waiting for the orange double suction

I've been using some of my 'investment tools' recently. I call them investments because of the informal rule that they mainly sit in the garage and are only very occasionally used.

It's the strange economics of buying a labour saving device, using it for a few minutes and then putting it away for sometimes years at a time. A possible trade-off would be to rent something, but as any fule kno, the tools available are always one less than the tools needed to complete the job.

Last year, even the professionals installing the kitchen showed examples of the rule, needing to get extra bibs n' bobs to complete things. On a couple of triumphant occasions, I was even able to supply the missing item from the dormant supplies in the garage.

This time I'm waiting for the delivery of one of those suction devices. This is for the northern project, rather than something at home.

Hopefully the above picture does justice to this double-suction-cup handle, which can be used to pull plinths from fitted kitchens.

It will probably be used for around 5 minutes and then join the other investments.

I suppose it will go into the same tool-bag as the carpet puller (20 minutes use) and that locking adjustable wrench (20-30 minutes use across many years).

voting for a discredited experiment?

Aside from the well-discussed London mayor elections, there's been local council elections and police commissioner elections throughout many parts of the country.

I took a peek at the websites for the PCC candidates for one of the areas, ahead of the actual election day. Some say that the PCC mechanism is a discredited experiment. I decided to take a quick look. Of five candidates in my selected area, only three had any relevant content loaded. Even the incumbent PCC's content pointed to a Strategic Plan, which catastrophically failed to download (this was a week before the actual election).

Even by these limited actions I suspect I did more than many potential voters to attempt to find out what was happening. I screen grabbed the incomprehensible .NET error message and sent it to the then current PCC's email.

The next day I received a direct mail from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, which did send me some working links to the things I'd been seeking. Still, it was a 'round the houses' approach to getting something tangible.

The turnout for this PCC vote was much higher than last time's extremely paltry one (something like 15% now up to around 35%). When a single mid-term re-election was called in one area, the stand-alone voting actually dropped to a 10.6% turnout.

I originally thought of this role as a kind of 'jobs for the boys' (actually, last time it was 6 women and 35 men). Based upon my rather unscientific attempt to get further documents, the old criticism that there was too little information to make an informed decision still seems to hold.

Perhaps this stealth uplift is part of an increased politicisation of the roles?

I suspect people have gone out to vote for their councils and seen there is an extra PCC paper to complete. Scan the list of largely unknown names and use their favourite party name (Conservative, Labour etc.) as the only guide. With nothing else to go on, that's the way the votes have turned. Of course the individually elected commissioners have to say they are non-partisan.

We shall see.

money

It is unusual to get cheques nowadays. Even more so to get a cheque issued to me direct from the Government Banking Service account number 10000002.

What would I need to do to get one from account 10000001? Who runs these accounts?

Who operates them? the sort code 23 suggests it is really Barclays, although the Freedom of Information disclosure says that the banks involved are RBS and intriguingly, Citigroup, of Park Avenue, Manhattan...

The same FOIA commentary says that information about government banking has absolute exemptions under section 2(3) of the FOIA. This means that even public interest arguments for and against disclosure don't need to be considered.

Still, at least I've got my money, and on a very interesting cheque.

red house

We stopped off at the Red House, over yonder, as a gap in the micro-moving. Taking car-loads of stuff across the swing-bridge and into a new post-code.

Getting to the front door of the old place was complicated enough. Despite being in the car park below, the traffic system means it is a 1.5 mile trip to get to around to the front, and it involves a road with 'no traffic' signs along it. See the same cobbled street in one of last year's promo shots to get the idea.

So after about four or five trips, the chance of a Red House pie and pint was too much to resist.

Before going back over yonder 'cross the swing bridge and up the hill. (Bb major)

sleeping on the road

I've been up and down a few long roads recently, including this one, near to where I found a spot to lay my head whilst wrapped in a sleeping bag.

No ordinary sleeping bag; it's what seems like a lifelong companion.

It's called a Strone and has a Mountain Equipment logo on it, although it is too old to be in any catalogue. Despite that, it still looks the part even down to the tapered shape and hood popular in modern sleeping bags with names like Helium, Titan and Aurora.

