Crown Currency failure may have Golden sister

Thanks to an anonymous email I have been alerted to a further development in the Crown Currency debacle.

Now, Foreign Currency exchange has always been a big market for the darker sides of our society. After all, dealing in cash has obvious attractions. Another angle of late has been to con retail investors out of money by getting them to play with Currency trading. Using high leverage you are guaranteed to lose. FT Alphaville has exposed this scam many times over. To dateit has not stopped these type of companies sponsoring Premier League football clubs or inspired the FSA to actually do anything.

Anyway, back to the Crown currency collapse of which little is known at the moment. All I can see is that Barclays have £2 million and about £20 million is owed. It could be a pure ponzi scheme or something similar. Anyway, under UK law you have no protection so the poor people who have got involved in this company trying to get FX for the future are going to suffer.

Then we come to Mayfair and Grant, whose shareholders are also Peter (previous form) and Susan Benstead of Hayle in Cornwall, same as Crown Currency. This company sells small amounts of gold at amazing prices which they sell online and store for you on their premises...I would not be very happy if I had put money there recently.  I wonder when we will find out how much Gold is in the vaults? Not surprising schemers like this pick on areas where retail punters are getting lured into a toppy bull market.

The story gets worse, as another main shareholder of Crown Currency is Edward James, a Tory Councillor in Somerset and one of the leaders of the Tories in the County.

Would you like carrier bag. Cashback ? How about a mortgage?

Tesco announced more profits, maintaining their £1 in £3 spent in supermarkets grip on the UK.
But a lot of this years profits came from overseas, with UK a little underwhelming. With fuel sales removed its actually quite stagnant. The big growth area for Tesco was Asia. The USA market doesn't look so hot, stuck in the same recession as we are. They also seem to be doing the sales and leaseback of stores, which is a short term gain.

{BQ opposes that strategy whenever it is mooted, but the beancounters nearly always manage to sell the benefits vs the downsides. In much smaller companies it means they actually suffer in a boom, with higher rents, and just look at Alliance-Boots recently, but anyway..}

So in order to boost future profits Tesco are increasing their financial offerings looking to add mortgages and current accounts to their insurances, loans and credit cards.

Government has yet to make a twenty year old decision on the PostBank so still no new banking facilities there. There is a big difference between the two models. Tesco primarily intends to be an internet bank. I'm sure they will have facilities at the checkouts, but really they aren't about to embark on a branch based model. They currently have only around 1,000 stores, but with phenomenal footfall. They also have plenty of cash and aren't encumbered by the banks' historic bad debts.

PostBank would use the existing post office network, some 12,000 outlets, more than all the banks combined, and covering the most rural of areas, highly unprofitable for a network. It would be a branch based model. They would be better for the local community, saving long journeys, helping the elderly who are "digitally excluded". However the government would have to stump up the cash for the bank.

I'm not sure which is the better model for the country if a genuine 'alternative' to the current banking system was to be tried. retail, not casino, safety first.. an' all that.
Tesco would be the cheaper. They are self funded, would only need a few financial advisers in each branch, and handle the rest through their stores. They generate cash on site too and are experts at automation.. But they will be restricted to the online and those who can best travel in, which must be said is already about 15% of the entire population.

I rarely go into my own local bank branch. If it wasn't for the business transactions I wouldn't use it at all, banking online, getting cashback and so on. But that local bank is always packed. Takes a good 10 minutes to be seen whatever time of day. And if you go into any bank branch its busy. So many,many people do still use a branch based model. Post office currently get their main income from their branches {after postage} from cash withdrawals/deposits.

Tesco are going to become a bank regardless of what the government does, but if PO is split from Royal Mail it would be most beneficial to its business model to be able to be a bank. In other countries where Post Office was split from government control PostBank was automatically introduced..
Putting the Post office into supermarkets has already been trialed, with very disappointing results for the supermarkets who can make a lot more money a lot more quickly by filling the space with tins.

Liverpool FC ~ Leveraged Finance denouement

Very interesting stories around today about the fate of Liverpool. Peston as ever has the insider skinny from Martin Broughton by the sounds of it.

We Capitalists have warned of the dangers of leveraged finance in football clubs for a long time. When you think about it,the Premier league is akin to a poker game in a casino, one player in the poker game using his overdraft up against a Sheikh and a Russian billionaire. It takes no genius to know who is going out first.

