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Lotto scratchcard ‘fury’ but no mention of the Health Lottery

The Daily Star picks up the sound of “punters’ fury at Lotto card Farce”.

Those “angry punters” have branded the National Lottery a “rip -off”. The Star says “nearly a quarter” and “most of the top prizes” on Lotto’s 42 scratch card games currently on sale offer prizes that have already been won. “What a waste of money,” says one unnamed gambler, without irony.

 

daily_star health lottery

 

We do hear from Camelot, which operates the cards. “There are only two scratchcard  on sale that have no top prizes remaining. No new packs of these scratchcards can be put on sale.”

That seems fair.

 

daily_star health lottery

 

What seems a little less fair is that the Daily Star does not mention that its owner (Richard Demond) is chairman of Northern & Shell, parent company of the Health Lottery, a Lotto rival which sells virtual scratchcards for online games. How it deals with scratchcards after the top prizes have been claimed is not mentioned.

We called the Health Lottery to ask them. Calls to The Health Lottery Helpline are charged at 7p per minute plus your telephone provider’s access charge. It took 59 seconds for us to be able to press ‘4’ to speak with an advisor.

We were directed to the Ts and Cs. They tells us:

The result of each Instant Lottery Game shall be pre-determined at the time of purchase and shall not include any element of skill. The Health Lottery Computer System will determine prizes based on the probabilities and not from a limited pool of prizes…

The chances of winning a Prize will be exactly the same at the point of purchase and shall not be affected by previous wins in the same Game or other Prizes previously paid in other Instant Lottery Games . The advertised prize structure shall remain in place at all times, with each prize tier always available for a win as the Instant Lottery Games do not use a limited pool.

It’s different system to the Lotto, then. Whether or not it’s any fairer is moot. Both systems are after all, odds-based punts.

 

Posted: 25th, August 2017 | In: Money, News, Tabloids | Comment


For sale: jar of soil touched by the eclipse

eclipse soil

 

Did the eclipse touch your home and garden? If it did, you could be rich. Your patch of ground touched by the celestial wonder is worth a load of money:

This is a Jar of soil from the area of greatest duration of the eclipse in Carbondale Illinois. This dirt seen total darkness as the moon traveled in front of the sun (2 minutes and 40 seconds). Plant your special seeds in this dirt and let the magic begin. Ok seriously, it’s just dirt, but it is everything I said it is. Hey, if nothing else help a guy out I need new tires for my wife’s car 😉 Seriously, I mean it!!!

Tyres cost $1,029. Dig deep!

Posted: 25th, August 2017 | In: Money, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


Medium wants to pay writers with claps

Good news is that Medium is thinking about – swoons! – paying writers who post on its website a fair rate. And to help them work out how much to pay are the readers, who will click on a pair of hands at the foot of each article and watch them clap. The more claps a story gets, the money cents the writer with earn. Yeah, Medium was to give writers the clap.

The Verge reports:

A couple weeks ago, Medium replaced its “recommend” feature — a little heart button at the end of each article — with a “clap” button that you can click as many times as you want (much like how Periscope lets you send broadcasters an infinite number of hearts). The site wants people to send authors claps to show how much they enjoy reading each article.

Now, those claps are actually going to mean something. Medium pays authors by dividing up every individual subscriber’s fee between the different articles they’ve read that month. But rather than doing an even division between articles, Medium will weight payments toward whichever articles a subscriber gives the most claps to. It’s not clear exactly how much each individual clap tips the scale, but you can be sure that writers will be asking readers to click that button.

Maybe writers should also be penalised for writing bad things with other hand gestures, like the bird, the tosser and a pointed finger that says ‘You’re fired’?

Posted: 23rd, August 2017 | In: Money, Technology | Comment


Shropshire Hospital rejects donations from fund-raising transvestites

Many men like dressing up as women: sailors, rugby players, the headmistress at St Trinian’s school, East German athletes and Glamour magazine’s woman of the year. So too men on a fundraising drive for Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust. The lads dressed up as female nurses and shook their tins in the streets of Ludlow, Shropshire. People dug deep in their pockets and donated a none-too-shabby £2,500.

But the money is no good. It’s dirty. The hospital has rejected the cash, saying the way  it was earned was “highly-sexualised” and “demeaning”.

The Trust’s letter to the Ludlow Hospital League of Friends, which raised the cash, opines: “The presentation of men dressed as female nurses in a highly-sexualised and demeaning way is wrong, very outdated and insulting to the profession.”

