The Anonymous Widower

One Of My Least Favourite Stadia Will Get a Station

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:47:14 +0000

The Ricoh Arena at Coventry is a reas9onable stadium, unless you want to get there when the buses aren’t running from the centre. That happened on News Years Day in 2011 as I reported here.

But it would now appear that by December 2013, it will have its own station! About time too!

Is Hull Going to be Connected Properly to the Rest of the UK?

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:14:04 +0000

Modern Railways are quoted in their February edition, that NetworkRail are going to investigate pushing the TransPennine electrification on from York to Selby and Hull.

This sounds like a good idea and I suspect that all those Hullensians will be pleased. It will also keep NetworkRail’s electrification train busy, especially as that line doesn’t have too many bridges, tunnels and viaducts.

Should Paul Scholes Captain GB in the Olympics?

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:50:26 +0000

Rules say that for Olympic football, you must pick an under-23 side, but you are allowed three overage players in your side. This article in the Daily Mail says that Giggs, Scholes and Beckham could be those overage players.

Obviously others will have their view and especially, when it is known, who’s not going to Euro-2012.

Liverpool Supporters Boo Evra

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:30:06 +0000

The Suarez affair has not shown Liverpool of their supporters in a good light. Watching the match today between Liverpool and Manchester United, there is a lot more booing of Patrice Evra.

I think, it’s going to need some sort of punishment to bury all of this.

Incidentally, it doesn’t seem that the supporters behaviour is not much better at Loftus Road, where Chelsea and John Terry are playing.

It wwould appear that we might be winning the battle against rscism in football, but now we have another one, where supporters use a racist incident to stir up trouble.

Peston on RBS Bonuses

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:30:59 +0000

Robert Peston at the BBC is a financial commentator I respect. His post today, in response to the news that the Chairman of RBS, Sir Philip Hampton, has turned down his bonus, should be read by all. According to Peston, Sir Philip didn’t actually request a bonus in his contract.

Well, the additional reward for Sir Philip was always something slightly unusual, which – as it happens – he didn’t request when he took the job three years ago. This shares incentive had already been agreed in negotiations with another candidate to chair RBS (Lord Davies, the former Standard Chartered chief executive, who ultimately turned the job down), and Sir Philip just attached his moniker to a contract drafted for someone else.

That sounds like a cock-up by the previous government to me.

Peston goes on to have a dig at the lack of talent available and also headhunters, whose interest is best served by high salaries. The first point is proven by looking at how many banks the world are in trouble and the second is well-known to anybody who’s ever hired anybody through a headhunter or an agency.

I think we’ll only know how good Hester and his co-directors are, when RBS is sold off.

More on Stehen Haster and That Bonus

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:37:55 +0000

He is a rich man in his own right. If I was him, I’d tell the stupid politicians I didn’t want the bonus, resign and tell them, where to put their job. I would know that I’d done a good job and could take my pick of a lot of well-paid jobs out there.

If that happened, it would cost all the UK Taxpayers even more and who would most politicians blame. David Cameron and the Tory members of this current government, who have nothing to do with this mess. RBS was such a state in 2010, that it should have been liquidated. But Gordon Brown needed the votes! Especially in Scotland!

It was the Crowd What Won It

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:49:54 +0000

At Liverpool University, in I think, 1968, the University Rugby team, got to the final of the British Universities Rugby Cup. Usually, this final would have involved two of the more sporting universities. But somehow, we got there and would have been long odds to win against Loughborough.

However, some old fart, decided to have the final at Birkenhead Park just across the Mersey one Wednesday afternoon.

So the whole University marched down the hill to the ferries and virtually filled the ground.

To say we were raucous would be an understatement, but Loughborough fell apart under the battering from the crowd and Liverpool won the trophy for their only time.

In the Telegraph next day, we were described as a mini-Kop that nearly rioted.

It was certainly an afternoon to remember.

An Enterprising Aussie

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:33:19 +0000

it has been reported on the BBC, that outside the ladies singles final in Melbourne today, between those two grunters; Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka, there was a man selling ear-plugs at $3 a pair.

Zopa In Hard Times

AnonW — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:56:23 +0000

I have been examining my detailed figures on Zopa, the peer-to-peer lending site I use to hold my deposit account money. You’d think that the real interest, I’d be getting would be lower than it was last year, as reading the papers and you’d think that everybody was going belly-up. But surprisingly in January the real interest, which is actual interest paid out, adjusted for any bad debts, has risen by about a percentage point. And I’m still waiting for the big payments that come at the end of every month, around the 25th!

So why could this be?

I think that it’s partly due to the improved lending policy of the company, in that bad borrowers are less likely to be loaned money and over the last couple of years, the dodgy customers have not got loans. And of course for every dodgy customer who doesn’t get a loan, there is more money to lend out to good ones!

Or it could be that those who have loans out with reputable banks and companies, make sure that whatever they do, they make certain they repay the loan?

I do think though, that this improvement will probably apply to all banks and companies that do personal loans in a professional and traditional manner. So as banks are constantly being criticised for not lending enough money could it be that they’re doing the right thing?

To return to Zopa, I also hsve noted that I have not picked up a loan using their Rapid Return system for eight months. This system allows good loans to be effectively sold on to other lenders.

It may be that I’ve not been lucky in picking one up, but it could be that people like the Zopa rates and would prefer to live off the interest rsather thsn cash in the loans.

I don’t know, but it does seem to me that Zopa is getting to be a better investment and that the majority of the good British public are not as stupid ass they are made out.

The Olympics Will Start With A Ring of Class

AnonW — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:37:16 +0000

I was a bit surprised when Danny Boyle was asked to devise the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the Olympics. But he is certainly crestive as his films show.

The first thing to be published about the ceremonies is that the Opening Ceremony will start with a bell and it will also be used in the Closing Ceremony.

But it won’t be any bell!

It will be a bell cast by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, just a few miles away from the Olympic site. It is the oldest manufacturing company in the UK and can trace itself back to the fifteenth century.