Monthly Share Updates

Not a great deal of action with my portfolio in the first month of the year, I was due to make a top up or a new purchase to balance my portfolio a little more, to do this I decided to either top up BP or National Grid or to buy into either Glaxo SmithKline or a house builder.

In the end I bought some more Tesco (reducing my per Share price from £4.34 down to £3.92 unfortunately this is still well above the current £3.21 price tag but at the end of the day I believe in Tesco and think that the recent news hasn't been as bad as made out in the press so think that the Share Price has some rebound in it. I would be expecting Tesco to sit around the £4 mark by the end of the year.

What I really learned is that I need considerably more self control to create a true High Yield Portfolio as I seem to be too driven by my feelings.

Anyway here is the state of my augmented portfolio taking into account a Dividend from National Grid as well as the £/Average of Tesco.

Interesting to see that if I had invested £1,000 in each of these as proposed in the table I would now be looking at a profit of £2,905

Finally got around to watching Benefits Street - And now I am Angry

I blogged a few days back about Benefits Street in my post I admit that I had never seen it but couldn't find anything to substantiate the claim that it was Demonizing the Poor. Well I have now managed to catch up with the first four episodes and to be honest it has left me feeling pretty angry.

I am not in anyway angry with the residents of James Turner Street (Although I find "Black Dee" very annoying and in need of a bit of a reality check.) but the rest of them I feel sorry for as they struggle to escape the welfare trap they have been placed in. I feel angry at the left wing twitterati taking to social media to denounce every part of the show with the great assurance of an ostrich with it's head in the sand singing "there's no problem" over and over again.

Because you know what, There is a problem and these people need help, they may not fit in with your idealised "Worthy Poor" that you are so heavily invested in it blinds you from everything else, but these people need help, they need responsibility and to be treated as adults - and I believe that is what the upper class left don't want.

Far from demonizing the poor I saw a great deal of hope from the first four episodes of Benefits Street.
In the last episode we saw White Dee's daughter taking work experience where she was cleaning toilets as it was better to start somewhere rather than just live of the state.

Then there is the 50p man, Stephen Smith,  who creates a business from trying to help people who may not be able to afford the whole product, he spends his time driving round selling 50p portions of washing powder, soap, toilet rolls etc... and is actually a great role model for anyone of possible solutions to the welfare trap.

Even Fungi who at first glance looks like the worst of the worst is trying to sort his life out, even though his idea of a life coaching note is biro scribbled on the wall this is still showing that he has the desire to change and should therefore be helped to have the ability.

And that is what I think the real point of the welfare system should be and where we have massively missed the point, the welfare system should not be about Benefits and definitely not about unconditional benefits, it should be about helping people get into work, get sorted and lifting them above where they are regardless of limitations, not just handing them cash and going to the wine bar to meet your friends safe in the knowledge that you have done whatever you can for the "poor unfortunates." 

This is no better represented than by Mark and Becky, the young couple who struggle to look after two out of control children, at the first meeting they appear to be terrible parents without prospects for their children and seemingly unconcerned with parenting, and yet over the course of the shows we see a different story, a young couple who are struggling to do their best in a society that they don't think gives them any choice. Who, and this is the important bit, when given the skills they need are desperately trying to better themselves as parents, Mark who has never worked in his life even gets a job trying to sell charity subscriptions, he may not succeed in selling any, but for the first time in his life he tries to stand on his own two feet, and that is the first step to a life not just without benefits but with self respect and the feeling of pride that can only come by looking at what you have and knowing that you have earned it from your own hard work. This is what the Champagne Socialists want to prevent him from experiencing and this is why I am angry.

Forget the Government what about the Champagne Socialists

With all the talk of the Coalition being out of touch you would think that the Labour front bench all grew up in deprived areas and struggled daily to make ends meet, after all the Conservative ministers are all toffs so of course they are out of touch - or so the Socialist Mantra goes.


Of course this article by the Spectator tells a slightly different story.

With Miliband sitting on a £2.3 Million pound house,
Margaret Hodge who with an £18 Million pound inheritance is reckoned to be the Richest Woman in Parliament and
Shaun Woodward selling around £30 Million of property in recent time.