However, the most interesting piece of news here is that no one has yet done the due diligence to see what the new owners will do. At Man Utd the new owners circumvented rules that are designed to stop companies being bought with debt raised against their own assets (they did this by re-financing after the deal). Who is to say the New England investors won't do the same?

Liverpool will then be left with debts half of what they have now, which is a plus, but will still be heavily indebted - and to American owners who have not proved a good match with Scouse fans (socialists and capitalists are never going to make happy bedfellows are they?).

Worse for Liverpool, the New England investors are not going to give Gillette and Hicks a penny, that will mean RBS foreclosing on the loan and Liverpool being docked points in the Premier League. Ouch, I look forward to the solutions suggested to get around this.

Nanny State ? - Nein, Danke !

Letter from Germany

Nothing much from me of late, es tut mir Leid: I am travelling rather a lot to a land where they take – what shall we say – a refreshingly robust attitude to ‘elf-n-safety’.

In the picture below, taken from my eyrie above Düsseldorf, the little orange blob is indeed a man in a trench, unguarded from the main road alongside, and working in perfect harmony with the mechanical digger whose large steel arm is indeed hovering a couple of feet over his head, as it appears. His head, by the way, is not adorned with a hard hat (for which he would immediately be dismissed from a UK building site - & that’s before everyone involved in this jolly escapade was given their cards).

He digs away with his pick: and when he has broken up enough soil, the digger grubs it up, swings its grab out across the road, through 180 degrees to the truck behind it. Sometimes bits fall out of the grab onto the road but no-one seems to mind.

In case you imagine I have misinterpreted this scene from a distance, let me assure you I have not: take a butcher’s at this:

I reckon they dug 100 feet in 2 hours – and not a pneumatic drill in sight. A man then dragged by hand some plastic piping across the road from the lay-down area opposite: they joined it all up, and back-filled. Job’s a good ‘un. The traffic was never halted. No animals were harmed in the making of this film.

I am going to take some pics of the remarkable, nay, lethal railway arrangements in this pleasant, prosperous town to illustrate my next missive.

Pip pip !

ND

Social media bubble market

Recently there has been a huge swathe of stories on the rise and rise of Social Media. Indeed the new film about founding Facebook is the number one film in the USA. Taking a contrarian view, the more discussion there is of these wondrous new businesses, the more likely it is we are seeing a bubble effect.

At Twitter too the news is that the co-Founder is out, replaced by a former Google executive as they try to find a way to make money out of Twitter.

For a long time I have been sceptical about actually making huge amounts of money out of social networking, no doubt it will be cracked, but will the fad last long enough to sustain the business? Already Facebook is slowing in its acquisition of members and tweeting is losing its cool. The Internet has seen many risers and fallers over the past decade, some huge companies like AOL have gone by the wayside and even Bebo has faded away, once a Social networking star.

So for investors this is a doubly difficult business as picking winner is hard and these businesses often don't list until the hype is ripe. You could not buy google for 20c a share like you could say Cairn Energy.  Instead the IPO's are at high valuations with much more downside risk than upside. In the UK we have the Ocado debacle this year too, a hybrid online/retail play with a silly price designed to net the owners a fortune. On the other hand, will many of these companies ever IPO?

What this demonstrates is the reality of the decline of the Capital Markets; small and fast growing tech companies can stay private, take PE and VE money and never share their growing wealth with small investors (noting of course the huge risks mentioned above). I guess the Dotcom boom still has a lot to answer for and now there is not even a route to trying to pick the winners.

Anyone have any good social media companies on their watchlists, is it possible still to buy into this bubble and get out before it bursts?

Can Osborne seek redemption through betrayl?

Osborne, never a big favourite of this blog for his ecomomic calls (his political ones are masterful) has begun to spell out what has long been expected, an attack on Tory marginal voters.

The cutting of child benefit will disproportionately affect those on middle incomes in the South East; but here the Tories are home and hosed. Where it will have less impact is in the Midlands and the North. Even in the early months of Government, the eye of politicians is on the next election.

The truth is the child benefit cut will save footling amounts, perhaps £10 billion over the course of the Parliament; it is thought meant to be symbolic of the self-flagellation of Tories for the sake of the deficit. The idea is to provide cover for the future cuts to come.

So, perhaps now is the time to wait and see what these cuts are going to be, I am waiting be be unexpectedly pleased rather than underwhelmed. Excellent comments for yesterday's post show the frustration at the lack of tackling the big issues, like public sector pensions. It is a disgrace in the extreme.
Example A - (UK Ponzi pension scheme)  Police force where the average retirement age is 49.

