Last time I glanced at the Johnston Press accounts they were akin to those of Greece (but without a compliant ECB) - something like £250M of debt which there is no possible way of repaying.  This month's ABC circulation figures for their titles are also a disaster, and the group can't struggle on much longer.  They've likely already lost the journos who ensured some sort of political balance.

A yesterday post from the ADVFN financial board says it all:

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23/2/2017 16:11 I know that most of you are getting excited re upward share movement but pause and reflect on latest ABC figures where JPR lead the way. For example- Wigan down 35% Hartlepool down 22.8% South Shields down 22.3% Blackpool down 16.9% Sunderland down 15.9% and the mighty Scotsman down 14.5% These falls are seriously bad news for viability of the group. I stick to my opinion that these shares have no value.

Replace the unelected House of Lords with a publicly elected body

On 27/01/2017 at 16:47, dunlinds said:

Re Oddfellows Arms Hotel: My Great great Uncle - Edwin Taylor Dale - took over the hotel in 1867, as per attached snippet from Newcastle Daily Chronicle. This doesn't show the location of the hotel, but I found a photograph from Northumberland archives dated from 1974 which suggests that the 'corner' building was The Oddfellows Arms....

I can confirm that this was The Oddfellows Arms by virtue of having handled the original deeds myself at some time in the mid 1970's.

Excellent!

The Choo-Choo of The North - eat your heart out Gormley! 

P.S. We might want to avoid coining The Dog of... 

Brexit boost for London as Bank of America Merrill Lynch eyes new City base

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Wall Street giant Bank of America Merrill Lynch has kicked off its search for a vast new London office, in what will be seen as a major vote of confidence in the capital as the UK prepares for Brexit.

The bank has hired property agents CBRE to identify sites in London as big as 500,000 square feet – similar in size to its current premises, which serve as the bank’s European headquarters.

The lease on the bank’s plush site near St Paul’s Cathedral expires in five years’ time. BAML has to decide by 2020 whether to roll over the lease or move elsewhere. It employs some  1,200 bankers and 600 back office staff in London. 

The revelation that America’s second-largest bank is looking to cement its UK presence will boost confidence that London can remain Europe’s financial hub after the UK leaves the European Union and attract multinationals from other industries....

...confidence is growing that the UK will remain an attractive hub for companies across a range of industries after it leaves the EU, particularly technology firms.

A flurry of big companies have announced plans to expand their presence in the capital.

Technology giant Apple, for example, last year unveiled plans to lease 500,000 sq ft at the Battersea Power Station development to create a new London headquarters with enough space to house 3,000 staff.

Fellow US companies Google and Facebook have also announced plans recently to expand their presence in the UK capital. Google is building a new 10-storey, 650,000 sq ft complex in the capital. Meanwhile, Facebook is planning to switch to new offices in central London’s Fitzrovia district, a move that will see the social networking giant hire an extra 500 employees in the UK, increasing its headcount by 50pc to more than 1,500.  

It is understood that BAML engaged CBRE to start an office search before the EU referendum in June. Its decision to push ahead with the hunt despite the vote is a huge boost for the Square Mile...

4 hours ago, Eggy1948 said:

Mobile, whats that?

We'll have the 7 minute battery life problem solved real soon!

Not so sure the new logo is quite as stylish as the old one.  Apologies to whoever put the time in on it.

Bank of England upgrades 2017 growth forecast

-but pound tumbles as Mark Carney cautions Brexit still has consequences

Well he would, wouldn't he?  Wants us all to believe that he "saved the world" - move over Gordon.  And, if he were ever to admit that he was badly wrong on just about everything on every occasion..

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The BoE said it now expected economic growth of 2pc this year, higher than economists had predicted and up from its previous forecast of 1.4pc.

Ah, yes, he's pedalling this line already:

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Now the first question of the day:  Last August you predicted that GDP would rise by only 0.8pc this year, you’re now forecasting 2pc growth. What went wrong with your forecasts?

Mark Carney responds: "Turn it around, what went right.

"Policy actions that were taken by the bank and the Chancellor both of which provide support into 2017. They have had more traction than we had expected at the time.

Ahem... presumably this included Osborne's "emergency budget" which you went along with?  Has anyone asked the obvious question as to why he lowered interest rates to depress the value of Sterling when many economists (and I suspect some MPC members) said he should have done the reverse?

What's the betting that the UK growth forecast figures will need to be raised yet again?

2 hours ago, mercuryg said:

Contrary to popular belief, at no point is parliament obliged to debate a petition, merely to consider doing so.

