Category Archives: Economics

How supermarkets promote theft

Posted on August 15, 2019 by

“A 2015 study of self-checkouts with handheld scanners, conducted by criminologists at the University of Leicester, also found evidence of widespread theft. After auditing 1 million self-checkout transactions over the course of a year, totalling $21 million in sales, they … Continue reading →

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Book Review: John Carreyrou ~ Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018)

Posted on July 29, 2019 by

Without trivialising this wonderful book I was reminded of a joke as I followed the career of Elizabeth Holmes: Q. What’s a gold mine? A. A hole in the ground owned by a liar Elizabeth worshipped Steve Jobs and Bill … Continue reading →

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Japanese Koi Carp

Posted on July 18, 2019 by

    Anything strike you as special about this fish here? Well, it’s worth 1.8 million dollars. It won grand champion at the All Japan Koi Show in 2017, and is the most expensive koi fish ever sold. https://www.businessinsider.com/koi-fish-worth-millions-expensive-japan-2018-12?r=US&IR=T

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A start a middle and an end

Posted on July 17, 2019 by

I’ll start this story in a tenants association hall in Myrtle Road, Harold Hill. I used the small bar for a pint or two in the 1980s when I heard that the chair had decided to resign. I put my … Continue reading →

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The victims of Austerity are children

Posted on July 4, 2019 by

Last week (end-June 2019) I tuned into radio 4 at 7am. I wasn’t paying too much attention, until I heard the report of a boy in school who’d fainted in school, when he got there on Monday morning. It transpired … Continue reading →

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The bin Laden family and the Twin Towers

Posted on June 24, 2019 by

“A perfect example of this new and often strange world comes with the sale of the largest stake in the firm that quarries the Carrara marble in Italy that was used for the Pantheon in Rome, the Duomo in Siena, … Continue reading →

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Not everyone is middle-class with assets

Posted on June 20, 2019 by

Rachel and Jack1 are in their late thirties, with two young children. Both are immature but have worked hard on their relationship. Jack’s a self-employed window cleaner, odd job man, labourer and gardener. He’s hardly ever in steady full time … Continue reading →

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