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I’ve recently wondered about the movements to recognise gender-status in banking. For example, a headline appeared saying that the Halifax Bank, part of Lloyds Banking Group, was stupid for allowing someone to be recognised as she/her/hers. It didn’t go down well with some people … But it is a thing. Pronouns count, and banks are recognising…

Gail Bradbrook, Co-Founder of Extinction Rebellion, joins her colleague Felix Barbour, to further address this challenge from an angry banker, who responded to her earlier blogs on this site. Maybe like HSBC’s Stuart Kirk, our angry banker is merely voicing what many of us silently think? The question then is, is he right? (Stuart Kirk…

This week’s main blog headlines include … What’s your purpose? I find the world fascinating. Humans are amazing. We just launched the James Webb Telescope to see world’s formed billions of years ago and the Elizabeth Line. Both are engineering projects of immense challenge, and immense cost, as covered by many documentaries. Then I read…

I blogged yesterday about the huge difficulty of proving I owned something, its history and provenance. This is actually something TV shows are made about and there is one on the BBC called Fake or Fortune, where our hosts and experts travel the world trying to prove if a rare item is real or fake….

I have house insurance for the contents and building. On top of that, I have a specialist insurance policy for my collection of rare things. I recently decided not to renew the latter. Why? Well, the house does have a few rare things inside … but no receipts. The things date back years and, in…

When I was a lad … OK, you can stop reading already if that’s going to be dealbreaker … when I was a lad, we had a holiday in Devon, a south-western county of England where my parents originated. There’s a lovely place there called Westward Ho! I have no idea why it has an…

I find the world fascinating. Humans are amazing. We just launched the James Webb Telescope to see world’s formed billions of years ago and the Elizabeth Line. Both are engineering projects of immense challenge, and immense cost, as covered by many documentaries. Then I read that Chinese social media celebrates the assassination of Shinzo Abe,…

2022 is proving to be a challenging year and, if my experience proves true, is harder than anything since we have seen since the pandemic began. After two years of lockdown, funding is still freely available but harder to find, and valuations are way down on previous years. Nevertheless, according to new data released by…

This week’s main blog discussions include … It’s not a stablecoin … it’s just Stable! A PR firm reached out to me the other day, saying: want to hear about a FinTech firm started on a farm? I said yes and, before I knew it, Stable became my new, favourite FinTech start-up. It meant that I soon…

I’ve been lucky. I got my first job just after a massive economic crisis and haven’t really been exposed to one since. I live in a bubble that has never had a war. I have never been in a country with double-digit inflation, during my working life. What that means is that I’ve never really…