I was racking my brains about how we, as a company, can do something about Carbon Emissions.
(We already do a bit. We print nothing we don’t have to, we produce no printed marketing material and only provide electronic invoicing, for example. Small stuff, but we DO think about things like that and do what we can)
Carbon Offsetting seems to be all the rage. I was never kinda comfortable with the whole concept. I just don’t really get it.
To me it was always a bit like that experiment they did with imposing a fine on Parents who don’t pick up their kids on time from school (and hence not inconvinience the teachers/ school). They THOUGHT it would incentivise the parents to be on time … but the OPPOSITE OCCURRED! Since Parents considered that they were now paying, it was suddenly okay to be late to pick up the kids, and incidences sky-rocketed!
See Here for the best reference i can find to this experiment. Best I can find in 20 Seconds anyway. I think it was reference in Tim Hartfords book “The Undercover Economist” or “Freakonomics”. One of the 2. Could be wrong. Good books anyway!
So I did a bit of research and came up with this video which put the nail in the coffin of that thought! Ha ha!
Imagine my surprise to get an “unsolicited” but USEFUL email into my inbox this morning.
I have been using “Efax” for some time now, all in the spirit of the Paperless Office (plus I don’t want or need the hassle of having a damned Analogue phoneline installed!) and it always works great for us!
So I get a little email, suggesting that since I have been using it for MORE than a year now, why dont I go on the “Annual” pricing plan instead of the “monthly”. It will end up saving me 2 months a year on the subscription.
Now I know that it is interesting to them to have Annual customers, I am sure it makes their planning and forecasting easier, and probably (if you aggregate the numbers) makes their company more valueable, but I think it is a nice touch anyway. Gift Horses and Mouths come to mind!
They could have just left me (and others, I am sure!) on that monthly plan and taken the higher revenues afforded by lazy Bas*&%*$ like me who don’t bother to look at the cheapest overall plan on such things.
Nice touch, eFAX. I am sure you will be MORE than adequately compensated for such systems in the long run!
A morose France has fallen behind its competitors. But there is nothing inevitable about its decline, argues Sophie Pedder: all it needs is political will
Bridgeman
“SOMETHING seems very wrong with this country. Once the very model
of a modern major power—stable, rich and smug—it appears beset now by
political and economic instability and by civil unrest and disorder.
One observer has even taken to calling it ‘the sick man of Europe’.
Hardly a month passes without the appearance of a new book or learned
article on the decline and imminent demise of a once proud country.”
(Please scroll down if you want to get straight to the « Properties to Consider » at the end.)
Nostalgia.
It seems a long time since “Property Letter 1” which was sent to about a dozen people on 17th April 2002. Vicky and I and the family had been out of Zimbabwe for less than 4 months! The March 2002 parliamentary election had been violently orchestrated and stolen again, and farming in Zimbabwe seemed not to be an option for us anymore. With that we decided to start again – in real estate in France.
This is the 60th Property Letter and goes out to over 300 people around the world. A 60th seems worthy of a small celebration, so perhaps Vicky and I will open a special bottle with family when the opportunity presents itself, to toast and thank all who have supported and encouraged us!
Capital gain is the reason everyone gets into property investment but it is the rental income that finances the deal while you
wait for the value to rise. In fact it is rental income that consumes a landlord and is a key factor in determining whether new buy-to-let investors stay the course.
Many first time BTL investors will sell up after a year and take the capital gain, and often a significant one at that, simply because they are struggling with the balance sheet.
Vicky and I will be in Cape Town for the month of August and I hope we will be able to see some of you there.
Cannes is amazing this year.
I suppose it is inevitable that we would feel increasingly secure in our environment, and we have been here for over four years now – we’re no longer “new boys” on the block.
Dear All,
I am going to change the format of my Property Letter a little in order to put in more properties and expand the offers to include luxury apartments and villas (Comments are invited and would be appreciated). Today I will write briefer descriptions, and leave it to you to ask me for details of properties that might interest you or that fall within your budget.
The property market in Cannes has not cooled. It is sometimes suggested that it “has” or that it “will”, or that it “is inevitable”. I believe the truth is that it will be subject to a leveling out from time to time (in the future), but see no reason for it to drop.
I found this article in this weeks Economist fascinating!
FREDERIC BASTIAT, who was that rarest of creatures, a French free-market economist, wrote to this newspaper in 1846 to express a noble and romantic hope:
“May all the nations soon throw down the barriers which separate them.”
Those words were echoed 125 years later by the call of John Lennon, who was not an economist but a rather successful global capitalist, to
“imagine there’s no countries”.
As he said in his 1971 song, it isn’t hard to do. But despite the spectacular rise in living standards that has occurred as barriers between nations have fallen, and despite the resulting escape from poverty by hundreds of millions of people in those places that have joined the world economy, it is still hard to convince publics and politicians of the merits of openness. Now, once again, a queue is forming to denounce openness—ie, globalisation. It is putting at risk the next big advance in trade liberalisation and the next big reduction in poverty in the developing countries.
