. Little evidence it will help now then?

I may just have the answer - I think I'll go out and buy an over-priced new car on a 35 year 0% APR loan? Gotta do my bit for the UK economy you know. So long as it's made or at least the spares are made in the UK of course!

Meanwhile, in another life, Polko is busy stashing all he can to exit this island before the sea swells and the land crumbles under the weght of all the prole kids dropping out of ill educated female loins across estates all over the land. God Bless this not so green and not so pleasant land.

PENSIONS...

On the subject of the RBS boss Fred Goodwin : whatever you think to the fact that someone was able to negotiate a massive pension as part of his package when working for a private company, the government's recent soundings have got to be more alarming?!

One quote from todays BBC News pages will suffice...

Ms Harman declined to say how the government would achieve this but made it clear it would not tolerate the award as it stands.

"The prime minister has said that it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted," she added.

"And it might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that is where the government steps in."

So, it would seem that the current UK government are about to disregard the law of the land which they themselves have ratified and do what they want instead... just because, as Ms Harman states, the Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable...

that's alright then, Gordon surely know what he's doing...... right?

P.S. It's not just me that thinks Gordon is doing a particularly bad job with my tax payments. Question: Will he forego his fat pension when he retires? I think not?

THANK CREDIT CRUNCH IT'S FRIDAY

..and so it is. The end of another relatively flat working week. But, at least Polko's got some work to do? Feel more sorry for the investment bankers that are now sat at home twiddling their thumbs. Or don't, as the case may be.

I was sent a bunch of Friday jokes (joke emails are constrained to Friday's in Polko's office - if you send me them any other time of the week, they get binned instantly!). Some are worth setting down in this blog for longevity.

Q: What's the capital of Iceland?
A: About £3.50

Q: Why have estate agents stopped looking out of the window in the morning?
A: Because otherwise they'd have nothing to do in the afternoon

This second one brings me neatly to an observation I made last night. There was nothing on TV, nothing at all. Quite a feat given we have Sky TV and about a zillion channels to choose from. As I flicked through high number channels (don't ask me why we have Sky as we tend to stick to the first 6 channels or so anyway - that way you don't wear out your thumb on the remote?) I noticed two channels called..

Real Estate TV & Real Estate TV+1 (Sky 262 and 263 if you're sad enough to be interested)

Now come on, I know there's been a fair bit of interest in property in the UK in the last five years or so - a lot of it by misguided individuals who call themselves 'property developers' because they've bought or have been left a second house to rent out - they should meet some of my clients. The ones buying up 100+ acre sites or blocks of city and town centres to build billion pound shopping centres and office parks - you know, property developers... get it? I don't think some of you do...

Anyway, I digress. Now, I'm not in TV but if ever there was a flawed business model in the media world it has to be to start a digital TV channel specialising in property, or 'real estate' as they seem to want to call it (it'll never catch on in the UK?), at around the time of peak property prices, over-inflated loan to value deals, rising re-possessions, increasing unemployment/uncertainty in the jobs market and zero liquidity in the financial system?

A quick browse to their website reveals that this so called TV company is just another part of the investment scam that has been driving the market in the past few years - the only real content on there is a search engine for finding property for sale - and this appears to be pretty much tied to major new build developments with explanations such as, "Hot new apartments at Celsius, Bracknell's new landmark development". Who are they trying to kid, £180,000 for a 1 bedroom apartment (and note that's from £180,000). On the old model (3.5 times your salary lending) that would need an income of £51,250 (and I am assuming a 100% mortgage here too). Which first time buyer is going to be earning that then?

Of course, in the real world (away from Real Estate TV's domain) new build developments are full of such stupidity - developers have been paying crazy money per acre for their land, the cost of materials has been rising rapidly and therefore end prices have been on an upwards spiral since 2000. We all know this. Yet, many people have jumped in and bought houses on new developments to try and rent them out and become 'property developers' - thus falling unfairly and squarely into the waiting hands of the real developers who've cashed in, closed out most remaining residential schemes and are sat waiting for the next circus to hit town. If I see it coming down the road I'm sorely tempted to change profession and become a ringmaster. Watch this space.

..and so to finish on a high note, another one of those Friday jokes..

Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Peter Mandelson are flying to a world economic summit. Peter looks at Alistair and chuckles: 'You know, I could throw a £50 note out of the window right now and make one person very happy.'

Alistair shrugs his shoulders and says: 'Well, I could throw five £10 notes out of the window and make five people very happy.' Gordon says: 'Of course, but I could throw ten £5 notes out of the window and make ten people very happy.'

The pilot rolls his eyes, looks at all of them, and says: 'I could throw all of you out of the window and make the whole country happy.'

Here. Here.

HOW DID YOU FEEL? (aka DECADE DREAMING)

In the middle of the 80's I used to buy the Sunday Times religously. This might not be strange in itself given it was a Sunday when I did it. Nothing special there you might think? Only, I was 16 or 17 years old and I guess it's not the usual thing you'd expect someone of that age to settle down to read. Especially given that I wasn't a nerdy 6th former type at the time (not me - not then, not now, not ever!). On the Saturday night you'd usually have found me dancing around to the latest synth-pop electronic music at my local nightclub, driving around the town with my mates eyeing up women or, a year or so later, taking my girlfriend out.

