Thoughts on Finance, Current Affairs and General Consumer Ripoffs - Damn Lies and Statistics

Are Top ISA Rates Too Good To Be True? If you search on Google for "top ISA rates" or "best ISA rates" then one of the promoted adverts and sometimes one of the high ranking results is a website called Top ISA Rates. Are Top ISA Rates Too Good To Be True? Best ISA rates Review If you click through and look at the products advertised on the Top ISA rates website then you will see a variety of products listed but no differentiation on their risk or status. Worryingly their website states "Fully secured ISAs. Types: Fixed Rate Interest, High Rate Of Interest, Full Security." This is incorrect as the products listed as not fully secured or having full security. They are products where you can lose 100% of your money. Until recently the main product they promoted was a company called London Capital & Finance . However this company is now being investigated by Financial Conduct Authority and is not allowed to promote for new business or move any

Are Direct Property Investments selling scam bonds? It appears that Direct Property Investments have been selling or promoting bonds offered by MJS Capital now known as Colarb. There are many unhappy investors that are complaining that they have not been paid interest on their bonds and are unable to get their money back from MJS Capital. Remember for any investment - if you want your deposit to be guaranteed then you must use a company that is FSCS protected. Companies that offer unregulated products do not have to meet the strict criteria that applies to regulated companies so can make claims that would not be permitted elsewhere including the use of the word "guaranteed". If you are looking for “certainty”, “capital protection” or “security”, you should not invest in unregulated products with a risk of 100% capital loss.

With London Capital and Finance, another company offering high rate "guaranteed" bonds being placed under FCA restrictions preventing them from trading or accessing any of their investors money & assets without prior approval the spotlight may switch to Blackmore Bonds that are offering very similar high risk investments to retail investors. The Blackmore Bonds are not deposits and they have the risk as with London Capital Finance that you could lose all your money. It remains to be seen if LCF investors will get any money back from the company. Unlike LCF though the people behind Blackmore Bonds have a bit more history and a rather chequered past that potential investors may want to consider. Remember that these are high risk investments that should only be sold to High Net Worth or sophisticated investors, they are not suitable for those wanting a bank deposit. Blackmore bonds seem to be very keen to keep information about their company and their past hidden perhap

The FCA have now announced more information about their investigation into London Capital & Finance. They have stopped the company from taking any action on their assets including bank accounts without approval as well as stopping the company from marketing any products. Many investors are asking if this means they can get their money back or have lost any money invested with London Capital Finance. The truthful answer is that no-one knows at the moment. Many of the investment bonds were fixed term so you could not access your money until the 3 or 5 years was up. The bonds are very high risk so it is possible that they may be worthless like other mini bonds that have gone bust like Provident. However it's also possible that the FCA may give the company a clean bill of health and they continue trading. This may be unlikely as there was obviously a reason the FCA decided to act in the first place - most likely that the bonds were being offered to retail investors without clear

Great WTO summary lifted from Twitter: 'Debunking WTO and what “trading on WTO terms” really means...' As EU members, we participate in over 750 international treaties. Many relate to trade, enabling us to trade freely with the EU, the EEA, and 40+ other countries. Other treaties cover non-trade issues, from air worthiness certificates to drivers licenses, UK and EU citizens’ rights, food safety, environmental protections, workers rights, etc. On Brexit Day, we leave the EU. That means we lose all the benefits of its treaties. Those treaties are gone in a flash, as if we’d fed them into a shredder. (That’s not the EU being vindictive, it’s just how the Article 50 process works.) Even IF we have a transition period, the treaties will already be gone, but we will be shielded from the immediate shock by the transition arrangement. Right now, we share in trade deals with 78 countries (22 more pending). These deals cover 60.7% of all our of all our goods imports,

Blackmore bonds seem to be very keen to keep information about their company and their past hidden perhaps so that potential investors in Blackmore Bonds are unable to fully research what they are getting in to. Google shows the links that have been removed from their index on request by the subject of articles by claiming libel or defamation to Google. https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/15945293# These links have all been removed and refer to discussions of Blackmore such as this one showing that they have not been audited and have an apparent hole in their accounts. It's not surprising that they want the articles hidden if they will deter new investors. https://pension-life.com/blackmore-global-fund-asset-liability-black-hole/ You might wonder if Blackmore Bonds and Blackmore Global are in anyway connected or if it's just a coincidence of naming?  Well it appears that the same person is behind both companies - Patrick McCreesh https://beta.companieshou

It appears that the FCA have finally taken some action against London Capital & Finance for promoting their bonds to investors that appear to be savings accounts and seriously underplay the risks involved in the investment. London Capital Finance - FCA FSCS Shutdown? The London Capital Finance website is now showing a message that the FCA have required them to remove all marketing material from their site. Hopefully this means that they will now need to look whether the investors of their bonds have been suitably advised of the risks involved and that they should be significant net worth investors to invest in the schemes. On its website LCF says its products are aimed at retail clients who are UK taxpayers and who fall in the category of either High Net Worth Individual, Sophisticated, Self Certified Sophisticated or Restricted Investor. This restriction doesn't appear on any of the London Capital Finance marketing material that is shown in the screen shots below:

