1347 days ago
I end with a view from my office photo just to annoy Graham Neary. I also comment on the latest bonkers ideas from Boris about how to cripple the economy. Those are relevant as I discuss the assumptions made by Metro Bank (MTRO) and its Godawful results. Who is it trying to kid? It has certainly not thrown in the kitchen sink in terms of provisioning. There is far worse to come when the banking crisis really gets going. I discuss gold and ask those with a knowledge of cocaine to help Lucian out with a new valuation metric. I look at Centamin (CEY) and am not persuaded there is a new normal to justify a sub 4% prospective yield.
2042 days ago
On today's Bearcast I look at debt, it is like crack but after the highs it always ends badly. I talk with reference to 2008 and the next correction. Then onto Kier (KIE), the spin and the red flags and finally to Nike and its self-inflicted PC own goal.
2781 days ago
I do not care a jot that Keith Vaz offers to buy coke for young men who he pays to have unprotected anal sex with. Nor do I care that reports are emerging showing that his pattern of behavior is not a one off. I feel sorry for Mrs Vaz who must be feeling very confused right now, not knowing which way to turn. But Vaz himself has no shame.
The oily old windbag has a history of sinning normally in the cash for favours department and in any normal job would have been fired years ago. But Vaz is an MP. And so yesterday he stood down from the Commons Home Affairs committee which he chaired. Naturally he said that he was doing so "for the sake of the committee"" not for himself you understand, Vaz makes this noble sacrifice for others because he cares. What a saint.
And naturally
3130 days ago
It now seems pretty clear that Call Me Dave did not stick his todger in a dead pig while at University but did smoke pot. So did I. On one occasion in a lavatory with a future Labour female cabinet minister in the days before she became a dreary sanctimonius bore. As far as I can remember the only folks who did not smoke pot were the religious maniacs and the thoroughly dull boatie health Nazis.
That Cameron acted like more or less every other student perhaps shows that he is perhaps just a bit more normal than most of the arseholes in politics. In a way I’d rather have a Prime Minister who has been a normal human being at one point in his life rather than some humourless wonk who lectures us all about how we should live while never having lived a normal life himself.
It is also alleged that Call Me Dave attended a party in London in 2008 where folks hoovered up cocaine.
3689 days ago
I have used Minoan (MIN) before as an example of how market makers operate. When I pointed this out before (HERE) I was told that they provide liquidity. No, they just manipulate share prices to ensure that they make enough money to pay for the cocaine and hookers this weekend. The transparency is obvious.
Shares in Minoan moved ahead sharply this morning on the back of reports
3792 days ago
It is alleged that the domestic goddess Nigella Lawson is in fact a coke fiend. The allegations have cropped up in a rather tawdry court case involving two of her employees and have been fanned by her ex-husband Charles Saatchi.
Nigella’s slick PR machine urges us to get behind this poor woman, formerly married to a wife beater to tweet #teamnigella and to feel better by making a scrummy holiday hotcake with eggnog cream. Calories 5000. Royalties to Nigella’s bank account even more.
Hmmmm
As a foodie I always had a bit of a soft spot for Nigella.
4107 days ago
Comrade Mick Kipper, a good man albeit a deluded Lefty from the grim North asks me for my views on Inheritance Tax. No problems Mick: it should be abolished at once. Trust that is okay with you? Nope you wish me to explain? No problems.
First up this is a taxed on already taxed income. Somewhere along the line the capital one bequeaths was earned and tax was paid on it. Thus this is a double tax. Now Mick will no doubt raise the example of the Duke & Duchess of Snootyland whose family have not done an honest day’s work in hundreds of years. Such folk are a tiny minority of those who pay IHT but the left like to paint them as typical taxpayers. Moreover the landed gentry have been crucified by IHT for several generations so levying another round is, in this case, even more unfair than usual- this is income that is taxed many times over.
IHT means that if I earn a pound and spend in on hookers I am taxed once.
