A £6 million mews house on the site of Henry VIII’s manor house
Cheyne Walk in Chelsea has long been a favourite address of Russians, rock stars and royalty. Cheyne Mews, situated to the rear of it, is built on the site of King Henry VIII’s manor house and with the sale of a £5,950,000 mews house there, a purchaser has the opportunity to acquire what agents Chesterton Humberts describe as a “discreet country cottage in the heart of Chelsea”. (more…)
Hilary Devey slices £250,000 off asking price of her country residence
Bolton born businesswoman and former Dragons’ Den star Hilary Devey CBE has slashed the price of her Staffordshire home from £2.2 million to just £1.95 million through agents Fisher German. (more…)
This Lancastrian steeplejack and television personality was gentle, outspoken and self-taught. A father of five and thrice married, Dibnah described himself as “just a bum who climbs chimneys” and once stated: “If you make a mistake, it’s half a day with the undertaker”. He had no time for “fancy London types” and took the view that: “We’ve become a nation of conmen, living by selling double-glazing to each other”. His type sadly won’t be seen again.
An Australian tycoon announces a bizarre plan to launch a replica of the doomed passenger liner RMS Titanic
This week, a “brash” 58-year old Australian mining tycoon named Clive Palmer announced that he will launch a full-scale replica of the RMS Titanic in 2016.
On hearing of this, I wondered if April Fool’s Day had come early, but it turns out that this billionaire is quite serious in his ambitions. Palmer, who is funding the estimated £133 million project personally, has just begun a world tour to share his plans. The businessman, in a bow to history, has even appointed Terry Ismay, a descendant of the Titanic’s owner, Joseph Bruce Ismay (1862 – 1937), whom many still refer to as “The Coward of the Titanic”, to the advisory board of the Blue Star Line, the company formed to manage the boat. Mr Ismay will be one of the guests of honour at a dinner at London’s Natural History Museum to celebrate the project tomorrow, Saturday 2nd March. The same 11-course menu first class passengers on the Titanic consumed on the fateful night of 14th April 1912 will be served.
Preliminary plans reveal the Titanic II will be some 55,800 gross tonnes in weight, 883 foot long and propelled by three azimuth thrusters. It will have a maximum speed of 24 knots, the same as the first Titanic. The ocean liner will have a capacity of 2,345 passengers and a crew of 900. Unlike the RMS Titanic, which had just 16 lifeboats for 1,178 people, the Titanic II will have 18 covered motorised lifeboats capable of carrying 2,700 and life rafts with an additional capacity of 800.
Though the replica vessel will be virtually the same size as the original and will feature the same class divisions of first, second and third class, there will be differences. The “shopping areas” found on many modern day cruise boats will be present and sensibly, there will be extra bathroom facilities and air conditioning. A decision as to whether Wi-Fi and televisions will be provided is yet to be made.
In a press release, Professor Palmer, who is described on Wikipedia as “an eccentric billionaire with a reputation for bizarre publicity stunts”, romantically stated:
“Why build the Titanic? Why go to the moon? Why do the Yankees play the Red Sox? Why did Christopher Columbus discover the Americas? Because they could, and they can, and we can build the Titanic”.
“By learning from the lessons of the past, the spirit of Rose and Jack, Romeo and Juliet, lives in all of us. The spirit of life, the spirit of love, to dream the impossible dream, all of us live in time, this is our moment, this is our turn to board Titanic II and set sail on a new sea, of our own making”.
“The Titanic was a ship of dreams, Titanic II is the ship where dreams will come true”.
Unlike the original RMS Titanic, which was built in the Harland and Wolff yard in Belfast, it is intended that Titanic II will be constructed in the Chinese state-owned shipyard, CSC Jinling. This is a curious choice as the company have no experience in constructing passenger vessels and as of date, according to Zheng Yi of the Global Times, no contract for completion of Titanic II has been signed, no date for start of construction has been fixed and no price has been finalised.
Equally, the first of a series of launch events for the project on a pier in New York this week (which began with a “rather cheesy guitar rendition of Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On”) was met with derision by many, amongst them Vanity Fair’s Juli Weiner. In her article, Weiner refers to the “morally reprehensible and dehumanizing economic divisions” that “one weird rich dude’s” boat will feature and goes on to describe it as “the second worst cruise we’ve ever heard of”.
Robert Colville of the Australian title The Age, however, took a contrary view and though skeptical about this “bizarre” and “crazily ambitious scheme” shared his admiration for Palmer:
“Palmer risks becoming a latter-day Ozymandias, his monument a 50,000-tonne liner rather than a crumbling statue. Yet at least he has the courage to dream his impossible dream, and help make the world a slightly weirder, and slightly more wonderful place”.
Larger than life, Queensland based Palmer is known for causing controversy. In 2012, he suggested Greenpeace were funded by the CIA and were attempting to bring down the Australian coal mining sector with the help of Barrack Obama and the Rockefeller Foundation:
“You only have to go back and read the Church Report in the 1970s and to read the reports to the US Congress which sets up the Rockefeller Foundation as a conduit of CIA funding, you only have to look at their secret budget which was passed by Congress last year, bigger than our whole national economy, which the CIA’s got to ensure that. You only have to read the reports to US Congress when the CIA reported to the president that their role was to ensure the US competitive advantage and economic advantages. That’s how you know it’s funded by the CIA”.
