Farmer Diaries

The first 5 months of 2024 have been ahead of projections and expectations.  Whereas revenues from produce sales to wholesalers have been more or less on target (5% variation) in terms of unit price, our volume, even after taking into consideration the increase in production, has been higher than anticipated.    What has proved to be far more profitable is our transformation business.  My wife and I both agree that we are at the edge of economies of scale, we have tripled production with almost no additional capital expenditure, so our marginal production costs have dropped by almost 40%.    However, the free ride is over, in five of our six transformation businesses, the next stage of growth would require rather heavy capital expenditure.   Our dilemma is that neither we nor our partners are very enthusiastic about following that next step. The question then becomes is stagnation in sales a negative issue?   Is the only measure of succe...

 Let's be clear the fights inside Labour are a direct consequence of the polling which suggests that they will win by a crushing margin.   So the fight for policy control has begun. If you think this is because Labour is in disarray, it is not.   The players have already moved to the post-election stage of governing and are setting up their pieces to get control over the agenda for the next four years.

This was not the verdict either the Democrats or Republicans were expecting.   The judge's instructions were complex in the case mainly because with 34 indictments (and really three crimes) it was easy for Trump to be found not guilty by some of the juries in some of the indictments.   The Republicans were banking on that it was patently unfair that the whole case was rigged.   Because he could be convicted for different crimes. What no one expected was a unanimous verdict on all 34 counts of criminal conspiracy!   It is important to note that this was the least "important" case against Trump, but it is the only one that will occur before the election in November.  What the Democrats or Republicans think of all this is irrelevant.   They were not going to change their minds, what is important are the independents.   The question for voters will be can you vote for a man, who not only cheated on his wife, who then tried to ...

The disaster in Fukushima occurred nearly 13 years ago.   The gap in preparedness can only be now fully understood, as for the first time in 13 years, the world has built a robot able to remove the nuclear fuel on the site.   It's a bit like having a gas station on fire and waiting 13 years to invent a pump to remove the fuel.   The gross stupidity and incompetence of those who designed and approved the construction of Fukushima was demonstrated in a Television Series a few years ago    What kind of moron installs emergency power generators in a pit next to the ocean?   Then the control room was nearly 1 km away.   It's not so much a failure to imagine the worst, it's a desire to avoid thinking about the worst, or even the very likely.   What is the likelihood that there will be a Tsunami near Fukushima over the next 50 years...its easy 100%.    Japan is at the edge of an active volcanic zone, and earthquake...

We forget now, but in 2015 when Trump rode down the golden escalator in Trump Tower (there's got to be some kind of biblical simili here!), the Republican party thought he was a joke candidate and during the first debate Trump won over the party's faithful (and a lot of other Americans) because he spoke unpleasant truths.    Americans are not rule followers, it's why everything is codified to death, to make sure that there are no loopholes, so Trump who said, I made full use of the loophole was the first American candidate who stated clearly that he was smart enough to "screw the man".    The takeover of the Republican party was probably for real Republicans a road down to hell over which they had no control and no ability to resist.  Six months ago when his daughter-in-law became the co-chair of the Republican National Committee his takeover was total.   ALL the money raised by the GOP goes to Trump, all of it.   The RNC Washington operation...

 Tory platform:  National Service You would think that the concept of re-introducing the national service would be something the Tories would have spent one or two hours at least discussing among themselves.  Turns out not so much.   The concept of bringing young people to organized military or civilian service is a good one if it works, most countries that have compulsory military services tend to waste the young people's time.  The reason the Germans and the French gave up was simple, 90% of conscripted young men did nothing for a 24 months.    Can the UK afford to waste young people's lives when there is already a known shortage of young people?   Is the message class-based, and aside from the grand political words was there any real thought behind this?  I can assure you this was about as thought out as Donald Trump's "We will build a wall and they will pay for it".  All my acquaintances who are still active in the Conserva...

