Thank you for redemption

When I was growing up I realised we needed to take sides but I didn't know why. 

When a woman cut the winter fuel allowance I felt this was the latest direct attack on women by the state (pink on pink again) and it went unnoticed. Why because nobody could extrapolate and have a guess. We know woman live longer on average so it stands to reason it was a tax on longevity or a saving from those living too long. Following the COVID cull it's what the rich would call progress. How many pensioners are over 90? Too many Whitehall cried and 80% are woman. Freeze them out, nobody cares about the old and it'll free up some housing stock. A callous way to sort the housing crisis I hear you cry but election manifesto promises must be kept (sic).

Hurrah, the bus has pulled into Pitlochry for my Highland adventure. It's time to see Tom, Sandra and the merry band at Killiecrankie. 

It's also time for cake. Did I mention my waist is now 35" and yet my waist after a big Camino is 33". My weight is 15st and my weight after a big Camino is 16/4. I think my muscle has been eaten during this process. 

I think it's time to do double cake while the merry band of folk singers entertain the growing crowd at Jaco Bite.

Tom and I recorded a song I've been writing. Don't worry, there's no link. It's about how people stand hesitantly on the sides wondering whether to get involved. My thread I tried to sow through it was the same cancer journey that many of us go on. 

Tests, wait, pause, results,

Treatment, wait, pause for months.

Test, wait pause, results,

Treatment, wait, pause results

You feel like shouting out "I'm not standing still", but there's such a large part of "are you dancing, are you asking, if you're asking, well I'm dancing".

I like a bit of Dancing in my head so it's off to Inverness and then Ullapool today.

sunshine and showers, it's so true. Connection with buses was perfect. Arrived 14:40 departed 15:10 lunch was Coffee, sausage roll and fudge donut. Toilet was 30p and clean. Bus is ready to board and time to leave cancer behind and move back to the poor women and the fuel payment.

What is the split with men. It's more divide and rule but it's a side we should all take. Grannies, Mums sisters, daughters all being robbed of money again. So I demand again, what is the split?

"No shit Sherlock" was Miss Marple's response as the deer stalker looked sheepishly back at her saying 80% of people over 90 are women. I don't identify as a woman but I can have enough empathy to spot this injustice. As a man I know we tend to expire earlier which is just as well because historically we've enjoyed controlling the purse strings. The Christmas fuel allowance was, on balance, a messy payment to the poor women of this country. Whatever imperfections it had, as the wealthy women of the WI shouted, 'we don't need it', the voices of the poor women were never heard. Lobbyists from the funeral industry and Buckingham palace were delighted. Apparently as much as he likes his stamps, Chuckie two sticks and Charles first of Scotland doesn't like the 100th birthday nonsense and feels it should be updated to a more realistic rarity, An inter city 125. Divide and rule, it's been here all my life and I don't always spot it.

It didn't happen before i was 9 and went to Washington with the rest of the family, much as I wanted to be home alone. While my dad was being a diplomatic attache I was going to the white house Christmas party and stuffing my face with sweets, while my mum had one less mouth to feed. I even got to sit down while my classmates did their Maoist "I pledge allegiance to the ....." Fascist salute of the flag. When I returned age 11, it was different. I stood out like a sore thumb, and it wasn't long before it was more than my thumb that was sore.

Earlier on Wednesday 

I'm just on my way out of town on a bus tour. The clock's ticking so better get to the other side of the road. I'll be jumping the Inverness bus at 10:17.

Meanwhile "back when I was younger they were laughing at me...." To borrow from SLF's Jake Burns.

Everything was about taking sides and having a Maryland accent marked me out.

Later on in life I'd work out divide and rule was a key industrial and society strategy. As I got older I realised that the rich were getting richer and the poor yet again poorer. 

I had to decide as a wee middle class boy with a fair bit of entitlement from living in a "boat hoose", being a boy, to my class aspirations, do I join the rich or not. I loved the SLF line "there's always someone better off than you", but the Holyrood experience had clearly rubbed off. There were very few of me at that school. There were a whole lot more of those who saw leaving school, getting a job, a council house, fighting and drinking as the aspiration. The Specials called it well, "Married with a kid when they should be having fun". As council houses were still freely available in 1979 it probably made more sense than I realised. The boat hoose would look a silly move when the massive discounts on buying your council house arrived a few years later. Why go to university to leave home, just get a joab. Lots to admire about that too. There's more than one party to go to.

I could never imagine how hard I would find myself fighting to convince the poor that they should not stomp on the head of their victims. Later in the song, "don't be told, don't be consoled", flies out of Jake's gob to remind everyone to ignore the platitudes. I don't blame people for pulling up the drawbridge as very few knew they were doing it. The vast majority however we're just jostling for position and pushing their way to the front of the queue. They knew about winners and losers, so winning was their side. They were stuck in the meat machine. Political nonsense was a distraction and communities were going to start fragmenting. This would be the age of get on your bike, but only a few had a bike.

Society was dividing and generations were dividing. The musical back drop was punk rock replaced the hippy prog rock era while mods, then the new romantics completed the move to gloss it all over. Deadbeat was conceived, published and completed in those turbulent years.

Yet for many who got a start and were working life wasnt too bad.its why even now there's a great perception of revisionist thinking but it's not. It just depends which side of the divide you fell on.

