The Full English – Just who the hell does the high street cater to?

What’s piqued my interest this week?

I was having an interesting chat this week about the high street with a colleague. We were trying to work out why we would actually go into the town centre. There’s a continuous roll-call in the press of ailing high street chains, the most recent HMV, while Debenhams looks wobbly (1, 2). As an aside I’m intrigued to see where Mike Ashley is dragging all these fallen chains. Some collective Brit-megastore in China?

We came up with the following four things we would actually bother going into town for:

an activity – e.g. a bar, an escape room, a haircut, etc
inspiration for an item – e.g. Waterstones for a book, John Lewis for a gift, etc
items needed NOW – e.g. running around like a blue-arsed fly for a dress shirt
items not available online – e.g. local produce from a market, packaging-free items like the avocado-smashing millennial wanker I am

I guess that’s what brand and PR people chat about when stating people want experiences. Most home or clothing goods now gets ordered online as it’s quicker, usually cheaper and I don’t have to deal with the rigmarole of parking/ avoiding mouth-breathers. The bars in our town seem to be doing alright, and there’s restaurants and stores offering activities like VR gaming and a chance to sit-in and touch that chintzy MG Rover (Roewe) springing up left, right and centre. So are town centres becoming more experiential?

Well let’s not forget that the concept of a High Street or shopping centre is pretty modern in civilisation terms. Prior to the 17th century you had taverns, inns and pubs, and a town market a few times a week, but otherwise you had to go to a specific place to seek out a vendor for your chosen items. Leather workers near tanneries etc. The 17th and 18th centuries saw the true growth of the High Street as a destination to be seen to be shopping (3). The money and riches of the empire fuelled the golden age in the 19th century (4). The start of the downturn came with out-of-town shopping. Prices have been driven down, and quality is now following. Online shopping has undoubtedly taken the wind from the High Street’s sails, but I think it’s overblown. Mail order was around before online shopping. Online is more convenient and offers greater choice than any bricks-and-mortar retailer could, but catalogues have long-offered variety when the High Street couldn’t.

I look forward to a smaller city centre full of things to do, and smaller shops selling local produce not cheap garms for tuppence from Bangladesh. I spoke to MrsShrink about this, and she massively disagrees. She loves shopping, or more specifically she loves rifling through sale-racks looking for discounted items trying to find things her life is incomplete without. So maybe there’s life in the old dog yet.

Have a great week,

The Shrink

Side Orders

Other News

Opinion/ blogs:

The kitchen garden:

What I’m reading (now affiliate links):

Tombland – C.J. Sansom – I love the Shardlake series, detective novels set in the Tudor period with a crippled lead character. Beautifully written.

Starting with Chickens – Kate Thear – A hint to a goal for 2019

Enchiridion by Epictetus – Bedside reading for a bad day

References:

Full English Accompaniment – It’s ok to not be ok

What’s piqued my interest this week?

Over the Christmas and New Year break I’ve been reading lots of blogs from across the pond and around the world. I don’t usually talk mental health on this blog. As part of a strict work-life balance the closest I get is usually philosophy. A post by Liz, Mrs Frugalwood, prompted me to break that rule (1). I’ve particularly enjoyed the tales from the Frugalwoods, whose ‘homestead’ dream sits nicely with my own smallholding aspirations. In her post, Liz talks articulately and openly about the experience, the feelings, of postpartum depression.

“My friend Melanie Lockert recently told me that “depression lies to you.” It tells you that you’re worthless, it tells you that you’re hopeless and stupid. But this isn’t true. You can be pulled out of this heavy fog. Please allow yourself to be helped.” (1)

Other UK finance bloggers have also eloquently related their experiences of mental illness; Mr and Mrs Young FI Guy, Little Miss Fire, Wephway at Deliberate Living UK and Sonia at MFTMG to name a few (2, 3, 4, 5, 6). I’m sure there are others, and I’m sure there are those who choose not to share. Mental illness is hidden in plain sight. Every week, one in six adults experiences mental health problems (7). One in five adults has considered suicide (7). Mental illness is the biggest cause for lost productivity globally, anxiety and depression alone accounting for $1 trillion lost annually (8). For stigma to remain around something so common is crazy.

