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

I've just had notification that Pro-Direct Sport have pre-authorised a Paypal payment of £3.95 from my Paypal account. I couldn't recall making any recent purchases for that amount of money or to that company so was on the verge of contacting them to find out what it was. The Paypal info only shows this with no order info: You authorized a payment of £3.95 GBP to Pro-Direct Sport Limited  ( customerservices@ prodirectsport.com ) On looking at their website it shows they are a sportswear company and although I'm a keen runner I've not ordered anything knowingly from them. From the contact information on their website it appears that a lot of people are contacting them currently so I suspected that I wasn't the only one with this query. Before getting in touch I thought I'd better check my emails for the email address to see if I'd had any other contact from them and bingo! There was an email over 4 months ago from that email address with a payment amou...

The recent voices being added to the Peoples' Vote campaign to have a referendum on the final Brexit deal might be dismissed by many in Government but it was actually something that Boris Johnson was in favour of before the referendum of 2016 when he first announced his intention to campaign in favour of Leave. In his words "The way to get better deal is to vote Leave" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/12169386/Sorry-Boris-a-vote-to-leave-means-we-leave.html It's surprising how much changes in the course of 2 years and that many things discussed back in 2016 have now been forgotten. The prospect of leaving the EU with no deal wasn't even mentioned as a possibility and when suggested it was dismissed as Project Fear. Now it's being touted as both better than a bad deal and possibly as likely as 60:40 These are a few links to 2016 articles that show quite how far the tone and substance of the debate has changed since 2016. It ...

We've seen adverts from Best Bond claiming you can invest in Crossrail through a 9.25% Crossrail Bond. Crossrail is a government backed infrastructure project building a new train line across London. Crossrail bond scam or genuine? This advert is rather misleading as when you click on the ad itself it says it's property related to Crossrail - quite a different proposition to investing in the government backed Crossrail project! With this Crossrail bond you have the risk of losing 100% of your money. It is not backed by the government and is an unregulated investment. If you think you are investing in the Crossrail project then you are being misled and potentially ripped off. Crossrail is here http://www.crossrail.co.uk/ - this is nothing to do with -the bond advertised

It often seems to be the Leave voters who are most upset about Brexit despite being on the winning side but many Remainers are angry about Brexit too for different reasons. The more revelations that have come out over the last 2 years the more the frustration with the result has become focused as anger at the way the leave campaign was run and lied to win the referendum. As someone who voted to remain in the EU because of the bigger picture and understanding that our economy and all parts of life are very closely interwoved with the EU in a multitude of ways it gets very frustrating to hear it suggested that we can easily leave overnight on 29th March 2019 without a deal. It's equally frustrating that interviewers don't follow up with additional questions to any Brexiteer that suggests this as a desirable outcome as the impact of literally no deal with be disastrous for our country. The recent problems with the supply of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) highlight how unrelated processe...

Despite dismissal as usual by Brexiteers, the suggestion by the Head of Amazon UK that civil unrest is possible within 2 weeks sounds to me like a fairly likely scenario if interruptions to basic supplies take place. This is entirely possible if we have no agreement to manage our relationship with the EU to replace current legal frameworks. You only need to look back at the Summer riots of 2010, fuel protests in 2001, Black Friday punch ups or the panic buying that happens if there is a forecast of snow disruption to see the mentality that can very quickly develop if people don’t get what they expect. No Deal Brexit Civil Disorder - Amazon UK Predictions Pictures as above of Black Friday bargain hunters getting into fights over a TV will pale into insignificance if basic food supplies run out. You can understand why the government would need to invoke a state of emergency to cope with the situation. Even most recently with the Build a Bear discount fiasco the police were calle...

Until recently the general consensus was that civilization only occurred around 5000BC but more and more evidence seems to be coming out that humans were more advanced longer ago than was ever previously believed. It's usually assumed that human progress is linear but even in the recent past this hasn't been the case when you had great civilizations like the Roman or Greek empires that were followed by hundreds or thousands of years with development going backwards and disappearance of technology previously used. There are various discoveries that I think could demonstrate that ancient advanced civilizations could have existed. As a scientist I know that proof requires evidence but also over time much material that would give certainty will have decayed or been destroyed so much is likely to be from secondary sources or by observation of changes. Firstly Gobekli Tepe has been shown to be around 12,000 years old and clearly needed a lot of knowledge and organisation to be a...

So Boris has finally quit because he couldn't agree with the brexit deal being proposed and didn't consider it was sufficiently bold. It's interesting that he hasn't proposed any alternatives and during the referendum campaign the details were deliberately left vague. If anything the referendum campaign means that anything that involves leaving the EU would respect the result regardless of what some hardline brexiteers might say. There were so many different variations of what was being suggested if we voted Leave that it's impossible to know which variant was actually voted for. Even now some Leave supporters are suggesting that being a member of EFTA is an option and if this is promoted by Ukip then it's hardly a Remain conspiracy. So despite the howls of betrayal from brexiteers about the proposal from Theresa May, the real betrayal was by Boris and Vote Leave by giving so many unachievable promises like his having Cake and Eat it quote.