Cuts ot universal benefits in UK?

Must say, loved hearing Ian Duncan Smith of the Radio today sticking to some BBC numpties over changing the benefits system. The BBC interviewer kept saying, '"hmmm" after every question and then proceeding to read out the most vitriolic emails she could find - i.e. are you going to stop disabled people having any benefits etc.

Even better was when a caller phoned in to ask whether it was expected that everyone should get a job rather than cut benefits.

Bill Quango is convinced this policy will be the downfall of the Government because it will always look like an attack on the poor, right or wrong.

I have more faith that the people who actually vote and pay taxes will stand strong and realise we do need a culture change.

Overall, this is the most radical thing the new Government is doing and it deserves to succeed for having the vision to seek change in such a broken, but controversial area.

Are we going to make it through 2010 without a Financial Crisis?

1st October today, right in the middle of the 'storm' months in the Financial Markets. Two years ago exactly Lehman had gone under and the UK Banks were about to go down, either to bankruptcy or just in a massive share price collapse. Of course, Black Monday and the Wall Street Crash were also October events.

There are some pretty bad macro-issues around at the moment, with a global currency war and the sovereign debt issues of the outer Euro states.

But so far, so good, the markets are a little up in September having recovered their losses of the summer. Gold keeps rising suggesting some stress, but the pace of the rise is a little lower.

Things as always are on a knife edge...can we escape 2010 without a Financial Crisis?

Views of the Wise Crowd welcome...

Question time

BBC's flagship political program comes from the Labour conference city of Manchester. {bit of a clue to the type of audience there}

David Dimbleby is joined by Baroness Warsi, {chairperson of the Tory party and Kirstie Allsopp double}Simon Hughes {Lib Dem deputy leader politically slightly to the left of Gordon Brown, Diane Abbott { shadow cabinet hopeful, possibly minister for education and private schools}, David Starkey {entertaining but impossible to like right leaning historian and Brian Cox {Scots actor... don't really know him.}

What could the major story of the day be?
BQ's guesses in new requested mini type face..

Q1 - David Miliband sort of resigns
Q2 - Wrong about Iraq and massive hippo-grit Harman.
Q3 - Fox's leaks
Q4 - Ireland's bank bailout and how exposed are we
Q5 - Police volunteers only.

Poll Next Week - Best UK Business/Economics Blog

Instead of the usual weekly round up this weekend I want to do a list of the top UK blogs for business and economic news. The trouble is, that as a relatively niche area I am sure I don't even come close to having to having a good list.

What should we do about the dead tree press, let them in? it seems mean not to have Ambrose Evans-Pritchard but then I doubt he would ever describe himself as a blogger. Perhaps instead a later competition for most influential commentator?

So buy the power of crowd source please can you help me come up with the nominations: so far I have,

Tim Worstall
FT Alphaville
Robert Peston
Stephanie Flanders
Mark Kleineman
Bearwatch
Burning Our Money
Michael Fowke
John Redwood
Stumbling and Mumbling
Tax Trust
Labour and Capital
Adam Smith Institute
Market Oracle
Duncans economic blog

I am sure this is not even close and so please nominate in the comments too - self-promotion welcome.

Guest Post: UK Small Oil Cap Shares

Well, fresh from having bought yet another small oil share this morning (AEY), I have below a post by an excellent young analyst, Chris Hopper. Chris started out a couple of years ago with an interest in the markets and has built some very impressive winning positions. Moreover, his commitment to doing real research has helped him pick many huge winners.

There is a huge amount of private investor money going into small cap oils at the moment. So Chris has come up with a defensive strategy for what is still a top sector beset by strange valuations and poor liquidity:


"2010 has again bought us some true winners across the London AIM Market, A market where small companies strive for profitability or to discover the next big resource/invention, however the London AIM market suffers from a disease that is leading to a serious miss-valuation on stock prices,


It is not uncommon to see 100 or 200% daily rises in Aim listed stock prices for them then to gradually give up the gains over the next few days; the fueling for these sky high gains can usually be traced back to Investor bulletin boards.


AIM stocks go in and out of fashion like there's no tomorrow and you only have to browse sites such as iii.co.uk or advfn to see what I'm talking about.


However over the past 18 months it seems to be the Oil Exploration and production companies that have been where the "Hot Money" has been flowing towards on London's AIM.


A few certain stock have truly found what every small Oil E&P company dreams of A world class discovery and this is usually reflected in their stock price.