I hope the stigma is improving, certainly since I’ve been practising more people from all walks of life present to see us rather than suffering in silence. For some people there’s a reason, a trigger. Life is full of bumps in the road, stresses and unexpected turns of events which can throw the wheel off your cart. Everybody deals with things in different ways, and what could be a major issue for one person could be a casual shrug for another. We’re all wired differently. Some people’s moods vary more (9). For other people there is no identifiable trigger or cause. It just is. Mental illness is an illness. You don’t need a reason to get appendicitis, it’s just crap luck.

It stands to reason that the rates of mental illness should be no different in the financial blogging community. I’ve privately wondered if they’re actually higher. Financial independence and diligent saving takes order, structure and self-control. It requires attention to detail and extensive planning. When something throws an unexpected spanner in the works, e.g. MMM’s ongoing divorce, it can put a lot of stress on not only your financial system but your mental system too (10). You can’t plan for everything.

Have a great week,

The Shrink

N.B. Apologies for the late post. I’ve spent the weekend away, bumped into Mr and MrsYFG, and discovered that we’ve known each other several years through a mutual friend. Small world.

Side Orders

Other News

Opinion/ blogs:

I really enjoyed this video from The Plain Bagel on the Grossman Stiglitz Paradox

The kitchen garden:

What I’m reading (now affiliate links):

Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch – This was an absolute corker that I read in a fortnight. First time in ages I’ve stayed awake to one am reading. Looks like another series to get into.

Starting with Chickens – Kate Thear – A hint to a goal for 2019

Enchiridion by Epictetus – Bedside reading for a bad day

References:

The Full English Accompaniment – A time for reflection

What’s piqued my interest this week?

With most blogs falling silent at this time of year, it seems we all go into a state of contemplative reflection. Or maybe it’s a cumulative cheese, booze, chocolate and sprout hangover. Because of this I’ve expanded my net of blogs in the side orders section, so readers may find someone new of interest.

Many blogs, including this one, are publishing year end posts looking back on all they’ve achieved. For me that included jumping aboard the financial independence bandwagon, and starting this blog as a journal and lodestone. It’s important to reflect and remember how lucky we are. Financial independence, despite what some people say, is not for everyone (1). While some of the frugal lessons run both ways, having an emergency fund in the bank is a dream for many. A study this year by the Social Metrics Commission found 4.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty (2). The number of people relying on food banks has risen by 13% since this time last year (3). Figures only tell half of the story, which is why I’d recommend reading last week’s ‘How I spend it’ in the Guardian (4). It’s a human story, the experiences of a mother, an asylum seeker, trafficked to the UK and now forced to live on a £100/week allowance.

As we sit in our warm homes, eating our Christmas dinner and swigging our New Year’s plonk, let’s not forget the message of that classic, A Muppet Christmas Carol. Love and care to our fellow people, lest we all become FIRE Scrooges.

Have a great 2019,

The Shrink

N.B. I’ve had a bit of a restructure of the top menu this week, to make the site easier to navigate. Apologies for RSS spam!

Side Orders

Other News

Opinion/ blogs:

The kitchen garden:

Nothing to report here, as all my usual blog suspects have shut up for the Christmas break.

What I’m reading (now affiliate links):

Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch – Absorbing stuff

Starting with Chickens – Kate Thear – A hint to a goal for 2019

Enchiridion by Epictetus – Bedside reading for a bad day

References:

The Full English Accompaniment – The rise and rise of P2P lending

What’s piqued my interest this week?

P2P leaves me puzzled. I understand the premise, I understand the attraction, but where does it fit in a balanced portfolio? Some of my fellow UK finance bloggers have dipped toes in the P2P waters; Monevator, Weenie and the other TFS to name a few (1, 2, 3). For many, including new reader the Obvious Investor, it appears to be separate from the rest of their portfolio, held as an independent entity or in an oddments corner (4). P2P has come a long way since the launch of the first platform, Zopa, in 2005, with 40+ platforms catering to different appetites (5, 6). As it comes of age and into the mainstream how do you classify P2P as an asset class in a mature portfolio? Here’s my amateur synthesis.

Risks

The appeal of P2P appears to be yield, projected at anywhere from 4-10% depending on the platform (6). This complies with the equity risk premium theory, and I’d be interested to find out if research supports this. P2P rose in popularity out of the 2008 recession. Banks clamped down on high risk lending, so those with poor credit histories or weak financial positions had to look elsewhere. P2P was safer for all concerned than loan sharks/ payday lenders. Savers chasing returns followed the risk premium to P2P seeking better rates than the crappy 1% offered by bonds and cash ISAs (7). P2P sits in the ‘Return Engine’.