Indeed. If nurses are to be demeaned by anyone it will be by pen pushers, male doctors and MPs, which is far more modern and progressive.

Posted: 23rd, August 2017 | In: Money, News | Comment


Cancer charity wrongly paid founder £31,000 from £900,000 budget with £27,000 left over for charitable activities

Have you been mugged by a charity? The Charity Commission has issued an official warning to the National Hereditary Breast Cancer Helpline, citing a  “significant breaches of trust”.

The charity’s founder Wendy Watson MBE was paid £31,000 for her good works. The Times explains where the money in the box ends up:

Wendy Watson MBE, who was also a trustee, was paid from the charity’s £909,634 budget. In total £874,539 was set down in the charity’s accounts as “fundraising expenses and other costs”, with just £27,403, or 3 per cent, left over for charitable activities.

The needy got less than Watson’s take?

Among other financial irregularities discovered by the watchdog were informal loans between Mrs Watson and the charity, and payments to her daughter for work as a fundraiser.

The Charity Commission’s “OFFICIAL WARNING” states:

Under the power in section 75A1(b) of the Charities Act 2011 the Charity Commission for England and Wales (“the Commission”) issues the following OFFICIAL WARNING to The National Hereditary Breast Cancer Helpline – 1150183 on the grounds that the Charity Commission considers that the trustees of the charity have committed a breach of trust or duty or misconduct or mismanagement in the administration of the charity in relation to:

 making unauthorised payments to a connected person
 entering into an informal loan agreement with a connected person
 improperly delegating the administration and management of the charity
 failing to keep proper minutes and other records of decision making
 failing to properly implement and manage financial controls.

You can find out what charities spend against money raised and the percent funded by the state here.

Posted: 14th, August 2017 | In: Money, News | Comment


Google blacklists Damore to protect weak women from diverse opinions

Everything is not rosy at Google. An internal memo written by Google engineer James Damore accusing the internet behemoth of operating as an “ideological echo chamber” is riding high on the news cycle. Google, opined Damore, is a place where the company’s approach to diversity is taboo. Google “dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the ‘victims’,” he wrote. And for saying that he was – get this-  sacked.

“I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes,” says Damore. He says “differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50 per cent representation of women in tech and leadership”. He adds that ‘”discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business”.

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, read that and decreed that Damore had amplified “harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace”. Google’s workforce is 69% male. A mere 2% of Google staff are African American.

 

Damore’s views were not debated. He was fired. He lost his livelihood for being a disruptor, something Google, which owns YouTube, is proud of saying of itself. You must stick to the orthodoxy or perish. Free expression is out at Google. But Pichai maintains, “we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves.” That’s not free speech you can hear – that’s the soft wind of everyone nodding in agreement.

Damore touched a nerve. Google fired him to advertise its own sound morals. Never mind that women are underrepresented and one in 50 workers at any paygrade is African American, just read the press releases and know that Google upholds diversity and equality and will punish anyone expressing ‘the wrong’ views. On Google’s diversity page, Pichai is quoted saying, “A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone.” Oh, the irony.

Danielle Brown, Google’s vice president for diversity, integrity and governance, tells us in response to Damore: “Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we’ll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul.”

She fails to tells us why, though. Damore did not understand the point of Google’s diversity programs. Does it improve results? Can its success be measured? Google defines itself as ‘diverse’ – Damore was sacked for breaking its “code of conduct”.

Picahi adds that female Googlers “are hurting and feel judged based on their gender”. Lucky for them that the blokes in charge are there to rally to the defence of these ultra-sensitive, simpering women who tremble and cower in the face of a man with a memo.

 

Posted: 10th, August 2017 | In: Key Posts, Money, News, Technology | Comment


Facebook is punishing smaller publishers

Is Facebook a friend to quality journalism? As well as publishing Anorak, I publish Flashbak. It’s Facebook page is up to 280,000 followers. But very few of the people who choose to follow the Page get to see it. Facebook limits the reach of anything I and others post there.

To reach every reader who wants to see our stories in their newsfeed, we’d have to pay Facebook a few hundred dollars per post. Post 5 stories a day and we’d be giving Facebook around £1,000. Add that up over a week; a month; a year. We can’t afford it. But that’s the deal. So we play along in the hope that readers will seek us out and find us though Facebook and other means – such as a weekly newsletter pulled together by the excellent Rob Baker.

