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For pete's sake stop thinking it's moral or cool to talk about investment in renewable energy whilst the actual economy (and the reality of millions of people's lives each day) are being destroyed by these immoral people. What the economy really needs today, and next year, and the year after, is more oil - much more oil and then the government can spend a bit more, and if we're lucky there might be a bit of a genuine economic recovery instead of everyone just sitting at computers doing none jobs pretending that is living a good life. What is living an interesting life is driving around in a car, meeting new people, dining out several times a week etc. etc. - even 10 years ago this sort of behaviour was pretty normal and now it seems to be becoming restricted to a privileged elite. In my area there are fewer and fewer cars on the huge estates housing tends of thousands, whilst in the small middleclass suburbs there are new SUVs appearing like mushrooms after a good night's rain. However you can't say (if you're in government) that there is real economic growth, or a balanced economy, if you make 5,000 people poorer but give 200 people from the nicer areas a new SUV. I'm not joking about the dwindling numbers of cars on the more "working class estates" - these people haven't had jobs for several years now and are finally not even able to afford to run their cars anymore. The government just can't see that the official figures don't tell the true story - GDP doesn't paint a true picture as Facebook is worth more than any oil company to the financial markets, the same for Google and Apple. Also more and more people have taken early retirement or part-time work even when they want full-time work. Hence the unemployment statistics don't paint a true picture of the economy either.

So for me it's actually become morally reprehensible to care more about investing in renewables if the same person doesn't care about the negative effects on citizen's resources to create new businesses and to travel frequently by car (even when these are not realistic projects currently and/or far more expensive than just developing Barryoe)

Yeah but the main point is the Irish government is so uninterested in economic growth that they hang this company out to dry and are not supportive of Barryoe being developed (unless PVR would have attracted the necessary drilling resources when they had a share price of 600p a share and Brent oil was trading at $120 per barrel).

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/u-offers-6-million-barrels-181810632.html

Also what's the point of investing in oil when the US has nearly 700 million barrels in their strategic reserve. They will just gradually sell it off as the oil industry withers and dies and is replaced by a 100% electric economy.

Nobody cares about the poverty that the lack of economic growth and greed is causing. The government is happy to have huge slums and a low wage economy. Low wages restrict people to their local area as they can't afford to travel much and basically there is no need to develop any new oilfields if the level of economic growth remains this low and so skewed towards the digital economy and renewables.

Just think someone should tell the government you think you are being morally resposible by tilting the playing field towards green investments - yet how is it moral to preside over a low wage, low opportunity economy where millions of people sit around on benefits, or disability benefits, and don't do nowt with their lives because they can't afford to do anything. Even people in work aren't exactly prospering if they are renting - housing costs are astronimic and landlords have balanced the rent market so that about 60% of people's wages go on rent if they are only earning the minimum wage. Hence people are trapped in the rent market where they are and just earning enough to put food on the table and to stay at home every night watching TV. This isn't really any sort of a life compared to owning a car and taking plenty of trips out for pleasure or to eat out.

I just think the government has gone way too far in telling everyone that oil is evil and scaring away the investment which the industry needs. What I think is also morally wrong is to keep the economic growth really low and to keep wages really low and to tell people that they are living a "normal" life by just earning enough money to put food on the table and to spend every night watching TV. That is actually no life at all .... but the government no longer cares about anything other than being seen to be green ....well it's time the media asked them a lot more about people's rights to a growing economy and to have a decent amount of disposable income for travelling and getting out and about in cars. Otherwise we are all just going to end up agreeing that the Victorian economy with horse and cart was morally the correct one and millions of people will have no better a standard of living than if they were born 150 years ago.

Love you pantherax. I hope you prosper in life because as an academic I've read that most people take too little risk in life and not too much risk. Hence if you risked a good wedge going long on Lloyds and it has come good then in my opinion it is not surprising, but it ties in with the academic evidence reported in the scientific journals that most people take too little financial risk in life (and not too much financial risk).

Mind you the share price often doesn't reflect whether a business strategy is good or bad for the business. When Premier announced Solan was to go ahead the share price was in a rising trend from 300p to 500p per share. Yet it was obvious at the time that Solan was too small and too risky and was a very poor use of the capital Premier had allocated for investment in new oil fields. By 2012 (before work had even begun on Solan) they already owned the majority of SeaLion and rather than spending $1.8 Billion on Solan they could have begun work on SeaLion back then. And as SeaLion is about 20 times larger than Solan the economics would have made much more sense - because it would only have cost double what SOlan cost to have got SeaLion developed - yet as SeaLion is twenty times larger then obviously the profits would be twenty times greater than what was expected from Solan (even before the writedowns and the engineering and management clusterf*ck that Solan became). I sometimes wonder whether Solan was f*cked up on purpose because it made no economic sense to begin it, and then once it was begin all the contractors took the p*ss in terms of costs and it went nearly a billion dollars over budget. I can't even bear to think about it really because you can do a lot better with a billion dollars in the oil industry than to try and develop a piddling little field like Solan …. sometimes you do wonder if the people making the economic decisions have any grasp on economies of scale plus risk/reward.

