Barclays are raising £7.3bn from Middle Eastern investors.
But look at the cost of the deal – I find it stunning. 14% until 2019 !!!
And all this so that the government don’t end up controling it.
Do you think executive pay may have something to do with this ?
WEA have long had one of the finest albums of the eighties languishing in their vaults. Stupidly, they ignored the love being expressed for the record, illustrated by copies of the rare-as-rocking-horse-poo CD edition exchanging hands on eBay for £60+.
Cue the internet and online petitions to get the album rereleased. Step up to the mark Cherry Red, the indie label that the band were originally signed to, who finally get the rights to rerelease it and as a nice little pressie they not only remaster it but stick a handful of B-sides on the CD for good measure.
It’s a pity none of the songs are up on Last.FM yet. Perfect pop (Lean On Me, Heart of the Sun), great art rock (Billy’s Line, Walk Walk) and massive anthems (Living in Domes, Chenko) all on one silver bit of plastic.
Nomination for this year’s “No Sh*t Sherlock” dumbed-down headline of the year is :-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7698393.stm
Remove the word “house”, insert …. well, just about any noun of your choosing really. D’oh.
That’s what they’ve got in the US now. And in Japan it’s 0.5%.
There’s talk of interest rates being taken down to 2% in this country by the end of 2009 and maybe even lower !
Sounds like excellent news. What would you do if interest rates get down to those levels ?
Football is the most frustrating game in the world. I was at the Emirates stadium for the 4-4 draw with Tottenham last night. Great atmosphere. Car horns going outside, chanting at the pubs. We get in and the game starts. Tottenham are keeping the ball and passing it around and everyone is standing off them. But they are producing absolutely nothing. That is until Arsenal reject David Bentley gets the ball in lots of space with nobody anywhere near him 35 yards out and tries a lob. Almunia is stranded, goes for it with the wrong hand and deflects it into the roof of the net. 1-0 to Tottenham. No panic. They’ve produced absolutely nothing.
It’s all Arsenal after that and eventually, a corner comes, Spurs muppet keeper punches Jenas and Mikael Silvestre (yeah you know, ex Man U – what’s he doing in the side) gets his head to the ball. 1-1.
Half time and I turn round to my mate and say, they’re there for the taking, they’ve got nothing. There was only one team in it.
Second half starts, and suddenly we are closing them down in midfield. Some tackling at last. Set piece, Gallas gets his head to it. 2-1 to Arsenal. This is going to be easy. It’s all Arsenal now. Several chances, several misses. Van Persie misses an easy chance, Adebayor misses an open goal. And then Nasri makes a run down the right, chips Spurs goalkeeper (who is a muppet) and Adebayor makes sure while Alan Hutton (another muppet) is trotting towards the ball. 3-1. This is easy.
“1-0 and you messed it up”. “Going down going down going down”. “You’ll never play here again”. “You’ve got your Tottenham back”. “One Arsene Wenger”. “One Tony Adams”
And then out of nothing, Huddlestone (way too fat to be a footballer) has a shot from 30 yards, Almunia spills it, and Darren Bent of all people gets to the rebound 3-2.
This is still easy. Only one team in it. Despite the 2 goals from goalkeeping errors, Tottehnam have shown nothing. And it’s all Arsenal. Chance after chance. Van Persie scores with his right foot. 4-2 with 20 minutes to go. It’s easy now. Arsenal are taking the p1ss. Passing it around beautifully. Tottenham look absolutely demoralised. The gulf in class is there for everyone to see. They are a relegation team. They are rubbish. And the crowd let them know it.
“You’re sh1t, and you know you are”. “Going down going down going down”. “One nil and you messed it up”
Arsenal are so on top by now, it’s unreal. Until with 2 minutes to go, Clichy (normally mr consistency) is messing around in defence and he falls over. Jenas gets the ball and runs and shoots. Excellently goal, very well taken. 4-3.
4 minutes of injury time signalled. Van Persie, Adebayor and Theo are off by now. And suddenly we look nervous. It couldn’t possibly happen could it. No, they have shown nothing. They are useless. Just hold out for a few minutes.
Until the 4th minute of injury time, when Luka Modric hits an excellent shot against the post and Aaron Lemon follows it in. Silence. Disbelief. I can’t believe it. How can we draw a game we were winning so easily.
