Member Info for asimpleinvestor

Quote "From people who i know who work in the NHS those who apply for a job in the NHS have to their passport with them as well as a proof of address"

@iDoji You've been misinformed to get an interview for the NHS you need to provide either two forms of Teir 1 photographic ID and one form of Tier two ID with your address on it or one form of photographic Tier one ID and two forms of Tier 2 ID with your address on it. Once provided, copies are made and kept on file. If you're successful, they're kept on file and one of the photos used on your NHS ID card issued when you start work and if you're unsuccessful, they're kept on file for a statutory 3 months then destroyed. So, if somebody else turns up for the job rather than the applicant that had the interview and supplied the ID information the photo on the NHS ID card won't match the person who wears it.

@affrm As of early April 2026, Pennpetro Energy has transitioned into a highly specialised financial state best described as "Liability-Clean and Asset-Restructured." While the company recently executed a Loan Release Deed that irrevocably removed approximately $5 million in legacy debt from its balance sheet, it is not "debt-free" in the traditional sense due to its ongoing funding relationship with the RMD Group. Instead, the company has replaced external, high-interest third-party debt with a strategic Convertible Loan Note (CLN).

The CLN2 agreement, confirmed in late January 2026, involves RMD Group providing £250,000 in additional capital (following an initial CLN1) to satisfy working capital needs and finalise overdue audited accounts. This instrument is technically debt, but its structure is fundamentally different from the previous Petroquest liabilities: it carries a 6% interest rate (down from 12%) and a conversion price of £0.04. This means the debt is designed to be converted into equity rather than being repaid in cash, which aligns RMD’s interests directly with the shareholders and supports the "Uber confidence" in future profits you noted.

Furthermore, the company's "asset" status has been strategically pivoted. By ceding 51% of its US subsidiary to clear the legacy debt, Pennpetro has moved its Texas interests into a Joint Venture (JV) model. While the physical assets (like the Chalk Talk A-1H well) are no longer consolidated on the primary balance sheet, the company retains a 51% profit share in the JV. This allows the company to restart production funded entirely by a dedicated RMD loan without the risk of further asset impairment or repossession. Effectively, the CLN serves as a bridge to move the company from a stalled, debt-heavy position into a revenue-generating entity focused on high-margin projects in Texas and Ukraine.

@REDDINGTONR I moved away from leveraging debt years ago for exactly the reasons you've highlighted. By holding assets in cash or clear ownership, I’ve removed the risk of repossession entirely, regardless of any ‘variation’ clauses in loan T&Cs.

Currently, because interest rates are higher than inflation, the savings from avoided debt payments actually grow in real value. Instead of sharing asset growth with a lender through interest, I retain 100% of the gains. When rates and taxes rise to 'kill' debt-heavy strategies, a debt-free position remains insulated, allowing for reinvestment while others are forced into liquidation

@Kaeren The US has the ability to halt Israeli military operations, as Israel relies heavily on American munitions and spare parts to sustain a high-intensity conflict. If a President cut off the supply of Iron Dome interceptors or F-35 components, Israel’s operational capacity would be severely limited in a short time.

While the leverage is real the US supplies about 15% of Israel’s defence budget and most of its advanced aviation technology it remains a dormant power, effective only if Washington is willing to risk a complete collapse of the alliance. At present, US financial support is being used to bolster Netanyahu’s position against Iran rather than to push for a withdrawal.

You're right that the property value increasing with inflation acts similarly to hoarding gold it protects your purchasing power. However, the mortgage interest is a guaranteed 'negative return' that works against that growth.

By paying off the mortgage, you aren't just saving on interest; you are securing 100% of that inflationary growth for yourself, rather than sharing a portion of your gains with the bank in the form of interest payments. You're effectively turning a leveraged hedge into a pure, debt-free asset

Quote "The report claims a fair value of £0.01 while the price is £1.31. Since ALRT is a pre-revenue defense pivot, fair value based on historical earnings is irrelevent as it has no historical earnings"

Somebody has got their decimal point in the wrong place. The current price is £0.0132 not £1.31

"We Pembrokians will always call the restaurant Le Gavroche even though it is now named Bonheur."

