Skip to content

Thassa a pretty cool contract

Sir Richard Branson stands to receive at least £250 million from Nationwide as an “exit fee” when the building society stops using the Virgin Money brand after its takeover of the struggling challenger bank.

The payment is due under the terms of a “brand licence agreement” and comes on top of the £400 million that Branson stands to receive from his shares in the FTSE 250-listed Virgin Money, in which he owns a 14.5 per cent stake.

You pay a licence fee to use the Virgin brand – that’s long been a standard Branson contrat. But having to pay to stop using it? Seems a tad harsh. But if that’s what the contract says, well….

How unlike a Leftie, eh?

Labour’s Yvette Cooper has criticised Elon Musk’s management of X, saying the tech billionaire’s social media company is being used to “continually promote anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate”.

The shadow home secretary also accused Rishi Sunak of giving a “free pass” to tech executives who are “allowing their platforms to harbour hate”.

People are saying things I disapprove of.

Ban it!

Oh Aye?

The victim said that her attackers “tortured” her and made her life a “living nightmare”. Omar Badreddin raped her on at least seven occasions, and threatened to kill her or take her to another country if she failed to comply.

The Badreddin family were the subject of 2016 documentary “To hell and back: the story of a Syrian family given refuge in the UK”. The show documented the family’s 11-month journey from Syria to Newcastle as part of the Syrian refugee resettlement program.

Cynical, yes, hypocritical, no

“It’s obviously hypocritical to call for technological neutrality when you are the dominant technology,” he said.

It’s also sensible societally.

Lobbyists on both sides of the Atlantic argued that government subsidies for clean technologies distorted free markets.

They do. And?

Actually, you do

James Anderson’s 700 wickets: ‘You would not expect a player to improve as they get older’

There is the physique, which declines as time goes on. Which bit at which time depends. Flat out speed perhaps from 18 or so onwards. Upper body strength from maybe 28 onwards (don’t take those ages as being accurate, mere examples).

OK, then there’s also expertise, skill, which is something we’d expect to rise with age – doin’ stuff tends to make you better at doin’ stuff.

Peak athletic performance is at the optimal point of those two curves, curves which move in opposite directions over time. You mature into the skill of the thing as the body starts its decay.

Rugby wings peak in their late 20s perhaps, rugby props in their mid 30s. That sort of thing.

Right On!

The Duchess of Sussex has criticised women who are “completely spewing hate” to other women online, calling on female executives in tech to do more to block it, as Prince Harry cheered her on.

The Duchess, speaking at an event about women in the media in Austin, Texas, said she could not “wrap her head” around how people could have been “so hateful” towards her on social media.

“It’s not catty, it’s cruel,” she said of comments written online while she was pregnant. “Why would you do that?”

“What I find the most disturbing frankly, especially as a supporter of women, is how much of the hate is women completely spewing that to other women,” she said. “I cannot make sense of that.”

She specifically criticised female executives at online platforms who host conspiracy theories, disturbing rhetoric and “very inciting comments”.

“There are a lot of women at the highest executive level who are great champions of women and great philanthropists, and they are working in these spaces, and yet they’re allowing this kind of behaviour to run rampant.

“And at a certain point, they have got to put the do’s behind the say’s and really make some changes on a systemic level.”

Change The World to stop wimmins being catty to me!

To which the correct response is “Fuck Off, Honey.” Or even “Fuck Off Honey.”

Matt Oliver got sold a pup here

The Industrial editor at the Telegraph:

The opening of America’s first cobalt mine for decades, marked with pomp and a ribbon-cutting ceremony, was supposed to be a step towards better energy security.

Instead, the facility in Idaho, built by Jervois Global, has become a victim of the problem it was meant to solve – reducing the West’s dependence on China for critical minerals, as Beijing seeks to dominate them.

“We are an unfortunate case study,” says Bryce Crocker, chief executive of Jervois. “I’d rather not be, but we are.”

Yet six months after opening, Jervois was forced to mothball the new facility as the price of cobalt plunged so low it became impossible to make a profit.

As Tim Newman will tell you, very loudly, the problem was Jervois screwing up the design of the refinery over contaominant elements in the ore. Which then, of course, leads to this:

Even on that score, Jervois’s Crocker sounds a positive note. His company is currently working with the Pentagon to expand the size of the US’s mine and open a potential refinery, helping to make the overall proposal more economically viable.

“We don’t need a 90pc market share, just a share that allows the portion of the product that goes into certain industries, which are genuine and critical, not to be cut off in the event of geopolitical unrest,” he adds.

“It’s an insurance policy. And I guess, since Covid and Ukraine, people are starting to realise that insurance policies matter.”

Plus the usual “Please Mr. PentagonMan, can I have some money”?

This also has the ring of a lot more hope than sense about it:

In Tyneside, one company seeking to do just this is Tees Valley Lithium. From 2026, the company hopes to begin producing lithium hydroxide and carbonate at a refinery near Redcar that will supply UK battery factories.