Late 2009 saw Kurdistan based Gulfkeystone Petroleum strike black gold in its shaikan block that analysts are now predicting could hold over 20 billion barrels of oil and has been labled as one of the biggest discoveries in the past 40 years its stock price rose from 5p to over £1.20 in just a few months, 2010 saw further large discoveries in the Falklands and in the North Sea, Rockhopper exploration found what could hold upto 450million barrels of recoverable oil and it too saw its stock jump over 1000% over a short space of time but is it these sort of discoveries that has led to investors becoming over ambitious on the prospects of finding oil, perhaps in similar regions where other discoverys have been made Sterling Energy is a good example who have so far failed to find oil in Kurdistan but remain to be valued at £300m , finding commerical oil is no easy task and in many cases can be the make or break of many of these companies, however the constant "ramping" and hype surrounding these stocks usually keeps the share price inflated until a faeces/fan intersect moment and in black and white investors are told their company has been unsuccessfull.


The recent bubble has been surrounding the Falkland oil stocks that all seem to of prospered on the back of Rockhopper's multi-million barrel find, its almost as if to say we're going to value happy shopper at half the marketcap of tescos simply because their next door and they sell the same things. Stocks such as Desire Petroleum (DES £500m marktcap) and Falklands Oil & Gas (FOGL £250m mrkt cap) are two examples of stocks that have failed to find oil but yet seem to be valued extreamly high, say in comparision to another AIM oiley Chariot Oil who havent started drilling for oil yet but hold the same if not more chance of striking it rich who are valued at £175m or Xcite energy who have already made a large discovery and are soon to provide its economic worth ( £140m mrketcap) and consider the remotness and the development costs needed should DES or FOGL make a discovery they seem a bubble waiting to burst but are being propped up by hot money.


Over to Canada and the situation is different Oil E&P stocks listed on their TSX are looked upon in a whole different light as the reality of development costs and the small chances of actually finding a commercial discovery is reflected in stock prices in toronto stocks such as African Oil and Vast exploration who despite having a good chance of making a commerical discovery in the billions or barrel range are valued at under £100m - these look like far better safer places for investment."
 
CU - I would add that my single largest "investments" are in GKP mentioned above and IAE an dual AIM/TSX listed explorere/developer of North Sea oil. CU managed to lose a small packet trying to trade DES.

Red Ed's Redemption

In the best-selling Wild West video game Red or Dead Redemption the main character has to hunt down and bring to justice his former gang members.

Not quite so for little Miliband, but he did do some of the the Redemption bit.
"Sorry about Iraq and all the wars. Sorry about immigration and lack of social housing. Sorry about 42 days detention and closing all the Pubs and Post Offices..and sorry for the economic wasteland and all that..."

He didn't apologise for the poverty gap, the armed forces lack of equipment, I.D. cards, rendition, cash for peerages, Railtrack, stealth taxes, the industrial decline...well the list is a bit long but it was only his first day.

It wasn't an overwhelming performance from the man who is tasked with bringing an end to coalition, but it was good enough. Ed Miliband made a speech to the faithful that went a little further than he needed to. This was primarily a conference speech. A speech that would receive massive media coverage but still a speech to the converted. He could have said he was backing bonkers Harriet Harman's earlier decision to endorse industrial action against any public sector cuts. In fact he distanced himself, however slightly, from the unions.
He could have denied the deficit, but instead he acknowledged it. He had a good line in there too.
He spoke about Labour's undeniably good record on the refurbishment of schools and hospitals.
"I went to school in a leaky port-a-cabin. Whatever they claim under 18 years of Tory rule they never fixed the roof while the sun was shining."

Not bad. Osborne has been using that attack to great effect since 2008. Why didn't someone think of a defence before? Whoever wrote it should feel rightly pleased.

The non-socialist media appear to have given Ed Miliband a sort of cautious..did OK..kind of report. BBC website's tone is suitably supportive. But at the conference John Pienaar was less impressed. I read CU's pleasure at having a 'red' into government. But if I was Cameron I might just feel a bit of apprehension.

The Tories took a decade to admit that they lost votes as least as much as labour winning them off them. It took a decade to apologise for pretty much everything except the poll tax which they'd already tried to neutralise with Major. The party was split over Europe, over spending, over social provision. The votes lost in Scotland have never come back.
Already Ed Miliband is telling his party that if they stay in the heartlands they will not gain power. Ten MPs in the south of England shows just how badly Labour did in 2010. Ed has accepted that. He admitted to past mistakes and talked about optimism. It was pretty vacuous stuff, with no sense of how to go forward or how to become less reliant on a generations worth of tax revenue from financial services. But the fact he acknowledged a problem at all marked a huge change from his predecessor.