So, what was I doing with the Times on my knee each Sunday afternoon. Tucked up happily in a suburban house somewhere, essentially nowhere (but that's open to debate) in the east of the country?

In fact, after a quick read through a news section or two (back then the Sunday Times was even bigger and heavier than it is now.. or maybe my hands are bigger?), I used to spend most of my time browsing the Jobs pages, focused mainly on City of London type jobs, and the Cars and Houses pages stuffed full of ads for Bentley's, exotic Italian sports cars and Thames-side apartments that were going for £100,000... imagine that £100,000! (I'll have 3 of those these days). I used to amaze myself at what some people were selling - not becuase of the fact that it was a real life Lamborghini like I'd grown up with on my bedroom wall, but more because I realised that some people were on the other side of the transaction and had the sort of money that most people could never ever dream of having (back then credit wasn't thrown at you like in recent times and if you drove a nice car you were not leasing it). I even set myself a target of being a millionaire by the time I was 30 and driving a Porsche 928S. Don't ask me where that particular dream went, but come and go it certainly did despite a move to London and a really well paid job for a while - I think I know what happened along the way but that's for another blog post..

Hmmm... What brought this retro-rant on you might ask? Last week I was completing some work for a client listening to The Pet Shop Boys 'Please' and the various 12 inches associated with it in the background. Listening to Opportunities or Love Comes Quickly brought back a feint whiff of my mindset and aspirations at the time. Like a lot of kids in the 80s I did have the Lamborghini Countach poster on the wall alongside Debbie Harry wrapped provocatively in a plastic sheet (focus, Polko, focus!). So, mine was a typical UK upbringing of glorification of material items and money-making and Thatcher was in power and people were indeed making lot's of money.. some people anyway, and my world was touching on that little group through girlfriends and family businesses so what did I know of others in Merseyside or elsewhere that were actually not making anything at all.? That was to be changed a few years later in the episode where Polko ventures west from his home town.


Nothing wrong with a bit of dreaming though if you ask me. People were still social, people still talked to each other. These days almost everyone is unable to talk sensibly to you as they are tapping away at the text keys of the latest mobile gizmo - a disease that started sometime in the 90s and has subsequently come into its horrible own in the first ten years of the 21st century. Even if they did start a conversation today it would probably be about some minor celebrity on tv last night, their latest BMW 3-series lease car, football or some other drivel wholly unrelated to how they were really feeling or thinking. Almost certainly not the state of the Middle East or about something with a little more meaning than kicking around a piece of leather that is meant to symbolise a pigs stomach for some unknown reason.

Give me the 80s any day - to (mis-)quote Depeche Mode, back then People Were People...

...oh, and the winning Euromillions Lottery numbers this week would come in handy to buy some of those things I used to look at too. I'd still drive that white Lamborghini Countach (if only to disgust my current girlfriend!) but might pass on the London flat for something a little more rural, and a little more French.. with horses darling!

Dream on.

INTERNATIONAL BUY NOTHING DAY ??

Today is International Buy Nothing Day apparently. An honourable enough cause - see www.buynothingday.co.uk - but one that many will I guess choose to ignore...

..or maybe not?

In these harder times (notice the relative 'harder' as economic conditions still cannot really be described in an absolute sense of Hard Times a la Dickens, great depression, etc?) people might just decide to spend less today than they have been doing in the past few years..

Credit crunch, mortgage woes - lower interest rates are one thing, but many people are having to stump up severe penalties by way of higher loan to value and arrangement fees on mortgages that are at or above 100% of their homes values and these translate to expensive fees when mortgaged out over the twenty or so year mortgage horizon as people add fees to mortgages instead of paying for them with shorter term loans - job losses looming in several areas of retail and manufacturing let alone the rationalisation of banking that is about to occur in the first half of 2009. All these factors are bearing down hard on most people's spending habits.

All good then, and in my opinion it's about time people generally stopped trying to live way above their incomes, buying newer and more expensive cars on bubble loan schemes - worse still consolidating the last loan with a new one and buying a new vehicle, borrowing against inflated property values to spend on depreciating assets and generally acting like the people they see on the telly. Who'd want to be a celebrity anyway? In the UK recently it would sadly seem plenty of people do.

Hold that thought while I slip back into obscurity for another day - and maybe go and spend some (non-borrowed) money in my nearest city to help Woolies out a bit!

SHORT OBSERVATION...

Just a few weeks ago the markets tested 5,000 (FTSE100) and are now sat staring at 4,000.. Big (allegedly) bank after big bank is in trouble and governments around the world use the opportunity to stop people putting their money anywhere they like, make it all more political and play at being bankers (no pun intended honest)..

I have just one thing to say about it all.

Polko wants his money back.

I woke to this message today which doesn't make me a happy bunny.