Contrary to parliamentary belief, the British public are sovereign and they have no divine right to do what's in their own interests (under the guise of their alleged moral superiority).  Gone are the days when they can pedal the line that we need them to do our thinking for us.  We now need to remind them of this at every single opportunity.

We've always managed to stave off bloody revolution in this country by the elites having the sense to give enough ground, but this collection of drones haven't got the basic horse sense of their predecessors, and still don't realise that their posturing impresses no one.  The utterly pathetic "debate" in the Commons yesterday is a case in point.

Donald Trump should make a State Visit to the United Kingdom.

It's going up faster than any one I've ever followed.  Pity the petitioner can't spell!

The interesting thing for me is will the BBC ever mention it; they've been doing a magnificent job of promoting the Corbynista one for days now.

A friend in East Anglia just messaged me about his switch to BT Internet a short while ago:

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We were so unimpressed with BT that we have changed to TalkTalk to be our phone and internet provider. TalkTalk gave me a free SIM for my mobile phone so I have also dumped Vodafone from that and effectively everything on my mobile is now free.

He's a very senior citizen so not prone to switching for the sake of it.

I've pinned the thread for now Sym, though maybe we can find a better way.

Unemployment falls by 52,000

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Levels of unemployment have fallen by 52,000 to 1.6 million in the three months to November,  the latest official figures have revealed. 

The Office for  National Statistics said average earnings increased by 2.8 per cent in the year to November, 0.2 per cent up on the  previous month. 

Employment Minister Damian Hinds said: "We start the new year with another encouraging set of figures. Employment continues to run at a near-record high, unemployment remains at an 11-year low, and both figures are stronger than this time last year - highlighting the strength and resilience of our labour market as we step up to the challenges of 2017.

"We have made real progress creating a strong economy and helping more people into work, and will do what is needed to continue that trajectory as we build a country that works for everyone."

Youth unemployment is down by more than 360,000 since 2010 and the lowest in 11 years, while long-term unemployment is the lowest since mid 2008.

1 hour ago, Andy (4G) said:

People still use BT for phone calls?

Is that anything like Skype?

Post-Brexit vote, UK leapfrogs Sweden and US in allure

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The UK’s decision to leave the European Union has not hit the country’s attractiveness when it comes to wooing top talent, a detailed investigation of the most competitive countries in the world has found.

Research published just before this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos says the UK has leapfrogged over countries including the US and Sweden to rank third in the world for workers looking for new challenges, behind only Switzerland and Singapore.

Adecco, the recruitment firm behind the research, to be launched today in the Swiss mountain town before the official start of the WEF tomorrow, will say Britain will remain competitive once it quits the Europ­ean bloc.

...

The Adecco Global Talent Competitiveness Index says that the UK is the third best country in the world in terms of its ability to attract, retain, train and educate skilled workers, as it leapfrogged countries including the US, Luxembourg and Sweden from seventh into third place.

John Marshall, chief executive of  Adecco’s UK and Ireland division, said Britain was likely to remain highly competitive after Brexit. “The UK has many of the attributes that competitive countries share. It’s certainly not about whether one is or isn’t in the EU,” he said. “Switzerland, Singapore and US, which make up the other top four countries are not in the EU.”

The research ranks countries on a wide range of metrics. The UK scores highly on ease of doing business and intensity of competition, and was best in Europe for teaching science, maths and technology subjects in schools.

You'd think that as a (fat cat?) lawyer Emily Thornberry would be an expert communicator, after all that's what she is paid a lot of money to do.  But boy was she struggling to communicate on Peston on Sunday!

Peston quizzed her on Labour's immigration policy saying ""There is so much confusion about your position. What is it exactly?"  After much talking around the issue ("The economy is most important thing. We have to be looking after the economy.") he was reduced to a "You have not made it clearer", to which she replied "I've done my best."

Well your best leaves everyone - including it seems Labour MPs - highly confused Ms Thornberry.  It's simply not good enough for a professional communicator, so I'm offering you a bit of help borrowed from none other than a former adviser and speech writer to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.  He was faithfully reported thus:-

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The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

He said Labour's relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to "open up the UK to mass migration" but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its "core working class vote".

As a result, the public argument for immigration concentrated instead on the economic benefits and need for more migrants.

"The economy is most important thing. We have to be looking after the economy." - Well, of course it is Ms Thornberry; that's made very clear in those notes from your spin doctor!

9 hours ago, Malcolm Robinson said:

Yes Sym and the earth is only 6,000 yrs old!  

How could the Robinson family bible get it so very wrong?!  From misty memory the authoritative "Gee" family bible has it at 4400 years. but of course that was about 100 years ago right now, so maybe we can split any remaining difference?