Tractor stats Brown could only talk of successes. After 13 years that Stalinist type of propaganda had worn very thin. And to Brown talk of failure was treasonous. Remember he was baited for almost a year by the press who teased him like an unpopular fat kid and tried to make him say sorry. The more Brown resisted, the more they had fun trying to make him. In the end the 10p tax fiasco {that didn't make it into today's apologies but there's still a long time to go} forced him to say a grudging teenage type of 'didn't mean it..sooorreee' and the press moved on. I doubt Ed Miliband will have that trouble. He already knows he needs to present a fresh image for his defeated party. He knows they lost because they were wrong. He is much more likeable than the brooding neighbour from number 11 was. He looks younger, fresher, and seems willing to offer something different, even if he is yet to know quite what that might be.

William Hague had absolubtely no chance of overturning the electoral landslide that Tony Blair won in 1997. Ed Miliband has every chance. He is facing a coalition of two parties holding different ideologies who are forced to make large scale cuts to public services, render workers unemployed and to raise taxes on everyone. The certainty of industrial action will only add to the misery. If Ed stops this rather weak strategy of solely attacking the Lib Dems and instead begins to woo them, while attacking the Tories he will pick up hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of votes. If he can attack the Lib dem leaders for 'naked power grabbing' while appealing for the left dems to join the
'All new..extra cleaned up, no more war, socially and civil liberty reformed. NLX [New Labour Extra] {now with added fiscal responsibility!}'
he can win back many lost seats. He will lose from the boundary changes but gain from the pain of the cuts.

With good fortune, a tight rein on the more extreme parts of his party and a poor economic recovery he could possibly make his dream of "ensuring that this coalition is a one term government only" a reality.

Debt Management's sick story

Spread across the news today is a sad story of exploitation, with debt management organisations abusing their status and making people's desperate financial situation even worse in the midst of the recession.

Today's OFT report has some disturbing insights:

"In some cases, it appears that business models may be set up to take the maximum amount of money from a consumer regardless of their circumstances," the report said.
"Firms are not giving the advice or offering the solution that is in the best interests of the consumer, but instead that which is most profitable to them."


Undercover Capitalist Workers have been able to discover this exclusive story of the worst abuser. Going under the name of 'HMRC' and being led by known charlatan David Hairnet, this organisation is praying in innocent taxpayers.

The greedy thieves behind this shady organisation are known to report to  capo di capo George Osborne; their aims are to defraud innocent people of as much of their wealth as possible in order for it to be used for secretive Government 'Debt Management' purposes.

The scam takes in its victims in the following way. Ordinary UK subjects going about their daily work and are sent inflammatory demanding they pay taxes. Call centres for the'HMRC' are set-up to strong arm people with threats of kangaroo court action and big fines for non-compliance. Failure to agree to making payments results either in the criminals directly assessing someones PAYE and deducting funds directly or the corrupt judiciary and police becoming involved (it is though in desperation for finance, the Police and their Unions are willing to take money from any sources) and possible imprisonment.

"There is no question there are lots of cowboys in the industry," said Michael Land, chairman of Demsa {the industry body for Debt Management] who welcomed the OFT report.

There are few ways to avoid entrapment, one is to simply never take a job to deny the Government PAYE access - this is a route taken by estimated 15% of the Country. The other increasingly attractive alternative to is move to abroad to a less corrupt Country.

Ed's Balls-y gamble

Ed Balls' is apparently very happy with the outcome of the Labour leadership according to my source working in his campaign team. He feels that he is well positioned to take a good shadow position in the Cabinet along with wife Yvette Cooper. This is going to provide a nice income to keep them far out of harms way from all these dreaded cuts and handily placed for those MP's expenses claims.

What I have noticed is Balls's canny ability to string out an economic stance to his benefit. Balls has outlined his view that what the UK needs is hugely more stimulus and no kind of cuts to the deficit at all. As he is a bright guy he has found some half decent evidence to back up his views and so there are some in the Media and the City who see him as being principled and perhaps even correct. Desperate to avoid or face reality, some will believe anything.