Thought it was bwyty pronounced approximately as BOO-ee-tee or at least it was last weekend when last we visited our smallholding there.

Just for you @Birdsong I don't like political rhetoric but I do like facts. Something you should consider verifying before writing claptrap.

Statistical data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) for 2025/26 provides a clear factual framework for understanding the UK's housing and migration landscape.

Regarding unoccupied properties, the most recent Council Taxbase statistics for November 2025 reveal that the total number of homes in England not in permanent use has reached 1,022,433, which represents 3.96% of all housing stock. Within this total, there are 542,276 empty homes, an increase of nearly 8% from the previous year. Specifically, "long-term empty homes" (those vacant for more than six months) have risen to 309,856, the highest level since 2018. The remainder of the million unoccupied properties comprises second homes (268,153) and unoccupied exemptions (212,004), which include properties undergoing probate or structural repair.

In terms of housing supply and demand, the UK currently faces a significant delivery shortfall. In 2025, approximately 202,800 new homes were completed, which is the lowest annual total since 2015. This figure is significantly below the government’s target of 300,000 homes per year and the 370,200 homes identified as required under the current "Standard Method" for calculating local housing need. This deficit is most pronounced in the South East and South West, where completions in 2025 were 50% lower than the identified need.

Migration data for the year ending June 2025 shows that net migration has fallen to 204,000, a sharp decline from the peak of 944,000 in March 2023. This reduction is primarily due to stricter visa regulations for work and study dependants. While migration increases the demand for housing, ONS and bank-led research (such as from Nationwide and Lloyds) indicate that house price growth which was 1.3% nationally between January 2025 and January 2026 is also heavily influenced by macroeconomic factors, including mortgage interest rates, real wage growth, and the ongoing structural shortage of new-build completions. In affluent and rural areas like Herefordshire, house prices are often further sustained by the "affordability gap," where the ratio of local median earnings to property prices remains high due to limited supply and high demand for detached dwellings.

We’re also working on developing a 10-acre community garden to help the local community feed themselves for free, in addition to the free food already available to estate tenants that is grown on the estate. We’re hoping to expand this by opening a community kitchen that will provide healthy meals by donation (pay what you can afford or not at all) to people in Leominster and surrounding areas. The idea came to us after visiting a similar place in Cirencester recently and thought as Leominster has the largest reliance on the local food bank this would be a good idea. The only difficulty is finding a suitable premises, as the last premises was outbid by KFC.

@Birdsong Having lived from birth to currently within the UK in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Folkestone, Aldershot, Belfast, Colchester, York, London, Wigan, Atherton, Manchester, Liverpool, Elgin, Aberlour, Bolton, Tewkesbury, and now Herefordshire, I have experienced some of the UK’s most challenging urban areas. This perspective informs my view and statistics that, contrary to popular belief, serious crime is currently lower than at any point in the last 40 years. The offences currently most prevalent are fraud and shoplifting; the perception of a broader crime wave is driven more by the rise of social media and 24-hour news cycles than by statistical reality.

Regarding the perception of wealth in Herefordshire, while there are individuals like myself who own significant land in my case, 1,464 hectares and growing the county remains fundamentally agricultural. The majority of the population consists of tenant farmers and agricultural labourers whose incomes are low compared to those in major urban centres. For context, the population of Herefordshire (191,047) is comparable to Portsmouth, yet Portsmouth’s median salary is approximately £5,100 (15.1%) higher than Herefordshire’s median of £33,700. Furthermore, average house prices in Portsmouth are 30% lower than in Herefordshire, creating a significant affordability gap for local residents.