 The GOP's stated plan is to fight for the stolen election of 2024 (not a typo).   They plan not to fight the election but hire 10,000 lawyers to fight all the elections they lose.   There is a tiny problem with this objective.  As Trump has demonstrated lawyers that are ready to sell their reputation for the GOP mafia will do so with an impressive price tag, think of the recent cases where Trump lawyers had to disclose the amount they were paid, it was millions.   Trump is spending tens of millions every month on his defence teams.    The limit of that program is already showing up in Arizona, one of the five states where the Republicans tried to send a fake list of electors to Washington -- let's be clear here, these are people that were selected by the republican party to go to Washington and vote for Trump, having nothing to do with the actual electors that were to be sent by the state of Arizona (and who had the mandate to vote for ...

 The fundraising activities of political parties is usually not very transparent in Europe or the UK, but one place where it is transparent is the United States.   The state of the race for the 2024 election is terrible for several local republican associations.  Many are close to bankruptcy, in some places (Colorado) its so bad that the Republicans may well have to move out of their Dever headquarters (for the state party).   The RNC at the national level is sucking in all the cash, and Donald Trump and his Save America PAC is sucking up the rest.   The vast majority of the money "raised" for Save America PAC is used to pay for Donald Trump's massive legal bills -- these lawyers that have sold their souls have done it for serious coins. The impact is easy to predict unless things change and the likelihood of that happening is near zero.   in 2007 when Barack Obama took control of the Democratic party he too got all the money.  It w...

 100% of our new workers are hired based on recommendations of current employees.  Jennifer even had an instance of a current employee calling her about a member of her family saying look the person has asked me to recommend her. but she is always late at her current job, and it was the same everywhere else she worked.   Granted that was an extreme case.    Most of the time the people we hire have come for temporary work and stayed because of other reasons.  A large percentage of our pickers are women but in our case, it is women who prefer part-time work on a strict schedule (e.g every morning three mornings a week).   Our work is never split shifts (2 in the morning and two in the afternoon), and there is always the possibility of advancement.   Generally, we have postings for full-time positions once or twice a month.   There has only been two or three cases where the full-time employees joined us directly (I think it w...

 I was minding my own business on the farm when our farm manager came to find me.   In her office was a representative of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.   The woman, let's call her Karen had arranged a meeting with our farm manager (you know; Jennifer) to discuss our two unregistered generators -- we purchased two large generators which burn the biogases that we produced in our biodigesters.   We have the biodigester for two reasons, first because we anticipate that the cost of energy will rise in the UK (it already has by 37% in five years) and the Department of Environment's new (and very expensive) rules for slurry disposal, and water pollution.   Field leaching in reality is the problem.    Let's be clear we built the biodigesters because we KNEW that legislation was in the planning stage (2018) that would affect how our farm would deal with cattle waste.   The biodigester and generators are turning expen...

The deed is done, it's time to move on and build on what we have.   Europe is yesterday's news let's focus on what is important.   As a parliamentary democracy, there are a few things that unify us as a people.  Our culture and language, although many would say that the Americans had appropriated the former and destroyed the latter, still as a people we know who we are, we do not define ourselves as who we are not, we define ourselves by who we are. As a leading power, we have been out of the race for some time.   We have our American cousins but families can be cruel even when being kind would achieve more.  Our reality is that we must rely on ourselves to endure and thrive and the sooner we understand this the happier we will be.    Brexit has killed certain industries, some with historical significance but where we have been consistently terrible at it.   The car industry is a good example, we produce(d) iconic vehicles but ...

 There are three reasons to call an election: The meter had run out and you had to call an election because of the constitution You think you are going to win now rather than in 6 months You are unable to govern For the UK, the conservatives have long ago lost the support of the people, and the recent byelection confirms the worst.  Many conservative MP know that it's all over and they want to get it over and do something productive with the rest of their lives.   So many MPs will have signalled that they want out sooner rather than later.  The crazies will be coming out of the woodwork and will try to undermine the government or introduce their pet legislation.   The opportunist who seeks a greater political profile. For the Tories, it matters little from what my "friends" have told me, too many conservative MPs have told the party whip that they are done and gone.   That means not doing anything in parliament (or even attending).  It's...