Inflation Risk

This is primarily the reason for investing in P2P. With inflation running at 2.7% your money is actively being eroded in a Cash ISA. Currently the RateSetter offer will give you 14% for the first year. The 4% thereafter may not look so rosy if inflation jumps to 5% and standard bank interest rates track.

Default Risk

This is primarily where P2P makes it’s returns over traditional bank loans. The theory argues that the platforms cut out the banks as middle-men and allow savers to loan out their cash to borrowers semi-directly. To attract savers you need decent returns, which means decent interest rates, which means the interest rates for the borrowers are necessarily high. Why would you choose those interest rates? From my laymans point of view there appear three reasons for a business to choose to borrow P2P:

The act of borrowing P2P acts as proxy advertising as you have to attract funders from a pool of individuals who are by definition tech-savvy, cash-rich early adopters. They may well be your target market who are interested in your product.
Your business pitch is disruptive, esoteric or quirky, and therefore relies upon a funding source which capture and project the emotive or story-driven level ignored by banks and other lenders. This is something lost with the move to centralised banks, and away from your friendly local bank manager.
Your personal or business financial history is absent or poor, precluding larger or traditional funding sources.

Point 1 seems a fair trade off for certain industries. Point 2 and 3 seem classical default risk. Your story may be good, your disruptive idea genius, but if your number don’t stack up well… *whomp whomp*. Banks lending criteria became tighter because the numbers tell the score, and the casual lending of the early 00s led to a financial crisis. Plus they were straight up told to by governments. P2P fills the lending pool where banks daren’t or are legislated not to go. I should point out that the counterargument from P2P lenders is that rogue and risky lending continues to occur across all debt instrument markets (8).

Liquidity Risk

Another classic, but appears to depend on the lending platform. Some platforms (Abundance, House Crowd) allow you to pick who you lend to, others select a time period (RateSetter, Zopa) and pool your investment with other (9, 10, 11, 12). Of the options I’d prefer pooled investments as it decreases the above default risk, and diversification is always better. A few platforms offer in house secondary markets for resale if you decide to cash out. Where that’s not possible your P2P investment is tied up either for the time period, or until the project/ business is completed, or can be returned for a fee (13). Both the liquidity risk and the default risk have me making comparisons between P2P and junk bonds. These comparisons are made elsewhere as well, so perhaps P2P is a bit more palatable, or smartly wrapped (14)?

Legislation

Speaking of wrappers, the attention of governments is an indication of just how far we’ve come. First IFAs were able to recommend P2P lending options, and then in April 2016 the Innovative Finance ISA was born (6, 15, 16). These operate in parallel to traditional Cash and S&S ISAs, offering a tax-free wrapper for your investments. They have their own pitfalls and complications I won’t go into here.

Legislation is a work-in-progress for P2P, but already as companies have grown they have begun to expand. This month Zopa has been granted a banking license by the FSCS, and declared it’s intention to open a traditional savings arm as a challenger bank which will be protected by the FSCS guarantee (17, 18). The FSCS guarantee won’t cover Zopa’s P2P lending.

No P2P lending/ platform is covered by the FSCS guarantee.

All invested money is at risk.

Returns are not guaranteed. There are plenty of stories in the news of people losing out where their loans default (19). The lines blur with junk bonds further. After all, you can invest directly, P2P, in small companies by buying bonds/ shares/ investments. Monzo recently ran a round of crowdfunding (20, 21). Brewdog continues to run it’s Equity for Punks V, with an eye-watering valuation (22). Those investments would also sit in a little ‘oddments’ pile of your portfolio.

Counterparty Risk

Here’s the nub of my concerns. As we look at the coming bear markets, the rogue wave in our recent trade winds, how will P2P fare. The last week has been the worst since 2008, when Zopa etc were in their infancy (23). Those times place stresses on weak companies, which fold, and default. How will P2P platforms fare? Performances and default rates are entirely based upon the platform (24). Zopa expected a 4.52% default rate in 2017, the last time it approached that was 2008 (4.2%) (15). Some platforms have provision funds to protect savers (5, 13, 15). This hasn’t stopped black holes appearing in the ledger books of lenders such as Ratesetter, forced to buy out the debts of bad investments (25). Some are bullish in their outlook, seeking further institutional investment to expand (26, 27). It remains to be seen how many P2P platforms will succumb to bad loans.