Since taking over this estate, I have expanded it from 35 to 66 properties. To support low-income families, I provide free electricity to 42 homes and free heating to 52, while maintaining rents well below market rates. All profits are reinvested to safeguard the estate and its tenants for future generations. I take no personal income from these operations. My objective is for the estate to be carbon neutral or negative within five years through a combination of traditional agriculture, rewilding, agroforestry, hydroponics, aquaponics, renewable energy and permaculture. We also host a veterinary training school, a laboratory for climate-resilient crop testing, and provide land free of charge to a local agricultural college. What are you doing?

The house had a triple garage on one side and a plot of land on the other. It was originally just a terrace, but the previous owner, a bit of a cowboy builder, bought the whole row, demolished most of it, sold part of the land to another business that built a garage for their taxi firm (known locally, at the time as rent-a-wreck), and left the other side as waste ground with rubble that was never cleared. We bought it when the terrace had basically turned into a detached house. In 2024, the new owner tore it down and built a five-bedroom place with a large landscaped garden, which now sticks out like a sore thumb on a road widened into a five-lane major route near Asda, with a boarded-up pub next door. It’s very busy, very noisy, and definitely not somewhere I’d choose to live now.

Herefordshire has become very expensive since we moved here in 2008. Before that, we lived over the border in Gloucestershire (Tewkesbury), which was a pricier county at the time. Back then, we were in a converted church on Mythe Hill, and during the floods, the BBC was in the garden filming the flooded town which appeared like an island rising out of the water just before our move-in date. Now there’s an influx of celebrities choosing Herefordshire over the Cotswolds, and in some of the more popular parts of the Cotswolds, prices are actually lower than here. We prefer shopping in Stroud and Cirencester rather than Hereford and Ross-on-Wye, so we visit the area regularly, but we wouldn’t live there because their council seems to have little regard for disabled people and offers a disappointing lack of services.

Quote " i recall interest hitting 17% back in the day and we had to make sacrifice's"

Yep I remember those days, I remember buying my first house in Wigan for £12,000 for a two bedroomed terraced which had a large garage & workshop for my motorbike and a piece of scrap land at the side where the neighbouring house used to be before the previous owner demolished it. This just 34 years ago. We sold it 4 years later for a whopping £12,600 and moved into a council flat instead so made a small profit. In 2024 that same house sold for £430,000 was demolished and a bigger house built to make use of the land it was on then sold on for a whopping £950,000. The area its in hasn't changed other than looking a little more worse for wear and the roads getting wider but if I was starting out now in similar circumstances as then I wouldn't be able to afford todays prices.

@iDoji We live in one of the most sparsely populated and largest counties in England and house prices are much higher in comparison to other areas. My wife for example works in our nearest town which is 8 miles from our home and my daughter goes to the local school which is 11 miles away in the opposite direction. I've chosen to take early retirement, so I potter around the estate doing what I fancy or pop over to Pembrokeshire to visit my smallholding there. In-between there is nothing other than a couple of hamlets and small two street villages. The public transport system is almost non-existent (one bus twice a day covering 40 square miles) so to suggest with a few sacrifices somebody can get on the property ladder is a fantasy. What sacrifices would you suggest? We have two cars a small Ceed to potter around in during nice weather and a 4x4 for when the weather turns sour or if there are any snow or flash floods.

Our local property market (within a 10 mile radius) averages half a million pounds and within 20 miles this drops to £350,000. You may find the odd do it up or small property for around £250,000 so if you were one of those lucky ones to find a £250,000 property (currently there are 26 for sale in the county) the repayment rate per month for currently available mortgages for the first time buyer would be £1,141 per month based on a 30 year mortgage at 4.5% and a £25,000 deposit. Now to qualify for such a mortgage you would need to be earning £4167 per month in take home pay but as has already been mentioned the average pay in the area is minimum wage which equates to a monthly take home pay of £1,807.75 so how, with a few sacrifices do you increase your wage to cover the missing £2359.25 per month needed to qualify to get that particular mortgage? For reference as of April 2026, the average 5-year fixed mortgage rate is approximately 5.77%, while 2-year fixed rates are roughly 5.89% so that particular mortgage quoted at 4.5% took a lot of finding. This is the reality that missing from your argument.