 It was 2005 and my flight from Tokyo to Perth took off on time.  In those days there was a direct flight.   It was a long flight nearly 12 hours, it was a B747 and I was on the lower deck.  The plane in business class on the lower deck was almost empty, there were three of us, and everyone somehow preferred the upper deck.   We were overlying Manila in the Philipines and the Pilot came on the intercom to tell the passengers that he expected mild to medium turbulence and that it would last 30 minutes. and that it was uncomfortable but not dangerous for the aircraft.   What followed was the worst 40 minutes of my life.   First, the cabin crew had a chance to remove all glasses, bottles and food from the cabin, they inspected the cabin four times to make sure that we all had our seat belts on.   They even had us store computers and bags away.    during the 30 minutes, the turbulence was so heavy that I had to keep ...

 Trump Media is not a case of fraud it is incompetence and hubris with a gullible investing public.  These are hardly uncommon in the investment world.   The Chinese EV company is a fraud, the intent is to defraud American investors with the complicity of the Chinese state.  The intent is there from the very start, why American firms participate in these frauds is simple they get paid handsomely.  The brokers that did the Chinese EV deal got massive fees. Trump Media is not that at all, are the managers overpaid and incompetent, yes! Is Trump suing the guys who created the platform because he wants more,Yes.  Trump wants the management team he has running the show because they are allies and supporters and for Trump, these are determinant factors.  He will always hire sycophant over competence.  It is in his DNA. When looking at the 10-Q there is a lot of stuff that makes perfect sense, the reality is that the imbedded option where the compan...

 The numbers will not change the stock price.  Still Q1/2024 revenues of $0.7 million ($2.8 million annualized) so down 37% on 2023 Q4/2023 revenues Q1/2024 profits before taxes of $327 million loss for the quarter.  It had to do with a write-down of options of nearly $220 million but there are huge expenses of nearly $100 million added to the company... Trump Social Media's largest advertisers are all part of the Trump empire.    Revenues are down and all expenses are 3x or 4x higher.    As for users who care, they are not part of the revenue equation.   Although the stock is down about 10% it should be down 50%.   The results are disastrous for the company, there is no real income there is no real expectation of income, aside from what it seems new projects to stream TV...that's what Cable is for! Note:   this is absolutely NOT investment advice, it's a cautionary tale.   Note2:  The reason revenues are d...

The answer is simple, the workers are treating employers the same way employers have been treating workers for the past 40 years -- disposable resource.   IN 2020 when the pandemic hit, the US saw unemployment rise from 3% to 15% almost overnight.  companies shed workers as fast as they could.   Now, many were directly unaffected, but they saw the callousness.   Now, they treat employers the same way. A good friend runs an investment firm, and last week five highly productive workers resigned from his company.  they gave him the minimum week's notice.  The reason they gave was that's what he had given to the employees he fired in 2020 at the start of the pandemic.    He was complaining today over lunch.  I like David but he can be a bit of a prick and I've asked him Why do you expect others to treat you differently than you treat them?  Why do you expect your employees to trust you when you don't trust them?    H...

High interest rates are finally starting to take their toll on the US Mall sector.   The first question is the closure of 30,000 stores significant?   In short no, not at all.   The impact on Mall occupancy is minuscule, but it does impact commercial REITs that specialize in Malls because their profits are slightly degraded.    As a strategist, the question becomes what does that mean?   There are two converging factors, labour costs and the internet are finally taking a heavy toll on the Mall business.    You just have to walk into a Best Buy, as an example, and there are no sales associates around, and those who are there no next to nothing about the products they sell.  Worse, because of higher interest rates the showrooms are now full of floor models but no stocks.    Labour costs are rising, because there are fewer 18-year-olds looking for part-time work.   The often-heard complaints that stores/re...

