Member Info for Terraplane

The downward trend has been going on for too long now. Directors are probably dumping to see off tax liabilities, as usual. Which doesn't help either the SP or the investment potential. Attractive is not a word I would apply to this share until the board get some gumption and take their listing - and their shareholders - seriously.

Unfortunately the big boys will take the IP offer hoping that shares listed in the US will give them a better return. For the PI's the Mondi offer would probably be a better deal.

Given that it wasn't so long ago that SMDS was trading over £5, whoever wins is getting the company on the cheap.

Should have sold last week.

Some history:

BT bought Huawei and Fujitsu kit for the so-called 21st century network project (21CN) because the then CEO, Ben Verwaayen, made that decision against the advice of the engineers and tech people at Adastral who told him it would not work. What was left of Marconi went bust because of that decision. They had equipment that was much more suitable and would have worked. But Verwaayen wanted to go global and he wanted to get into bed with the Chinese rather than supporting Marconi, who had supplied BT for decades. The Huawei kit never worked. I was involved in the disasterous pathfinder project to design and install Huawei kit at Swansea. It never worked and the entire project failed. By this time Verwaayen was looking to leave BT and didn't much care. The so-called 21CN project was a complete failure because of Verwaayen's insistence on going with Huawei against the advice of technical specialists who knew more than he did. Yet another episode of CEO hubris costing BT millions.

Mandy, which of the statements was wrong?
You might be happy to foot the bill for failure - and the people I mentioned have been responsible for huge failure, costing the shareholders a great deal of money.
If all you can do is make stupid comments than it would be best to keep quiet. Perhaps you should grow up and learn to think for yourself instead of regurgitating the same old nonsense.

BT leadership = failure on a huge scale.
Francois Barrault pocketed £3.5 million regardless of being the cause of a spectacular failure in IT contracts that cost 15,000 jobs and a £1.5 BILLION writedown.
Ian Livingston took a £350,000 bonus regardless of missing ALL his targets.
Louis Alvarez flogged £675,000 worth of shares a month before Global's financial crisis costing BT £530 million
Richard Cameron and Corrado Sciolla also named as complcit in the Italian fruad with Alvarez.
Gavin Patterson failed miserably at everything and yet still got paid millions...

The list goes on and on. Reward for failure at the top is endemic in BT and the shareholders cop the bill for it.

Sharon White has never been head of Openreach.
OFCOM yes, Openreach, no.

This will be £3 when, as Kruschev famously said, "Shrimps learn to whistle".

Mr Looney will continue to be disappointed in the returns from so-called renewables (this term is an oxymoron of the highest order, energy cannot be renewed once it has been used and the source of energy is not renewable in and of itself, even the wind. You can't renew electricity or gas, you can only generate so-called green energy from sources that don't come out of a hole in the ground). Green energy - if we accept that the term means energy sourced from the wind, the sun, water flow or radioactive materials - is more expensive and less reliable than the sources currently being exploited. Wind farms are a blight on the landscape and useless when there is no wind or when there is too much, solar panels need vast areas of land to generate sufficient power for even a small town, hydroelectric dams are efficient but usually involve vast areas of land being flooded and nuclear power, whilst very clean, is not cheap to operate and the construction costs of nuclear power stations are huge. Mr Looney needs a bit of a rethink about strategy going forward. Oil is still king and isn't ready to abdicate just yet. To maximise profits BP only has to pump more oil. The green lobby has no sensible ideas, it just wants to take us back to the dark ages, living in wooden hovels in little villages and existing on a diet of boiled root vegetables.

The Falkland islands were, and had always been, uninhabited before the British got there. So nobody was chucked out.
Try educating yourself before commenting.

...except that Russia invaded a sovereign nation with malice aforethought using the tired excuse that Russians in Ukraine (note that they are in a sovereign nation - Ukraine - and not in Russia) must be protected. Apart from the fact that these Russian speaking people in Ukraine are Ukrainians, not Russians, Ukraine has the right to defend itself from invasion by a foreign power. Russia under Putin has only one aim in mind and that is the complete subjugation and absorbtion of Ukraine back into Russia because Putin believes, and has stated on many occassions, that Ukraine is historically part of Russia. This of course ignores the other facts about the Russian empire being constructed from many previously conquered former republic states in central Asia, not forgetting the Mongolian republic, Siberia and the Caucasus nations. So perhaps Putin will be happy to release those former self-governing nations, especially considering that many of the people in central asia no longer speak Russian as a first language.
Following Putin's bizarre and twisted view about how Russian speaking people must be protected from aggressors, perhaps all those Russian people in London and America can declare their little enclaves part of Russia, too.

Fleccy,
Why would you expect dividend increases to be only added to the final?
Other companies add them to interims and BT have done the same in the past.
Face it, BT shareholders are being fleeced to pay for yet another failure by yet another failed CEO.

