Rachel Reeves should cut taxes rather than back Heathrow expansion if she wants to boost the economy, Ryanair’s finance chief has said.
Neil Sorahan said scrapping a planned increase in airline passenger tax would do far more to encourage short-term growth than building a new runway at Heathrow.
Ryanair doesn’t use Heathrow. Ryanair does have to charge Air Passenger Duty. From those two facts we can divine Ryanair’s position, no?
The Government’s own impact assessment has estimated that the new red tape will pile an additional £5 billion of costs onto British firms every year.
Under the plan, which is being fast-tracked through Parliament, new employees will become entitled to a number of rights from day one in their job.
But what really amuses is where do they think that £5 billion is goingto come from? Despite it being a gross undervaluation of what it’s going to cost.
They’ve added to the cost of employing someone. As the total compensation package isn’t going to change in value this means wages will fall. Which they will. Over time, sure, it’ll be inflation carrying the load as that rises and wages don’t. But that’s where it will come from. More lvely statutory rights and less cash money.
Alastair Campbell’s son accepted new investment into his £5 million betting syndicate weeks after existing backers struggled to withdraw their cash, it has been claimed.
Everyone’s being careful what they say here.
So, you be too.
But paying off old investors with new money…..well, in one reading that’s terribly sensible. Every business wants to maintain its capital base, so if some want to leave then bring in some others to replace them. Paying out a member of a partnership while allowing another to buy in really isn’t unusual.
On the other hand…..
Mirror publisher discovers £5m black hole in pension scheme
Newspaper group Reach uncovers ‘historical error’ as it hails surprise profit upgrade
One of my little amusements in life is that one of Captain Bob’s vast holes has now come good.
One of his speculations was in a tiddler of a company called Central & Sherwood (Sheerwood?). This was one of those left in the rubble engineering companies Britain was littered with. The value there was, effectively, the old industrial sites. Inside C&S was Stothert & Pitt. Used to be the world’s largest crane maker, did the ones for Sydney Harbour for example. The location in central Bath – and it is central too. Have a look at a map and it’s, sorta and not wholly, the bit between Sainsbury’s at Green Park and one side of the river towards Bristol for a mile or so. Prime building land that is. Being in central Bath as cranes got bigger for the North Sea etc they couldn’t be floated down the river to the port. So, dead then.
Bob – and others – realised the land had value. More than the price of the company in fact. So, asset strip it. And it should be asset stripped too.
However, all of this was happening in the 1980s. That land is really only building out now – or perhaps a decade back. The base calculation of the speculation was entirely correct. But as M’Lud Keynes pointed out the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain liquid.
When I go home I often have a wander through there (it’s on the way to the bus for the airport from the parentals). Always gives me a bit of a chuckle really.
Barclays has been criticised for paying mystery shoppers to pretend to be blind or deaf in an attempt to test the response of branch staff.
The National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFBUK), which campaigns for blind and partially sighted people, said the bank’s stunt was an “insult” to blind people and “totally inappropriate”.
It comes after Barclays hired research firm Ipsos Mori to find out how branch staff responded to blind and deaf people who came in with queries.
How do you test how well the system works for customers? You fake a customer coming in and see what happens. Getting pretend blind people to try to use banks improves the experience for actual blind people once the report is digested and – mebbe – acted upon.
It’s there in Up The Organisation and therefore is correct. Every exec should try occasionally phoning his own office. To simply see what happens.
Cold snap’s north-south divide sees 20C difference across the country
Now we see the true outcome of Fatcher’s destruction of British industry and cruel suppression of the working classes…..
Alastair Campbell’s son has been threatened with bankruptcy and police action over a £5 million loss from his failed football betting syndicate, The Times understands.
The daughter seems to write pieces about her sexual misadventures. The son as here. Well raised, eh?
Of course, it’s only twice so far which is merely coincidence.
How did Rory Campbell’s syndicate work?
Campbell used mathematical models to try and gain an edge over the football betting markets and make a profit with a £5 million pot raised from 50 investors. Information from sources about the bets being made each week suggests that Campbell and his team were wagering millions per month. Campbell’s own figures put the fund’s returns at 8.5 per cent per year between 2017 and 2023.What did it bet on?
The syndicate placed bets on top-flight football matches taking place in Germany, Spain, England and Italy. Usually it would bet on the outright result of the match and whether there would be more or fewer than 2.5 goals in a game. The fund used the Asian betting markets as they are more liquid than European firms and accept large bets in volume.
That’s actually an idiot betting method. At which point three options. He lost it, the bookies didn’t pay or we’re in Charlie and the postal coupons territory. Claiming 8.5% a year. Umm. What was Madoff claiming?