But Facebook is making it even harder. Facebook is to penalise “reposted” content. They want us to post “new, original, content”. Posting links to stories on Flashbak.com we’ve taken a long time to research and resource, for instance, will be seen by even fewer readers. But slap up a livestream video of one of us walking about an art gallery, say, and lots more people will see it.

Come on, Facebook, we want to work with you but you’re making it harder and harder for small and mid-sized publishers to make the deal work .

Posted: 9th, August 2017 | In: Key Posts, Money, News, Technology | Comment


Martin Shkreli convicted on 3 counts in fraud case

shrekli pharma bro

 

Martin Shkreli, aka ‘Pharma Bro’, has been found guilty of three felony criminal charges, including securities fraud. He was cleared of five other charges at a court in New York.

The Washington Post notes:

“We’re delighted in many ways,” Shkreli said outside the courtroom, saying he was glad to be exonerated on many of the charges. This was a witch hunt of epic proportions,” he said. “They may have found some broomsticks.”

What with this being America, Shkreli, 34, will most likely not serve any time in prison – the maximum terms behind bars for his crimes is 20 years – and just pay his way out.

The mixed decision perplexed many in the courtroom, including the 34-year-old Shkreli, who first drew widespread public scorn in 2015 for raising the price of a lifesaving drug by more than 5,000 percent.

You will recall Shrekli from his ealier work, outlined by CNBC:

The charges against Shkreli were unrelated to his decision, while CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, to raise the price of the drug Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill in 2015.

Spiking the price of the life-saving drug earned Shrekli the sobriquet “The Most Hated Man In America”.

Was he hard done by? Fortune writes:

Robert C. Hockett, a Cornell University law professor, said the U.S. Justice Department is still smarting from criticism that it didn’t hold top executives accountable after the widespread fraud leading to the 2007 financial crisis. With limited resources, prosecutors also often factor in “extreme moral turpitude” as a “tie-breaker” in cases where it’s not clear whether to move forward, he said.

“Zealously pursuing a notorious and widely loathed character like Shkreli offers a great deal of bang for the buck where demonstrating prosecutorial seriousness is concerned,” Hockett said.

He’s served his purpose. Will he do his time?

Posted: 6th, August 2017 | In: Money | Comment


Polly Tonybee misses the point about Kensington and Chelsea property tycoons

Polly Tonybee is writing about London property in the Guardian.

Empty property bought by investors to sit unused is a scandal the Guardian has exposed this week, finding 1,652 in the Grenfell borough of Kensington and Chelsea alone.

Why is buying expensive property a scandal? Tonybee says these “mothballed houses” ares”sitting there as gold bullion in the bank, not homes for anyone.” Are the kind of people who can afford to rent gold bullion-homes are of prime concern in the poster pats of London?

Even the prospect of collecting £10,000 a month is not enough to encourage wealthy owners to fill their vacant properties

Rich invest money to get richer. Not exactly news, is it, let alone a scandal on a par, say with blood diamonds or blowing the crap out of oil-rich Iraq? (What changes his mind?” asked Tonybee in 2003. Her question was rhetorical because she swiftly answered: “Only the barrel of a gun up his nostril.”)

She then adds this – and it’s great:

What happens at the top end of the market knocks on all down the chain – and what’s happening at the bottom is a disaster.

She’s right. And the top end is booming. If the big property developers build more, then good. No matter who buys the bricks, it’s the building of more than makes things work. The story should not be about affordable homes; it should be about more homes.

PS: Polly Tonybee knows all about foreigners buying property overseas and leaving it empty for most of the time. She owns a second home in Tuscany. It’s all that non-working-class Left-wing politics. Hold the equality and fighting the powerful, Polly’s into class guilt, the family firm and prejudice.

PPS: This from 2016: “More than 7,500 local authority properties across the capital are lying empty as thousands of Londoners struggle to find a home.”

Posted: 4th, August 2017 | In: Broadsheets, Money | Comment


Politician sues god for failed promotion

india money sue god

 

Life imitates Billy Connolly movies in India. If you hire the priest to perform the service then the service must be done. Or else:

An MLA, who belongs to the ruling party in Telangana, paid Rs 50 lakh to two tribal priests to perform a special pooja so that he gets a ministerial berth. However, when the duo failed to give him the promised political fortune, the MLA sent them to police custody.

A Lakh Rupee is one hundred thousand rupees. The politician paid around £60,000 for prayers! You trust this man’s judgement?

