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The Garrulous Jay – Broken Promise Machines
All businesses are promise machines. The contract between seller and buyer effectively involves the giving and receiving of a promise, whether the enterprise is manufacturing pins, leasing...
The Garrulous Jay – Health Warning
Health Warning – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that 1 in 500,000 people who receive the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine will be struck by lightning. Politicians are now...
The Garrulous Jay – Shippam vs. Tyson
“Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.” So, famously, said Mike Tyson ahead of his fight with Evander Holyfield in November 2006. This oft-quoted line was intended by Tyson to...
The Garrulous Jay – 2021: A SPAC Oddity
African Gold, Velocity, Fusion II, Warrior, Flame, SilverBox, Gores VIII…and the list goes on. But what are they? Concept albums by Seventies supergroups? Names of spacecraft? Street vernacular for...
The Garrulous Jay – Gender Disadvantage
In 2011 women made up just 12.5% of FTSE-100 companies’ Boards, and 9.5% for the FTSE-250. As the final report of the Hampton-Alexander Review disclosed last week, the corresponding figures for 2020...
The Garrulous Jay – Queen Bee
On the 11th February 31 year-old Whitney Wolfe Herd became the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire when the company she founded just over six years ago, Bumble Inc., floated on the US...
The Garrulous Jay – “Not At The Table, Darling!”
There was a time when matters of politics and religion were deemed not to be appropriate topics for conversation at the dinner table in polite society. There is now a debate – reframed around...
The Garrulous Jay – Authenticity
On the 21st May 2016 Hibernian beat Rangers 3-2 in the Scottish Cup Final to win the trophy for just the second time in the Club’s history. Their previous victory had come 114 years earlier. What...
The Garrulous Jay – Caught Short
I have a great idea for my own movie. It’s an improbable high stakes David versus Goliath financial thriller, with a twist in the tail. I’m going to call it Caught Short.Here’s how it goes… A...
The Garrulous Jay – The Italian Job
The Italian Job is one of my favourite feel-good films. The tale of Charlie Crocker’s audacious plan to steal $4 million in gold bullion, whilst avenging the death of his friend Roger Beckermann at...
The Garrulous Jay – Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540)
I have just finished reading The Mirror and The Light, the third book in Hilary Mantel’s magnificent and meticulously researched fictional trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell. As I read...
The Garrulous Jay – Try January
This January I thought I would try something new, so I bought myself three bottles of non-alcoholic spirits. As well as satisfying my own curiosity, I thought it would help me stay a little ‘drier’...
The Garrulous Jay – I Believe In Unicorns
In November 2013 serial seed-stage investor and founder of Venture Capital company Cowboy Ventures, Aileen Lee, wrote an article for Techcrunch.com entitled, “Welcome To The Unicorn Club:...
The Garrulous Jay – Twelve Snowflakes
In keeping with the spirit of the season, this week The Garrulous Jay brings you twelve snowflakes...1/ Snowflake - A small agglomeration of water crystals that falls from the sky in...
The Garrulous Jay – Wealth Attax
A well-designed one-off wealth tax would raise a total of £260 billion at a rate of 5% over £500,000 per individual...payable at 1% per year over five years. (Source: “A wealth tax for the UK”,...
The Garrulous Jay – A Dash & A Wish
“No matter which way we cut it we end up with a situation where, across any number of metrics of valuation that we have faith in, the US just simply looks like the world’s most expensive market...
The Garrulous Jay – Imperial Mince
“Empire…” What does the word mean to you?For me it conjures up images of might, autocracy, scale and longevity. But it also comes with connotations of history and decline: empires don’t just fade...
The Garrulous Jay – Go-Ahead Punks
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”Ecclesiastes 1:9The book of Ecclesiastes was written in c.450-200...