Paul Atherley, chairman of Alkemy Capital, the company’s parent, says he is “agnostic about the lithium price” to a degree because his company will be seeking to deal with car makers who sell to wealthier customers, not those looking for cheaper, entry level cars.

“We’re targeting that premium market, where anybody who is consumer-facing has to make a value decision about the product and the supply chain that goes into it.

“Customers also want to re-align their supply chains, so they’re not totally dependent on [China].”

You just try charging a substantial premium for local lithium for local people matey. You’re not gonna get far.

But to me the joy is here:

the price of cobalt plunged so low it became impossible to make a profit.

Over the past two years the metal’s value has tumbled from around $19,000 per tonne to less than $5,000, according to data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence,

No, that’s not the cobalt metal price, which remains in the $25 to $30k per tonne range. Probably one of the salts.

Two years ago, the global price of nickel peaked at around $7,000 per tonne. Now it is below $4,000 per tonne following a significant boost in production by Chinese-owned mines in Indonesia.

Eh?

And, you know, if you’re that far out on the prices – which can be looked up real easy – then the strategy and real story stuff is going to be…..

On the next honours list

There’s a slightly odd convention – so I am told. That later PMs do not take honours until earlier PMs have had their. Tone took a K, so that’s OK, so did Major. Brown, G, hasn’t had one yet. That then blocks Cameron, May, Boris, Truss and Rishi from their.

Cameron was put into the Lords to be For Sec. That doesn’t breach the convention. But all of them are, in theory, eligible for anything from K to an Earldom, at their choice. But only once Brown G has had his. And if he refuses honours then he’s cockblocking them all.

Now, how much this convention is going to be kept to if Brown, G, keeps this up is another matter. For the thing about convention is that it can be changed. But that is how I understand it works right now. Until Gordon the Viking takes summat the rest can’t get anything.

A more minor interest will be how many of them try to go for the Earldom, if allowed a gong at all. The old objection, that we’d then end up with the great grandson of a PM as an hereditary legislator no longer applies, as an hereditary does not gain a seat in HoL. The specific would have to be the Earldom which inherits, plus a Life Peerage which does not, as the elevation to the Lords for an ex-PM.

My best guess is that Dave is gagging to be an Earl, May would like to be a Countess and the others I don’t know about.

Again, one of things sorta true

Because Ms Coates earns the majority of her wealth from her salary rather than dividends or other instruments, she is liable for a higher amount of tax than many other business chiefs. Ms Coates and her family are thought to have paid around £460m to HMRC last year.

If you own the company then, well. Salary is paid out before corporation tax. Income tax is higher than dividend tax. But the two together – at these sorts of levels at least, after the small scale allowances – run pretty much the same by design. Corp tax plus dividend tax isn’t far off income tax alone.

NI changes it again. Which is why the personal service company works. But it is still necessary to add in divvie and corp tax together to compare to the income.

Well, yes, sorta

An Australian businessman who once worked with David Cameron is at risk of disqualification as a director after the Government launched proceedings to strike him off.

Lex Greensill is facing action from the Insolvency Service on behalf of Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who is seeking to bar him from running British companies.

Details of the claim have not yet been made public. A spokesman for Mr Greensill said he intended to fight the action.

One of those things done in the name of the Business Sec, not one of those things really being done at the instigation of the Business Sec…

It’s correct to say that it’s Chuck III demanding our VAT return but it’s not really correct in detail….

Eh?

Justin Trudeau’s government has proposed a law giving judges the power to put someone under house arrest if they fear they could commit a hate crime.

Critics have warned the “draconian” bill is an overreach of power and could stifle free speech and difficult discussions.

But Canada’s justice minister defended the measure, claiming it would be an “important” tool to help protect potential victims.

To be used against wrongthink in 3…2…1….

This is one that’s gonna get lost

JK Rowling has been reported to the police by trans broadcaster India Willoughby over “misgendering” on social media.

The Harry Potter author became embroiled in an online row with India Willoughby, in which she referred to the transgender newsreader, Loose Women host and former Big Brother contestant as a “man” and with “he” pronouns.

Willoughby, who was born male and underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2015, made a complaint to police over Rowling’s posts on X, formerly Twitter, claiming she had “definitely committed a crime”.

The broadcaster, who holds a gender recognition certificate, claimed to be “legally a woman”, although Rowling pointed out there was no law which compelled her to “pretend” that Willoughby was a woman.

This isn’t going to end up in charges against JK now, is it? Sure, there might be some idiot plod who’d try it on with Miss Normie, but noitwith JK. But that then sets the standard, the treatment of JK….

Not well thought out then

A controversial low traffic neighbourhood (LTN) scheme in south London is to be scrapped after turning a three-mile bus journey into a two-hour slog.

The scheme at Streatham Wells has been suspended by Labour-run Lambeth council after it caused huge traffic congestion in the suburb.

The authority, which announced the U-turn on Thursday, admitted thatthe scheme had caused an eight per cent increase in traffic on boundary roads.

One bus reportedly took 121 minutes to travel just 2.9 miles after the A23 arterial road, which runs along one side of the LTN, became heavily congested with traffic trying to avoid the scheme.