I thought that as I was getting the PET scan. Would I prefer not to know and find out when it was not treatable or would I rather know. Many of us walk around with our cancers and do we say ignorance is bliss or with hindsight, I wish I'd known. On years to come genetic screening will ensure we know when our immune system has fought off a cancer and when that cancer is having a party at our expense.

I joked nervously at the beginning about Stockholm syndrome and getting too fond of my lump. It seems the lump responded with ardour as it's still here. Am I unlucky because I'm a good host or am I lucky I had it checked out. 

Many people believe you have a number and when it's called, your time is up, the boat must return. I don't know but I'm happy on my pedallo for now.

I remember the song like it's been my mantra for 40+ years. The punchline resonated because it was all about consider yourself lucky you're not one of them really poor folk.

I look back at all the stuff I wrote from the 80's onwards. Many people ask why we don't have a sovereign fund when Norway do. The answer is tragically very simple. We made choices, we elected people and gave them the choice of how all our windfalls are spent.

The government, in the 80's did one hell of a lot of redistribution. Like all governments they talked about decentralised power while sucking the wealth into London.

They sold the council houses, out from under the councils who had been the ones who maintained and upgraded  them. The councils were left with the debt and given none of the revenue from the sales. They took this money into the centre, where as we know all governments have done since.

They started a programme of privatisation reversing 35 years of government investment in industry. Selling the assets at a discount some viewed at the time as a fire sale. The issues were so oversubscribed people accused them of naiviety or worse still corruption for not getting value for the country. They used some of the proceeds to fight wars both internally with their citizens and externally. It was a bizarre time. They weren't alone as the graphs on public assets globally were plundered. What the Greeks, Romans, Vikings etc never realised is you need a religion. 

When the world lurched to the right in the 80's, very few people did not like having a few quid in their tail. The issue I had was only those with capacity could take advantage. The more cash capacity the greater the greedy could be. Some might argue ours weren't as bad as what the Russian oligarchs did, but we're just discussing semantics. Theft for some, not all, is very unfair. Or should I rephrase that, some theft is prosecuted, some is encouraged. 

Some people still think theft is too strong a word but as someone who signed the cheques in WoodMac for these privatisations I can confirm it's not. 

At the time we all thought it funny when one of the directors applied in 50 different names from his household. Mickey mouse and Donald duck appeared many times on the Share register albeit only until the shares were sold on first day of trading. The practice was called stagging. You applied for as many as you could afford to, selling them at the guaranteed profit, the early trading indications were rarely overstated. You were not allowed to apply multiple times but it was not policed. Many people used initials after their name to indicate a "child". It was self policing and the greedy couldn't help themselves. It was free money and they wanted as much of it as possible. The industry were not interested in policing it either. Every application ensured they got paid an introduction and a selling fee.

At the time it was both funny and extremely sad. I found myself quite bipolar on it. I could see the humour of the greed as not everyone was. I could also see the calculations they'd done. If you applied for 10,000 it would be scaled back to 1000. If you applied for 50@200, you would get 10,000. If you wanted to make £3000 you did 50@200.

I would take a lot of slagging and I'd give it out too. My holier than thou attitude to not taking this handout would ensure I could continue to be poorer than those who did. I'd miss out on the champagne celebrations when the final numbers were added out. I'd miss out on the Carribbean holiday BT would be providing. I'd console myself I could sleep at night and wasn't part of the great government train robbery. I wasn't any good at cracking jokes back then either. They won the cash and the banter but I had my morals whatever they were. I'd eventually concede after 5 or 6 of these things that I'd better join in or I would never be in a position to change anything. I thought the least I could do was try and find the theft for other people.

There were many honest people with a small amount of savings that said I will buy these and lock them away as part of a savings plan. The irony is that if they were good enough to be locked away as a savings plan why was the government in a hurry to sell such valuable assets. It's true, it was a valuable savings plan.

The same was true of council houses. Many sharks realised they could get as many house as they had council houses in their names so would fund family members to buy their homes. Children would beseech their parents, aunts and uncles to buy their home. Some would do so and others would hold firm. Some belonged to the generation when there had been no such housing and they knew it's value only too well. Like a good wine, when it's gone it's gone. When the council houses had all gone, they were gone. They now appear, largely for rent in an estate near you.

It was a wonderful time to study human behaviour and why nazi Germany rose so quickly. Why the Hutu could create such hysteria and hatred about their Tutsi neighbours, resulting in the Rwanda genocide of 500,000+. It still sits with me that my world sat by while in 100 days this genocide took place, largely with swords. Machetes that hacked through flesh. It's frightening to think of, hotel Rwanda is a tough watch. These atrocious events like Gaza today, make me want to stand up, call it out and it's the same with where did all the money go. I just hear Jake's "don't be told, don't be consoled". Even if things aren't so bad what's upsetting is things could have been so much better for us all. We have just found ourselves victims to the political class having fewer morals and even less capacity.

The north sea oil revenues which would start to flow into the treasury during the 80's were another excellent chunk of change but far from creating a sovereign fund the cash was used to fund more nonsense. Political battles to win idealogical wars. Moving unemployment from 1m to 3m in under 3 years was a masterstroke of right wing thinking. The unions and the labour party destroyed in one swift purge. The fact it cost a fortune became the reason why the welfare state had to be abolished. The skittles fall beautifully into line and the only disappointment the right got was not freezing the pension there and then. Transferring the education debt to the students was an outstanding piece of conjuring, a national disgrace.

The 80's culminating in the reversal of the ill conceived poll tax. How much of that shortfall was paid for by local citizens and central government will doubtless never be known.

What we do know is the parliament like the royal family was not privatised.

Westminster for whatever reason,  like Buckingham Palace, was not sold and leased back during this period, well not to my knowledge. Clearly some assets were worth preservation. Perhaps they have been handed out and Iissed the memo.

Fast forward to the late 90's and 2000's and we see the political momentum for saying decentralisation while continuing with abhorrent asset stripping of the state. It's what politicians do, hide in plain sight.

I sometimes find myself reading the Scotsman column Edinburgh property guy David Alexander takes enormous pride writing about, usually house price inflation.

In the latest he proudly describes the top end of the market as being particularly bouyant. I'm not quite sure why he's so smugly saying to our nurses and doctors, lecturers and teachers that they'll never be able to afford a house. They'll be lucky enough to hold a job down the university will tell us, they're so skint. 

The good David tells us Edinburgh prices are up £67611 in 12 months for detached property, an average of 10%. Well I'm pretty sure wages haven't moved that way.  It used to be those stomping grounds I walk through used to be owned by those doctors and educationalists but are much more likely to be owned by a sports star, tax accountant, builder or financial planner. 

The good David goes further and says despite Scotland's higher taxes for income and property stamp duty. I think if house prices are up £67k then we are clearly taxing too little. At the top end of the market there is no price sensitivity being displayed.

In economics if there is no price sensitivity you should migrate to the point where there is equilibrium. In short move tax until they feel it. The highest band of council tax needs a higher band. The highest bands of stamp duty need increased. We need to impact consumption. Once we do we can refine it. A big empty house needs even more police to monitor it when the alarm goes off. Edinburgh is full of them now and their policing is not a victimless crime.

So has the cold weather payment cull worked and thrown more houses onto the market to dampen demand. 

I somehow doubt it. I think this is Ullapool - I'm liking what I see.  If you are waiting for something this seems a good place to wait. Time I found the FBI. Every fishing town has a Ferryboat Inn.

When I return it will be time to get some result and a bit of redemption at last...

 I hope.

Feng Shui in my head - fuzz on my chinny chin chin, lots of words needing said, to clear the brain's internal din

I'm always tearing and Sharing my thoughts but this week has seen some amount of yin and Yang. It's been some fortnightly review.

Tuesday's session of reiki and reflexology had me swimming in a tsunami of supreme well being while the afternoon at the oncologist smashed me up against the rocks.

Thursday saw my equilibrium restored as another session of supreme well being left me feeling good about taking custodial duties seriously. I feel absolutely superb now.

We even took in the Hollywood gloss of the Dylan biopic at the cameo picture house. It's got a good bar and is the perfect distance for walking to. I won't review it but it was a great video for MTV and probably missed an opportunity. It was mostly music with the odd bit of story to create a back drop. I'd go further and say they over played the russian stuff and under played the civil rights and dust bowl issues that were central in the struggling USA, but maybe that is how they did it back in the 60's too. Hence, I wouldn't know so won't comment. It had been sold to me as a musical or a biopic. I went expecting a film a la "the Way", the Camino film Hollywood had to cartoon up. So if someone tells me it's not a true representation I'll nod sagely and mumble, "after seeing it, I guessed it wouldn't be, but it had a lot of music and I like a good song or 30."

I did get to walk home again and after a pint in black ivy it got my steps to 15,000 and my pints to 3.

Friday brought news of the Pet scan on Thursday 13th and consultant result 25/2. I've got myself psyched up for the op following a week or two later so I'll try and present the body in a decent condition so drinking less starts Tuesday.

I've been watching a lot of Gary Stevenson on YouTube this week. His channel is Garyseconomics, a booming you tuber heading for 1m followers and I've really enjoyed his contrarian content as it's what I've been banging on about, but he's a lot younger and more qualified. He reminds us regularly about the growing inequality as the richest get richer chasing every asset they can. They can't spend it anywhere else. They lend it to governments to build hospitals and school and make even more money. 

I think he must be about 40. He stopped making millions for Citibank about 30, long before the age when Carnegie's U-turn has that auld relic as some magnanimous fella. 

Gary didn't need to work long before he knew austerity was the new poll tax. Blame the poor people. 

He bet the economy would crumble and asset prices would rise. He continued for a few years, spotted the rapidly closing doors as the poor were left behind while working and stopped. Carnegie needed to get near death to suddenly spot the flaw in a broken society so I really liked Gary instantly. He saw, he acted.

Like the big short this is a guy who understands how the money moves and where it's all going. Why the markets continue to rise despite higher interest rates. He also helped me understand why house prices universally but particularly in certain places continue to rise despite higher interest rates.

I've been banging on about the asset stripping going on about the world and Gary's sufficiently smart to know a Frenchman who wrote this stuff back in 2015 showing the UK has indeed sold the silver, the gold and don't own their house. If there's a saving grace it helps explain why taxes rise and things get worse. For the poor they've known their wage goes up but they still can't buy a house as it goes up a lot more than inflation. Oh, that's right, house prices aren't part of inflation. 

Like the Big Short the biggest mental problems I have are when I'm in full contrarian mode and I can't explain to people in an articulate way. It's like I'm speaking to my dad and he says "NUTS", while I repeat "nurse", "N-U-T-S" he replies spitting the letters at me as if English is not my first language and I smile softly spelling "n-u-r-s-e" back. He sees me saying 5 letters and realising changes to "nurse." I am just so inarticulate even my Dad struggles with the words never mind the content I try and communicate.

I wanted to talk about Jimmy Carter's funeral and how the speeches would remind him of a time when America was great, unlike the 45 years since when they restored the good old days. The times when a car bumping into a person was the pedestrians fault. The times when big steel, oil and coal ran the show while the dust bowl was created out of the mid west. The times when buffalo would feed a nation until the de-population of the locals. The times when you could just push someone out of bed because you wanted the mattress and had bullets to kill them dead. The times before Roosevelt brought the anti trust laws in to break the monopoly of the mega rich. The times before the wall street crash finally said, the economy can't take anymore. People can't buy a new iPhone so, sorry guys, no point in producing them.

what a brilliant day walking and lunching with Stu and Simon.

It's nice to get a break from writing my drivel.

It's even nicer taking in the air.

As ever I feel compelled to write the stuff in my head and are we really heading for a repeat of the 1930's.

Well folks, we are fast approaching 50 years since we had a democracy here with any kind of social mobility. You're born rich or poor and that's pretty much how you'll stay. For the generations born from the peak of the 50's onwards the decline on opportunities has increased every decade. 

More generally, the final straw in my tax paying camel, came with covid. For those who did manage to make a little bit of money and are looking at handing it on to the next generation the concept of taxation was a given when I was growing up. We believed in the state and the state believed in us. Never again, was the cry about wars, we would never be led by donkeys and we'd keep fascists away. Well, we did for a while and we created a start on our way to a utopian state which gave birth to the Beatles, even the Sex Pistols. We paid our inheritance tax and you could form a band and get £1000 to put a single out from the government scheme. You got unemployment benefits if you were unemployed, including between school and university. Essentially like a student, a musician could be unemployed while learning their craft. The same for many of the arts. It's pretty easy to call that waste but it's what keeps economic activity up. I'm 62 and if asked I would vote for kids receiving unemployment benefit while they were unemployed whether they were looking for a job or just bumming around busking. Whether they were training part time with a football club hoping to get a contract or running around a track trying to join the olympic programme. Let them grow up is what I'd say. Let them keep priming the economy as they'll spend every penny.

Of course we do the opposite and teach them to acquire debt.

Back then I'd talk about how income tax takes a chunk but your still left with a pretty big chunk. The same if an old person with a house dies. I'd talk about paying tax all the time. After inheritance tax the kids will get a decent wedge. Not my advice now Sherlock. Not if Michelle Mone has got her money off to the isle of man, not if the Cayman islands are full of tax Dodgers while Hunt buys his property while Clarkson and the growing army of millionaires hide their money in farming assets, ironically one of the few doors labour tried to close.

I confess I have, I really have changed my tune. I now believe and have since 2009 when I stopped working that the Thatcher Tories of the 80's have won. I'm now repeating myself as I only want to pay tax if everyone else does. In the 1980's I argued in my economic tutorials that I wanted to pay £1m in tax. I kept arguing a society that allowed me to win £2m working, a society who had given me my stake in the game by keeping me healthy and educated for 20 years, deserved a decent cut. If the society also allowed me and my business ideas to prosper I would give them a cut, aka, paying even more tax. If I built a nursery or ran an old folks home, paid it off until I was left with a £3m property, I'd split it with the government for encouraging me to do so. I argued until I was blue in the face that if I could pay £25m I'd be over the moon.

In the end I stopped working in 2009. I was 46 and I was still the only one who seemed to think like me. I was in the wrong room. My last Stocktrade bonus was regarded as fairly small and I laughed. If staff thought Directors should take more then we definitely had taken the right amount. I consistently argued that as Directors we picked up a decent salary so the largest lump should go to the staff. 

Additionally I would argue that we would get taxed more on it and giving it to the staff would have a bigger impact for them. It did, plus it meant they liked working with us because they knew we were sharing the bonus. Those arguments resonance, disappointingly disappeared when I moved to Newcastle to help another part of the Group. The EO brokers directors would finally take all the bonus for themselves and stop the ludicrous policy of handing staff 20/30/40/50%. 

By 2009 I realised I wasn't going to pay £1m in income tax but I took comfort from knowing if I added my tobacco and drink duties I'd exceeded the £1m in 2008 so I retired. I'd forgotten I'd get to pay more on my pension as I drew it down so feel quite content now the wee 17 year old student will deliver on the £1m income tax promise. 

I don't however believe the social contract only applies to the uninitiated. My Dad sold their home to pay for my mum's care. It was his choice and I applauded the public spiritedness. Like John leaving his council house at the foot of the royal mile and handing the keys back to the council on Tuesday so Edinburgh could profit from selling it. These small good deeds put money into the pot that Edinburgh council will splurge as they choose. I just hope it goes into housing. I've long argued you can't supply any service if you don't have cash. Golfers witness it daily at their golf clubs. They talk about it while spending £300 on a driver that slices out of bounds at least twice a round but it never gets mentioned when they shout down a £20 increase in subs.

Looking back at the history of things we're reminded how often we reinforce our memories. How often we choose to say things were better back then. It's that whole nostalgic way the current bunch of day time drinkers discuss daily.

In my case I look back at my eggy bread and compare the photos with today's. I may have even improved my standards but sadly the opportunity for our children is a recurring nightmare.

On the decline of opportunity for children born from the 1950's onwards it is real. 

When the average 75 year old was buying their first house they'd been to a school that probably had a nurse and a dentist. They had increasing access to college and university, with grants based on income. The price of that first house would be between 2-4 times their income while the queue for a council house was under a month. The price of that house or flat now will be 30-40 times what it cost 50 years ago when they were 25. I'm pretty sure their salary never moved as fast, but luckily their pension was largely tied to it for the majority of their life.

I'll probably research 62 year olds because that's me. I'll add in the double camel hump distribution (binomial?) if appropriate. I also like the mean the median and the mode as the easiest way to understand how "wealth diverse" our society is becoming. Media is trying to make you think diversity is something to divide us. It is, which is why it's so important we take the contrarian view and unite on the growing wealth diversity.

The voices on other diversity issues are purely distractive voices and the cunning conversations of a conjurer. Tommy Cooper's bottle /glass trick reminding us all that political satire was alive and kicking in every trick he did. It's why I have enjoyed Eddie Izzard's comedy as it comes through the prism of what else are you telling me here. We have always had things we disagree over but surely number one in our society is making sure we're preventing poverty. It can not be that providing more food banks gets our focus. Being lectured about growth in the economy when it's really the growth of the disparity between the asset owning and the no chance of ever owning, is annoying.

Economics suggests to me the poverty of our generations got worse, in fact, increasingly worse, so there's an accelerator at play here too. It's like inflation, the effect on the wealth diversity is still growing. It is still getting even bigger. I still regard "don't go to university, get a job that will pay for your training" as one of my top 10 best pieces of fat Al chat from the Stocktrade slavering in the 1990's and early 2000's. Navigation for 16-45 year olds must be so tough as they try to work out what they want to do as well as how to get there. If you're a woman as I mentioned years back, going to university and having a family just meant you would be in debt for life.

I bought and sold a few houses in my time from the mid 80's. I look back now at the madness of lawyers bills and stamp duty but it was a consequence of living. Today's generation don't even have that luxury. They will never be able to buy in the centre of towns and cities again unless their parents do a chunk for them.

I laugh as had I known how short a marriage or a job would last I may have taken a different view but I was as ever all in. Edinburgh property like most cities has it's peculiarities with the city's universities largely being property companies now, they don't build council houses but instead build hotels as they've done with Pollock Halls. I would love to have a look at how the institution's run because the £50m they pick up during the festival probably competes favourably with the course fees, although the annual (10month) accomodation will probably be double that. 

I will get distracted with it, as Edinburgh peculiarities go, we have long been a city where house prices rise as students come to town and rich parents will buy a property because it's a one way bet. We all know it and many locals move further out of town to huge schemes or estates the same as all over the UK.

It's Tuesday and I'm in my wee box so apologies. I've had the tracer injection so I'm now radioactive. I'll continue this diatribe but it does make me chuckle when I look at that graph.

I'm on a hospital very grateful to the staff for treating me. In order for us to have a scanner we had to sell the Royal infirmary in town and build a new royal on the edge of town. The new hospital is rented and the money from the old one has since been spent. 

People putting the case forward for getting funds from PFI say it wouldn't happen without it. I say we forgot to tax the rich.

I try not to get mad but get even. I talk about it, this growing inequality but at the same time I have to back it in the stock market as those are the shares that are going up as they are one way bets. It's like when Caitlin was paying a fortune to rent and so I bought shares in Unite. They went up because inflation is part of the deal and students are easy targets to say just borrow more. Student property is also the easiest to get planning for, judging by the projects that go ahead. Their consultants might disagree but Edinburgh is full of these buildings both completed and in construction. Someone will tell me we need them, I won't disagree. I will merely point out it is a factor in wealth diversity and keep asking why we can't have council house being built at the same rate. I would also argue that the reason why the university increasingly talks about cuts and getting experts in, is they're rewarded too well in the boardroom. 

Buying a house in 2000 in Edinburgh was still pretty affordable. As we were selling Carrick knowe and moving to Orrok park, we were selling for £55k-£60k and happy to spend £130-160k. We sold to a colleague and it was probably 3 times his wages. That's one person, in his 20's, not a couple. We looked at all the places within walking distance of Swanys. From Prestonfield sweeping around to Morningside. Wanted a garden and we went for the brookside style cul de sac by the inch park. I think if you were investing you'd have bought a flat in Montpelier or the one in hermitage terrace we put an offer in for, the bungalow at craiglockart, the many in the Rankins or Relugas but we were buying a family home to live in not an investment only about selling. If that was the case we'd buy in the popular catchment of Gillespie's and Boroughmuir to ensure we could sell it with save on school fees and socialist credentials. 