A sensible betting method – in volume, as here – is to play home and away odds. There’s a big home bias in betting. UK odds on England winning are often different, wildly, from NZ odds on NZ losing when England play NZ. For the bookies are stting their odds on the weight of money. And it’s possible to be – sorta – an anti-bookie and take the other side of that weight of money price difference.
But you do have to be a good bookie to be able to be an anti-bookie. Oh, and the bookies have to pay up of course.
And finally, the more people who do this the closer those home and away odds will become – weight of money, see – meaning that what definitely used to be true might either not be any longer or perhaps v narrow.
Gonna be fun to find out.
Train cancelled every 90 seconds in 2024, figures show
Should be easy enough to clear up from here…..
US tech billionaire Larry Ellison has bought an office building in London’s West End from a fugitive Hong Kong tycoon for £162m.
Mr Ellison, who co-founded software giant Oracle and is a close associate of Sir Tony Blair, has bought 11-12 St James’s Square from Chinese Estates, a company linked to Joseph Lau, a fugitive Hong Kong tycoon, and his family.
The seven-storey building was acquired through Mr Ellison’s family office, the Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust, according to public filings.
The purchase comes as Mr Ellison, 80, opens a $1bn research institute in Oxford to “help solve the world’s great problems”. It plans to invest in innovative new products such as advanced batteries and fund research into fighting superbugs.
The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) will be led by scientist Sir John Bell and is backed by former prime minister Sir Tony, who has had a decades-long friendship with Mr Ellison.
Sir John, who is known for his pivotal role in the Covid vaccine rollout, told The Telegraph that the St James’s Square office block will be a base for EIT in London.
A billion on the head office, eh? Was it Parkinson – C Northcote – who suggested that a new HQ was a sign to short sell the organisation?
Is it then true to say that privatisation has miscarried, and if it has, might nationalisation fare any better? The answer to the first of these questions may in a number of cases be “yes”, but sadly, the answer to the second is “no”. The need for private sector solutions has in fact never been greater, but the concept has suffered reputational damage and has to be reinvented in hybrid, more acceptable form for the modern age.
When markets fail use markets.
For what is it to agree that a business has failed? That it has been run badly. So, what is required? That it be run another way. And what is a market other than experimentation in ways of doing things?
So, (step) granddaughter has just passed her driving licence. Wants to buy a car.
She’s, erm, 22? Works, but bits and pieces here and there. Some Tesco shelf-stack, some dance teaching, a bit of performance work as a dancer (tap etc, not exotique).
So, what’s the sensible thing here? That really cheap thing I’ve herd about, an EV trhough employment, isn’t really an option as she’s not, technically I guess, full time employed.
Get the bank to finance a second hand?
She’s not going to drive a £500 banger. So, that’s out.
So, options?
London. 3 days a week in office. Financial journalism.
The expected range for this role is £26,000 – £30,000
Only just above minimum wage…..
All-electric Jaguars to cost £150,000, suggests boss
As Bloke on M4 has been saying.
Back when posh cars really were different. Two things that made them expensive. Same design costs, line set up costs etc, amortised over fewer cars. But also the actual machining, alloys, components, were better/more expensive.
The Jaguar V8 – 5 litre? – engine was made in the same Ford plant as the Ford engines. But in a separate corner, where they took more care etc. And Aston had a corner of the Jaguar bit for their engines. Sorta, not really but sorta, the very best bit went into an Aston, if not good enough into a Jag, if not good enough into a Ford.
Then they put sexy body and leather seats on top, expensive car.
These days, yes, same design etc costs, amortised over low sales. But the actual car is all pretty much the same components, isn’t it (well, isn’t it?). Same electric motors, same batteries even if the pack might be a bit different etc. And all those bits are made by the same people on the same machines.
So, the buy for a Jag is the body, the design, the leather seats and what else? The brand, sure.
But the brnad was created by that difference in quality of the engineering – at least in hte beginning. Now that’s the same across all cars then what’s left?
If BYD put a sexy body and leather seats on one of thei structures then why won;t that be the same as a Jag – brand excepted?
Sure, I’m being extreme to the point of near nonsense. But how long is the brand worth much when there isn’t that underlying difference in quality any more?
Georgia Stannard was a 22-year-old student when a bus ran over her foot, and her right leg had to be amputated. She struggled to cope, then came an unexpected offer — she’s now a model and the face of a high-street shoe brand
Do shoe shops still only put the left of the pair out on display in order to reduce shoplifting?
That equation was flipped in January with the launch of Pump.Fun, which lets people release new memecoins instantly, at no cost. The idea was to give people a safer way to trade memecoins by standardizing the underlying code, which prevents developers from building in malicious mechanisms to steal funds, in what’s known as a hard rug pull.