Krakenoil Lehman Brothers told people they were adding shareholder value. When a board of directors becomes too greedy, corrupt, or delusional, then they really believe they are adding shareholder value even when the shareholders are telling them that they are destroying shareholder value. And given that the share price of PMO for many years ranged between 150-350 pence then I think the board need to consider that shareholders have been telling them for several years that they have been destroying shareholder value - but either the board don't care, don't believe the share price is set by knowledgeable people, or they have no interest in shareholder value and are out to further their own careers by selling the company way below fair value to someone looking for a guaranteed massive profit when they in turn resell the business later.

Are Premier going against the official government policy of decarbonisation and shutting down the North Sea by 2028? Why aren't they in big trouble when all you hear on the news is that oil is evil and we all need to stop using it as soon as possible? Just sayin' either Premier is bonkers or the people or the news is pure lies. Because if the government is supporting the move away from oil then I've got to say that Chevron look smart by getting out and Premier look dumb by betting against official government policy (don't they know that the government will just legislate oil out of existence even if it impoverishes the country and sends the economy back to Victorian methods of horse and cart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department said on Thursday it is offering up to six million barrels of sweet crude oil from the national emergency reserve in a sale mandated by a previous law to raise funds to modernize the facility.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/u-offers-6-million-barrels-181810632.html.

Probably all we're going to hear for the next 10 years is that the US is selling off oil from the strategic reserve. Because if 50% of cars are electric by 2028 and people use Apps to car share and to derive income from their cars then 95% of car journeys will be by electric car by 2028. The role of oil could be miniscule in the economy. I think this is what a lot of people forget … that even 10% penetration by electric cars could result in 50% of journeys being made by electric car - because people will car share as it will just be so much cheaper and every individual is ultimately looking out for their own financial interests.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/u-offers-6-million-barrels-181810632.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department said on Thursday it is offering up to six million barrels of sweet crude oil from the national emergency reserve in a sale mandated by a previous law to raise funds to modernize the facility.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/u-offers-6-million-barrels-181810632.html

Trouble is prices are all algo driven - hence when the oil price fell from October to December last year the PMO share price halved. The positive reaction to the debt reduction announced in the results was small beer by comparison to the size of the fall. So it's all algo driven and basically people who think that low oil prices are good for the economy need to realise that investors/traders lose a fortune when oil prices fall - and the price at the pumps in the UK/Europe never goes down by anywhere near as much as the fall anyway (was it Tony Blair that introduced the fuel price escalator as well as taxing the North Sea to unprecedentedly high levels?) So the only country that really benefits from low oil prices is the USA - no wonder Trump is so keen to keep lowering the oil prices.

Well Genel IPO'd at £10 per share in 2011 does anyone remember what the production target was for 2020? I know the oil price is a little lower now - because humans being human are pretty stupid when you analyses collective behaviour, rather than individual behaviour - and basically everyone invested towards developing new oilfields from 2009-2012, despite it being official government policy to cut back on oil demand massively. Hence the shareholders of oil companies have done pretty badly because oil companies behaved pretty stupidly when you consider their aggregate behaviour - first of oil their was a dire lack of investment in new oilfields from 2002-2008. And then there was far too much investment from 2009-2013. Oh well, that's life I guess.

Rowe, who only last month said M&S' basket size was not appropriate for a full online grocery service, noting 41 percent of its customers shop for "today/tonight".

Basically without Waitrose food Ocado was going bankrupt in 2020 in the UK. Hence I think Rowe could have offered them £1 for a 50-50 JV and they'd have had to have taken it - what other option would they have had?

When one thinks about this deal it befits a banana republic or a country without regulated financial markets. I mean the business is going to provide an extra service (to deliver food direct to customers homes). However in a normal economy the people that pay for this would be the customers (and the business which is providing the service would continue making the same total profit or perhaps increase its annual profit because the overall revenue would have grown). However, the customers aren't going to pay for home food deliveries in future. Because the dividend is being cut, and also a rights issues meaning more shares issues at a lower price, then the people paying for the new service are the shareholders. This is "crazy" because once you have an economy where the customer can get a new service/product but the people who pay for it are the service providers then if that continues it can't be long before the whole economy collapses. Hence why I think this deal must be bordering on "corrupt practises" - because it is a way of thinking which endangers the whole capitalist business model and if other people also adopted this way of thinking then very soon the whole economy would collapse - or at least trust in financial markets would completely evaporate.

You're having a laugh when you say £30 billion earmarked for roads. It may have been earmarked but it will just be trousered by people who have no interest in actually doing the work of resurfacing and improving UK roads. The roads in my area haven't been resurfaced for years and the potholes are 3-5 inches deep and becoming more numerous (and harder to avoid) every year. So jog on with your fantasy figures. Anyway, the amount the government collect in vehicle duty+fuel duty they should probably be spending about £30 billion on the roads each and every year. I think we both know that they aren't spending anything like that amount per year on the roads (or else it is being trousered rather than actually getting the work done that needs to be done).