What is happening now is that real estate prices are falling gently, the fall is due to two factors:   (a) Real estate is a store of value in China and not a source of income, (b) debt burden are generally small for investors rather they pool their resources to buy the apartments (buying clubs).  Again NO ONE anticipates any income from the properties, in 99% of cases they are left unfinished to reduce the tax burden, the assumption is that an eventual buyer will finish the apartment (eg install bathroom and windows).    In China, an apartment is like a bank account, to be used to finance retirement.  It has never been seen as a potential source of income.   Selling of apartments only arises when cash is required.   The only measured valuation for the price of real estate in China is NEW apartments, not the secondary market.   Granted if you purchased a small apartment in the outskirts of Shanghai in the early 2000, the capital...

Ok first some hard news about Trump's social media company, called Truth Social and trading under DJT: Two large firms of auditors resigned from the company before its "listing" One small IPO mill auditor provided the necessary paperwork so that the company could be acquired, yet indicated that the company had issues as a going concern.  Since then the auditors have been shut down by the SEC for being an IPO mill where more than 500 companies were affected, and more than 1,500 SEC filings were issued (fraud in terms of audit standards).  Truth Social has hired Semple, Marchal & Cooper LLP, a small Phoenix-based auditor (may 6) (there is a real shortage of auditors anyway) Truth Social has seen its stock price rise to above $50 per share giving the company a market capitalization of nearly $7 billion.   Trump received another 36 million shares increasing his ownership of the company and diluting outside investors (Trump is now 65% owner of Truth Social) Truth Soci...

The temptation has always been to believe that trend persists forever.   This is simply not the case.   Baby boomers have experienced two trends over their lifetimes, declining interest rates since the early 1990s (when they began saving) and ever-rising real estate prices (more or less the same timeframe).    This 30-trend has become a mantra for the investment class.  However, as the world is now discovering interest rates can rise and have risen, and house prices can fall, and have fallen.   The drop in the US has been small, with two hiccups, 2008 and the subprime crisis a decade and a half earlier.  The limits of housing as an investment can be seen in several European countries and in Asia.   In Spain, Portugal and Italy, houses can be bought for virtually nothing.   The trend so far in these countries has been limited to the countryside, but in Japan, it is now in Tokyo too house prices have declined dramatical...

 It is very well known that the head of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson is a rabid evangelical Christian, he makes Mike Pence the ex-vice president look like a sinner.   To watch Mike Johnson repudiate all his beliefs by supporting Donald Trump, a three-times married cheater, is amazing.  I can only imagine the mental gymnastic and the absolute horror of Johnson having to support such a man.   Moreover, to do so, when the evidence if plain for all to see, that Trump has broken important laws, after all if Congress thinks these laws are unimportant they can always change them.... This case has been delayed repeatedly since 2018 by Donald and his friends.   This week it all comes to ahead, the prosecution called its last witness, and the defence is calling no one (especially not Donald "I will stand before the jury" Trump).   The case was expected to take four weeks because Trump's team decided to deny everything (the prosecutor ...

 For some strange reason when Donald Trump began selling a bible a few months ago now for the small price of $69 dollars each plus shipping, he had included the US Constitution, and the bill of rights.   my first thought was that Trump would not be stupid enough to change parts of the bible or the US Constitution, it would be too easy for his opponents. Guess what he did just that.   Absent are amendments 11 to 27.   Why he included the first 10 is beyond me, still it would have been better, because missing is the womens' suffrage and the anti-slavery components.   The stupidity, You could not make this up!

 The wife is camping in London as our second grandchild is expected any day now.   Needless to say that like his father did all these years ago, my eldest son if freaking out right now.   First, there is the prospect of being entirely responsible for a new life, second is the pain he is causing to his wife.   Thank god we are having a cool spring, it would be much worse otherwise. Watching Adam brings back memories, of just before he was born.   Great memories, I remember after the first month, saying to my wife, "The little guy is a lot of work, how can people have more than one!"  For those keeping track, we had three more, as I've said to Adam.  Enjoy the ride, it's the best thing that will happen in your life! I, on the other hand, am at the farm taking care of business.   