Summary

These are merely an amateur’s thoughts and ramblings on P2P. YFG has also done an analysis from a more professional point of view (28). As always, do your own research.

Have a great Christmas,

The Shrink

Side Orders

Other News

Opinion/ blogs:

The kitchen garden:

What I’m reading:

Fools and Mortals – Bernard Cornwell – finished this – good but not Sharpe or Uhtred

Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch – the new bedside fiction

Smarter Investing 3rd edn – Tim Hale – very close to finishing this

Enchiridion by Epictetus – Bedside reading for a bad day

References:

The Full English Accompaniment – Wealth whispers

What’s piqued my interest this week?

This picture, from meta-aggregation site Reddit, triggered me.

The Shrink comes from an old family. We have an extensive family tree taking up many interconnected A1 sheets, and several books have been written about both maternal and paternal ancestors. These families are not rich. They fell from grace long before my parents came around, and many of the extended family survive at the mercy of universal credit. This is one of the reasons for my peculiar attitude to wealth. I have learnt from my family that all that is won can be lost by your children. Attitude is more important than cash. The Shrink’s great x 5 grandfather may have been a Victorian Buffett, but he didn’t teach his grandson not to splash it all on fine wine and pheasants.

This created an underlying distrust of overt displays of wealth. Encounters with people classically defined as aristocrats reinforced this. No lord gives a damn about your 68-plate Landrover. Wealth whispers.

I feel this attitude sits well with financial independence. You don’t maintain great wealth by spending it frivolously. To an extent, I think the financial independence movement needs to credit the millionaire next door concept as part of it’s roots. The original 1996 Millionaire Next Door book found that millionaires were disproportionately clustered in blue-collar neighbourhoods due to white-collar professions spending on luxury goods and status items (1). The follow-up focused on how financial attitudes (and advertising/ cultural shifts) pushed people to live a pseudo-affluent lifestyle of “freedom to consume” (2). Credit and loans means you can consume whatever you want, when you want, and deal with the consequences later. Consumerism and debt props up a stagnating economy by borrowing from future prosperity. Lifestyle magazines and the media focus on self-made stars (footballers, rockstars etc) encourages people to believe that anyone can rise to the top and have everything. And even if you don’t get that million-pound AC Milan contract you can emulate your favourite footballer by buying a Merc C-class. You just have to get finance at 18.9% APR to do it, paid for by your job managing a Vodafone call centre. Other brands are available.

Across the ages debts don’t make a person rich. Greeks and Romans knew the value of saving. Samuel Pepys turned £25 to £10,000 by working hard and saving (3). The core concepts of saving, spending only what you can afford, keeping debts and credit lines small cross-cut history and movements. Modern articles on how to be the millionaire next door could be copy-pasted to FI (4). The lesson is that you can’t get rich by ‘flashing the cash’.

Have a great week,

The Shrink

Side Orders

Other News

Opinion/ blogs:

The kitchen garden:

Sharpenyourspades does a monthly round-up of allotment blogs for November (38)

What I’m reading:

Fools and Mortals – Bernard Cornwell

Smarter Investing 3rd edn – Tim Hale – hu-bloody-rah

Enchiridion by Epictetus – Bedside reading for a bad day

References:

The Full English Accompaniment – boggled by Bogle

What’s piqued my interest for my 50th post?

This week, in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal ahead of the release of his new book Stay the Course: The Story of Vanguard and the Index Revolution, John C. Bogle sounded a warning on the growth of index funds (1). The article is paywalled, and mostly taken direct from the book. I have replicated the crux here:

“Equity index fund assets now total some $4.6 trillion, while total index fund assets have surpassed $6 trillion. Of this total, about 70% is invested in broad market index funds modeled on the original Vanguard fund.

Yes, U.S. index mutual funds have grown to huge size, with their holdings doubling from 4.5% of total U.S. stock-market value in 2002 to 9% in 2009, and then almost doubling again to more than 17% in 2018. Even that penetration understates the role of mutual fund managers, as they also offer actively managed funds, and their combined assets amount to more than 35% of the shares of U.S. corporations.

If historical trends continue, a handful of giant institutional investors will one day hold voting control of virtually every large U.S. corporation. Public policy cannot ignore this growing dominance, and consider its impact on the financial markets, corporate governance, and regulation. These will be major issues in the coming era.