Spotter: India.com

 

Posted: 17th, July 2017 | In: Money, Politicians, Strange But True | Comment


Dash Cam: biker jumps onto bonnet of car in compensation attempt (video)

Idiot of the day is the biker who leapt on the bonnet of car in an attmept to win compensation cash. Dash cam – you got on?

Posted: 15th, July 2017 | In: Money, Strange But True | Comment


Arsenal player donates £19,000 to Grenfell fund

Footballers get such a bad press it’s useful to focus on the good they do. Arsenal defender Hector Bellerin has kept his pledge to donate £50 for every minute he played for Spain in the European Under-21 Championship. The sums have been done and Bellrin will give £19,050 to the Red Cross fund helping survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire.

This follows news that Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling, who grew up in north west London and played for QPR, has also made a substantial donation to Grenfell survivors.

NOTE: Let’s hope all the money goes to those who need it. According to the Third Sector, the British Red Cross paid its highest earner £173,000 in 2017. Thirty-seven charities paid their top earner more than £200,000.

Posted: 3rd, July 2017 | In: Arsenal, Money, News, Sports | Comment


After Grenfell Tower: let’s envy the ‘victims’ in their luxury flats

Kensington Row grenfell tower

 

After Grenfell Tower, news that displaced residents will be rehoused in “Posh New £5m Flats” (Star) at a new-build complex called Kensington Row located around a mile and a half from the disaster. The development has 68 flats, where the three-bed and four-bed flats are worth “around £5m” each.  These bigger flats, says the paper, are where “a majority of the survivors” will live.

Over in the Express there’s news that only “some of the victims” will be rehoused in the new flats. I’d say none of the victims will be. They’re dead – at least 79 of them. It’s the survivors who are being rehoused because their last home was a toxic time-bomb.

The flats, secured by the City of London Corporation, are worth even more in the Express. Now homes on the plot are worth up to £8.5m. Residents have access to a “gym, swimming pool, spa, private cinema and 24-hour concierge”. Are we supposed to envy them, or just marvel at the insane London property market which keeps so many people off the property ladder?

 

Kensington Row grenfell tower

The Mail says those survivors are living the dream

 

And then we learn that the City of London Corp paid around £10m (source: The Sun) for the 68 flats. That’s not £5m each is it – even if Diane Abbott is doing the maths. The majority of survivors are not living in £5m flats. It’s just under £150,000 for each, on average. Yes, I know that’s not the asking price, but the base price. The developers have “sold the properties at cost price”. But it proves that the flats’ monetary value is affected by many forces, not least of all guesswork and the legal requirement that all new complexes contain an element of low-cost housing.  The government defines affordable housing as “social rented, affordable rented and intermediate housing provided to specified eligible households whose needs are not met by the market”.

The need for a decent roof over your head is not a luxury or an investor’s punt. It’s a basic human requirement.

Oddly, the Mirror makes no mention of the new flats until Page 5. Buried in the 14h paragraph of a story on how Grenfell Tower became enveloped in a “deadly cyanide cloud”, we learn that “some Grenfell residents” will be rehoused “in a £10m deal”.

The Mail leaves it to pages 20 and 21 to focus on the flats. Now the flats are in “£2bn blocks” and worth up to £13m. The flats are “the stuff of dreams”. Well, the privately owned ones next door the council flats on the same £2bn development are. The council homes will have a lower spec.

The rehoused Grenfeell Tower survivors will, the paper observes, “live near multi-millionaires”. Not everyone’s a multi-millionaire in London – yet. There are people in the city who live in social housing and do menial and blue collar jobs. Who knew?

Posted: 22nd, June 2017 | In: Money, News, Tabloids, The Consumer | Comment


Man sues date for texting during Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

Brandon Vezmar is suing his date for $17.31, the price of the movie ticket he bought her. Vezmar claims the woman’s behaviour on their night out “is a threat to civilized society”.

Vezmar, 37, of Austin, Texas, is unhappy that whilst on a date at Barton Creek Square cinema, the woman, 35, became disinterested in the 3D showing of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and began texting.

He talks to the American-Statesman. “It was kind of a first date from hell,” he says. About 15 minutes into the movie she took out her phone and texted. “This is like one of my biggest pet peeves,” he adds. In his small claim’s law suit Vezmar claims the woman “activated her phone at least 10-20 times in 15 minutes to read and send text messages”. This, he states, was a “direct violation” of the cinema’s policy on mobile phone use.