“Buying into memecoins was a very unsafe thing to do. Programmers could create systems that would obfuscate what you are buying into and, basically, behave as malicious actors. Everything was designed to suck money out of people,” one of the three anonymous cofounders of Pump.Fun, who goes by Sapijiju, told WIRED earlier in the year. “The idea with Pump was to build something where everyone was on the same playing field.”
Since Pump.Fun launched, millions of unique memecoins have entered the market through the platform. By some metrics, Pump.Fun is the fastest-growing crypto application ever, taking in more than $250 million in revenue—as a 1 percent cut of trades on the platform—in less than a year in operation.
Blimey. So what’s the plan then, Mateys?
Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a national officer with the trade union GMB, said: “Recent history has shown we must retain control over crucial industries like steel. Leaving domestic production to the whims of the open market is sheer folly.
What bit of recent huistory is this? Other than the bit where your union members lose jobs that is?
He said: “We are absolutely committed to our manifesto commitment of a 2030 phase-out for new cars powered solely by internal combustion engines. We are not changing our level of ambition for the transition, and there will be no repeat of the uncertainty generated by the previous administration.
“But at the same time, the Transport Secretary and I have heard you loud and clear on the need for support to make this transition a success, and that’s why we will be consulting with you on changes to the same mandate and inviting your views on options for a better way forward.”
Banning an entire technology will always have huge and bad effects.
Hey, it might even be worth it, who knows.But it really is true that banning an entire technology is going to have huge effects. And if they’re not going to change the policy then those effects will happen.
My best guess – hey, it’s a guess – is that without significant tariff barriers it’ll be cheapo Chinese EVs that irrupt into the market. One of more of the European brands might not manage the transition.
At the moment, SpaceX is involved in various massive bureaucratic struggles with the Federal Aviation Administration and environmental authorities. Musk wants to make 25 Starship launches next year: at the moment the regulators want to limit him to five.
Why is the FAA trying to launches?
We can imagine all sorts of lawfare etc. But what is even the excuse they’re using?
I’ve already mentioned this but here we go again:
The boss of Jaguar has defended the carmaker’s controversial rebrand and said criticism of its marketing campaign had featured “vile hatred and intolerance”.
Rawdon Glover, the managing director of Jaguar, said the campaign message had been lost in “a blaze of intolerance”, adding that the carmaker must move away from “traditional automotive stereotypes”.
It comes after Jaguar ditched its historic “growler” cat logo and released an advert featuring models with asymmetrical haircuts and dressed in brightly-coloured clothing. It also includes the phrases “break moulds” and “create exuberant”.
Mr Glover told the Financial Times: “We need to re-establish our brand and at a completely different price point so we need to act differently.
The connection is that Meghan thinks that she can create a brand out of being Meghan. And that’s really – no really – not how it works. Brands can obviously be helped by advertising and positioning, sure. But the brand has to actually be. There’s got to be some nub there to start with. Heinz and Campbell’s canned soups becamae iconic brands, not started as them. They became because they got canning righter earlier and so poisoned fewer of their punters. Jaguar a certain snarling joy at 8 and 12 pistons encased in leather and wood. For want of a better phrase, sports saloons?
Sure, they’ve a problem now that snarling pistons are no longer to be allowed. But sticking up a few modish haricuts might not do that – a product worth being a brand could….
Even so, the decision by Jaguar to restyle its branding this week – focusing on an advert full of models but with no car in it – already looks set to join the great marketing flops of all time.
Jaguar has been a company with problems for many years, but through everything, its brand remained incredibly strong. Trashing it is only going to damage the company even further.
I’ve been looking – aghast, obvs – at Meghan over the past couple of years. She talks endlessly about her brand. Abuout developing it. And, well, she doesn’t really have a brand. She might be trying to create one but she’s not got one.
An extant brand means something. Has connotations. Forgetting this is, to me, to suffer from Meghan Disease.
As, I think, Jaguar is doing here. Gin and Jags, yes, OK, Har Har. But there really is a “brand” of somewhat archaic Englishness, Terry Thomas etc. And it’s a powerful one. Quite seriously I once did a $300k deal on a handshake as my Russian cooperator in the adventure said that everyone knows an Englishman’s word is his bond. Whether this brand is true is another thing but it undoubtedly exists.
And, if we’re honest about it, that’s the thing that Jaguar has to sell. Given the move to EVs the old engineering of the ICE cars is no longer relevant. The only way to sell an EV box at a premium is to have a brand. Which appears to be just what they’re throwing away.
Most odd.