"Renewables have their place that is for sure but how much oil and gas they produce? Sadly none. How many homes use gas as main heating source..73%"

That is a fair point regarding the current reliance on gas, though the data from this year shows the relationship between these energy sources is becoming quite intertwined. While you are correct that renewables don't physically produce oil or gas, they have become essential to the extraction process itself. As of 2026, many North Sea platforms are switching to offshore wind power for their operations rather than burning the gas they extract. This shift actually increases the amount of gas available for the market, as every bit of wind power used to run a rig means more gas can be sold instead of consumed as fuel. It also helps protect production costs from the extreme volatility we saw in March 2026, when wholesale gas prices spiked by 42%.

Regarding your point on heating, the 73% figure for homes using gas as their main source is spot on for 2026, though it has dropped from about 78% a decade ago. Even with so many homes still on gas, the renewable sector is currently acting as a significant price shield for the grid. Data from the April 2026 price cap indicates that record renewable output saved the UK roughly £1 billion in gas imports last month alone. Evidence suggests that if we didn't have this renewable contribution and relied solely on fossil fuels, electricity unit rates would likely be closer to 40p per kWh rather than the current 24.67p, simply because the cost of purchasing that extra gas at current market rates would be so high.

"ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is pausing a multi-billion pound UK data centre project aimed at boosting its AI infrastructure, citing concerns about high energy costs and regulation."

OpenAI confirmed that while they see 'huge potential' for the UK's AI sector, they will only resume the project when 'right conditions' specifically lower energy overheads and clearer regulation enable long-term investment. The regulatory friction is notably centred on AI copyright rules and the multi-year delays currently facing grid access for high-capacity projects.

For critics of renewables evidence-based data suggests that discarding renewables in favour of a return to coal and gas would likely result in higher, more volatile energy costs. While the April 2026 price cap saw a temporary 6.6% decrease, wholesale gas remains the primary driver of high electricity prices in the UK. Removing low-cost renewable generation would increase exposure to global market spikes, such as the 42% rise in wholesale gas prices seen in March 2026.

A return to coal and gas would not only increase the base generation cost but would also significantly increase the total carbon costs (currently approx. £25–£30/MWh) which renewables do not incur. Analysts estimate that the average household bill would rise by at least £600–£900 per year under this scenario compared to the current trajectory.

"Let that sink in. JW would have expected something very positive to come out of ppp and must have some very in depth knowledge of the worth of ppp in the future etc."

Almost everyone who invested here expected great results, and many did their due diligence before buying, but that doesn’t mean those expectations would come true otherwise, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are today. Let that sink in.

Anyway I'm off to watch the new Peaky Blinders film via my VPN

"The role models these days have much more exposure 24x7 and far more influence than in the past along with the media."

That’s the thing, isn’t it? They have to be even cleaner than the role models of the past, or they can lose their following faster than they gained it. Just look at the stars of the ’70s and ’80s many of them fell foul of Operation Yewtree not the role models you would want your children to have..

IDoji The real challenge for most people isn’t saving for the deposit, it’s being able to afford the mortgage payments. I live in a rural area where the average wage is minimum wage. I’m fortunate to be wealthy, but many around me aren’t. The average house price here leads to mortgage repayments that are almost double what the average person earns, so even with two incomes, many households can’t afford to buy. Renting isn’t much easier either outside of private country estates, the average rent for a two-bedroom house is £1,450 a month, and flats are scarce. On our estate we charge 45% below the market rate to attract long term tenants, some of which have been here longer than we have and do so because it helps keep the estate ticking over and it creates a community that in turn helps each other.

Look at the role models of each generation going back as far as the first world war and say that again. Each generations role models have been as bad as the generation before it. If we're judged on our generations role models we have all lost the plot and Trump has the IQ of Einstein.