2767 days ago
Oh happy days. The only way that Monday night's Presidential debate can get better is if crooked Hillary has a coughing fit and then another pneumonia induced collapse live on air. And if anything will bring that on it is the now confirmed presence of Gennifer Flowers in the front row. Gennifer who? say the millennials who still think that the Clinton family are not pathological liars and sleaze-buckets. Welcome, my young friends, to a refresher course on the 1990s.
In the 1992 Presidential election campaign
3114 days ago
Eagle eyed readers may have noticed that another blog covering the colourful associates of Aussie share ramper David Lenigas appear to have got me a little confused with the crook Damian Conboy (see picture below). Let me explain.
3777 days ago
That headline got your attention? Read on.
There have been too many lunches this month. I look forward with relish to a January spent away from London living the simple life and detoxing. One of the more illuminating lunches was with Mark Jones of Alecto Minerals (ALO).
3978 days ago
It was a year ago today that the first article appeared on this blog. Most blogs fold after a period of months but I am still here. And to celebrate a glass of bubbly for breakfast! The toast “to you dear readers for continuing to read this site”
A year ago my life looked unimaginably bleak. At a personal and health level it was a mess and I was days away from leaving Rivington Street and t1ps the company I founded. To the victors the spoils and so it was repeatedly asserted that all t1ps’ problems were of my making and that new management was turning it around. Yes I have read the interim results released at 6PM on Friday. Hmmmm. You might say that but I could not possibly comment.
That however was a former life for me. My line in the sand was drawn in September. By then I knew who my friends were. To folks such as Richard Poulden, Abbe Aronson, Darren Atwater, Steve Moore, Clem Chambers, Monisha Varadan, Chris Potts, Amanda Van Dyke, Lucian Miers, Chris Booker and Zak Mir I am forever in your debt. To you I say “cheers” – another toast.
I chatted yesterday to most of the above and life has changed pretty dramatically. At the Real Man restaurant we were losing £5,000 a month when I took it on officially in September. There is now just one of the staff at that time still working here and I have hired and fired aggressively and made a stack of other changes. Having just enjoyed our busiest Saturday in memory we are now happily making a profit, our customers like us and we serve far better food. That was achievement one. I guess that “new management line” is true sometimes. Miaow.
Achievement two was getting the UK Investor Show organised in just a few months and it went well. Now with my friends at ADVFN we are well on track to deliver an even better show on April 5 next year. And I now rather suspect we will be the only show featuring master investors happening next spring. Miaow.
But perhaps the biggest win has been in writing. It is what I do best (although I can knock out a fantastic Risotto con salsicce e funghi these days as well). The launch of the www.shareprophets.com site has exceeded expectations. After 50 days it has half as many registered users as we managed to attract in one year at UK-Analyst. More join every day. And gratifyingly more and more writers seem to want to join the team and write for us. Another two will debut this week. Meanwhile other websites…no that is enough miaows.
But www.Tomwinnifrith.com is my real love. It started as therapy but being able to write exactly what I thought without some corporate hissy fit ensuing soon became an addictive drug. The fact that I use the odd naughty word or talk about birds does not appeal to everyone – notably Google and PR prude Kay Larsen of College Group – as you may remember here and here.
But it is me. I do use naughty words. I do find myself drifting into the vernacular of my favourite TV show (The Sweeney) now and again. And I do have strong views on Israel, welfare scroungers, the EU, global warming and civil liberties. Why hold back? I had been gagged for so long that the release was joyful and still is.
But there was also a release in that I ceased to by a City insider and became an outsider. As such there was no need to kiss arse – anyone and everyone was fair game. The past year has shown me that not only is it fun to constantly expose and poke fun and to say what you want but that I can earn a reasonable living doing that and looking after Real Man Pizza. There is no need to hold back. While I might have been tentaitive at first I am now in 5th gear and will not be slowing down or getting softer in my approach.
And so looking back I reflect on those who have brought inspiration and pleasure to me:
1. The visit to Butrint (photo article)
2. Damian Conboy of Alecto hooking up with the Playboy PR girl
3. Kay Larsen PR prude at College Hill
4. Sefton Resources & Jim Ellerton – thanks Jim you have made my year ( see you in court Bitchez)
5. Taking a contrary view on the Olympics
6. Vroula – the fascist Greek athlete and defending her right to free speech
7. The visit to the Berlin Jewish Museum
8. Standing by St Paul’s for Lady Thatcher’s funeral
9. The start of the AIM Cesspit campaign
10.Going on stage with Nigel Wray and Nick Leslau at UKInvestor show – feeling I was with friends.
11. Being complimented by the Goddess
12. The Guardian and deluded lefties everywhere
13. The Baker of Zitsa
14. Albania - National Leave your Gun at home day
15. Financial PR firms & the AIM Cesspit - another fight picked
I am sure that I have missed out a few highlights.
At a personal level, many of you met my partner at UK Investor Show. She may be an utterly deluded lefty. No okay she is an utterly deluded lefty but she has been a rock at all times. She even now knows who Joe Cole is and that Mark Noble’s veins are claret and blue. What more could a man ask for?