Harry was notable for two specific things;  He served in the regular army and even did two stints in Afghanistan,  and created the Invictus Games -- helping hurt soldiers. He celebrated 10th anniversary of the Invictus games, now I get that none of the Royal showed up, and I am relatively certain that the King didn't organize a 5,000-people garden party to inconvenience his second son, but to announce on the same day that his older brother would become head of his old regiment is just mean.    As I have said many times, Harry made his bed and seems to enjoy it a lot more than his previous life.   Nothing is ever perfect, but he and his wife seem to have a good life, the family back channel probably functions but away from the press.    What was truly amazing was Harry and Megan's African Adventure.  Once again Harry demonstrated an amazing ability to relate with people.   This is the second time that Harry outshines the Royal family...

There are several issues wrong with Europe, but first and foremost is that the two countries at the centre entered into the agreement for very different reasons.  the Germans saw it as a way to re-establish the German empire, don't laugh but the reality is that the German way has become the only way in Europe.  Secondly, Germany does not have a democratic tradition, it simply doesn't grant the UK is not much better, but institutions here matter, in Europe, they matter too, but it is the will of the bureaucrats that run the show, and that is true for the French too.    The one good aspect of Brexit is that the UK's democratic traditions were re-established.  For most Britons, this doesn't matter and they are right in the short term, but in the long run, they do matter. The second issue is that the entire European experiment was financed by the Germans.  what happens when they run out of money?  Sure it sounds ridiculous but Germany's aging problem is no...

I've known him my entire life, we first went to school together, we were at University together, and we both worked in the City.   Friday night we had dinner and I suspect that after that meal we will never speak again.   My friend is Jewish and has been a "supporter" of Israel his entire life.   I was in London, and we were having drinks (yeah I get the irony -- having a beer in a gastropub on a Shabbat...I get the joke), and we were having a chat about nothing when for some reason the conversation shifted to Israel, for the life of me I have no idea how it started, anyway at one point I said, it is ironic that a country and a nation that still threads on its Nazi persecution tragedy uses more than similar tactics, actually uses the same language.    He immediately looked cross, and I doubled down giving him clear and evident parallel specifically the recent words at a press conference by the minister of defence -- what he said was not open to in...

 Consider that until about two years ago, about a quarter of China's GDP was related to the construction industry.   In the past two years, dozens of construction companies have gone into bankruptcy.   The big names are known the world over, Country Garden and Evergrand, they were/are massive companies with hundreds of billions in debt and tens of thousands of unfinished projects (I am not making this up).   The Chinese government "decided" that others than the construction industry would now benefit from the largest increase in capital (aka lots of cheap/free debt), and so manufacturing production rose.    It is important to understand that the goal in China is not the end result but the process.   It is not the millions of empty, useless apartments that have been built (the Chinese government recognized formally a year ago that there are more than 500 million empty apartments in China) it is the purchase and building of things and...

 I mentioned before that our daughter and future son-in-law (also our beautiful and brilliant granddaughter) are leaving London and have acquired a medical practice nearby.   Since the apartment was completed ahead of schedule (about three months) they too have accelerated their departure from London.  Our daughter followed her brilliant father (the tech guru aka Nerd Dad) and is deploying technology in their new surgery. The first thing they did, when they signed the purchase contract was to begin digitizing all the patient files, which was overdue, but small UK practices had been given longer timeframes mainly because of both availability and the cost of digitizing.  However, for our daughter and (future) husband, it was something they needed from day one (also part of the law on patient medical files).    In short, when they take over the medical practice the entire medical filing system will be removed,  the paper files will be kept for a year...