People are angry. “Happy now Wenger” “Enough support for you today”, “Pleased you didn’t spend any money now”. Most people are just stunned.
Meanwhile, Tottenham are celebrating like they’ve won the league, not just got one point. Sickening. 4 shots 4 goals. A team that should be demoralised and heading for relegation, are now thinking we are confident, we can do it, and talking about that Harry Redknapp magic. And we’ve let 2 points slip away.
Can anything good come of this ? I hope so. We really should have beaten them out of sight. Some of the cracks that have been papered over were shown up today. No tackling in midfield. Suspect defence under pressure. Failure to buy a commanding centre back or a defensive midfielder. Not clinical enough in front of goal.
Harry Redknapp is no miracle worker, and there is still a very good chance of Spurs going down. Top 4 is very much within Arsenal’s grasp, but unless they buck their ideas up, they have no chance of winning the league.
Banks get a bailout for losing too much money, oil companies face a windfall tax for making too much.
Discuss.
Ronaldo is world footballer of the year, and here is the full 11 team of the year.
Iker Casillas (Real Madrid)
Sergio Ramos (Real Madrid)
Rio Ferdinand (Manchester United)
John Terry (Chelsea)
Carlos Puyol (Barcelona)
Xavi (Barcelona)
Steven Gerrard (Liverpool)
Kaka (AC Milan)
Lionel Messi (Barcelona)
Fernando Torres (Liverpool)
Christiano Ronaldo (Manchester United)
As you can see, 5 premier league players, 5 La Liga players and one from Serie A. Agree with a lot of it – for my money Spain deserve a lot of players there for being far and away the outstanding team of Euro 2008. But I would argue that Gerrard and Terry have no place in there. And how comes no place has been found for Fabregas ?
Who would you have in your World XI for the year ?
Watch Andrew Neill make mincemeat of her over the level of personal debt in the UK. Shocking to think that she is helping to run the country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEyj9Ui6p20
An interesting piece from Antole Kaletsky in yesterday’s Times ….
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article5002928.ece
About eighteen months ago, I lost faith in Mr Kaletsky as he dribbled on about how good Mr Clown was going to be for the country. To give him his due, however, he was also one of the first to realise and (more importantly) have the cojones to admit that maybe he’d been wrong. Since then, I’ve had a lot of time for his analysis pieces – personally, I think he puts the likes of Robert “um errr” Peston to shame.
Lo and behold, breaking news this afternoon …
In these days of indiscriminate asset dumping and falling share prices, you seeing any opportunities out there ? I know mingey was looking at making some investments before he bottled out …. 
Here’s my starter for 10
1. BP shares. Why put your money in a bank account, when you can get a 7% yield on these. If you believe the unproven analysis that they are now capitalised at less than the value of their reserves (don’t know about this one), or that the supply and demand fundementals for oil are such that longer term the price of crude has to go up (I do), then this one is a no brainer. Sure there are plenty of other shares on the FTSE like this one (Unilever, Legal and General, Tesco – but I don’t have the time to research all this – maybe mingey has)
2. Jupiter Emerging Europe – maybe not for right now, but at some point. Very good long term track record. Experienced manager. And Russian shares are sitting on a P/E ratio of 3.7 righ now (THIS IS NOT A TYPO !!!) and with the foreign reserves they have built up, Russia is in a very good position to ride this one out IMHO
3. Invesco Perpetual Income – Cigarettes, utilities, energy. All the defensive stocks. Take a look at Neil Woodford’s track record. He’s been managing the fund for 20 years. probably most famous for not investing in tech shares in the late 90s. Solid.
4. RIT Capital partners. Lord Rothschild’s own investment vehicle, The only investment trust I’m aware of that didn’t lose any money in the last downturn. Comfortably outperforming indices right now. 23% in cash and fixed interest.
5. JP Morgan Natural resources. 30% energy, 60% gold and precious metals. Excellent track record until recently, but now getting absolutely hammered beyond belief as institutions dump everything they can get their hands on and deleverage. If you believe the long term supply demand story about oil, gold and natural resources (like I do), this has to be getting to a stage where it is undervalued imho
6. National savings and any index linked gilts – no brainer
PS usual disclaimers. All my own opinions. I don’t know my arse from my elbow and none of this constitutes investment advice. Don’t listen to me, listen to somebody who knows what they are talking about
Your opinions please