I wouldn't be surprised if M&S needed a bank rescue in 3 or 4 years time and had to give away 90% of the equity to "vulture" funds. Personally I think it is insane to pay £700 million for an online business that will optimistically generate £70 million in "dubious" profits in 3 years time (I use the word optimistically, because all forecasts are optimistic because people don't foresee all the problems and can't imagine what they can't easily foresee - look at the government projects for growth under Tony Blair/Gordon Brown, they were always "optimistic" and never achieved in reality). Anyway, like I said, imagine that all the Ocado hype is indeed nearly "over" as another poster suggested it may be (which I happen to agree with). Then basically once the hype/froth has evaporated from the valuation of the Ocado business model then what will the market value it at in 3 years time (the M&S stake I mean). The market might value the M&S stake at £200 million is the Ocado business is only making say £30 million profit in 3 years time. Hence is M&S take a write-down of £500 million on the joint-business, and if they find that their overall food sales have also been damaged in the process - because the quality of their food may "suffer" due to the business integration with Ocado. Also someone else said that the majority of M&S food customers are wealthier older people on M&S pensions and I think there is quite a lot of validity in this. Hence it's not a good match up to their core customers lifestyle habits in that their core customers probably don't want to do online food shopping - as retired people like to go to the shops and spend some time walking around amongst the food and choosing what to buy in person. Anyway, those wealthier older folk with index-linked pensions, if they do switch to doing their food shopping online, will probably discover other online apps that offer personal shoppers and personal assistants who can carry out things like food shopping for a fixed price of £12 per hour or something (in the gig economy). So in the long-term it is just going to change their core customers behaviour away from M&S food - because the same ingredients can be bought way cheaper elsewhere and the added value in terms of cooking quality meals can be provided by workers in the "gig" economy. It's just going to be a disaster in my eyes. Anyway if they write down the business by £500 million in 2022 and at the same time announce a 5% drop in food sales (not adjusted for inflation) then what will M&S shares be worth then? Will they be worth anything at all except to the "vulture" funds?

Personally I don't think DT's tweets can affect a global oil market which produces 88 million barrels per day. However, what does affect the oil market is the lack of bank lending and the lack of business growth (which obviously DT could be partly responsible for).

You fund investors are a bunch of muppets here. The government has overseen the erosion of so much capital value here it's untrue. The business wasn't exactly worthless in 2008/09, and then there were two rights issues/capital raises. Interest rates were reduced to 0.5% so you didn't have to pay anything to savers anymore (which is a big hit for them to take and quite unfair really I think many people would think). Anyway after all that value which shareholders provided to the business the return is absolutely pathetic - dividend only paid for the last 2 years and now have I understood correctly that the dividend is to be scrapped in favour of a share buyback? I just think the big funds must be in cahoots with the government because so much value has been destroyed here that the fact it hasn't been front page news every month for the past 10 years is hard to believe ....until one realises that everyone is self-interested and the media no longer bothers with scandals if it doesn't fit the government agenda of sweeping all the lost value here under the carpet. I mean it's not unreasonable to expect a 12% return on assets per year. Hence over a 10 year period, with very little payout to shareholders, one could reasonable have expected the share price here to have reached 120p per share. But unfortunately either Lloyds never bought a 5% stake in Apple in 2008, or else it did buy that stake and instead it has been ordered to use it to "decarbonise" the economy instead of its legal obligation of focusing on growing shareholder value within "reasonable parameters".

But nobody seems to mention the $45 Billion of debt that Vodafone has which is more than 50% of the current enterprise value of the whole business. Surely this financial metric is normally considered "unsound" by markets?

Also look at how all the indicators (whether it be government statistics or stock market prices) don't tell the story that from 2008 onwards construction collapsed and never recovered. People were hit with large rises in national insurance contributions, banks really tightened up lending (stopped lending in many cases), and the official government policy was austerity and decarbonisation - hence all new lending went into funding the tech sector and to pay for people to sit at computer screens instead of building houses, roads, and engaging in food production/having children. It's not surprise that the demand for oil is so low. The only surprise to me is that governments have managed to get away with these policies without causing people with different economic ideas to get into power - people who want to actually get the construction industry ticking over again, increase and then stabilise oil production, and get every back to a minimum standard of living (an apartment or a small houses, at least one car per family, and enough money to go out and to do something every weekend). The rich will always have more - but I can't see how any government since 2008 can be proud of their record of generally impoverihing large swathes of the country so that they can't even afford to leave their home town at a weekend.

Because as I've said before, last year, the global economy is dire. If you look at things like unemployment numbers they mask the fact that billions of people of working age in the global economy are sitting around with nothing productive to do. Especially in America and Europe there are tens of millions of people just existing on benefits, or loans/handouts from family members, and not actually contributing anything productive to the economy.

Lol 200p to 2p. I just laugh now. My personal experience of the market makes me think what can anyone do but laugh. The market makers take the piss - always looking for a short-term profit which leads to massive falls in the share price later on. Any responsible company would definitely keep an eye on how their shares are being traded - because illogical and irrational moves in the share price will come back to haunt the company later on if it ever needs to raise capital again for future growth/expansion. Basically if a company allows a sizeable proportion of shares to be sold for a quick and irrationally large profit then woe betide those other shareholders left holding the baby if the company ever needs to come back to raise further capital in the future.