Donald Trump's electoral strategy is similar to his legal strategy, don't follow the process, abuse the process and fix the problem behind the scenes.  That is why he was so successful, surrounded by grifters who were betting the house, and the consequences of their actions are all part of the same show.  The disbarred lawyers "know" that when Trump is President they will get the big payoffs, although most of them who were semi-competent made sure to get paid upfront.   Only the idiots, such as Guliani gave advice on credit...that only gets you so far. Politics is about money, it is also about money in the UK (don't let Labour make you think otherwise) and politics shares a lot of similarities with sausage making, "how can something so good have so many disgusting ingredients..." Trump last week took it to a new level, he asked US oil executives for $1 billion in election money with a guarantee that he would reverse all of Biden's green energy laws. ...

When I joined my ex-employer all these years ago, in 1995 or was it 1996 (there is a joke here), the world of finance was very different.   At the time, the City was well on its deregulatory wagon, the change that had occurred almost 10 years earlier and the massive inflow of capital that it created was something to behold.   I remember a friend who worked in a mutual fund shop telling me that his strategy was getting between 2 and 5 million pounds of additional capital every day.    When I joined my ex-employer, about half of our client's assets were in bonds.  Bonds have always been the sleepy bit of the financial industry, and whenever it gets exciting (aka the junk bond craze) it never ever ends well. As a strategist my conservative brain said 40 to 50% of an investor's portfolio should be in fixed-income instruments.   Guess what when the reality of working in the financial sector hit that question went out of the window.  Of course...

 Donald Trump's newest and read-out-loud in-court nickname is the Orange Turd.   He is now known as the Orange Turd in the press.   I kind of feel sorry for Donald Trump, in a sense it is 100% self-inflicted and today was a low point.   Stormy Daniels the porn star started her third day on the stand because Trump has decided to deny that the encounter ever occurred.  In many instances, Trump denied even knowing her.  So we have the terrible situation where the defence counsel starts reading tweets that Ms. Daniels wrote and one of the tweets was to not only qualify Donald Trump as an Orang Turd but also say that if she had written a sex scenario involving Donald Trump she would have written something much better than that (she directed more than 150 sex movies). Overall, it was another disastrous day for Donald, the orange turd Trump.   On the bright side it's almost over another two or three weeks is all that will be required....

The boring stuff is often the important stuff.   Three weeks ago the US Census Bureau revealed the latest data.   Under the US constitution every 10 years the entire population is counted. contrary to some voices this is not a ploy by the Democrats (not a joke this is for real among some of the crazies on the right).   The questions can be political but more often than not, the questions are written by demographers to get a real understanding of the population shift. In the last 10 years, there has been a negative shift in the US birth rate.  20 years ago, the US birthrate was about 2.2, (population replacement was 2.1).  this is not political or biased it is a simple statistical analysis.   The latest census shows that US birth rate has declined to 1.6. This has short-term and long-term demographic consequences; economic growth in the short term will be more dynamic, and fewer children means more savings which means more capital for the...

 Because Trump is an idiot.   Everyone knows that Trump cheated on his wife (including his wife), but apparently Trump decided to deny everything.  so the Prosecutor had to prove that Trump was a sexual predator...I'm not sure how much more embarrassing it could get for Trump, but as in many things he has done, he only has himself to blame.  the whole stormy thing could have been avoided. i know what is Trump's defense strategy is to demonstrate that his lawyers are incompetent

A very good friend from my college days who majored in English paid for his London house from ghostwritting political biographies for relatively famous UK politicians.    He would often brag about these biographies because he would always insert a specific paragraph in each book, a little easter egg of his own.  He said no one ever noticed because in most cases the politician read their book quickly.  My friend would get a bunch of notes and elaborate the story for the politician.    It was a well-paid gig, a sure thing, and editors loved him because he wrote well and worked with the publisher's editors.   He told me that he would get notes on the book from the politician and that all the stories were "true", maybe slightly embellished but truthful. Now in the US South Dakota's Governor Kristi Noem is publishing her biography.   In the book, she is now famous for having shot her puppy (who may have been a 14-month-old hunting dog) and al...