What he is really doing is a typical politician's gamble in the Vince Cable mould. After all, if the cuts hurt and the economy staggers, Balls can declare victory and carry on haranguing at length. If the economy pulls through and the Coalition prosper, Balls is not going to to get anywhere near government anyway. Thus this is like Cable's conference speech, lacking in sanity except as an appeal to the populist masses.

Balls has played the game well so far, he has 're-established' credibility and will bag himself a continuing role in the Labour Party. If he gets lucky, he may even be seen to be a star; I think this unlikely but then predictions are hard to make, especially when they are about the future.

Ed Balls reflects.

With Ed Miliband's victory, it seems brother Dave might get the shadow chancellors job.
Poor David Miliband must be kicking himself that he behaved like Friedrich Fromm when James Purnell began the Operation Valkyrie coup against Brown.
Still, With his brother in charge he's guaranteed a job.

Not so for the candidate who was the real heir. The heir to Brown should have been gifted the party, much as Brown was by Blair.

What now for Ed Balls?




{music by Lee Evans}

My Birthday Wish

For my Birthday (35 today!) I would like Labour to elect a lame duck leader with no majority of support from the Labour MP's and only winning because of the undemocratic dinosaur Union vote.

Hahahahahaha.....time for something fizzy to celebrate.

Our Man Ed

Go Ed !

One of my better calls.

If I have judged my man correctly, he will prove fairly creative, very pragmatic, and quite ruthless. He will be his own man, and a big disappointment to his Union sponsors, who will get a lot less air-time and ear- time with him than they
assume.

And Mandy will never hear from him at all.

ND

Stamp it out!

The latest set of commemorative stamps from Royal Mail should come with an extra set featuring pictures of barrels being scraped.

Medical breakthroughs.. wow!

The value structure is odd too.
- 58p stamp is a surface letter to Europe. Who posts those? Its 2p cheaper than air. ..
-88p is surface letter to USA. I guess its for Christmas cards. So if its for Christmas cards why is the stamp picture of the Malaria parasite?

The weekend's competition is to come up with your own set of inappropriate or unlikely commemorative stamps. Capitalists at work offers up

1. "Failed banks of the credit crunch."
2. "Labour leadership contenders of 2010
3. "Famous terrorists of the world"

and maybe a special set for Royal Mail themselves.
4. "Memorable privatisations of the 20th century" - so if you see Sid, tell him to enter.

FSA to increase insider trading in UK markets

Sadly this is only to be expected from an organisation that thought Northern Wreck was a well run organisation that needed only occasional light touch regulation by a 22 year old straight out of uni.

As usual the FSA have seen the problem and utterly failed to engage their brain. The issue so they think is that bankers tell journalists about deals that are yet to happen. This apparently leads to unusual trading as speculation mounts. Of course the FSA does not regulate accountants, lawyers and PR's who all do the same thing.

There are two epic failures of understanding here. Firstly, insider trading is when the news IS NOT shared with journalists but with individual investors who then profit from secret information that may affect share prices. Journalists have a strict code about investing in companies, their role is just to print information or gossip.

The second failure is to try to restrict information in the age of twitter. Good luck with that, what re you going to do send everyone to jail? It is really finger in the dyke thinking.

The real, glaringly obvious answer, is to make information MORE freely available, so that bankers don't get to stitch up retail investors behind closed doors. In this age of mass information dissemination this is of course easier to do too. More negotiations conducted in public would be a good thing.

The City would hate it too; the fact that the FSA is trying to do the opposite just shows how in the pocket of bankers the place is. Can't wait until it is disbanded.

BBC Question Time competition Returns

The return of the never popular question time guess compo. You guess questions from the 5/6 that will be asked. Also completely arbitrary bonus points awarded for predicting a key word, theme or phrase from members of the panel. Answers in the comments.

This weeks Question Time show has David Dimbleby {long running, inconsistent, but good on his day, host} joined in Liverpool by Vince Cable {Cuban schooled, anti-business secretary,} John Redwood {Conservative ex-minister, blogger, and minor coalition irritant}, Caroline Flint {Failed coup plotter, and hopeless minister, who can sometimes be surprisingly good on this show}, Ian Hislop {venerable HIGNFY panelist, journalist and satirist} Mehdi Hasan {shouty politics journalist for the New statesman}.

1. Cable goes after the Spivs in austerity Britain.
2. Clegg has destroyed the Lib Dems
3. Labour Leadership. Liverpool audience wants Andy Burnham.
4. Should HMG have paid for the Pope to visit
5. Royal Mail privatisation {outside chance but some of the most militant mail centres are in Liverpool}