They, and indeed the Strone would not look out of place in the sleeping quarters in a space movie. Although, it's fair to say my Strone has a glossy external finish, which is surely due for a comeback.

I remember originally getting it in one of those camping shops just off of The Strand. My memory tells me it was in John Adams Street, although nowadays more of the outdoorsy shops have moved to the other side of the Strand, probably into bigger premises.

Anyway, that sleeping bag (LH) and its companion (RH) have been carried to and slept in through the mountains of the Swiss Alps, Serbian Cities, Greek island beaches and many points in between.

This time the comfort of a carpeted floor with real underlay meant an easy night's sleep, as well as a progressive upgrade as a bed arrived, followed by a compressed mattress which somehow boinged back to full size when its bag was opened.

using MiFi whilst waiting for broadband

The distant building project has also created a few technical challenges.

The people from Openreach are just sorting out the manhole covers and wires so that providing an interim internet connection has required ingenuity.

I'm using a MiFi solution. This uses a Huawei black box, which takes a regular 4G SIMM card, finds a signal and then works as a hotspot. Easy-peasy to set up - the hardest part was finding out how to fit the SIMM card (RTFM).

It also has an ethernet connection, so I was able to hook it up to a Mac Time Capsule and then broadcast a nice strong secure Wifi signal as well as providing an across-the-wire ethernet link to the internet.

It's a bit pricey to use at around £10 per Gigabyte, but will do nicely until the regular broadband arrives.

scratching a living

I've received an email from Companies House about new rules for People with Significant Control (PSC).

It says I'll need to create a new confirmation statement and ensure that the company register and SIC codes for my company are up-to-date.

It adds that from 30 June, I won't need to complete an annual return (which was free to complete) but will instead need to file at least once a year a new confirmation statement - for which I will now have to pay a fee.

It's all to do with the 275 page Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act, which is designed to help UK business compete, get finance to create jobs, grow, innovate and export.

I found the relevant PSC 'Company Transparency' information in section 80, on page 60 of the report, just after a section about Destination Information related to education.

I'm not convinced that the document is the best example of crystal clear writing and when I ran 'drivel defence' against the 'Transparency' section it gave an average sentence length of 37 words. The longest sentence in the section was 137 words. Of 65 sentences, 47 were longer than 20 words.

But then I notice that the introduction to the Act was only one sentence. 903 characters or 133 words. Perhaps the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled need to tighten up on their writing style? I believe they are about to stop using parchment.

(Average sentence length of this post = 20.25 words)

a frontier click into the past

The car is clean again after its time spent on a building site. There was a team of about five people cleaning it and even in true pit-stop style it still took them about five minutes to get it nice and sparkly.

There was a frontier land feeling to the time on-site. I was staying at the very end of the current addressable world and even the delivery drivers needed piloting in for the last part of the journey.

And a fascinating thing is that this is one of those parts where in Google there's a proper time machine effect.

The main roads get updated more recently than the side roads, so it is still possible to jump from 'Now' (well, April 2015) across a one-click boundary into 'Then' (2009) and see the striking difference in the terrain.

There's plenty of examples of this sprinkled around Google Maps. Just find a newish building site and then look around and there will almost certainly be some of the older land behind.

not the aga questions all over again?

Fair play that Cameron has released his income and expenses across the last few years, although I suppose people will also delve into the detail. I noticed that the interest on his second home in Witney which used to be paid for by the taxpayer seems to not feature.

I recollect that the monthly amount claimed for the interest for this back in the mid 2000s was about £1,776, (around £20k per annum) according to the claims forms. He also had the Aga chimney repaired, the oil for the stove and even the wisteria maintenance paid for by the taxpayers - all of which were his entitlement.

Perhaps the rental income on his spare homes now covers this? After all Dave's (50%?) share of the annual net rental income is now £46,000 per annum.

I wonder if he will ask his Cabinet to make similar declarations? He did say he would back in 2012.

the wiggly tail of Blairmore Holdings

Ages ago I downloaded the prospectus for Blairmore Holdings. I stashed a part written post about it in my notes. Patience has its rewards because it is now in the mainstream news.

There are a couple of points that don't stack up with the chorus of secondary politicians defending their leader right now in the saga about who held what.