He says he asked her to stop. She refused. He invited her to text outside, which she did. She left and never returned. She took off in the car she and Vezmar had shared to reach the cinema, leaving him to make his own way home.

“I had my phone low and I wasn’t bothering anybody,” she says. “It wasn’t like constant texting. I’m not a bad woman. I just went out on a date.”

This being America, the woman says “she planned to file a protective order against Vezmar for contacting her little sister to get the money for the movie ticket”.

This one will run and run.

Posted: 16th, June 2017 | In: Film, Money, Strange But True | Comment


For the unlucky not the few: Michael Lewis narrates the parable of the lucky man and the fought cookie

cookie michael lewis

 

In 2012 Moneyball author Michael Lewis gave addressed Princeton University. He tells the gilded youth arranged before him that they “owe a debt to the unlucky”.

I now live in Berkeley, California. A few years ago, just a few blocks from my home, a pair of researchers in the Cal psychology department staged an experiment. They began by grabbing students, as lab rats. Then they broke the students into teams, segregated by sex. Three men, or three women, per team. Then they put these teams of three into a room, and arbitrarily assigned one of the three to act as leader. Then they gave them some complicated moral problem to solve: say what should be done about academic cheating, or how to regulate drinking on campus.

Exactly 30 minutes into the problem-solving the researchers interrupted each group. They entered the room bearing a plate of cookies. Four cookies. The team consisted of three people, but there were these four cookies. Every team member obviously got one cookie, but that left a fourth cookie, just sitting there. It should have been awkward. But it wasn’t. With incredible consistency the person arbitrarily appointed leader of the group grabbed the fourth cookie, and ate it. Not only ate it, but ate it with gusto: lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths. In the end all that was left of the extra cookie were crumbs on the leader’s shirt.

This leader had performed no special task. He had no special virtue. He’d been chosen at random, 30 minutes earlier. His status was nothing but luck. But it still left him with the sense that the cookie should be his.

This experiment helps to explain Wall Street bonuses and CEO pay, and I’m sure lots of other human behavior. But it also is relevant to new graduates of Princeton University. In a general sort of way you have been appointed the leader of the group. Your appointment may not be entirely arbitrary. But you must sense its arbitrary aspect: you are the lucky few. Lucky in your parents, lucky in your country, lucky that a place like Princeton exists that can take in lucky people, introduce them to other lucky people, and increase their chances of becoming even luckier. Lucky that you live in the richest society the world has ever seen, in a time when no one actually expects you to sacrifice your interests to anything.

All of you have been faced with the extra cookie. All of you will be faced with many more of them. In time you will find it easy to assume that you deserve the extra cookie. For all I know, you may. But you’ll be happier, and the world will be better off, if you at least pretend that you don’t.

Of course, cookies make you fat. You should thank the greedy sods for prolonging your lives.

 

Spotter: @goldman, Kottke

Posted: 11th, June 2017 | In: Money, Reviews | Comment


Fabulous playing cards inspired by Karina Eibatova’s bird art

We love a beautiful set of playing cards. This set designed by Karina Eibatova with LUX Cards features her birds and feathers drawings.

 

 

You can buy AVES  here. And you can learn how to play at the online casino at RedBet.

Posted: 9th, June 2017 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment


Donald Trump and the cancer charity horror story

21st Century Bastards Donald TRump- action figures for the post-truth age

 

Occasionally you read something that shocks you. Forbes’ Dan Alexander has a story about Donald Trump’s son Eric and a charity golf event .

The real star of the day is Eric Trump, the president’s second son and now the co-head of the Trump Organization, who has hosted this event for ten years on behalf of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. He’s done a ton of good: To date, he’s directed more than $11 million there, the vast majority of it via this annual golf event. He has also helped raise another $5 million through events with other organizations.

Fabulous. Overlooking the grandstanding, doesn’t just one extra dollar raised make the entire thing worthwhile? Surely it does.

The best part about all this, according to Eric Trump, is the charity’s efficiency: Because he can get his family’s golf course for free and have most of the other costs donated, virtually all the money contributed will go toward helping kids with cancer. “We get to use our assets 100% free of charge,” Trump tells Forbes.

That’s not the case. In reviewing filings from the Eric Trump Foundation and other charities, it’s clear that the course wasn’t free–that the Trump Organization received payments for its use, part of more than $1.2 million that has no documented recipients past the Trump Organization. Golf charity experts say the listed expenses defy any reasonable cost justification for a one-day golf tournament.

