Churchill and His Money

It’s all very well Phil Bentley laying out £3.6m on his Mitie (LON:MTO) bet but he is not in post until 12th December. He will then, I think, be able to see contracts which are front-end loaded as regards profits. This will grind hard.

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I had absolutely decided to leave Cadiz (NASDAQ:CDZI) alone since the cheerleaders over here had consistently got it wrong. But the price keeps lifting. So I paid $9.60 for a sentimental 5,000 shares. Last night they closed at $10.35. The price action is good and, of course, the Angelenos want the water. Trump is on Cadiz’s side.

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I went on buying REA (LON:RE.). The current price of 315p is quite simply wrong.

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I was in Oxford yesterday and so missed the Hammond speech. As I understand this morning’s press it was merely more of the same. It is astonishing as to how HMG’s debt has still not become so pressing that the gilts market collapses. Peter Oborne this morning blames Osborne but I am sure that blaming Brown would be much nearer the mark.

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Book review (1): I have just ploughed through Churchill and his Money by David Lough (Head of Zeus Limited, £25). You would have thought that our all time national hero would have been supremely sensible in his private life. Far from it: he constantly speculated to no effect whether on horses, casinos or the London and, in due course, New York Stock Exchanges.

Of course he had the perpetual problem of financing his bid for political power where the costs ran far ahead of any salary paid by Parliament. However, quite extraordinarily, he revelled in jousting with his creditors and, also, the Inland Revenue – in the latter case he even engaged when he was in the middle of arranging Britain’s part in D-Day.

It is not possible to understand Churchill unless one understands his money. Hurry now.

Book review (2): Surely, You’re Joking Mr Feynman (Amazon £5) struck me as so good that by the end of page 2 I was ready to recommend it to a chum. On reflection the book suits those of a scientific mind but that still leaves a vast market.

Richard Feynman was born in 1918, worked on the development of the A-bomb at Los Alamos and became a Nobel Laureate in Physics. The book was published in 1985 and I presume that Mr Feynman is dead. He had a searing mind.

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Finally, I see that our chairman has been chewing the cud in Trump Tower. He does not say so but one is bound to suppose that he was gladhanding Beelzebub himself. How about the chairman for British ambassador in Washington? Why not? After all, he has no reputation for downing Young’s bitter in the street.