No doubt, there are cranks out there who’d suggest the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912 with the loss of 1,502 lives, was also a conspiracy. Given also Palmer’s odd view of the world, we’d most definitely avoid embarking on this tasteless pastiche of the tragically doomed ship, if, indeed, it is ever completed and if indeed it ever sets sail.
We leave the last word with the family of the RMS Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith R.D. R.N.R. (1850 – 1912), who have simply commented that the Titanic II is just a vessel that is being built “in bad taste”.
For more information about Titanic II, go to: http://bluestarline.com.au
Gina Miller investigates the links between Saint Valentine and transparency in investing
According to the wise font of all knowledge, which can be extremely accurate or extremely inaccurate, Wikipedia, Saint Valentine (in Latin, Valentinus) is a widely recognised third century Roman saint commemorated on February 14th and associated since the High Middle Ages with a tradition of courtly love. Nothing is reliably known of Saint Valentine except his name and the fact that he died on February 14th.
But many of the current legends that characterise Saint Valentine were invented in the fourteenth century in England, notably by Geoffrey Chaucer and his circle, when the feast day of February 14th first became associated with romantic love.
Whatever the truth is, most people today associate Valentine’s Day with romance. When one thinks of romance it is normally in the old fashioned Mills and Boon books or the more modern 50 Shades of Grey with some dashing man seducing his future conquest but once the charming good looks are pierced, below the surface they are often found to be pretty shallow and unedifying and after a while, maybe the real cardinal sin, boring. I say this as someone who once dated a famous model who was known across the UK for taking his jeans off in the laundrette revealing a great body but sadly not a lot of substance beneath.
Where is the connection with the world I work in, investments? Well a surprising amount when you consider it. The world of investment relies on seduction but the seduction is used for all the wrong reasons and normally with all the wrong results. There is a fine line between seduction and deception. Every day countless savings and investment managers cross this line.
When you meet your wonderfully charming or slick fund manager they try to seduce you with flowery words and jargon with no meaning or deliberately assembled to impress you with its complexity; but designed to prevent you from understanding how your money is really invested or how much your money is really costing. The smoke and mirrors are crafted to beguile and reassure that by being so complex, they must be amazing to do what they do and charge what they charge. Of course more often than not investing does not really need to be so complex or expensive to get sold returns.
If you think of most great inventors or inventions they are often based on a simple design or a simple concept. In investment the living Saint of investment is widely held to be Saint Buffet of Omaha, Nebraska. He has an annual convention where thousands flock to his temple to hear and learn from every word he says since he has probably the longest and best known and maybe most successful track records of anyone. He does not make things complicated or flowery he talks of common sense and old fashioned virtues that have stood the test of time and which people can understand. He simply tries to buy companies which he trusts, thinks are great franchises that can stand the test of time; and which for whatever reason are available at the right price. He does not hide from his investors how he invests, what he invests in or his charges for the services he provides. He works alongside his clients because he is managing his own money in the same way.
When you meet your fund manager or wealth adviser or whatever other name they call themselves, don’t be seduced by the initial lavish language or entertaining or lavish date because normally this does not last and it is you who ultimately is paying for it anyway. Often the more lavish the entertaining, the more likely that they are ‘after’ something and that something is to erode more of your returns in fees.
In economics there is a term called giffen goods. These are goods by which the more that is charged the more that it is demanded, these are luxury goods. If your XXX handbag was available for £10 rather than £1,000 it would quickly lose its panache or lustre. Investment managers try and make their services desirable through charging more in the knowledge that most clients wrongly think: “If I pay more I must be getting a better product or a better performance”. However the research shows the precise opposite and that if you pay more, it simply means more money has been deducted from your savings and in turn they are then worth less.
We have been working extremely hard via a True and Fair Campaign to force by law, the investment industry to stop this deception and reveal to customers exactly how much, in total, investments are really costing and how they are really invested. The scale of this deception is truly shocking.
Maybe, just like a good relationship, there needs to be substance and openness and trust or the relationship is not a real relationship but just an empty dalliance, fun at the time but not particularly rewarding thereafter. I implore you to trust your instincts, keep to your principles and do not be seduced by the flannel. Instead, do plan today for your tomorrows and the life you dream of as you grow older and go off into the sunset of retirement.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
For more information about the True and Fair Campaign, go to: http://www.trueandfaircampaign.com
“Petsy” brilliantly combines life as a writer and journalist with being a social dynamo. When interviewing Janet Anderson, then Labour Minister for Women, she suggested that: “Under Labour, women will become more promiscuous.” Her own relationship with Boris Johnson was a very public affair but the daughter of Lord Wyatt of Weeford deserves to be better known for her superb musings on love, life and society. Here is a firecracker who is definitely worth following.