"The original aim was the restoration of the 2 separatist republics of Donbas within their full administrative borders."
Really?
There have never been 2 separatist republics of Donbas. This is a false construct propounded by Russia using the same illogical excuse as the annexation of Crimea. Namely, that because the majority of the population of these areas (according to Russia) are Russian-speaking, they are de-facto Russian territory, and the inhabitants are entitled to be "protected against anti-Russian agencies" by Russia, using force, if neccessary. This is the same excuse rolled out by the Nazis to annexe the Sudetenland and we all know how that ended. It was the same excuse used when Russia "liberated" South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia in 2008.
Crimea is still part of Ukraine, regardless of Russia's illegal annexation which they sought to justify by a ridiculous "referendum" which apparently proves that Crimea is Russian territory. If it wasn't so tragic it would be hilarious.
Russia has invaded a sovereign nation, waged war upon its citizens, destroyed huge tracts of civilian and commercial property, destroyed infrastructure, hospitals, schools, roads and railways and sought to bring about regime change without a single care as to what the rest of the world thinks because they have got away with it before and Putin believed the west and their allies would just stand and watch as his glorious invaders brought the troublesome neighbour to heel. Except this time he was wrong.
His actions have collapsed the Russian economy and will eventually collapse his entire nation. China and India are taking everything they can get from Russia at pound shop prices. They are filling their tanks at Russia's (and our) expense.
I've just returned from a few weeks in Moscow and I have seen what's going on. Young Russians are angry. The majority do not support the war and they do not believe that Putin has any interest in them. They have been used to travelling the world, having money to spend on western fashions and european luxuries. Now they have nothing, except decades of international condemnation and being isolated again. On every street there are huge posters with pictures of military people with the slogan "Glory to our Russian Heroes!" and every TV channel spits out 24 hour rolling propaganda justifying the "special military operation". There are hours of discussions where panels of dupes rage and rant against the west, interspersed with footage of so-called Ukraine atrocities. Whenever a Russian is killed in action there are pictures of the person's family (supposedly) wringing their hands, weeping and wailing, railing against the barbarity of the Ukrainian nazis (according to all TV and media Ukraine is a de-facto nazi regime) but not a single mention or reference is ever made about the Ukrainian casualties, except when the media roll out the laughable fairy tale that the Ukrainians are murdering their own people. Russia cannot win thi

Amers: In December 1999 BT shares reached £15.13.
Within three years the share price had tanked to £1.50 and has never really recovered.
BT also built up a £30 billion debt mountain because Iain Vallance and Peter Bonfield embarked upon a lunatic spending spree, buying up bits and pieces of largely useless companies. There followed a series of humiliating fire sales of the mobile arm and everything else for peanuts. Not to mention the hugely expensive mistake of trying to tie up with AT&T in the Concert venture, which collapsed in 2000.
Since privatisation BT has been staggering from one crisis to another, largely due to incompetant CEOs. Bonfield, Vervaayen, Livingston, Patterson - all hopeless chancers who were paid huge sums for failure.

Fleccy - Vodafone has very little backhaul. Almost all their services backhaul on Bt/Openreach networks. Like all the other service providers they don't want to invest in network infrastructure, they just want a free ride on BT. Vod want BT to give them dark fibre to hang their own kit on.

Dear John
When all you have to offer is what-about-ery, you have no argument.
So let's play that game for a minute:
What about the Russian empire subjugating central asian countries and Mongolia, what about the Soviet Union subjecting people to 70 years of abject misery by denying them the right to live in freedom from oppression. Remember the slaughter of Polish people at Katyn? Remember the mass executions and imprisonment of millions in Gulags? Remember Hungary in 1956? Prague in 1968? The invasion of Afghanistan? How about the destruction of thousands of Orthdox Churches and the murder of thousands of priests? Shall I keep going or do you the message?
Your ignorance is pathetic.

JohnNth - Still pedding the same old rubbish I see.
Russia is struggling big time with their soviet-era weapons and soviet-era soldiers. The plan is failing and will continue to fail because they have no plan other than to destroy as much of Ukraine's infrastructure as possible. Zelensky won't be replaced just because Russia want him out of the way so as to install a puppet government. When Finland and Norway are full members of NATO, Russia will be cattle-trucked. There is no way that the US or Europe will turn away and leave Ukraine to be subsumed back into Russia, it is no longer an option. Russia wanted a quick and easy invasion to subjugate a country that they believed was theirs by right. It isn't. Putin has failed and what's more, he's a very sick man and from what I saw whilst I was in Moscow for the last three weeks, a lot of Russians - especially those underthe age of 40 - are sick of him and sick of being treated like the scum of the earth through no fault of their own. They've got used to having the freedom to travel, to spend money, to have aspirations, not to be dragged back to god-awful soviet conditions. Many Russians don't agree with the war and they don't like the consequences of being scapegaoted by a man with a grudge. The desperation of Putin is clear to see. TV and radio pump out "news" about Ukraine 24 hours a day, every Russian lost in the war is considered a crime perpetrated by Ukraine, and yet not a single word of regret is ever offered about any Ukrainian killed by the indvaders - Russia. The words "war" or "invasion" are banned on all media outlets. It's a joke. The constant beligerant threats against Finland and Norway for having the nerve to protect themselves by joining NATO, the threat to cut off gas supplies to Europe, the threats of nuclear war...it never stops. Russia cannot win this war, all they can win is universal condemnation and eternal disgust. Russia will never again be anything but a pariah state in the eyes of the civilised world. They have no friends except for Belearus, Syria and now Iran. Turkey are trying to ride two horses at once but when it comes down to it, Erdogan will abandon any pretence of friendship with Russia. However, for China it's a bonus because they are buying up oil, gas and just about everything else from Russia at bargain prices, whilst Russians are now paying more for petrol than the Chinese. China are taking everything they can get and give nothing in return. Great leadership from Putin. He is yesterday's man, a would-be dictator with an enormous grudge against just about everyone. He could have done so much to make Russia a great nation, an open nation, a nation that became rich and successful by trade. But no. Putin decided to be Hitler instead. Nobody will shed a tear when he dies, especially Russians.