Maybe the reason the Labour Front Bench disagree with the Coalitions "We're all in this together." mantra as they are worried it may mean that they have to give up some of what they have.

Of course a special mention has to go to chief recovery denier Ed Balls as not just is he a Millionaire Class Warrior but his vast wealth is all 100% Tax Payer funded.

"Labour :- Don't let the truth get in the way"

Miliband is a Threat to the Recovery

The title above isn't mine - although I do honestly believe what it is saying.

It is instead the headline of an article on the Front Page of The Times today, The article states that FTSE 100 chiefs have claimed that Ed Miliband is "risking the recovery by developing unpredictable policies" now whilst this will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to Ed's hair brained, ill thought out schemes it is interesting that as the worlds business leaders arrive in Davos for some skiing an important economics conference. the issue being debated is the craziness of the leader of the opposition.

One of the FTSE 100 execs was quoted in the paper as saying "Ed Miliband doesn't give a toss about business, He will say anything to get elected [We] think it's economic vandalism."

I am just glad that this message is being spread, I honestly can not believe that Miliband is so stupid as to not have known that his words last week would have reduced the investment that the UK has in LLoyds and RBS, in fact I would go as far as to say that Miliband may even have purposely acted to bring down the share price so as to prevent the government from securing a profit for the taxpayer before the next election. it is very difficult for me to believe that a shadow cabinet made up of millionaires isn't financially intelligent enough to know what the effects would be.

Adebayor - The Master Plan Continues

Back at the end of Last Year I asked if not playing Adebayor was actually a master tactic. My tongue in cheek question was basically around the facts that whilst Ade was often the star of the first four months of the season come January he was often a little absent from the Score Sheet.

Now whilst I wasn't 100% serious it would appear that I may be getting proved right. Ever since Sherwood came in Adebayor has scored 6 times in 8 games, Hopefully this will continue to the end of the season instead of running out of steam in January, essentially giving us Adebayor at his best at the perfect time in the season. I'm going to be generous and say this was AVB's plan all along. (I doubt it was, but he is a former Spurs manager so I am inclined to go easy on him!)

the match itself was reasonably comfortable and showed real signs of the summer signings all starting to come together in what has been missing in earlier games, I am actually starting to feel slightly optimistic for the future (Normally a sure sign that a big defeat is around the corner.) Which coincides with the visit of Man City to the lane. I guess we will know better if we are "over the hump" better this time next week.

#CostofCameron More like #CostofMiliband

I Posted a few days ago about Miliband's ridiculous idea to make me change Bank Services Provider even if I am perfectly happy with who I currently use. I was wondering how bad for the Economy Miliband actually is so I thought I would look at the effects of his words.

The Twittersphere is awash with the #CostofCameron being pushed by Labour at the moment, essentially Labour pushing the myth that if they had stayed in charge then despite constant rises in the previous 13 years prices would have suddenly stopped going up somehow. And please don't be deceived in thinking that Labour want to keep down inflation, inflation in an economy is only used to reduce the size of government debt, therefore the party who is the biggest debt addict will also necessarily be the biggest inflation addict.

Anyway, as I said, I wanted to know exactly how bad Ed Miliband is for the UK economy, bear in mind this is only as "Leader" of the Opposition, Were Labour to get control of the economy this would only get worse.

Before Ed Miliband started to leak the details of his "Forced Bank Moves" policy then the UK top four Banks had a combined market capitalization of £617 Billion, After he had finished and the news had been discussed widely the Market cap had fallen to £608 Billion.

Therefore the #CostofMiliband is around £8.979 Billion per speech.

Now I know that many people may think that this is just the Rich being hit so why should we care, but don't forget that less than 1% of shares are held by individuals, If you have a pension, then Miliband just made you poorer.

Even more directly he has also reduced the value of the Government's investments (80% of RBS and 33% of Lloyds) the effect of Ed Miliband's speech on the coffers of the Government were:
Value before speech £38.533 Billion (Actually £38.533.518.240)
Value now £37.346 (Actually £37,346,059,216)

Therefore the Direct #CostofMiliband is £1,187,459,024 

To add some context, according to The Guardian this would be enough to build 23 Hospitals or 39 Secondary Schools - Or Heaven forbid, actually pay off some of the debt taken out by Labour in the first place.