The US president sent Antony Blinken to China to try to re-normalize relations with the country.  First and foremost to stop the arrest of American citizens trying to leave the country and normalize trade between the two.   A few weeks ago China's most supportive friend in the US administration (Janet Yellen) turned into a hawk, and Blinken, considered the most serious and capable foreign envoy of the US was sent to see if a trade war could be averted. Let's not forget that the US can do rather well without Chinese imports, and every day this situation is improving.  The issue is that the Chinese market is completely closed to US imports and has been since before COVID-19.   To say that Blinken's reception was "frosty" would be a polite way of saying what actually happened, in reality the Xi Jinping wanted nothing to do with the man, he was under the impression that America needs China. American warships have been protecting the oil trade in the Middle East...

After my short note on the Blackpool by-elections I got one question; will the Tories survive this?   The answer is obviously unknowable, but there are certain signs, first, the Tories are still raising money, and a sizable portion of the electorate is still very happy with Brexit, they wish it was more than it is, but they generally like the outcome.     So the Tories still have cash and supporters.    There is no doubt that the Tories will spend the next few years in the wilderness, it is overdue and necessary the "old guard" needs to take a long walk down a short plank, the likes of Boris and Liz have to be expunged from the party, and rebuilt.   I strongly believe that between 2032 and 2033 the party can return to power, rebuilt and re-energized.   Eight to ten years should do the trick.   The question for the Tories: "What do we stand for"   An existential question especially if labour does the difficult thi...

DJT was not the first, it was one of hundreds of US listed companies that used the firm of auditors BF Borgers.  This afternoon, the firm agreed to pay $14 million in fines and to permanently suspend its operations.   The SEC determined this firm to be an IPO mill, that provided fake auditing services to small companies (3%0) that were seeking to list on the various US exchanges. Several of its partners had already been barred from working in the industry, the investigation into BF Borger goes back years, and has nothing to do with Trump Media...although Trump media is by far the largest client of Borgers. Two things, first BF Borgersprovided an limited opinion to Trump Media, that it was at risk as a "going concern"   in other words an auditor known to more than cut corners was found to be one of the worse auditing companies in the US, did not like the numbers for DJT. If I were an investor in DJT I would run for the hills, because now everything they did will ...

Well last night was interesting,   Last night Blackpool saw a swing away from the Tories of 27%.  That is so large as to be significant, this is not a protest vote this is the total repudiation of the Tories' mandate.   This is well beyond "writing on the Wall" it's the end of an era. The one thing for which the Tories have been blamed is Brexit, not only did they lie about the impact they totally mismanaged the exit, seemingly on purpose to make the whole thing feel even worse.   Boris the delusional and Liz the idiot did not make things any better. The real shame is that the Labour came out smelling like a rose because they were equally guilty and basically "supported" Brexit for their own reason.  However, such is political life, the body politic rightly blamed the Tories, and they deserve to be gravely punished.   I don't know if they will survive the next five or 10 years will be interesting. Part of the issue is that there are real...

We've seen this story before.   30 years ago, laptops would be replaced every year, the capability of new machines was demonstrably better than the older ones.  Now not so much.   Give anyone a 15-year-old MacBook and this person will be hard-pressed to tell you in what year it was manufactured.   For 99% of daily applications, there is no difference between a new and an older machine. When the iPhone came out in 2008, yes it has only been 15 years, the phone was groundbreaking, and many resisted but in the end, the combination of ease of use, the App Store and the blind stupidity of Research in Motion (aka the company that invented the blackberry) made frequent upgrades for your phone a must.  Every year or so a new phone was needed. Rolling on to 2024, and most people have changed the way they use their phones, fewer calls, more text messages, mean the phone doesn't work as hard.  In addition, you have to check the BIOS to know what model y...