Thoughts on Finance, Current Affairs and General Consumer Ripoffs - Damn Lies and Statistics

Heron Global Alternative Investing Review - Is it a scam? Heron Global are advertising on national newspaper and other websites offering high interest paying investments but without any clear warnings of risks or of requirements. If you look closely in the terms you must be a sophisticated investor or have high net worth to use these investments - they are not suitable for retail consumer savers despite being advertised at them on consumer sites. I would recommend extreme caution for any investments that highlights returns and do not highlight risks and more importantly are NOT FSCS protected so you could lose ALL your money.

Some have said that we could easily strike trade agreements with other countries and can ignore the EU. Rather shortsighted if you look at the numbers: GDP of Ghana was under $40bn in 2014 GDP of Germany was under $4000bn in 2014 Our exports to Germany were $46bn in 2014. So we export more to Germany than the entire Ghana GDP. Do you really think we can replace trade with Germany with Ghana instead? It's all very well looking at other trade deals but the reality is that the volumes are way off what we have with EU and cannot replace them in the short or medium term before you even think about what we could sell to other countries - our manufacturing base isn't exactly massive.

This was the fascinating analysis from a post on Guardian comments by user Teebs the day after the EU referendum result was announced. Now that Boris Johnson has confirmed he is not standing for the Conservative leadership it looks even more intriguing. Teebs - The Guardian Comments 25 June 2016 If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost. Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron. With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership. How? Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice ...

Now that the referendum votes have been counted and the result announced the expectation is that the UK will be leaving the EU. However for this to happen the UK government needs to notify the EU in accordance with Article 50 and this still may not happen for some time, if at all. There has been a petition organised to have a second referendum where the margin of victory is required to be much higher. Ironically this was initiated by a Leave supporter before the results were known and when they were expecting Remain to win. I think this has virtually no chance of success. David Cameron has given his resignation and handed the responsibility for initiating the formal process of withdrawing from the EU to his successor. At the moment the two likely front runners are Boris Johnson and Theresa May. As I explained in my previous blog I don't think Boris is an enthusiastic Leave supporter and the result was unexpected for him . Theresa May was a supporter of the Remain side although ...

Boris Johnson - A Plan in Ruins? It’s often said that David Cameron has been a lucky Prime Minister but that his luck ran out over the EU referendum. Prompted by some comments over the weekend I wonder if the same can be said for Boris Johnson. Seeing his body language and what he said as well as the time it originally took him to decide he was going to campaign for the Leave side I think probably shows he isn’t really in favour of leaving the EU and never expected Leave to win the vote. I expect he thought as with the Scottish referendum that when faced with the choice, voters would take the status quo and stick with Remain so the result was as much of a shock to him as to anyone else. I’m sure his long term (now short term) aim was to be PM and his plan was to manoeuvre himself to be in the best position to lead the Conservative party when David Cameron stepped down before 2020. The delay in deciding if he was for or against Remaining seemed to be time he was deciding wh...

This blog has been silent for a little while as I've concentrated on other projects. However the EU referendum vote has galvanised opinion so much on both sides that it seemed an appropriate channel to post some thoughts as the weeks go on. While I was firmly in the Remain camp, I had a high expectation that Leave would be on course to win from discussions with work colleagues and from viewing comments on Facebook groups. When various friends I considered to be balanced and considered, were posting Leave material in the days before the vote I believed it was a sign that the Leave vote would triumph. As a result and for the only time in my life I placed some bets. I wish I'd known that bets could be placed after the vote had closed as the odds were much better then but I still managed to get odds of 4/1 for Leave and have ended up with a decent profit. Unfortunately it's somewhat tempered by the drop in my share portfolio but even there the fall hasn't been as dramat...