There’s three in a pair, right?

A while ago, I took a “10% off” voucher with me to Halfords. I bought an item with a marked price of £30.  At the checkout, I was served by a young man whose badge identified him as the Store Manager.  When I presented the voucher he excused himself to run up to his office to fetch a calculator to work out what to charge me.

Humbug

Jeremy Corbyn tonight criticised Theresa May’s cuts to policing in the run up to last night’s London Bridge attacks in a strongly worded speech.  He said Labour would take “whatever action is necessary” to ensure the safety of citizens, adding: “You cannot protect the public on the cheap.”

The New Case for Gold

If global uncertainty has got you thinking about the increasing likelihood of another economic meltdown, you may be interested to read Jim Rickards’ The New Case for Gold (here’s the Amazon link).  Rickards, of course, is not alone in recommending that investors have at least some exposure to gold as a hedge against financial instability, but one of the key points he makes is that it’s worth considering how that exposure is achieved.  

Too many bells and whistles?

Last week saw the 50th anniversary of my driving licence (or, more accurately) the day I passed my driving test. In those days I used to view drivers who displayed the grille-badge of the Company of Veteran Motorists (founded in 1932) as a bunch of senile old dodderers.

Better business education

A friend, who’s the MD of a tech company, is in the good habit of engaging regularly with his staff.  In collecting feedback from a recent staff meeting, ready for the next, he saw that several senior engineers wanted to know what was meant by profit, and why did the company seem to care so much about it.

That they asked these questions was no surprise as most people don’t seem to know (and still less care) much about business.  What disturbed me more was that my friend felt that he had to answer the question indirectly.  The questions themselves reveal an ignorance of basic business reality, and his approach showed that he sensed that profit is a rather suspect motivation.

I’m writing a novel…

There. I’ve said it.  It feels like a confession at Alcoholics Anonymous.  I’ve often thought about writing a novel, and now I’m of retirement age I have a lifetime of experience upon which to draw, and more time to spend on personal projects.  But it’s slow going.  My prevarication techniques, aside from writing blog posts like this one, include reading ‘how to’ books and evaluating various tools (this is the 21st century – no-one uses just pen and paper any more, do they?)

How close are we to Molenbeek?

Teun Voeten is a cultural anthropologist and war photographer who lived in Molenbeek for nine years until, in 2014, he could stand it no longer and left. The article he wrote after the Paris bombings in November last year is still more resonant after the events of last month.  Can we honestly say that the problems he describes are not present in many places here in the UK?  I believe they are, and that we should no longer be so complacent.

Forgiveness – a life lesson

Someone could spend a year writing a novel to illustrate the life lesson that was encapsulated in an extraordinary obituary in The Times this week.  The subject was one Tom Tate, who died at the age of 98 on 19th January.

Use a good bike lock!

The U-lock obviously did its job well, but perhaps it wasn’t wise to park outside Halfords in Eastleigh in the first place.  Fortunately, the tea leaves mustn’t have had a crank removal tool with them, otherwise it could have been a lot worse.

Old donkeys…

I thought that ‘grade inflation’ was a feature of school and university exam results, but I’ve found another example where the desire to encourage has overwhelmed common sense.  In the past few months I’ve spent a fair amount of my spare time using Duolingo, an excellent (and free) website that provides a very effective means of learning a new language, in this case Portuguese.