Exclusive: Chancellor Philip Hammond took personal stake in food technology company months before it won share of £560,000 Government contract

The opposition are going to play this one for all it is worth.  Hammond was always a dumb choice for Chancellor.  In the old "honourable" days this would have been an instant resignation matter, but they will try to ride it out.

On a slightly less serious note...

Is this glorified Post-it note worth $4000 - $8000?

No, I'm not poking fun at modern art collectors - far too easy a target, and also so easily overdone.  It's the signature of course, and what it says about us that we'd want to pay that.  Isn't that Andy Warhol's "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" point?  Fame by association has a definite market price, even if the association is with an 85p tin of soup.  And, here you have a BOGOF offer.

Maybe twenty!

Moon formed from merger of 20 little ‘moonlets’, new theory suggests

So, everything we were told about the Earth being the result of the collision of two smaller planets was likely a load of bunkum. What's more, this has been suspected ever since the first samples of moon rock were chemically tested; now how long ago was that?

What I find amusing about the failing theory we were taught as certainty is the pseudo precision (around 4.31 billion years ago) of something which likely never happened.  The current "global warming" hype hinges around precision measurements (0.12c a decade) which even modern instruments are struggling to resolve.

This further illustrates just how dumb the BBC Guardianistas are when they proclaim that "the science [of so-called climate change] is settled", and so there can be no further discussion. That can only ever be the case if you are veering into politics and religion, and the inconvenient counter evidence is embarrassing. Real scientists retain an open mind, and constantly denigrating Trump for having (what is these days) the courage to sit on the fence, is in fact a massive display of bigotry from the very people who regularly level that accusation at others.

I don't think anyone is saying "carry on as before", as it's only common sense and good housekeeping to clean up our act.  But in the hysteria about (anthropogenic) climate change it's so easy to overlook other polluting factors which may turn out to be vastly more important; this in order to fit someone else's political agenda.  It also becomes so easy for politicos to divert vast sums of (other people's) money into madcap schemes, and thus ignore areas of more pressing need.  The only certainty here is that those who don't retain and encourage a degree of scepticism very surely possess a hidden agenda,

"bug stopped play for me"

There is "something going around" in town here too, and I probably caught it during the 4.5 hour+ communal Christmas lunch (only in Italy!).  Mrs 3G seems to have escaped with only an early light cough (is this positive for the 3G family gene pool you ask?)

Anyway.. it's now just over a full decade (6th December 2006) since I arrived here permanently in "the Mediterranean outback" from the total civilisation of Bedders, and HOW things have changed here since!  Maybe some of the details later.

A Happy New Year to everyone!

An amazing quote in today's Daily Express:

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Peter Chand, a Labour councillor in Dagenham and Rainham, Essex, said: “The feeling on the doorstep is mainly about migration.”

Another, Kathy Graham from Blyth Valley, Northumberland, said: “We don’t have a cat in hell’s chance. A lot of locals aren’t going to vote for me because of Jeremy Corbyn.”

But hang on a tick "Ms" Graham: are you telling us that if the Blairites get back control of your party things will be any different?  You both want to open the floodgates to mass immigration.  The fact that it's the Corbynista's communism, and the Blairite's intention to force working people's wages down in the fascist EU, is a little academic here don't you think?

I take back anything I might have said about your intelligence Ronnie; you clearly have enough smarts to know when the Labour Party gravy train is about to hit the buffers.

Philip was a friend of our family, and I'm sure did a fair bit of our industrial electrical work too.  I can recall some humorous discussion about his cable stripper in the late 1950's or early 1960's, but never actually encountered one of them myself. This info regarding his injury explains a lot.  Reg Dixon is another name that passed over my head as a child, along with Bill Orange, Bill Elliott, etc...  It was a smaller world then.

A video to calm the nerves of your fellow travellers as you queue for ages at the inevitable security check.

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UK car production roars to 17-year high

Car production has reached its highest level since 1999, with over 1.6 million models rolling off the production line so far this year, new figures show.

Almost 170,000 vehicles were built in UK factories last month, an increase of 12.8pc on November last year and the best total for 17 years.

Production for UK sales increased by 14pc in November to 33,745, while exports continued to boom - up by 12.5pc.

A record 1.2 million cars have been shipped to overseas markets this year, said the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

Chief executive Mike Hawes said: "Made in Britain is a badge coveted by car buyers worldwide, and these latest figures highlight not just that international appeal but the fact that the UK is a globally competitive place to make cars...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/12/22/uk-car-production-roars-17-year-high/