Huw Edwards is supposed, according to the Daily Mail, to hand back some of the money he has been paid by the BBC ever since his troubles emerged in mid 2023. However, were I his solicitor, I would advise him to do nothing of the sort. This is not because what he has he holds but because, quite lawfully, the money is his. This is just a stance published by the Daily Mail to try and convince the readers of the Daily Mail that their newspaper is on their side. We more cynical fellows know that their newspaper is on the side of the profit-making policies of the management, an entirely different objective. However, I dare say that the BBC might review its standard contracts of employment.
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The late Dr Michael Mosley drew his listeners’ attention to the advantages of drinking a tablespoonful of olive oil a day – what some would consider the basis of the Mediterranean diet which leads to Italians, Greeks etc. living appreciably longer than their northern European contemporaries. It is the polyphenols that do it (apparently). So, drawn by curiosity, I followed through a long video-based promotion offered by the online edition of the Daily Mail. It kicks off with the lead come on: are you interested in wellness? This works since the converse would be: are you interested in being unwell?
The viewer is drawn to the advantages of olive oil consumption but emphasises to the viewer the much improved advantages of virgin olive oil on account of the much higher, it is declared, incidence of polyphenols. This is fine but the selling price of virgin olive oil is roughly double its pedestrian basic product as competitor. Hereon things become more intense, the advertiser’s virgin olive oil comes from olive trees grown on volcanically determined earth. By now this olive oil is becoming scarcer and scarcer in the viewer’s mind and he is therefore softened up to paying around four to five times the basic product. From all the persistent blah one might imagine that the vendor is some public spirited Doctor who has specialised in studying diet. But until the matter is clarified it is probably much wiser to suppose that the vendor is a retailer of olive oil. Hardly difficult, is it?
*****
Eventually I got back my HMRC-owed tax refund of £29,000 albeit only after several telephone calls and a four month delay. At the time of its receipt I ascribed the delay and the dither to the general low level of HMRC’s staff that has emerged in recent years. So readers can only imagine my astonishment to be telephoned late last week with the advice that £200 compensation would be in my bank account within days. This may of course just be a sum based on some sort of estimate of interest that I might otherwise have received. But it was nice of them to phone without being prompted.
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Late last week I kept my wife away from the balcony lest she had donned a white flag adorned with the red cross of St. George and decided to rush out. This was because a helicopter kept going round and round overhead looking for troublemakers gathering below. Note to the pilot: my wife is 77 years old.
*****
Pantheon Resources (PANR) have successfully got away their fund-raising at 17p. Stock is now on offer at 19p and, with a bit of luck, have a long way higher to go. I am told that the target price is well above 100p.