Three index fund managers dominate the field with a collective 81% share of index fund assets: Vanguard has a 51% share; BlackRock, 21%; and State Street Global, 9%. Such domination exists primarily because the indexing field attracts few new major entrants.

Why? Partly because of two high barriers to entry: the huge scale enjoyed by the big indexers would be difficult to replicate by new entrants; and index fund prices (their expense ratios, or fees) have been driven to commodity-like levels, even to zero. If Fidelity’s 2018 offering of two zero-cost index funds has established a new “price point” for index funds, the enthusiasm of additional firms to create new index funds will diminish even further. So we can’t rely on new competitors to reduce today’s concentration.

Most observers expect that the share of corporate ownership by index funds will continue to grow over the next decade. It seems only a matter of time until index mutual funds cross the 50% mark. If that were to happen, the “Big Three” might own 30% or more of the U.S. stock market—effective control. I do not believe that such concentration would serve the national interest.”

A range of solutions are then postulated, including references to a draft paper released by Prof John C. Coates of Harvard. The solutions are drastic, and most unworkable. They range through requiring index funds to spin off assets into independently managed entities, limiting each funds exposure to market sectors, requiring an independent supervisory board, to limiting corporate share voting rights of index managers. Perhaps the most workable is implementing full transparency and public disclosure by index funds of their voting policies. A ban on indexing has been hypothesised, but seems impractical and unworkable.

The Fire Starter pointed me towards a good retort by Cullen Roche at Pragmatic Capitalism (2, 3). The riposte is that not only are indexing firms a long way from owning 50% of the stocks on the market, never mind the 80-90% people are worrying about, but also that these firms invariably follow management decisions. These are not active firms. They are passive by their nature, and follow the natural flow of the company.

My own concerns comes more down to allocation. The FTSE 100 already includes Hargreaves Lansdown and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (4). Neil Woodford’s Patient Capital Trust and Terry Smith’s Smithson have joined the FTSE 250 (5). Should the number of investment funds in these metrics begin to increase then allocating becomes recursive. The spread across FTSE 100 companies either becomes the FTSE 95 + 5 globally diversified funds, or the FTSE 95 alone, decreasing your diversification. If your aim is to stay invested in the top-performing UK companies then you get derailed. There is the potential to make your portfolio much more globally diversified, as some of those funds will track companies way outside your intent. It also has the potential that you end up with compounded holdings of companies you don’t want exposure to (*cough* FAANG *cough*). Not to mention the headache in calculating global and sector allocation percentages.

I’m merrily beavering away at my own allocation conundrums, but it appears to me that investors will need to put a lot more thought into strategies if they want to maintain a specific philosophy as more funds climb the FTSE ladder. Or they can just buy an All-World tracker. Different strokes…

Have a great weekend,

The Shrink

Side Orders

Other News

Opinion/ blogs:

The kitchen garden:

What I’m reading:

Fools and Mortals – Bernard Cornwell

Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall by Sir Thomas Browne – the theological and psychological reflections of a C17th doctor. Getting to the end of this now, and it’s been a slog. Written in C16th prose, you really have to get your head in the right place. Some fantastic philosophical points, with moments of period debate thrown in; e.g. is glass the most divine substance as all can be rendered into it through fire?

Enchiridion by Epictetus – Bedside reading for a bad day

References:

The Full English Accompaniment – Not all advice is good advice

What’s piqued my interest this week?

Screams the Daily Express (1). Le sigh.

Unpicking this is a good exercise in publication analysis. A team from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, are the ones making the forecast. Clear valid prior experience. They predict a massive worldwide financial meltdown “such as never before” in the mid-2020s. Helpful. They performed a “multi-fractal” analysis of financial markets, published in the journal Complexity. To be clear, I looked up the journal Complexity (2). Studies are appropriately archived, but the journals impact factor is a measly 1.829, and it’s a pay-to-publish open access format. This publishing model is not well-regarded, but increasingly common and predatory. The author, Prof Stanislaw Drozdz, at least has previous for a number of interesting fractal theory publications. This paper was published in September and can be read here (3).