Firstly, the reported £30,000 holding cashed in? A minimum holding stipulated with the fund is USD100,000. This would imply that the total holding by a single entity would need to be at least USD100,000. Either this condition was waived, or there was a joint holding, which would then be closer to $100,000 - split 2 ways? Could it be that Sam and Dave each cashed in £30k? Not what Dave implied. Someone should really ask...

Then the statements about this being a regular trust mechanism and not one particularly designed to avoid UK tax. That's quietly contradicted in the original prospectus, which made s specific point of saying it is designed to avoid UK taxation.

As a clue, the banking arrangements were via Nassau, Bahamas. Payment into the fund was via Société Généralé in New York.

Intriguingly, the investment managers are Smith and Williamson, 25 Moorgate, London. That's really the working part of the Fund, having to decide what it invests in. One could say that the financial factory was based in London. I wonder if any of the beneficial holders of the trust had links with that firm (wink)?

Then there was an English legal firm, Simmonds and Simmonds from Ropemaker Street EC1, as well as the Mossack Fonseca in Panama. Add some Deloitte and Touche auditors from Nassau, a few more advisors and banks and it makes a complete structure.

But that was then.

The trust has since relocated to Ireland, which also claims that funds are not subject to any taxes on their income (profits) or gains arising on their underlying investments. Furthermore, with Irish regulations, the treatment of foreign investments can reduce or eliminate withholding taxes under Ireland’s network of tax treaties.

I notice that the current Blairmore fund is currently rated at around USD30 million. Some of its top ten holdings are also well-known tax optimisers. Top holding is Google (Alphabet), 2nd is Walt Disney (tax via Luxembourg) and 8th holding is Amazon.

There's probably another story in that?


And here's those Prospectus extracts (SEOs rev your engines)...

Blairmore Holdings

Minimum Investment
The Directors are entitled (in their sole and absolute discretion) to determine the minimum initial investment amount and the minimum amount for subsequent subscriptions from time to time. As at the date of this Prospectus, the minimum initial investment per subscriber is US$100,000. Shareholders must maintain this minimum level of subscription in the Fund...

Taxation, United Kingdom

(a) The Fund
The Directors intend that the affairs of the Fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for United Kingdom taxation purposes.

Accordingly, and provided that the Fund is not trading in the United Kingdom through a fixed place of business or agent situated in the United Kingdom that constitutes a “permanent establishment” for United Kingdom taxation purposes and that all their trading transactions in the United Kingdom are carried out through a broker or investment manager acting as an agent of independent status in the ordinary course of business, the Fund will not be subject to United Kingdom corporation tax or income tax on its profits... "

produkt review

Sometimes it is the simplest things.

Take this product called Produkt, from that well known purveyor of Billy bookcase.

Plonk it into warm milk and switch it on to make frothy milk for latte coffee.

The bulky mains powered fancy machine I'd used previously took 2 minutes, required a teflon interior coating and a complete overhaul after every use. This takes about 10 seconds and then a quick dunk in some water.

And all for £1.

Oh yes. Even if the instructions were in Norwegian.

my iPhone secret experiment

I decided to carry out a secret experiment when the recent iPhone SE was announced.

I decided to take a leaf from all of these tax-free people and see how long it would take to use Apple shares to create a tax free gain sufficient to buy a new Apple iPhone 'for free'.

So I set up a watchlist on a W8-Ben compliant share trading platform. I added an amount of money equivalent to the maximum level of the current UK ISA, which for 2015/16 is GBP 15,240. In other words I put the virtual money into a virtual tax-free wrapper.

Then I set the watchlist to buy Apple shares at the announcement prevailing USD106.51 rate.

The I let it run until Apple's share price got over USD109.27, which would be the equivalent of a 2.59% gain, or expressed in GBP, a gain of £395 - i.e. the price of the phone.

The number was broken today and ran on to around USD109.93, briefly going over USD110. That shift moved the gain to be sufficient to buy the larger 64Gb iPhone.

Now, I did this as an experiment only, and I can say that it took 8 days to see the gain, based on what I perceived as Apple's comparatively low share price before the recent announcements.

Just an experiment and just for fun, of course.