Thank you all for reading this website over the past year. Year two starts on Monday. What will it bring?
Best wishes
Tom Winnifrith
4092 days ago
LinkedIn has emailed me to say thanks. Aaah how touchingly American. And …I mean that most sincerely. Facebook for grownups is celebrating having 200 million users and apparently I have played my part as my profile was among the top 1% most hit upon in 2012. I am so touched. Grabs Onion. Weeps. I’d like to thank various of my stalkers, notably Mark & Sarah and those folks at legal firms Pinsent Masons and Kermans for crawling all over my activity log almost every day and making this possible. And so what does this all mean? Absolutely nothing.
While Facebook is inane, LinkedIn is just rather boring. Other than alerting me to the networking activities of Alecto Resources boss Damian Conboy ( liaising with the playboy PR bird Lucy HERE) I cannot say that it has really brought me much in the way of laughs over the past year. For what it is worth I am now on Facebook. I use it as I use LinkedIn to churn out links to my articles and so to attract readers to TomWinnifrith.com. And for what it is worth, over the past month LinkedIn has brought in about 3% of my traffic and Facebook 1.3%.
Natch I ‘d like to thank the two firms concerned but not by giving them any money. I am a customer in that I add to their metrics they boast about to hoodwink Wall Street. But the cash I generate for both firms is exactly £0.00. I have never clicked on an advert & will not do so. I use them for free marketing and that is it. I will link in or whatever the term is on Facebook with anyone (even one of those aforementioned stalkers) as it means they get alerted to my articles and might just be read them.
I am also sure that the 1% is misleading. In the same way that I think I am around the 2 millions most followed person ( of 500 million) on twitter ( @tomwinnifrith in case you want to push me over 3,000 today), the scales are logarithmic. So the top 2000 twitter people in terms of followers are followed by 1 million + or whatever and hen it tails off quite dramatically. And of course most of the twitter followers of those with a million + followers are paid for robots, exercises in vanity ( as I explained here) I am pretty sure LinkedIn traffic patterns are pretty similar. So being on the edge of the top 1% is a lot closer to being in the bottom 1% than it is to being in the top 0.1%. And on twitter I am closer in absolute terms to being the least followed person on this planet than I am to being the 1 millionth most followed.
Alerts on this article will naturally whizz off into the ether by twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – I still fail to grasp why I add anything at all to your bottom lines, but thanks for having me none the less.
4267 days ago
The bus timetable on the internet said that there were buses at 10 am and 12 noon from Athens to Igounemitsa. My late grandmother (Lesbia Winnifrith) only missed one train in her life and that was when she was so early she caught the one before. My mother’s side of the family (Bookers) only ever turn up on time once – at their funerals. Luckily I did a Winnifrith and arrived at 9 to find that the bus was actually at 9.30. Eight hours later I arrived in Igounemitsa.
This is the ferry port that takes you to Corfu or, in my case, Italy. I am now killing time as the vessel does not leave until midnight. This place is like a half finished Tilbury without the glamour but much hotter. I doubt the “new port” at which I am staring will ever be completed. But enormous ferries still chug into the quayside to load and unload. These vessels are vast and as I sit here in a cafe on the other side of the road it seems as if their sheer momentum could carry them through the building site and across that road. But that would be hard work and this is Greece.
4286 days ago
I start by thanking the lovely Petra ( pictured left) for her assistance in the photo shoot required for this story. She has asked my to accompany her to a beach party starting sometime after 1 am tonight. I tried to explain that this not the sort of thing 44 year old codgers do, but after her assistance today, it would be rude to refuse her invitation. No early start for me tomorrow.
I am advised by a concerned reader that I should take precautions in Albania. You know what I mean? It is really hot there. I need to wear a hat to avoid sunstroke or my sensitive (getting ever less anaemic white) skin getting burned. And so I have bought suitable apparel and, killing two birds with one stone, I thought I’d start keeping my side of my proposed deal with Lucy Sharp the playboy PR girl who networked so effectively with proven liar, Damian Conboy of AIM listed Alecto Resources (ALO).
I have been somewhat disappointed that Ms Sharpe has not yet been in touch to start arranging how she is going to help me to understand this networking business but I am sure she is busy helping Mr Conboy turn his initial networking into value-add for shareholders of Alecto.
4302 days ago
The harmless sweet looking little old lady I chose to sit next on the overnight ferry to Athens turned out to be the Greek national loud snoring and snorting while asleep champion. My night was thus fitful and so I sit in Athens with not enough energy to do anything but too much energy to sleep. The obvious answer is to scroll through the updates of my various LinkedIn connections: you never really learn much but you can pretend to be working (virtuous) and it should send you to sleep. Learning that my pal Will Tyndall had joined the group “Cement, concrete & construction” was fairly gripping – I bet they have some pretty fascinating discussion threads going there – truly a cyber place you’d want to hang out.