To summarise very briefly, the team used an analysis to look for multi-fractal formulae across the S&P 500 and NASDAQ stock market indices. Their hypothesis was to prove that investor nervousness, measured by proxy through market volatility, followed fractal patterns. They looked at the Hurst exponent, which has assumed values from 0 to 1 reflecting the degree of susceptibility of a system to a change in trend. The Hurst exponent has continually stabilised after dropping during repeated ‘stock market crashes’ over the past 30 years, each time stabilising at a lower level. The time intervals decreases between falls, and never reaches it’s previous level. The eventual tipping point is somewhere in the mid 2020s (4).

So a functionally derived measure of an assumed value measure predicts terror at an vague point in the future. Interesting reading, but is it going to change my plans? Probably not. But it does prompt the thought experiment (Hi Savings Ninja) ‘what if we had another Great Depression’?

This would harpoon the latest MMM blogpost. In it MMM has many sweeping statements, including:

“If you start with $1.2 million chunk (a 3% withdrawal rate), it is overwhelmingly certain that you’ll have a growing surplus for life.”

“A fixed chunk of money is about as safe a retirement strategy as you’ll ever find.”

“Stock market crashes are never permanent. In the long run, the market always goes up. So all that happens during a crash is that those few shares that you do sell during those brief times when the market is down, will hurt your account balance just a bit more. Within a year or two, the market is back up and your remaining stocks are more valuable than ever. If you want even further reassurance, you could just choose to spend a bit less money during this time.”

Eggs and baskets spring to mind. MMM advocates holding your money in a Vanguard ETF, tax-sheltered via your chosen domiciles methodology. You’re diversified across markets. MMM does qualify his claims:

“Now, these statements do all depend on the continued existence of a productive human race which continues to innovate and trade and not destroy its own productive capacity.”

Which is fair enough, but I seriously disagree with his suggestion to go wholly equities. Diversification out of the market and into other avenues is far safer. MMM goes on to say:

“Heck, even if you are stuck with a $1 million house occupying a huge part of your net worth, you can convert that into livable money: sell the house, put the cash into index funds, and use the resulting cash stream to rent a spiffy but reasonably priced house or apartment in the lovely walkable area of your choice.”

Which to me is nuts. Worst case unimaginable scenario the stock market falls through the floor/ a global hacker collective wipes debt and investment records/ Brexit causes the collapse of British industry and ‘the city’ etc, what happens to you? It’s all gone. We mourned this week the passing of Harry Leslie Smith, one of the last vocal writers who lived through such a time, the Great Depression (6). I recommend reading his experiences. His eldest sister died of Tuberculosis in a workhouse when he was 3 because his family couldn’t afford a doctor. She was buried in an unmarked paupers’ grave because they couldn’t afford a funeral. He worked as a barrowboy from age 7, then delivered coal aged 10 to support his family. He lived in and remembered a world few of us can now imagine experiencing. Here’s his memory of the Christmas of 1930, during the Great Depression (7).

MMM is a fantastic advocate for financial independence, but putting all your financial eggs in one basket is a risk. We can calculate that risk is vanishingly small, but we can’t predict the future. Is Prof Drozdz’s prediction came true, how would you fare?Diversification reduces risk, at the cost of potential returns. Maybe this is a risk you’re willing to take?

Have a great weekend,

The Shrink

Side Orders

Other News

Brexit twists the blade on UK GDP. Helpfully my beautiful part of the UK is least affected (8)
And some ‘experts’ worry a no-deal Brexit will prompt an interest rate rise and housing market crash (9) N.B. I try to read widely for my news, generally the Guardian counterbalanced by the Telegraph with the FT thrown in. I’ve recently gone back to browsing the i and the Independent, but I’m still not entirely convinced of a) editorial quality and b) editorial independence.
However the housing market saw a slight rise in prices (0.3%) last month. Crack out the Moet! (10)
But it doesn’t matter anyway as based upon the Met Office’s latest predictions low lying areas (most cities) will be flooded anyway (11)
So the rest of the UK should follow Scotlands lead on de-carbonisation (12)
And most homeowners want solar panels (13)
Which will be helped by a deal between Tesco and VW to provide free electric charging points (14)
Just a shame that Network Rail continues to fail, and our aging trainstock are falling apart (15)
As ticket prices rise by 3.1% (16)
And in a study not really picked up by UK news outlets, Brexit is pushing more businesses to automate (17)

Opinion/ blogs:

The kitchen garden:

What I’m reading:

Fools and Mortals – Bernard Cornwell

Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall by Sir Thomas Browne – the theological and psychological reflections of a C17th doctor.

Enchiridion by Epictetus – Bedside reading for a bad day

References: