London Rants

There’s a massive ongoing discussion about the massive bonuses of bankers. Its gone as far as Primer Minister Brown being ‘very angry’ about bonuses. Generally I don’t have a problem with bonuses, I don’t even really have an issue with large bonuses. The problem I have is with cash bonuses. Traditionally a large bonus haven’t been cashed based but rather share options. The idea behind this is that a bonus is provided as options that after a period of time become fully franked shares in the company in which the person works. The reason these are good is because if a month after the bonus is awarded, like in the case of Lehman Brothers, the company goes down the toilet due to the decisions that the the people that received the bonus had made the person is also impacted. So if a company goes broke a year or so later the person basically gets nothing, but if the company continues to grow the person does well. This should especially be the case for all member of the boards of directors in companies and the various CxO people. That way the bonus actually reflects their performance over a period of time. Very simple and the way it use to be, if PM Brown gets his way its the way it will be once again!

Well like half the world seems to do I’m cleaning out all the excesses of my life onto eBay. I’ve only been in the UK a little over three years and in that time I’ve moved three times so I don’t have an overly large amount of stuff but even so I rarely throw away anything that’s still useful. I give it away or store it away. Being in the technology industry I tend to acquire various bits of equipment and books. Whether that be through stuff I buy, I’m given or receive through training or various other means. Over time you either end up using them regularly, not actually ever needed or they are superseded.

So when I last moved almost six months ago I started putting things aside into a plastic crate that was labelled eBay. Ever since then I’ve been meaning to get around to put the various stuff up on the site. I’ve slowly got myself organised by signing up for an account as well as a paypal account, photo documented all the items and listed them in a file so I knew all the things I had to sell. The list kept growing, the crate filled and started being piled up on top but still I never got around to actually putting things up for sale. I had to get organised! After all tech devices (not that it all was) tend not to appreciate in value while sitting around gathering dust. The next thing on the list was to google how to optimise my returns. More procrastination!

So the week before last I actually did finally get off my proverbial butt and start to put some items onto the site that has been made famous world over. I decided not to put everything on at once but to slowly add things and use some of the items of less value to experiment with. Oh so much stuff to fill in. You have to decide on categories, photos but worst of all postage… how much to charge, what type. First class or second class. Argh!

I eventually got it all sorted, items listed and now just had to sit back and wait and watch the cash flow in. Well over all I didn’t do too badly for first attempt. Some of the items sold, some didn’t but overall it wasn’t too bad. I won’t be giving up the day job though! I do wonder about some people and things at auctions. I got a free prepay mobile phone from when I moved carriers. When I listed it on the site the vendors price was £25, mine sold for £31. I’m not sure if that was the rush of adrenaline of sitting at a computer, the fact it was out of stock or discontinued or something else but you’d think people would do some research (I might prove myself and idiot by being shown up for not doing my research and finding the carrier has replaced the phone since.

Since the first round of sales I’ve discovered and read about some other tips for selling on eBay. The first was list your items on Thursday night between 17:00 and 20:00 for a ten day auction. That way the auction ends between 17:00 and 20:00 on a Sunday night. Apparently when everyone is browsing the net dreading going back to work the following day. Monday is apparently good with everyone at work browsing the net with Mondayitis.

The other sort of similar site that seems to be taking of is FreeCycle. What I don’t sell might well end up on there.

Anyway I have to go and search through the next cupboard and find more things to sell. I’m might just be getting addicted!

Spring has to be my most hated season of the year. This hatred actually ends up being a hatred of one to two weeks of the season when all the grass is in full flower and the pollen is in full swing. I end up dosing myself up on antihistamine tablets for a couple of weeks to stop my eyes and nose from running and sneezing my head off. The grass seed and Plane tree pollen seem to be the ones that set me off, the later is hell as it makes my throat seriously itchy too and the antihistamine doesn’t seem to have an effect on that.

The hell kicked off over the weekend, lets hope its a short peroid of hell this year! Also lets hope its followed by a nice warm, dry European summer

I watched the late night news on the night of the UEFA Champions League final with slight bemusement but not surprise due to some of the antics that the Chelsea fans were getting up to just down the road in Fulham. My house mate on his arrival home also told the story of a group of Chelsea fans getting stuck into one another on a Tube train. They may be one of the richest clubs in the league but it doesn’t mean a lot of their fans are generally much more than thugs. Chelsea wasn’t always a rich club, prior to the current owner pumping in millions of pounds I believe (and actually don’t care) it was actually quite a poor club.

There’s a quote that floats around and gets pulled out by various people and media on occasion that goes something like this “Football: a game for thugs played by gentleman, Rugby: a game for gentlemen played by thugs”. I’m not sure who originally said it, a quick google revealed nothing concrete. How true! I mean how many sports do fellow fans belt each other up. I can vaguely understand the supporters of opposing teams belting each other up, but its incredible that they beat each other up.

The other thing that has provided amusement to me is the little girl that is John Terry. Apparently he was crying for hours after the game. Why? Its only a fucking game! Its not like he’s lost a close family member or is crying for all the death and despair in China and Burma. His team mate Frank Lampard sums up my thoughts perfectly with his quote “I can probably speak better than anyone at the moment that it’s just a game of football and there are more important things in life” (he recently lost his mother to pneumonia). Terry deserves all the jokes that are getting published about him. The Telegraph has some choice ones here. Maybe he’s crying for the despicable behaviour of his fans or the fact that the loss of the game means a loss of money for the club and London where they’re based to the tune of £35 million pounds in prize money, tourism and promotions. Damn, he probably won’t get a pay rise this year, after all with inflation and the price of fuel £110,000 a week probably doesn’t cut it.

Don’t get me wrong, I like watching a good game, not necessarily football, and have no problems what so ever with celebration or commiseration except when it hurts others… which it seems invariably happens most of the time that Chelsea win or lose.

What is it about Londoners and their complete and utter lack of good taste when it comes to drinking coffee? I back this up with the fact that there are more Starbucks coffee shops per square kilometre in London than anywhere else in the world. I admit now that I do on occasion have the a cup of the aforementioned coffee but the only reason for this is that it is the only coffee within reasonable walking distance of the office….. and I don’t drink the instant muck.

In the last couple of years that I’ve been living in London I’ve been on the lookout for good coffee. Well to be honest whenever I travel I try to find a good coffee. Its quite rare that I have found it. Like Starbucks the other place that I rarely find good coffee is in hotels so generally, unless I’m working, I’ll try and find somewhere near where I’m staying with something that resembles a reasonable cup of my favourite hot beverage. Over my time in London I have found places that have reasonable coffee but nothing that I class as great.

As a general rule the couple of things that I usually look for to get a half drinkable cup of coffee is simple. Firstly I look online to see if I can find some recommendations. Failing that I look for a couple of major coffee brands. Segafredo Zanetti is one, Illy is another or failing that I find most brands of Fairtrade Coffee generally offer a reasonable cup.

So are there any better than reasonable coffees that I’ve had lately? Yes! Recently I found Monmouth Coffee in central London. No idea why I hadn’t found it before and what’s more I found it while trying to find a good place for coffee in South West London (any recommendations on that one would be great). Anyway it comes highly recommended, but the flagship cafe in Monmouth St is tiny so its quite hard to get somewhere to sit. They also have a store down in Borough and are about to move their roasting from Monmouth St to a larger facility in a rail arch in Rotherhithe, I assume they’ll also have a Cafe there too.

Out of London if your after really good coffee in New York City I can recommend both Jack’s Stir Brew, some of the best coffee I’ve had in a long time, and Grey Dog Coffee at 90 University Place, not far from Union Square. Jack’s Stir Brew was another small cafe, but Grey Dog had lots of space and does good breakfast too.

Any recommendations for good coffee in London add details to the comments as I’m always on the lookout for good coffee

Welcome to the inaugural London Rant.

BAA amuses me with their increases to taxes that they’ve just been granted. I have no idea why the government has granted them an allowance to do this. From their website they report an operating profile of £577 million yet they still manage to completely fuck up the operations and security of the likes of hugely important airports like Heathrow. There have been two major security incidents in the last couple of weeks, the last one occuring as I write this. They also manage to loose more baggage than Imelda Marcos has shoes as well as not even managing to maintain things like baggage handling facilities!

How does the government allow this to continue happening? I would guess that they get a large percentage of the taxes that BAA collects so allowing them to increase the taxes allows them to collect more from the general consumer who is already paying. I recently went to New York for a holiday. The cost of the return ticket from Heathrow was £285.30 but I was interested to note at the bottom of the confirmation email was a breakdown of the cost, the flight was £102 but the the Tax/Fee/Charges was £183.30! Nearly twice that of the actual fare!

Surely their ability to increase taxes and hence their revenue should be tied to their performance, especially that of security and the basics like their ability to be able to load/unload planes with luggage. They strike me to be alot like most of the formerly publicly owned companies completely incompetent due to being filled with ex public servants but profit driven due to their private ownership.