So next time you hear that the #CostofCameron is £1,600 after three years in power, remember that Ed Miliband cost us all (Well anyone with a Pension, Savings or who pays Taxes) £8 Billion just by opening his mouth.

Just to make things more transparent, here are the figures I used.

Is Idea to Break Up Banks Milibands worst yet?

So Miliband has now come up with his latest anti-business idea and it really is the worst yet.

Firstly, you can't Ignore the fact that if Miliband did look at breaking up the banks it will lead to many years of legal battles as the people whose investments are affected will no doubt sue the government - and before you think "oh well it's just the rich" don't forget that the non-government parts of the banks are about 70% owned by pension funds, so the people affected are anyone with a pension.

There is also the issue that I am with my bank as I like my bank. I had an account I wasn't happy with so I changed my bank, now Miliband wants to decide for me that I should change again. I don't understand how he thinks it will help me as a consumer to remove my personal choice? He wants more competition but surely this is about helping people identify the best account for them, not forcing them to join a different bank regardless of what they want. Additionally if a bank excels themselves by being better than the rest then in a free market they will get more customers but under this system you surely no bank would try and give a better product than their peers as they will be broken up - Labour punishing success again?

Finally, Miliband thinks that this will increase competition but the simple fact is that the government don't increase competition, customers do, there are alternatives to the big banks and if people want to use them, they can. If people don't want to use them again that is up to them. If Labour want to increase competition they need to make it easier to run a bank not try and disable the banks that are already there. But then at the end of the day challenger banks will only come from customers who want to change. If my account is moved to a different bank I will simply close my account and move back again which may cause the bank to hit the government's cap again, I can only forsee a never ending cycle of bank changes for no other reason that Miliband decided that if he weakened the banks (and lost the country millions) then the coalition wouldn't be able to off load the shares labour bought. Once again making the people of the UK suffer for political greed, it's just the Labour way.

Benefits Street - Propaganda or Real Life

There is a great deal of debate going on about Benefits Street and what the show is trying to show. Channel 4 say it is a "fair and balanced observational documentary". whilst commentators on the left claim it is about Demonizing those claiming Benefits.

Now I hadn't planned on having a view on this as I have simply never seen the show and so don't know what the fuss is about. but I have read a great deal of the opposition about it and it appears to me to break down along the lines.

1) Benefit Claimants are not like this

From the things I have read about being shown, then I have to say that SOME are, in my time as a local Councillor and even more so simply from my time living in a deprived neighborhood I have heard nothing about the residents that I find shocking. Whilst I would never say that everyone on Benefits is "Playing" the system or "up to no good" I have met enough of them to know it isn't an isolated occurrence.

2) All Residents of James Turner Street are crooks.

The first I heard about the show stated that the street had 90% claimant rate, I assume this would have been challenged if it wasn't true so assuming this is right they are still saying that 10% do not receive any benefits. Also to argue that most people on Benefits are not unemployed (Including Pensioners and Low Paid) is fine but is there evidence that people claiming benefits were purposely ignored for the show? Maybe there is but I haven't seen it.

3) It tries to show that ALL benefit claimants are crooks.

One thing I have never heard claimed is that Benefit Street is a typical representation of ALL claimants and if anyone did (other than a few mupwits on twitter) I would refute that, as just as I have experienced many people the likes of which seem to be represented on the show, I have met many who are simply trying to do the best with the situation they are in, and it is these people who should feel the most anger to the people featured as it is not the TV company who make people on Benefits look bad, it is the people on Benefits who act badly.

4) People were mislead to appear

I have heard this many times (Although never with a direct quote) but from what I understand the name of the show and the focus on benefits was known to everyone who was filmed. Even if we assume that the premise of the show was kept secret then I still don't think that the film company would be responsible as surely all they did was point a camera at the people, they didn't make them go out and steal (And if they did the person being filmed should have said no, after all if they asked them to jump of a bridge would they?)

