2012 reasons for not being there

My lunch guests today were asking me if I'll be shelling out £2,012 for a top-whack ticket for the opening day at the Olympics, which triggered an outbreak of much hollow laughter. A straw poll uncovered the fact that no one around the table planned to watch the opening, either by being there or on TV, and no one would be watching the events, not even to count the empty seats. So it looks like we have another Millennium Dome on our hands thanks to New Labour.

p.s. Nobody realized that yesterday was National Potato Day. But no doubt the quangocrats of the Potato Awareness Council will still be drawing their fat bonuses and expenses.

Transport of Choice

Some people find it amusing that I went for a Roller instead of a herd of Ferraris. I have a Roller because I like to travel in comfort. That’s precisely why I didn’t go for the Ferrari option; I didn’t feel an urge to zoom about with my bum scraping along the road. I also have a driver. After all, if you’re seriously rich, that means you don’t have to bother with the driving and you can concentrate on more rewarding things in the spacious back of your Roller.

Kneecap Parade

Out and about in the Roller, I became aware of hundreds of knees on show on a sunny day with a pretty strong wind blasting. Not just kids; old blokes with grey hair were wearing shorts or jeans sawn off above the knee. Just what the attraction is of bare legs in October escapes me. We seem to have a lot of allegedly mature people around trying to prove how hard they are.

10/10/10? Who cares! Today doesn't feel remotely special.

It seems that caffs and fast food joints are handing out banknotes covered with lethal bugs. Makes you glad you have staff to knock out snacks on the premises.

Not A Problem

Today's big scare story in the tabloids – mobile phones are so lethal that holding them less than one inch from the human body means instant death! For anyone who's worried, the solution to the problem is simple. You just get rich, you get some staff and you get a member of your staff to stand a safe distance from you with the phone while you use a hands-free headset.

Desirable Invisibility

Back to the bankers tangentially – the challenge of having lots of serious money is to make it disappear. If it's in a bank, or stocks & shares, or bonds or whatever, the taxman can see the gains easily. The trick is to move it into assets which will gain in value to beat inflation, at the very least, without showing up on the taxman's radar.

Of course, the trick lies in avoiding the shoals of rip-off merchants looking for a rich mug and finding safe havens to stash your alternative to cash. My master plan is to be able to croak with peanuts left visible, and leave the taxman saying, "Hey, that guy had the best part of a hundred million quid. Where's it all gone?" But no one who knows will tell him because the taxman is on everyone's Far Queue list!

Shock, Horror vs Dotty Old

You have to laugh at the court system. It’s a joke here but it’s reassuring to know that things are no better abroad and judges are “dotty old” everywhere. In the USA, they give people sentences of hundreds of years “because they can”. In France this week, they went in another direction.

A rogue trader got 5 years (2 suspended, time off for good behaviour means he does about 18 months tops) for exposing his bank to a 50 billion euro risk. He was also ordered to pay €4.9 billion in compensation – which the bank says it won’t try to collect. So that was a waste of time.

Afterthought: Maybe the bank is planning to give the guy his old job back and keep his bonuses for a couple of years.

Deluge-proof

Watching the weekend rain battering and drenching the grounds from the highest window of The Mansion, I began to wonder if I have flood insurance with a company which won’t weasel out of paying. Then I realized I don’t need it.

The trees mask it to a fair degree but the estate is on a shallow hill with The Mansion at the highest point. So everything drains down toward the river, which separates me from the main road, and a lake, the contents of which, my estate manager assures me, can be sold to the farms around me if the weather gets really dry.

So let it rain, I say. I’m not bovvered!