Fancy banking in the Ukraine?
There is a bank in Ukraine that is offering *21%* interest on a checking account. But you must take 10,000 steps a day, tracked by their app, to qualify. Miss one day and you get nothing. I can’t...
View ArticleThe world’s most successful criminals: Banks
A single small branch of Danske Bank in Estonia processed £120 billion between 2007 and 2015. “No one really knows where this money went. All we know is that the last people to see it was…three large...
View ArticleWhy posh boys and girls run the Arts
Not long ago, my wife, a composer, asked me if I would ever advise a student from a low-income family to pursue a career in the arts. “What do you mean? Of course.” “Really?” “If that’s what they...
View ArticleComparative Poverty: The Top 1% vs the Top 0.1%
Someone at the bottom of the top percentile of incomes is on about £120,000 a year. The top 0.1%, however, gets over £500,000…. The very rich price the reasonably rich out of houses and schools: top...
View ArticleEat your heart out lottery winners: this is winning
“Over the past 54 years, shares in his [Warren Buffet’s] company, Berkshire Hathaway, have outpaced the S&P 500—a broad index of American stocks—by almost 2.5 million percentage points. The degree...
View ArticleWorking on council estates
I worked for fifty years in Hackney and Havering on Council estates as a plumber. Like everybody else Council tenants are of all kinds of people: loud, selfish, helpful, timid, stupid and clever and I...
View ArticleThe top 0.01% in the USA
The top 0.01% of American workers—now some 15000—this year have incomes, including capital gains, of about 500 times the average. Typical incomes in America today, including capital gains and benefits,...
View ArticleBook Review: John Carreyrou ~ Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley...
Without trivialising this wonderful book I was reminded of a joke as I followed the career of Elizabeth Holmes: Q. What’s a gold mine? A. A hole in the ground owned by a liar Elizabeth worshipped Steve...
View ArticleBook Review: Oliver Bullough ~ Moneyland: Why thieves and crooks now rule the...
There is an investigative book. Like all investigative books it offers revelations, which alter our perception of the foundations of society itself. Misha Glenny’s McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime...
View ArticleHow supermarkets promote theft
“A 2015 study of self-checkouts with handheld scanners, conducted by criminologists at the University of Leicester, also found evidence of widespread theft. After auditing 1 million self-checkout...
View ArticleBook review: Annie Duke ~ Thinking in Bets (2019)
Gambling fascinates me and I like stories associated with gamblers. Kerry Packer is an endless source of pleasure for me. He was famously irritated by a braggart in a Las Vegas casino who wanted...
View ArticleGordon Brown’s* Aspiration to End Childhood Poverty, 1997-2010
Gordon Brown became Chancellor after the Labour landslide of 1997. His aspiration was to end childhood poverty and no one would ever have a better opportunity. The Conservative party was in utter...
View ArticleThe generosity of billionaires
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made headlines earlier this month with his donation of $690,000 to the Australian wildfire relief effort- a sum roughly estimated to equate to less than five minutes* of his...
View ArticleA couple of drinks at the Ritz
Gordon and his wife went to the Ritz where they had a whiskey and a gin and tonic. After sitting for a while enjoying the ambience they decided to leave. Gordon called over the waiter to settle his...
View ArticleSS-Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich’s widow: an unrepentant Nazi
The German authorities, too, turned a blind eye to the Heydrich case. Lina never stood trial for the maltreatment of her slave labourers in Jungfern-Breschan. On the contrary, in the context of the...
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Recycling, Craftsmen and Bonuses
In the 1970s I worked for Hackney Council at the Defoe Road Depot, as a plumber. Once I was paired with George the roofer, and his labourer Tom. We had to strip and renew an ‘up and over’ slate roof...
View ArticleFilm Review: American Factory (Netflix) (2019)
This brilliant documentary won the 2020 Oscar. Unfortunately it’s only on Netflix. If you want to see it sign up for a months free trial and then cancel. The 2008 banking crisis consumed GM’s factory...
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Hitler’s nightmare: Henry Morganthau’s plan
Henry Morgenthau was Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury from 1934. To Hitler he epitomised ‘World Jewry’. He was Jewish Wall Street royalty, a close friend and colleague of Roosevelt. He rescued the...
View ArticleBrexit, Northern Ireland and Unification
The 2016 Brexit referendum aggregated all UK votes into a single total. England’s majority swamped the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish vote, which immediately cast a doubt on the idea of a shared...
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