Additionally, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which has come under previous scrutiny for self-dealing and advancing the interests of its namesake rather than those of charity, apparently used the Eric Trump Foundation to funnel $100,000 in donations into revenue for the Trump Organization.

Read it all on Forbes.

The wonder is that President Trump should know that charity can never replace government social assurance. Nothing and no-one has the financial capacity of the federal government. Contributing your celebrity to the cause is not enough:

Donations rise during good times and fall during bad; the $316 billion given last year is high, but it’s still less than any of the three years leading up to the last recession. It’s understandable that people would have less to give when times are hard, but happens to be the exact time when the need is highest. …

The food stamps program cost $78 billion last year, and Medicaid cost, $251 billion. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or what used to be called welfare, cost another $31 billion. Once the Obamacare exchanges reach something like full capacity in 2017, federal subsidies for insurance on those exchanges is projected to cost about $108 billion. And that’s before we even mention Social Security, which cost $773 billion in 2012.

So the idea that a reduction in these programs could somehow be made up for by an increase in private giving just doesn’t reflect reality.

Over to the President…

Posted: 7th, June 2017 | In: Money, Politicians | Comment


Man takes exquisite revenge on VERY LOUD business meeting in a coffee shop

When people use the coffee shop for business meeting that can be loud.  VERY LOUD. One man has exacted revenge:

 

Guy has perfect revenge on people having VERY LOUD business meeting in coffee shop

 

Spotter: @sehnaoiu, The Poke

Posted: 20th, May 2017 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment


Lottery winner’s millionaire son sues parents for more money

Can love be measured in cash? Michael Dawes was given a pot load of cash by his dear old dad. But he reasoned that dad should have been more generous. The matter game before the Beak:

A man who was given nearly £1.6m by his father after he won £101m in the Euromillions has had his claim for more cash thrown out by a judge.

Best check the will.

Michael Dawes, 32, took his father, Dave, and stepmother Angie to court after they stopped giving him more money. He claimed the couple had promised to ensure he and his partner, James Beedle, 34, would never have to worry about money again.

All depends on how much they spend, right? A £1.6 million windfall – tax free because it’s a fit – is not a small sum of money. Spread over his working life – 18-70, say – and all things being equal, the sum gives young Dawes an equivalent income of  over £30,000 a year in today’s money. In April 2016 median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £539. Not too shabby, then, for young Dawes. Or he could invest the sum wisely and get more – something achievable by stashing the cash on multiple high-interest-paying current accounts and taking a long-term view on funds and shares.

So what did he do with the money?

Michael Dawes was given £1m by his father and stepmother soon after their win, but the judge said nearly all of it had been spent within a month.

Sound investments?

About £550,000 was spent on a house in Portsmouth, where Michael lived, but he also gave nearly £250,000 to friends and his partner’s family, and quit a well-paid IT job.

He quit his job? Dad had won big on a low-risk/high-reward activity. Why work when you can just ask?

At one point, the pair were spending up to £30,000 a month, including £1,000 a week on groceries.

And he wanted to be kept in the style to which he had become accustomed. But the judge dismissed his claim.

You can’t pick your family, but you can pick your numbers. Best of luck!

Posted: 19th, May 2017 | In: Money | Comment


He’s right: Jeremy Corbyn’s high income does not make him wealthy

jeremy corbyn money

 

Is Jeremy Corbyn a wealthy man? We don’t know. We haven’t seen his tax returns. All we do know is that he earns well. The UK average salary is around £27,000 a year. Corbyn earns more than £137,000  year. According to the Mirror, the pay gap is a “grotesque chasm between a rich one per cent and the other 99% of the country”.

Is Corbyn grotesquely rich? An annual income of £100,000 is enough to put you comfortably within the top 2% of all earners.

The Mail spots Corbyn speaking with Julie Etchingham on ITV’s Tonight show:

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has REFUSED to say that he is a wealthy man – despite earning more than £137,000…

He said: ‘I consider myself adequately paid, very adequately paid for what I do…. What I do with it is a different matter. I consider myself well paid for what I do and I am wanting to say to everyone who’s well off, make your contribution to our society.’

Ms Etchingham, 47, reminded him that people at home will be ‘shouting at the TV saying “of course you’re a wealthy man on a £137,000″‘.

But he replied: ‘No, I’m not wealthy because of where I put the money, but I’m not going into that.’

