Beating a drought

It would appear that you can’t use a hose- or other pipe to fill a swimming pool without facing a huge fine, but you can use a tap and a bucket. But filling up a fish pond with a hosepipe is okay. So the answer to the problem seems to be to put a couple of fish in the swimming pool and say it’s a fish pond with lots of elbow room, to which humans have access. Simple!

Give him an “E” for Enterprise

The proprietor of the local village bakery has suggested to me that I might care to buy a modest microwave oven and leave it in his shop for the benefit of customers who want hot pies, rolls, pastries, etc. He’s worried that the 20% VAT slapped on Hot Food in the Budget will affect his sales, and he expects that he will have to leave almost everything fresh-from-the-oven to cool because his customers won’t pay the unnecessary tax. Admiring the cheek of the fellow, I’m inclined to go along with his notion!

A whole lotta nuthin'

I was just thinking, why would anyone give £250K to the Tories? You got a peerage for your money under New Labour. But dinner with Dave? That sounds like a job for a psychiatrist for anyone who thinks that's value for money.

What have I been doing other than not blogging?

Well, one activity which has featured very prominently in the last fortnight is my Things Campaign. Given that the government is run to a disproportionate degree by Liberals, who are very liberal with everyone else’s money but their own, I’ve been converting my assets into Things, which can be dropped off the radar conveniently so that whatever profit or loss I take on them should I ever need to convert them to cash will be my business and mine alone. I reckon I’m providing more than enough cash to the economy through existing taxes, not to mention all the employment I’ve created, that I am entitled to make myself Liberal-proof. And the beauty of it is that, if done well enough, there’s not a damn thing the Liberal millionaires like Clegg and Huhne can do about it.

Amazing how long it takes to do a “simple” deal

The museum, it seems, was in a tearing hurry to spend a legacy before its time limit ran out, and the Picasso filled the bill nicely. But when it came to actually putting a signature on a cheque (or rather, doing an electronic money transfer), their expert got a severe case of the hesitations. Which my expert cured by making him think we wanted to call the deal off because there was another buyer on the horizon.
    In the event, I’ve acquired a handsome profit on my original purchase price, even after my expert and the taxman combined will have an arm and a couple of legs off me. All in all, it’s been an interesting and entertaining month, rather than a couple of weeks, and a fascinating look into the world of high-power art purchases.

Where have I been?

Unloading a Picasso, is the quick answer. Following my sudden elevation to the ranks of the filthy rich some 18 months ago, I was let in on a sure-fire brilliant deal. The latest of a long line of aristos was eager for some ready cash and he had a couple of 1920s Picassos, which his father had treasured but which he had never rated. After seeing them, I didn’t blame him.
    Naturally, my first thought after the approach was that maybe someone was setting me up to be ripped off, that I was about to be sold the equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge or the Eiffel Tower. After appropriate checking, I decided to take a punt on the “least worst” of them, but I actually ended up buying both of them.
   To my surprise, I was approached at the end of last year by an American museum, which was desperate to acquire what I consider to the more horrible of the pair of Picassos. And I’ve spent the last couple of weeks looking over my expert’s shoulder while the buyer’s experts checked my provenance. The deal is supposed to go off at the weekend. More after that.

Unintended consequences

How typical that one of Labour’s wimmin should get the Top Totty guest beer banned from the bar at the House of Common Criminals. And how heart-warming it is to hear that the publicity from Kate Green’s fit of charmless PC pique has left Slater’s Ales struggling to meet the demand for this product.