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Now there’s no need to wait for my 50/1 winnings For the past few days I’ve looking forward to the big pay-day that I expect on November 5th – the day after the US presidential election when it looks as though Barack Obama will win a convincing victory. Well that’s been brought forward nearly three weeks. PaddyPower have just paid out and I’m just about to transfer winnings on my bets at 33/1 and the one I will bore people…

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Did Thatcher and Campbell make editors scared of whoever was in power? After refraining from entering the “biased BBC” debate I’ve decided to write two pieces covering the two elements which I think are behind the concerns. One is that I believe that the BBC is scared of government – whoever is in power and secondly there is my old cliche – the media narrative. I should explain that from 1971 to 1984 I was a journalist with the BBC…

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Should you now become a Labour buyer? There have been big moves during the day on the spread-betting markets where punters with deep pockets buy and sell the number of seats each of the parties will get at the next election. The spreads at 2pm BST are featured above. Just ten days ago a buyer of Tory seats would have had to go in at the 356 level. That’s now down on one market to 344 seats. I decided to…

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But the Tories are still well above 40% As expected Gordon Brown personally and Labour have received a poll boost in the wake of the global financial crisis. The figures from the latest survey in the Sunday Times with comparisons on the last poll from the firm are: CON 43%(-2): LAB 33%(+2): LD14%(-1) As ever we have the usual problem of the paper comparing not with the last published poll from the firm but from the last survey that it…

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Which events could turn the tide this late in the game? On Thursday night, I recorded another 10-minute slot for ‘Inside City Hall’ on NY1 (the Time Warner Cable news channel for New York). To the astonishment of the host, Dominic Carter, I mentioned an InTrade market that assesses the likelihood of an Israeli or US attack on Iran. Though I don’t play this market myself (I actually find it in rather poor taste), I suggested that such a significant…

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How are the pension funds going to cope? Just trying to think through the consequences of the massive global crash that we have seen in the past few days is awesome. One group of many that come immediately to mind, as several remarked on the previous thread, are those for whom today marks the end of their working life and the start of their pension. For thirty or forty years they will have been ploughing money into their pension pot…

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