He’s right. Wealth is having a great deal of money, resources, or assets. We don’t know if Jeremy Corbyn is wealthy. We do know that he is paid well and his income affords him choices. Wealth inequality is not the same as income inequality. The two can be linked. But they are not cause and effect.

 

Posted: 15th, May 2017 | In: Money, Politicians | Comment


US tech titans mint millionaires as globalised business model pays off

When the web first boomed, the dream was to become a dotcom millionaire for running you own website. Now you can rich by working for someopne who built a website that went huge. The trick is to work for one that operates on a global scale and is based in the US. In “Tech titans pay $20bn in bonuses” The Times’ Danny Fortsun writes:

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google’s parent Alphabet doled out a combined $20bn (£15.4bn) in share payouts last year, on top of the techies’ salaries, according to an analysis of stock market filings…

The $20bn bonanza equates to $29,850 for each of the quintet’s 670,000 employees. Last year Britain’s bankers and insurance workers took home £13.9bn in bonuses, an average of £13,400 per employee.

Well, quite. As Tim notes: “Global industry pays more in bonuses across the world than the one country sector of a global business.” If you’re tax efficient, the share price will rise leaving more money to dish out amongst friends and employees back at HQ.

What we don’t know is that bonuses the  Big Five’s UK-based workforce took home when compared to their colleagues in the USA, say, or Luxembourg?

Posted: 7th, May 2017 | In: Money, Technology | Comment


The Nomadic Gardener: this man will hire your garden to grow his vegetables in

 

Jim Kovaleski is the nomadic gardener, a doyen of “portable farming” at one point he hies your garden to grow his produce in.

This nomadic gardener travels between Maine to Florida gardening leased front yards. With a frugal lifestyle and revenues as high as $1.5K a week, he’s living the dream.

It’s win-win. You rent out your land for an itinerant worker to farm. You, the gardener and your land become useful and profitable parts of society. If the price of land is lowered because of this new industry, then good. Landu s the largest inout cost. Reduce that and we should rejoice.

Spotter: Kottke

Posted: 4th, May 2017 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment


Nigerian spy chief had $43m dollars in his Lagos flat

Can it be that the bloke whose been emailing you all these years has been caught? Police in Nigeria have noticed Aoy Oke, the country’s National Intelligence Agency boss, after finding $43 Million in cash at his four-bedroom Lagos flat.

Police also found $36,000 worth of British pounds and $75,000 worth of Nigerian naira.

Nigeria’s anti-corruption body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said it suspected the funds were linked to unlawful activities.

 

ayo oke

“It’s amazing what you find down the back of the sofa”

 

Oke’s been suspended from his job.

Oke has’t yet made a public statement, but unnamed intelligence sources told local media there’s nothing to see here, and the cash was just being held for covert operations.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari isn’t buying it, and has suspended Oke pending an investigation. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo will head the investigation and report back to Buhari with findings in two weeks.

Meanwhile, that email about a pressing need to deposit tens of millions of dollars into your Post Office savings account might not be all that far-fetched after all.

Spotter: Foreign Policy

 

Posted: 21st, April 2017 | In: Money, Strange But True | Comment


Europe’s robot sex brothel provides stiff competition for sex workers

The robots are coming! Well, not yet. But one day they will. The Daily Express says flesh and bone prostitutes have forced a mechanical sex parlour in Barcelona to shut. What the paper calls “Europe’s first sex robot brothel” is no longer open for business because women complained that the plug and play sex dolls were ruining their livelihoods.

We hear from Janet, a sex worker in city’s Raval district. “It is another strategy of the patriarchy that presents us as objects without rights or soul,” says Janet. “A privilege of the wealthy classes.”

 

lumidoll sex brothel

Live cam

 

For those of you uncertain if you were shagging an on-the-clock polymer sex doll or an on-the-clock woman, the Express tells its readers who have been on Stag dos, rugby club dinners and business trips to the Spanish city that the the house of ill repute was at 2 Baixada de Sant Miquel “in the Spanish city’s Gothic quarter, north of the cathedral”.

“The rooms are decorated with candles,” the paper noted in a previous story, “a single glass of cava and a bowl of strawberries, with pipped music that is similar to Michael Bolton. The TV also plays pornography.”

Yeah, that one. The one that shows Keeping up with the Kardashians on loop.

Posted: 22nd, March 2017 | In: Money, Reviews | Comment (1)