My curiousity can't resist seeing how a home compares to an investment. This is how the asset rich economy always operates. Kahneman and many others have talked about scarcity driving this wealth diversity. 

As soon as you own enough assets that your income continues to exceed your requirements, you can only buy more assets. This drives stock markets and more relevant to us, house prices. The asset rich will continue to try to maximise the growth of their assets. As much as anything they want to preserve what they have. It's like a failsafe brake in a lift. As you get up to the 21st floor, it will not drop below an inch below where it is. Preserving is everything if you are asset rich so therefore, exploitation is the best the asset poor can hope for. Higher personal tax and lower standards of living. It's why I've always shouted tax the rich, especially when I was one.

We are repeatedly told there is a housing shortage and we should encourage more private landlords. This is partially true but it is private landlords with the many properties that are the scourge. Jeremy Hunt buying 7 properties that year he introduced the new tax dodges summed it up. We don't want more private landlords pushing up asset prices turning homes into investments. We need more homes at council house rents. 

When Thatcher handed out all our council houses at knock down prices I truly believe she thought that she had given these people the first step on the ladder. Nowadays those are the council houses that countless 20-40 year olds live in paying 3 times the current council rent. You can't blame the asset rich owners for maximising their rent but you can applaud the few owners who don't raise it.

I mentioned a few years back the figure for student debt, in England alone, being equal to the national debt of Ireland. From a macro and micro perspective it's just wrong. The budget last year and the levels of debt the UK has had now confirms it won't get better soon. We keep taxing the nurses. We keep asking the poor in our society to pay a larger amount of their income, while encouraging the richest with more wealth protection schemes. You can scramble towards the life rafts but this ship is going down. At a time like this it's best we work together.

I've talked often about being an economic migrant when I go on the Camino. Soon I'll be able to go to places more local and my money will be worth twice it is by jumping a bus 30 miles. Simon and I are going to practice by going to villages and towns in Scotland that have lowest house prices and report back on the price of a pint.

Hooray, the scan is done and I survived to tell another tale, or is it the same one. I said thanks to the radiographer and said I hope they get a pay rise soon to move them off minimum wage. Of course I didn't say the last bit but I thought it.

I've been banging on about scarcity for a while. Whether you talk about Edinburgh streets in the dean village or houses in and off north or south street in st Andrews it's clear to see the scarcity value. Dornoch has long known that some overaeas billionaires have two properties with the smaller one near the course which they use as a locker room.

The billionaires drive up these asset prices as they try to out muscle the local population. That was easy, if Tiger Woods wants to buy a cinema in st Andrews, he buys it, though it does lead to some fun and games. In Dornoch, Gullane, St Andrews wherever, they might argue that they love the town and the locals but through their actions they do everything to ensure the local workers have to be bussed in from another parish.

The changing shape of many properties on the southside as I take my daily air walking to the meadows or bruntsfield let's me see close up how empty many huge properties are. It won't be long until burglary becomes worthwhile again as some of these houses are lived in during the festival and that's about it. Although squatting would probably be even more lucrative. I think we all know celebrities who have flats on the Royal Mile, that's why I chuckle about John's council house still being publicly owned. It proves what could have happened had the asset stripping not taken place.

Many financial people from Edinburgh who return after 10-20 years in London have often found they've gone from a flat in balcarres street to a huge house and have change left over. There's no doubt if you spent well paying off your mortgage as you lived and worked in the city of London you could come back with a handsome amount of cash. They're now asset rich and will doubtless provide a deposit or buy a flat for their children. They'll find a LISA, so the tax payer can help them. 

Preserving wealth when we have the diversity of wealth is immoral. Increasing the burden of tax on the poorest is not sustainable.

What many people watching Garyseconomics probably want to know is the answer to the question, will it always be this bad. The answer is of course that it will get worse unless we have a revolution and I think the 60+ group I'm part of, have got enough to see them by so they'll just want the younger ones to suck it up, pay the increased burden of tax that labour liberals and Tories have lumped on us. Oh and work for nothing in the NHS please.

When the Christmas winter fuel payment was axed you would've thought labour might have cut tax free schemes like ISAs. They could crack down on the aforementioned Lisa's which gives the under 40's of rich people £1000 a year. They didn't. They made a choice that said the rich deserve more hiding places for their money. Not only do they not pursue taxing wealth they encourage it to stay with the wealthy causing an increasingly fragmented society. Soon life long friends will become detached on their 40th birthday parties or their Hen and Stags, as the organiser plans a £1000 jolly and half the crowd can't go. Worse still, choose a venue where transport links mean staying over and a £500 one off, when the heating hasn't been on all winter.

When the big furlough handout was done more people than ever had £50,000 to spend on funding Lisa's than ever before let me guess, did the take up go up?

How much went into planning a bigger and grander wedding. How much went into the annual golfing trip which now involved £200 becoming £1000.

When platitudes were being played on the doorsteps of the nation for the NHS and essential workers we were being asked to bang a drum. We weren't being told that these exhausted staff members reward for risking the life by going to work during lockdown and not getting pissed in the park with handouts, would be a wage freeze or even worse a wage cut with inflation. 

We weren't told these essential workers would have the tax free earnings limit frozen at £12,000 for 5 years so that over those 5 years they could pay £3000 more in tax to the government who had paid all their pals so much dough.