JohnNth.
"...are you on the same page as most of us?"
Most of us? Really?
So you are trying to claim that the majority here support your inane mutterings?
Us?
You are all alone chum, all alone and deluded.
Furthermore, your mask is slipping. You claim that Zelensky "is neither a Ukranian or an ethnic Russian."
Oh, really?
Then what is he?
He was born in Ukraine of Ukrainian parents. So how is he not Ukrainian?
Perhaps you are referring to some other characteristic, hmm?
The war has not caused inflation.
Putin is not as popular as you imagine. Many Russians despise him for dragging the country back to Soviet conditions. They want freedom, they want jobs, they want to travel, they want to be able to be what they want to be, not to be told every day that they are Russians and that they must die for the glorious motherland, the fabled Rodina. The sad thing is that dopes like you swallow the lies.
Russia is now an international pariah state with no friends apart from Lukashenko who will extract his payment from a desperate Russia, just as he has been doing for decades. Without Belarus Russia would be completely isolated. But all will come round in the end. Putin will die and Russia will have to change or become a nation of serfs again. When he dies it will be Russia's ONLY chance to become a civilised nation again.

Your little grammatical errors betray your non-English speaking background, as well as your idiotic claims about Russia winning and only a few countries supporting Ukraine. You are unmasked.
Pathetic creature. Give your head a wobble.

JohnNth.
You are mistaken on every front.
Putin wants Ukraine to be subsumed back into the Russian state. He wants another Belarus. He has never accepted Ukraine's right to be a sovereign nation. In his version of history Ukraine was a mistake that he is now attempting to correct. The matter of Donbas is another of his bizarre versions of reality. Yes, a lot of Russian speaking people - let's call them Russians - live in eastern Ukraine. But the fact that they are ethnic Russians doesn't give either them the right to claim the territory as a separate state nor Russia to invade a sovereign state to help them do it. Ukraine IS a sovereign nation, recognised by the UN and almost all nations across the world. Donetsk and Lugansk are not. They are part of Ukraine. The language they speak is immaterial. Imagine Russia using the same raison d'etre to invade Kensington just because lots of Russians live there. It's a nonsensical idea but one that appeals to Putin's bizarre world-view. Russia's annexation of Crimea was a criminal act and the fact that the rest of the world shamefully turned away when the Russians marched in doesn't make it right. It is obvious that Russia wants a puppet government in Ukraine and it is obvious why. Another Lukashenko installed by Putin. The constant excuse of being surrounded by an aggressive NATO, and thus Russia's right to defend itself from this imaginary threat trotted out on an hourly basis by the Kremlin is all they have by way of explanation - not that Russia ever explains anything in terms that a reasonable person can understand. But you've swallowed the entire story and now you must choke on it because Russia cannot win this war - they can't even bring themselves to call it a war or an invasion, it's a special military operation, how ridiculous. Putin was convinced that it would all be over in a couple of weeks and the west would just stand back and watch as his tanks flattened any resistance. Well, now he knows that the west is not going to back down and he's cattle-trucked. Despite what you might think, many Russians are opposed to this war, many Russians, especially the younger ones, don't want to lose the opportunities they had before Putin ordered the invasion, many of them are terrified that the world outside Russia is going to become off-limits to them. Again.
Public opinion in Russia is kept muted for a reason.
This war is going to continue for some time because it is a war that neither side can win and neither side can lose.

Crimea became part of Ukraine when Khruschev made it so. It was still part of the USSR at that time.
Before that, going back several centuries, it was occupied by Khazars.
Before that, it was a bit of land that belonged to nobody.
How far back do you want to go?
In Putin's eyes, history only begins when he says so and only when it is in favour of what he believes.
What Russia wants in Ukraine is a compliant and subserviant goverment, just like Belarus. Russia wants Ukraine to be subsumed back into the so-called motherland and not become euro-centric because a european Ukraine becomes the enemy and Russia - and particularly Putin - believe that the rest of the world is an enemy. They have clung to this idea for centuries. Most Russians don't want to be shackled to a world where the state dictates who you are and what you can and cannot do, where you can and cannot go and what you can and cannot say. So Russia have most certainly not won the war in Ukraine, not by a long way. Russia's problem now is to find a way out of this war and that is not going to be easy.

You have until COP on wednesday 15 June for the final divi.