So whilst I think that this show sounds like gross examples of the Benefit system for the Left Wing Commentators to pretend it doesn't exist explains why they never tried to get a handle on the issue, personally I think this is a lot more to do with the fact that all the Champagne and Idealism Socialists are angry because their argument of 100% or benefit claimants belonging to the Noble Poor doesn't stand up to scrutiny of placing SOME of them in front of the camera, at the end of the day the Daily Mail could try and Demonize the Poor all day long but it will never be as efficient as letting the people who are taking advantage of the system Demonize themselves.

FINAL NOTE - I just wanted to stress one last time, before the hate mail starts coming in. The views here are based SOLELY on MY experiences with living in a deprived area and meeting SOME people like the ones portrayed as well as SOME who were not. I do not believe nor do I claim that it was ALL people either in the area I lived or ALL people who claim benefits.

UK Inflation falls to 2%

So after being told we were going to have a triple dip recession it turns out we didn't even have a double dip.

After being told we would lose our AAA credit rating we were marked down by only one of the three agencies.

And now after being told that we would have unrestrained inflation we have - Inflation back to the 2% target.

Now obviously I wouldn't expect  Labour at any time to actually admit to being wrong, wrong and wrong but at least the economy is on the mend.

I guess at least they can still talk about the cost of living crisis and pretend that prices today would be the same as in 2010 had they stayed in power - of course I am not sure quite how this claim works as prices were going up at quite a rate before 2010 but at least this is one of Labour's claim which can't be shown up as scaremongering.

p.s. I hadn't planned on this being an anti-labour post more about the good news for the economy, the trouble is that pointing out Labour lies is just too much fun (and quite easy)

Robots test their own world wide web

Robots have started to test their own world wide web for learning and communicating together. a "global brain" for robots is being developed by Philips and five European universities.

According to the BBC

"The eventual aim is that both robots and humans will be able to upload information to the cloud-based database, which would act as a kind of common brain for machines."

I can only assume that Terminator 2 or iRobot are not very often watched around the continent. 

President Hollande has an affair

Speaking to a French colleague it would appear that in the UK we are as obsessed  (if not more so) about Hollande's affair than they are in France, The general feedback from the French has been that they are not really surprised, not sure if this is because of him, or because they don't see anything unusual about someone having an affair, but it certainly seems to be of more curious interest than the shock we are treating it with.

Still I have at least learnt a new phrase gauche caviar (The Caviar left) basically this is the french equivalent of our own champagne socialist, which just goes to show that wherever you live socialism exists to take money from the poor and give it to the rich.

Unfortunate Penalty Kick

Whilst searching youtube for the Penalty by Jason Puncheon I came across this video of open goal misses. I'm sure there will be sympathy from anyone who has missed an open goal.

Unfortunately Jason Puncheon's missed penalty isn't on here as it is from 2013, but I am pretty sure he will get a role on next years video.

Goodbye Jermain, Thanks for the Memories

So news has come out today that Jermain Defoe has agreed to join Toronto (And former Spurs player Ryan Nelson) at MLS side Toronto, He doesn't straight away so will still play out a few Spurs games (not often you get football players working their notice period) and I am sure will get a great send off at the Lane.

For me Defoe was the highlight of the Spurs team for many years, in recent years he was occasionally sidelined but was always there ready to be called upon, there has been talk of him joining other teams (And he did join Portsmouth for 1 year.) but he has never seemed to be getting stroppy if he was carrying the whole team or sat on the sidelines I always felt that when needed Defoe would be there and would give his all - funnily enough I remember speaking to a West Ham fan after we signed him who said that he had no Loyalty and he would be off if the going ever got tough, Looks like he proved them wrong.

So farewell Jermaine Defoe, good luck in Canada\America and know that you will always be a Spurs Legend.

Years	Club	Played	Goals
2004–2008	Tottenham Hotspur	139	(43)
2009–	Tottenham Hotspur	135	(47)

Goodbye to the tax Disc

 

So we are going to see the end of the Tax disc in October. Personally I have thought it outdated for quite a while now and in fact when I ride a motorbike I very rarely rode with my tax disc on show and in all the years I rode I never once was asked for it. (And in fact to be honest even in the car it was normally a month or so before I managed to get the disc into the car.)

