Index-linked savings to return!

Great news: National Savings & Investments are reintroducing Index-Linked Savings Certificates, according to this article in the Guardian newspaper.

But there is a sales target (£2 billion) and then quite possibly NS&I will shut up shop again, as they did last year. So it's likely that these will fly out very fast and you should be on the lookout for the launch - click here to get email updates from NS&I.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Galgenhumor

The kindest people have the cruellest humour, it's kind of a ying-yang thing. Seen in an advice centre for carers today:

"I wish my lawn was EMO so it would cut itself."

"The EU has no power over Parliament" - British MP

"The EU has no power over parliament. In fact the Lisbon Treaty included a change for a provision to leave the EU. Parliament can simply refuse to incorporate EU law and in my view should be a bit more critical.

People also get confused between the EU and the Council of Europe."

Rt Hon John Hemming MP to Mr Rolf Norfolk, emailed 22 March 2011

In view of this, be prepared to challenge any Minister who claims that something is so and cannot be changed, because of European legislation. The struggle is between the people and their supposed representatives in Parliament.

More drivel, and getting more dangerous

Max "spank Prince Andrew" Hastings reaches out to the dar al-salaam in his latest Daily Mail piece:

"It remains puzzling why David Cameron, with so much unresolved in meeting the huge challenge of remaking Britain, has chosen to take the risk of leading the way into Libya.

"His boldness in an honourable and moral cause is indisputable. Now that British forces are engaged, we can only pray for their success, and hope that the crusade to remove a wicked despot from power ends as happily as do the best fairy stories."

Elsewhere in the (recent) news: "Why we should do nothing about Colonel Gaddafi", by Max Hastings.

It begins

Is a radical a broken Conservative, one who believes in the principles of his country and whose conditioned inhibitions have snapped after too long contemplating the suborning of the Constitution?

How interesting that businessman-turned-professional-investor Karl Denninger should host a YouTube video by a subversive group that intends to mount cyberattacks on "The Machine"; a video that concludes with the soundtrack of Mario Savio's 1964 sit-down protest "put your bodies upon the gears" speech at the University of Berkeley, California.

And now that speech no longer sounds like merely the effusion of youthful testosterone, the power-ambition of spoiled adolescence; it begins to sounds reasonable, even to an older, cynical man like me, who never bought into revolution even as a student. It begins to sound like the only, desperate chance.

In that beginning are the seeds of a bigger beginning.

New Con-LibDem pact?

Why is the present Conservative government so keen on forging an alliance with the Libyan democrats?

Linguistic survival

In Hereford today, I told the tea shop owner it was the best cup of tea I'd had from a cafe in years. Delighted, he burst out, "Goo' boy!"