I remember when Stu told me Farage had stolen my policy tip for labour of making the public sector more attractive by offering those workers a £20,000 tax free limit before they had to start PAYE. I was disgusted that old dodgy garage was stealing my well argued policy. I wanted to offer all workers a house as well but I never saw that policy being snaffled.

I'm nearly home now so just another 5 hours before I'm not radioactive and can go to the pub you'll all be delighted to hear, if you've made it this far.

What Gary does in his many videos is explain facts faster. His clarity doesn't need another 30 minutes. What will be interesting is seeing how soon he builds the bridge that lets him into the room. Personally if I was a betting man I'd suggest his life expectancy may not be too good. He really has raised his head that far above the parapet. This is like watching the real time version of Le Mis. Someone will lose their head and I just hope it's a metaphorical one.

He clearly wants to be part of the conversation and this is his route. He's using his social media to get there and frankly the issue will be that nobody else in the room will understand him. 

The politicians will therefore be terrified quite quickly. This will cause them to, at first fail to keep up then depending on their egos shut him down or accept him at face value and act.

The problem with our meritocracy is it needs to be paid for. It's like our judiciary.

What happens now is you need money to go to university.

You need money to sustain you after university while you serve that internship.

Finally if you survive that, it's merit.

So in modern parlance there's a paywall to progress.

Luckily Gary doesn't need to earn the money, but he banks it nonetheless as the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer is a one way bet he's done for 14 years. He's a trader, he's a smart guy, he knows how to place that bet. Don't try to copy him, 99.99% will fail. 

Remember he was the anomaly that broke through the paywall.

I get my results on Tuesday 25th I think and I'm sure I'll write plenty more nonsense before then. 

Thanks if you did read to the end, I applaud your endeavour.

I'm now about to write some of the music for our 21st century Robin Hood. 

This is not the end

This is not the end its now the beginning of the next phase of existence. Judging by the rain today I'm still learning.

The scan was inconclusive so a PET scan is now ordered. It was the size of a cream egg arlt the outset and is now a mini egg size. They need to know if it's hot or not. If it's hot it'll be surgery, if it's not then it's tube out and viva Espana. Scan will be within 3 weeks.

My consultant is a Mackenzie but I can't remember if old Donald McKenzie was a Mc or a Mac. He'd be 120 if he was still around. He taught us WoodMac post room kids loads. It's the wrong time to ask if he was a grandparent but it would make me chuckle.

They often say at funerals that you come into the earth with nothing and you leave with nothing but they don't tell you how you live rent free in your friends and families heads for evermore. I know golfers who still miss putts because I got in their head in 1979 and I've been there since. I know songs that I have bang on about to others while some are still quoted to me 40 years on with the love and affection Joan Armatrading would be proud of. This website is full of Deadbeat tapes and bands very few heard but I still listen to it sing as I wander the streets.

There are forces who try so hard to monetise everything and yet songs we sing, the air we breathe, company with people who make us feel good are free. We're encouraged to believe those conversations will be better if we spend £200 a head on them. We make choices to enjoy things that are expensive or free to enjoy our memories of people we have loved and lost. 

Some may have travelled around the world some may have left the world but they'll never leave our heads. I have regularly walked the Camino to enjoy these things as it's the setting they work well in. It's a very nostalgic time and it's also a great time to get excited about what's next.

I think that about work and I remember mentioning in a blog last year about bumping into John Frame at the meadows, the day of the short hole golf world championship. I remember it well and it reminded me of work of many types before and after I worked with John.

Since May I have been involved in a wonderful project where I've been reminded that I'm a custodian of a body.  I managed to ditch work for other fun responsibilities but I've never taken seriously my duties to myself. My time will come, I'd chuckle. It had always been my time.

Process 

This whole process has reminded me of the light bulb moment when I was in Newcastle. I was there to guide the team away from relegation. Yes, where 200 people worked in the custodian looking after 20 billion pounds of assets on behalf of 500,000 peaople. I don't think many of them appreciated what they were trying to do. One task at a time was largely the way it was viewed. They had no concept of safe keeping. That's all we were, a post office box that collected stuff for other people, gave them some of it and kept the rest safe. They were failing on many counts.

I think looking after your body and being custodian over it is similar. In my case I've failed over the years on multiple levels but that's why you live and learn.

There have been times when I have found it easier to focus on one task and not concern myself with the overall job. 

On arrival in Newcastle I met everyone and tried to give my thoughts on why I was there. I tried to explain our job and relevance, we were looking after your mum's money, your dad's money, your granny's money and that was all. They looked blankly back at me and thought we've got one here. As administrative hosts, I continued, we tried to provide as much intelligence to the individual or asset manager as possible. This element of coaching proved quite tough for some as not every manager was grateful for our services. It appeared every time we scored a goal it was ignored but when we passed it out the park or failed in our control it was met with groans. I set about mediating when I arrived but no doubt about how broken it was.

I look back at the chemo, dehydration, at constipation, overnight stays with disdain and affection. My daily blood taking and lines being put in. Sometimes I thought process while at other times I saw the whole picture. My body has failed and as custodian I was getting assistance.