I think perhaps the more interesting announcement by George Osborne was that you can now pay your road tax (I know - Vehicle Excise Duty) by monthly direct debit, surely this is great news for people on a lower income as I always remember the stress of trying to come up with the money to pay my 6 month road tax which quite often amounted to a couple of weeks wages and so was not exactly easy to come by.

Gambling in the High Street is already controlled

I read an article on the Guardian this morning by journalist Greg Wood, in it he is urging the BHA (British Horse Racing Authority) to fight against the "Toxic" influence of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (Basically machines with casino style games) It was funny as the link I followed on twitter said "Greg Woods has a reasoned look at FOBTs" I did find it very funny therefore when the sub headline read

"British Horseracing Authority must end shameful policy towards toxic presence of betting terminals on high streets"

Obviously my formatting but hardly what I would call  reasoned. more prejudiced and biased would be how I would describe it. essentially the gist of the article is that governments need to do more to protect people from these insidious machines, what they have not taken into account is that like all businesses these machines are already controlled, like all commercial ventures they are controlled by Supply and Demand, if there was no Demand for the machines then no one would use them and they would close down. It really is that simple, they exist because people want them. I can never understand why this fact escapes certain people, I can only assume it is because certain areas of the country believe that they know what is best for people and can do a much better job of controlling them than if they had free choice.

Another one of the elements that is discussed is that as they can only have 4 of these machines you are starting to get multiple betting shops on each high street, well the answer to this is obvious, cancel the limit of 4 per shop, this is a problem that is caused by government regulation, not because of a lack of it!

I do have one solution that would have an effect on the number of betting shops on the high street but I highly doubt it will prove popular, Stop paying benefits in Cash! If you remove cash benefits and replace them with vouchers that can not be used to gamble you will essentially be stopping a state subsidy to betting shops and market forces will be able to balance up the supply and demand so we only have the number of betting shops that are wanted.

Is Immigration Good or Bad for the UK?

With the opening of the EU to Bulgarian and Romanians there is a great deal of talk over immigration and the argument always seems to fall on the question of "Is immigration good or bad for the UK?" 

Personally my answer to this would be Yes, of course immigration is both good and bad for the UK, after all just about everything that happens will have a positive and negative effect depending on who you are and what you are looking at. Immigration brings many wonderful things with it it terms of diversity and bringing in hard working people that are able to contribute to our society. However there is also potential for it to have negative effects especially for people who are out of work and now have a wider pool of competition and there will obviously be strains on a local economy if we have a situation where there are not enough houses being built for the demand, it is obvious increasing demand would have a negative effect if supply is not also increased.

I do think it is quite funny however when I read articles like this one from Left foot forward and they make the claim that immigration is not a bad thing as

2) Migrants from Eastern Europe are less likely to claim benefits than indigenous Britons
*Not a direct quote as I spell checked it first

Now this "fact" doesn't surprise me at all as I have never believed that people will travel halfway across the world just to live on benefits as after all being an Immigrant takes guts and determination and these are not the qualities of people who want a life on benefits, I think it is much more likely that the migrants who are on benefits came here looking for a better life but instead were sucked into our welfare poverty trap.

My issue with the fact is that if they are saying migrants are less likely to claim benefits than indigenous Britons then are they saying that those indigenous Britons are claiming benefits instead of working, as a life choice? Surely if we are to look at the fact that migrants are in work and not claiming benefits as a success then we should surely recognize that the swing side of this is that indigenous Brits are choosing not to work.
After all if British people are being forced onto benefits due to immigration then this benefit bill needs to be offset against the tax revenues paid by migrants (If the unemployed British were working then the tax revenues would be the same.)

To be honest this backs up what I have found from my own experience so I am not surprised however I have often read from Left Wing commentators that nobody wants to be on benefits but there aren't enough jobs to go round - surely this would therefore create a direct negative to having migration.

Unfortunately I think the truth is that many people who hold both of these incompatible opinions is that:

Migration is good as migrants tend to vote for left wing parties and unemployment is good as the unemployed tend to vote for left wing parties.

For my two-pence worth, I think migration is a great thing and should be encouraged and the answer to the concerns of overcrowding is that we should be getting out there ourselves and understanding a bit of the world outside our own borders.