Archive for July, 2008

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Of Mice and Men

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Exactly who do I have to shoot in the head to escape this depression?

No, serioulsy. This is not nearly a recession, this is really a recession. I’m a relatively young 31 years old and whilst the last proerty crash never really hit Newcastle (houses werent worth fcuk all anyway) this one is really hurting real people. So is it fair?

Have you heard the expression “mis-selling” or “mis-sold”, often found in close proximity to “scandal”? Well you tell me what giving 0% or even any line of credit to people on minimum wage is and I wait to join the class-action.

You think mortgage debt is bad (sub-prime?) wait til you see credit-card debt (supersubprime!).

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Oil Price

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

So, is the oil price now correcting, with the price rises over the last six months being mainly down to speculation? Or is this a temporary dip?

Posted in Money | 4 Comments »

9pm curfews for kids in Redruth

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

This has been in place for 5 days, and is making a big difference, improving the quality of life of residents.

I would like to propose that

1. It be extended to the rest of Cornwall

2. It be extended to include short people

Posted in State of the Nation | 2 Comments »

What’s Worth Watching, Part Three

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

In the wake of Doctor Horrible, some more things that (fingers crossed) may be coming to our screens soon …

Dollhouse – The new “proper” Joss Whedon show, which sounds like a twenty-first century reworking of the Joe 90 concept.

Fringe – The new JJ Abrams project. X Files meets the Twilight Zone, complete with a mythology arc.

In the absence of anything decent on the telly, there’s a run of good movies coming up. The Dark Knight, The X Files (Mulder and Scully are back, back, BACK!), Babylon AD, Hellboy II, The Mummy III, Watchmen …

Also, currently showing – Wanted (pretty good) and Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (not bad, but gimmicky 3D). Oh, and Indy, of course.

Posted in TV, Film and Music | No Comments »

Made a few healthy changes

Friday, July 18th, 2008

ok, I’m going to ‘fess up, but only to you guys and only on this forum, on the basis that what goes on in this forum stays in this forum. I’ve made a few changes to my lifestyle and I’m feeling a lot more energetic, positive and calm as a result of it. This has been going back around 3 months.

1. Coffee – I’m down to 1 cup a day. The rest of the time I am drinking green tea. This is down from 7-8 cups a day. I’m quite strict with myself on it, even down to drinking green tea in Starbucks.

2. Traditional Chinese Medicine – following my trip to China, I’ve started having regular appointments with an acupuncturist. The woman is a genius. She has been treating me for hay fever, asthma and stress. Since my teens I’ve been suffering really badly from asthma June – mid August especially when it rained. This year I haven’t suffered had any hay fever or asthma symptoms. I don’t know what she’s done (well I do have some idea, but that’s another post, and quite a long one), but it’s worked. It could be down to 1,3 and 4 but I am also a lot less stressed out.

3. Tai Chi – doing this every Friday lunchtime and practicing when I can. Again it’s a traditional Chinese treatment for maintaining good health – a cross between meditation and exercise with slow movements. Very good for well being and a sense of calm

4. Meditation – not been as good on these as I have on the other three, but have been doing some meditations, some of which contain NLP. Have been doing them as and when I remember. These are guided and I’ve downloaded these from i_Tunes.

Result – say what you like – and I’m not expecting this to go unchallenged.

I’m still a good stone heavier than I’d like to be (maybe that will be next thing to tackle) but honestly speaking, I’ve never felt better.

Posted in Health | 6 Comments »

Move over Kirsty

Friday, July 18th, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4353453.ece

Self acclaimed property expert writing a disgraceful article in the Times today.

She makes it sound like the property bubble is nothing to do with her. What a cheek. Didn’t she look at the TV cameras and say countless times, you can’t go wrong with property, or property only ever goes up, or property will never fall in value, or renting is dead money ?  Didn’t she give dodgy financial advice to thousands of people, with millions of others watching ? Didn’t she promise to eat her hat if property prices dropped ?

And as for saying blaming her for the property crisis is like blaming Jamie Oliver for obesity – since when did Jamie encourage people to binge eat ????

Her advice isn’t sound, it’s well dodgy. And she still doesn’t get it. Time to let people with a grasp of economics take over.

 

Posted in Housing Market | 3 Comments »

What’s Worth Watching, Part Two

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

Nothing on TV, but Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly) has been hard at work on ….

Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

The three episodes will only be available for free viewing until July 20th. More info on the related Wikipedia page.

Posted in TV, Film and Music | 7 Comments »

June Report

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

 

 

 

 

http://www.rics.org/NR/rdonlyres/B159571E-AE0A-4D02-9822-4444E450EC25/0/hms_0608.pdfNot pretty reading :

Buyer enquiries and newly agreed sales fall (but at a slower pace !!)

New vendor instructions continue to fall

Confidence in sales and price outlook improves slightly (yeah right !! Gone from a balance of 92.2 % reporting falls to rises to a balance of 88% – some improvement !!!)

A continued reduction in mortgage availability and negative newsflow discouraged the market (or it could just be that prices are tanking and that is discouraging people !!)

 

third uncle territory : Market activity definitely increased in the last few weeks

mingey territory : there has been an increase in activity / interest in recent weeks

London : There is a lack of stock and buyers making the market increasingly difficult to read. Sales at the top end are still relatively strong but other areas are suffering. The most common factor is the squeeze on finance. When banks loosen up so will the market 

 

(dream on sunshine, the times they are a changing !!! Have you not noticed we have gone from lending anyone as much as they like to people back down to sensible multiples and guess what – you need to have saved up a deposit to buy a place)

Posted in Housing Market | 3 Comments »

Consultancy – A blank cheque in 13 easy steps

Monday, July 14th, 2008
13 easy steps – works a treat every time
1) Get yourself a job as a partner in a consulting firm
2) hobnob with anyone you know who is a senior executive
3) convince them they have seriously fallen behind the competition
4) start up a project to assess the gap
5) make the project scope as big as possible – no getting something in first or piloting an idea - make sure it considers all models for all countries and the scope is as wide and complex as possible
6) employ lots of clones. They should be recent graduates who have never worked on a project before (it’s a good training ground)
7) Make sure they are keen as mustard – use them to take minutes, and document everything on powerpoint – minimum presentation size is 50 slides. More is better.
8) under no circumstances take account of any practicalities before you’ve process mapped and analysed the world
12) blame staff of the client company, substituting your own people to sort out the mess
9) instruct your people to work until midnight every night causing client employees to drop out
10) once the scope is truly enormous, it’s time to start a pilot
11)  when the pilot goes t&ts up, (remember you may have banked 18 months worth of consulting fees by then), convince senior management that they have to have the stamina to see this through or else they fall even further behind
13) once you have reached the point of no return, begin again at 1) with the next idea

 

Posted in Consultancy | 4 Comments »

What’s worth watching on TV

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Euro 2008 is over. Heroes Series 2 is over.

So what’s worth watching right now ?

Would recommend Dexter series 2 which has got off to a teriffic start. Looking forward to Heroes Series 3 in September

Also found Touch Me I’m Karen Taylor quite funny

Other than that, not watching much right now. How about you ?

 

Posted in TV, Film and Music | 4 Comments »

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