When I look back at some of my most difficult moments in Newcastle my exchanges with the managers of the valuations and the fees teams summed it up. They had a complete disconnect with the purpose of the process, they were so obsessed by the actual process. A classic wood for the trees moment. For completely different reasons they were so fixated on explaining to me why it wasn't their fault they couldn't see the problem never mind any potential solution except through their problem prism.

The valuation manager kept explaining that a stock had been miscoded and that was why the correct stock was not displayed on the valuation and it was now worthless. I tried one of my many different analogies but to no avail. I said I bought a ticket for the Newcastle v Man Utd but you've given me a ticket for take that in the summer. I was told it was because the codes were similar. I said I just want to go to the football and I kept having it explained to me why I had the wrong ticket, so it was right. I knew I was barking up the wrong tree as the manager tried to convince me I had indeed now got a ticket for take that so I could forget about the football unless I wanted to change it. My attempts to try and get them to understand that wasn't what I'd asked to do just resulted in them getting more irate at my attitude.

I backed off quietly on the analogy as this was a moment for personal reflection. This manager wasn't in learning mode and certainly not from the just bussed in boss. I tried another one. These situations keep arising where upstream someone has polluted the water your using to give to your crops and some are getting diseased. I thought we could discuss what options we have. It was explained to me that nothing could be done because someone has polluted the water. When I suggested we could ask them to stop, that was met with a stony face. Don't be stupid, I was told, this river's always been polluted and some crops can't cope. That's why we call it brown corn when we sell it. I begged had we tried to investigate the pollution and I could see in the rolling of the eyes that it was a pointless endeavour. She clearly was bright enough to play the analogy game and obstinate enough to persevere in beating me.

Finally I said, as I'm the guy allegedly down here to rescue the office from closure maybe I'll investigate. I was back 10 minutes later saying it was fixed. I was met with I've been asking for that to be done for two years how did you get it fixed in 10 minutes. I explained I was just lucky, I asked the right person. When asked who, I said you, of course. You explained to me why it had never been sorted and so I went and sorted it. The actual reason was a silly we technical one where you had to request a code and nobody had ever done it before so they didn't know who to ask. I think in business courses they talk about the right technical knowledge but with many organisations it can mean knowing someone old enough to know how it was done in the manual days or knowing that new problems appear requiring new solutions. Valuations was an old problem fees was a new one.

My time with the fees manager was the same. A short session over the course of a day or two and an evening. I asked all the stupid questions they gave me the answer and then I thanked them for fixing the problem. 

It was again a system issue, the complete lack of one. It was also a human issue where the manager believed getting 80% right through manual input should be celebrated. He liked his football so I was able to say playing without a goalie works 4 times out of 5 as the opposition are rubbish. It didn't work, but when I said you sound like an England penalty kick taker it hit home. I never missed a penalty. Exactly, I said and I need you to never input changes incorrectly, if that's ok. I had asked is the processing stuff your game. He had said no, he hates numbers and wanted to open an art gallery. I laughed and so did his colleagues who all knew he was in the wrong job.

They received these instructions via email in the main and the whole procedural process was flawed bringing human error into the spotlight. I asked a programmer pal if we could write a very simple program, she did, the rest was history. I rolled it out around the group calling it a prototype. Everyone loved it and the anger levels between fees and the rest plummeted. As there were no errors anymore the fees team prospered and a year later, the manager left to set up a gallery in Sheffield. Funnily enough the company did alright too, as over £2m of fees had never been collected that year but I wasn't allowed to get the previous 3 years that had over £5m of unclaimed income. Some managers really do look after their clients money when the firm are trying to charge.

Some reading this will be laughing at the absurdity of work, some may even identify with the protagonists, me or the managers, it's hard not to for me, but it's what keeps me going as well as I frequently identify with the managers. I often get stuck banging my head against a locked door that everyone knows is a wall. 

In my first 6 weeks there was a plethora of discoveries. 

Finding everyone still at the coffee machine at 10am every morning I had to ask. Basically their machines were so old they lacked the processing power for an organisation that had built it's office on 100,000 line spreadsheets. I bought them all new machines to replace their 8 year old museum pieces. Finding a fraudster had been pilfering for 11 years was the main reason out dividends weren't working well. £600,000 and counting but impossible to quantify as the procedures for fraud didn't exist. Dividend cheques often go missing in custodians and the largest I saw was a Tesco one, 3 years old for £80,000. It had actually been stolen after being legitimately lost in a drawer. Custodians are notorious for losing cheques and there are few people who check they've received all their dividends. It's done on trust, well they are custodians. 

Finding nobody sat the exams explained why there was such a disconnect with the concept of custodial responsibility and care. I tied exams to salary cash with passes getting well rewarded. Within 6 months 100 had a pass. I paid out more for the passes than I had for the new computers. I still had change to drink for a lifetime.

The recovery process involves recognising we are all custodians, not just of the planet but of ourselves. We need to be able to manage ourselves first and not many can. It's hard knowing when you need help and when you should puzzle it out. Cancer isn't wordle. It's not soduko and certainly not a bus timetable.

That much is true but when does a toe nail become an issue. When it falls off? Or do you just tape it up and walk on.

I'll get the next PET Scan and results before the end of February I hope and keep my fingers and toes crossed. It's always been a waiting game so time to get on with stuff while I wait. I need new water proofs for starters🙄