851 days ago
Former chairman of the Vaccine Task Force, Clive Dix, has given an interview to the ever more appalling Daily Telegraph. I am not sure which I find more depressing, the lack of thought in Dix’s claims or the failure of the deadwood press to pick him up on this? Let me explain…
964 days ago
For what seems like an eternity, ever more restrictive and ludicrous rules have been imposed on us in an attempt to tackle a plague with a 99.97% survival rate on the basis that we must “follow the science.” Of course that was tommyrot.
999 days ago
This is a superb video Gotcha. Congratulations to those responsible.
1136 days ago
The graph below is pretty clear. Having lockdowns as a way to fight covid does not work. It looks at age adjusted excess deaths per million. You will see that Sweden, no lockdown, does pretty well, far better than the UK with a draconian lockdown. Florida with a very lax lockdown does marginally worse that California with a very tight lockdown, but not that much worse. Lockdown jihadists, mainly from the “tolerant” left, have repeatedly warned that Republican run Florida was heading for Armageddon. Many of those fanatics lived in New York with a far more draconian lockdown. Look how it fared…
1183 days ago
Like colleagues such as Daniel Sandford, Ms Adler banks a six-figure salary, plus expenses, funded by extorting £157.50 a year from we plebs whether we watch her fake news or not and she honestly thinks she does a good job. As the BBC’s EU correspondent, she has become utterly embedded in the Evil Empire’s mindset. In the Brexit talks she batted for Brussels. On every glitch, it was always the fault of the evil Britishers and now that we have left she carries on blaming Britain for everything as you can see below.
1196 days ago
Like others who have had Covid, I am pretty sure that my vaccination from God is about as good as the one Matt Hancock wants me to take but the Government seems desperate to make us think otherwise and the BBC is acting as its propaganda arm in this aim. Yesterday, it reported – as you can see below – that a new study showed that having Covid could protect folks for at least five months! Putting this 5-month figure in one’s mind is an utter deceipt.
1249 days ago
Today, from AstraZeneca (AZN) and the City of lost causes, we have news on a third vaccine against Covid-19. There will soon be a fourth and a fifth and at some stage lots of folks will ignore concerns about potential long term side effects to get vaccinated against a disease which kills 0.05% of those under 70 who catch it. And a bedwetting world can breathe a sigh of relief and, even idiots like Matt Hancock, will realise that we will not need mass testing and we can get on with our lives.
3629 days ago
The Board of AstraZeneca (AZN) has today rejected an improved £55 a share bid from Pfizer. The yanks say they will not go hostile but urge Astra shareholders to tell the board to get a grip and accept. They should do exactly that.
3644 days ago
Ed Miliband wants the Government to step in and at least investigate if not block the proposed purchase of AstraZeneca (AZN) by Pfizer. He is wrong and showing a touch of UKIP style nastiness to boot.
The leader of the Labour Party reckons that takeovers of big UK firms by foreigners should be checked out to see if they are in the National Interest. He hints that Pfizer have a poor record of cutting jobs post takeovers. To paraphrase: They are foreign and nasty foreigners to boot. If Pfizer buys AstraZeneca jobs of British workers are at risk. It sounds almost like something you might hear from UKIP. It is unpleasant and it is also just plain wrong.
4011 days ago
Robert Sutherland Smith is again proving that he is still alive with another guest post. Robert started his City career the year before I was born and is, I think, 157 years old. Fear not. He is very much alive and kicking. He and I have worked together for almost eight years at t1ps.com . He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at various places ( including Shareprophets.com naturally) on FTSE 350 Income stocks. Robert is a speaker at the UKInvestor Show on April 5th 2014. He is a great one for focussing on yield. RSS today looks at AstraZeneca. RSS writes:
With the first quarter’s results from Astra Zeneca (AZN) the curtain has gone up for the first act of what we all know will be a tough and difficult year; a stock market version of Gounod’s Faust but with a happier ending we trust. At least that is what the market expects to judge from the fact that the share price has risen some ten per cent from since the introduction and appointment of the new Chief Executive (whose name almost rhymes with Poirot) and his plan plus the fact the share price did not fall significantly on their publication - ending down 4.5p on the day to 3321p a share. His plan is to transform the company from its co-operative, external economy dividend favouring model, back to the drug discovery orthodoxy of more internally funded research and development; leaving the question hanging in the air about whether the company can increase internal R&D spending while at the same time maintain and increase dividends?
4048 days ago
Robert Sutherland Smith is again proving that he is still alive with another guest post. Robert started his City career the year before I was born and is, I think, 157 years old. Fear not. He is very much alive and kicking. He and I have worked together for almost eight years at t1ps.com . He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at TradingResearchPoint on FTSE 350 Income stocks. Robert is a speaker at the UKInvestor Show on April 13th. He is a great one for focussing on yield. RSS today looks at AstraZeneca. RSS writes:
The new CEO of Astra Zeneca Pascal Soirot (which scans with Hercule Poirot very nicely) made his promised presentation on the strategy for returning the company to profits and earnings growth on Thursday 21 March. He appeared to do that with some degree of credibility because the share price was marked up the next day. I am also delighted to see that along with the presentation on how he plans to get profits growing he had a comment on dividends. Basically, the company says that ordinary dividends will not be an automatic function of an individual year’s earnings but rather will reflect expectations about growth. I think it is worth a direct quote
4098 days ago
Robert Sutherland Smith started his City career the year before I was born. He is, I think, 157 years old. He and I have worked together for almost eight years at t1ps.com . He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at TradingResearchPoint on FTSE 350 Income stocks. He is a great one for focussing on yield. RSS today looks at AstraZeneca.
Whatever else, the annual results from that curiosity of the pharmaceutical sector, the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca (AZN) tells us that the company’s management is thinking about dividend policy but presumably not telling us all they think. So here are my Hercule Poirot like surmises. Smoothing the waxed moustache, taking the cane from the umbrella stand and giving oneself an admiring glance in the art deco hall mirror, I mince forward, stimulating my little grey cells – such as they are – as I go.
4109 days ago
Robert Sutherland Smith started his City career the year before I was born. He is, I think, 157 years old. He and I have worked together for almost eight years at t1ps.com . He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at TradingResearchPoint on FTSE 350 Income stocks. He is a great one for focussing on yield. RSS today looks at AstraZeneca.
Astra Zeneca (AZN) is not as other pharmaceutical companies are: or rather, it was not as other pharmaceuticals are! Until last year, Astra Zeneca was operating a singular business model in which it sought to reduce R&D costs by outsourcing much of it in collaborative deals with outside companies. That left it, in theory at least, to simply generate cash with which to pay shareholders dividends or buy back their shares. The City did not buy that model and the shares sunk to a level where the yield was phenomenal. Change was needed and now, under new management, it is returning to being a more orthodox ‘big pharma’ which by convention, does a significant quantity of its molecule discovery, research and development in house – incurring the costs of such activity.