Typical of planners, eh? Not noting even the existence of second order effects…..

Whoo, Boy

There is a cost to this. If the government borrows less, someone else has to borrow more: that’s the way in which any economy works if new money (all of which is debt-based) is to be created, which is the actual rule that cannot be broken because, unlike so-called fiscal rules, it is based on facts.

This from the bloke who repeatedly claims that QT destroys money. Even, the bloke who opposes QT because it destroys money.

And if QT is happening – it is – and money is being destroyed – it is – gthen we don’t have a problem about how is going to borrow in order to create new money, do we?

A useful proof

According to 2021 figures, east Germans still have 11% less disposable income than their western compatriots, and they inherit only about half as much wealth. Impose almost any economic indicator on to a map, and the old east-west divide reappears.

Socialism is such a shit economic system that imposing it for only 40 years still causes vast problems near four decades later.

Not, exactly, an advertisement for it, is it?

The problem is that this isn’t, in fact, true

“By voting yes in the family referendum, we’re saying that all families are equal, regardless of the marital status of parents,” he told reporters.

Marriage is a contract. The contract involves some legal issues. Those who marry have that contract, those who do not do not. Therefore the unmarried and the married are not equal.

Perhaps they should be regarded as equal in moral and ethical value, perhaps they shouldn’t, but in legal terms they’re not equal simply because marriage is that contract.

This is more than a little aggressive

A spokesman said: “The decision to include a man who has been charged, and pleaded guilty to, assaulting his wife, in the Celebrity Big Brother house demonstrates the lack of awareness that the production team has when it comes to survivors of domestic abuse.

“The producers should consider how Gary Goldsmith’s appearance will impact women who have survived domestic abuse and how they will feel watching him on TV every night.”

The Americans restrict voting rights upon conviction. Apparently we’re supposed to restrict TV appearance rights?

How, erm, traditional

The actor met Ms Hart while filming the Channel 4 series Longitude in 2000, and within a year he was introducing his girlfriend to fellow actors.

For two decades, the actor split his time between her and Lady Gambon, who was said to have initially been devastated by the news of his other relationship and moved out of the home they shared.

However, she then came to terms with the arrangement and moved back.

Eccentric but certainly some traditionality there. But even more traditional:

Sir Michael Gambon has bequeathed his £1.5 million estate to his wife but left nothing to his long-term girlfriend and mother of two of his sons.

The money stays with the legal arrangement, the scarlet woman gets nothing.

Not syaing I approve – or not – but it is all rather traditional….

Gary Stevenson’s telling us all about banking again

There’s no real surprise this is being run in The Guardian. They don’t understand enough economics to know that it’s tosh.

The next year, 2011, I placed a bet. It was a bet that the hundreds of billions of pounds of economic stimulus being poured into the UK and US economies would not reach the people who needed it. It would settle in the pockets of the richest, who would use it to buy the homes of the poor, and the economy would never recover. That year, I was Citibank’s most profitable trader in the world. They paid me $2m and asked me to do it again. It was around about then I realised the whole economic system wasn’t working.

That wasn’t a bet, that was a certainty. On the basis that the Fed and the BoE actually announced that they didn’t want that QE cash flowing into the real economy. The entire point and aim wsa that it should sloh around the financial markets. The effect – the desired effect – was to lower long term interest rates and thereby push people out along the risk curve in pursuit of yield.

If they’d actually desired QE to be money that govt then spent into the real economt then they’d have done tens of £ billions of it, not hundreds of £ billions of it. Because – as lockdown QE showed – if you then spend vast waves of newly printed money into the real economy then you trigger inflation.

Traders do not care about the budget, because the budget is not for traders and the budget is not about the economy. The budget is a piece of theatre meant for your consumption. It is a cute moment – a photogenic moment where a multimillionaire can hold up a red box and bribe you with a bit of your money, while they and all the other multimillionaires bankrupt the government with monetary and fiscal stimulus packages that seem somehow to always end up in their own pockets. They then use that money to buy assets such as all the houses that your children will need but never be able to afford to own.

Very Guardian economic analysis, isn’t it?

And the traders, traders like me, we sit in skyscrapers and we laugh. Because we know that Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak, who are multimillionaires just like we are, will never tax us. We know that we will get richer and you will get poorer, and our lives will get better, and yours will get worse year after year after year. And each of us are paid millions of pounds every year to bet on it. To bet on it, instead of telling you.

Very, very, Guardian.

Well, that’s me sorted then

It adds a whole new meaning to bedtime reading: St Paul’s Cathedral is opening its hidden library for a once-in-a-lifetime overnight stay in honour of World Book Day.

For one night only, two guests will be able to stay in the “secret” room of the historic London landmark on 15 March. It is the first time anyone has officially slept inside the cathedral since the second world war, when a voluntary organisation protected the venue from bombing raids.

OK, there is actually a little bedroom up there. Super.

The visit, which costs £7 a night,

Block book that for the next 20 years and that’s the London pad sorted then.