Could this be the next big speech that Theresa May gives as Prime Minster? "As your PM I’m speaking to you as we face one of the most critical moments in our country’s recent history. I was elected to deliver Brexit and over the last 2 years I’ve been working to that goal along with other colleagues who were part of the Leave campaign. This week we achieved a deal that I believe respected the result of the referendum as well as protecting our country from the damage that a disorderly Brexit would entail. I believed that all members of the cabinet were agreed that this was the way forward but it now appears that some Brexit supporters no longer agree. This further demonstrates the number of variations of Brexit that different people believe the referendum result justifies and the contradictions behind many of these positions are now being exposed. As the result was close I felt that the deal we have agreed is one that could bring the country together by enabling Remain suppor

A number of customers of Park First car parking investments have requested refunds and payout of the money that they paid for the car park spaces. Payout looks like it can take up to a year if successful but there is no guarantee that any money will be returned by Park First as a similar investment scheme that they ran called Store First has failed to repay investors, some of whom have lost tens of thousands of pounds. One investor has reported that even trying to get the correct paperwork to register for a refund has taken many months so it seems that anyone wanting to get their money back has a long wait on their hands -if the money is paid out at all. Park First Investment Refund Payout

LCF seem to have found a loophole with Companies House filing to avoid any review of their accounts and prevent them being made public. By reducing their accounting period by 1 day it gives them another 3 months to submit their accounts and avoid any scrutiny of the numbers and their profit & loss statements. London Capital Finance Fraud Loophole If you were a fraudulent company trying to avoid any warning to investors that you were having trouble with your finances then this would be a perfect tactic to prevent such information going public. This isn't to suggest that London Capital Finance are fraudulent or anything other than a genuine company offering unregulated investments that could lose all your money but their tactics do raise concerns about their transparency. This is not the first time that London Capital and Finance have adjusted their reporting period so that the accounts do not need to be submitted to Companies House. You can see from the link that it is s

A company called Review your ISA are advertising on Facebook. When you dig into their website the following info is shown: SELF-CERTIFIED SOPHISTICATED INVESTOR STATEMENT I declare that I am a self-certified sophisticated investor for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act (Financial Promotion) Order 2005. I understand that this means: I can receive financial promotions that may  not have been approved  by a person authorised by the Financial Services Authority; the content of such financial promotions may  not conform to rules  issued by the Financial Services Authority; by submitting my details , I may  lose significant rights ; Is Review Your ISA a scam or Genuine Investment? Despite using the words SAVINGS and ISA and interest, this is an INVESTMENT product that risks your money. It is NOT a savings account or savings bond. If you believe your money is safe then you are being misled. Stating it is asset backed is meaningless, there is no guarantee any

A firm called Universal Wealth Management that promised to protect from Inheritance Tax has collapsed risking customers losing their life savings and potentially houses. People had transferred their assets into trusts controlled by Universal Wealth preservation which means they no longer own them. As a result they will avoid IHT but also have no ownership of the assets and rely on the honesty of the the Universal Wealth team to get their homes or savings. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-45829270 Many people were warning about this company as far back as 2014 on the Money Saving Expert forums but were being threatened with legal action to remove their comments. In hindsight it appears that these concerns were valid and should have been heeded. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=74916701 Even on my blog I'd warned about Universal Wealth Preservation Trust some months ago

As per the Store First storage pods there are now complaints coming out about Park First airport parking investments where they sell you a parking space near an airport with a guarantee that you will be paid 8% or so income for a number of years. Exactly the same model was used for Store First where a lot of people got their fingers burnt when the company stopped trading and the storage pods were shown to be worthless. People are now complaining that they are unable to get their money back from Park First and have been waiting many months. It has also been reported on the MSE forum that Park First has no significant assets and that the company accounts show  " it held no tangible assets (its only assets were £10k worth of "patents and licences" and £515k of debtors, mostly trade debtors). The land is presumably owned by other Group First companies." Park First are not the only company offering similar airport parking investment, another one called Aston Darby

I've just had notification that Pro-Direct Sport have pre-authorised a Paypal payment of £3.95 from my Paypal account. I couldn't recall making any recent purchases for that amount of money or to that company so was on the verge of contacting them to find out what it was. The Paypal info only shows this with no order info: You authorized a payment of £3.95 GBP to Pro-Direct Sport Limited  ( customerservices@ prodirectsport.com ) On looking at their website it shows they are a sportswear company and although I'm a keen runner I've not ordered anything knowingly from them. From the contact information on their website it appears that a lot of people are contacting them currently so I suspected that I wasn't the only one with this query. Before getting in touch I thought I'd better check my emails for the email address to see if I'd had any other contact from them and bingo! There was an email over 4 months ago from that email address with a payment amou

The recent voices being added to the Peoples' Vote campaign to have a referendum on the final Brexit deal might be dismissed by many in Government but it was actually something that Boris Johnson was in favour of before the referendum of 2016 when he first announced his intention to campaign in favour of Leave. In his words "The way to get better deal is to vote Leave" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/12169386/Sorry-Boris-a-vote-to-leave-means-we-leave.html It's surprising how much changes in the course of 2 years and that many things discussed back in 2016 have now been forgotten. The prospect of leaving the EU with no deal wasn't even mentioned as a possibility and when suggested it was dismissed as Project Fear. Now it's being touted as both better than a bad deal and possibly as likely as 60:40 These are a few links to 2016 articles that show quite how far the tone and substance of the debate has changed since 2016. It

We've seen adverts from Best Bond claiming you can invest in Crossrail through a 9.25% Crossrail Bond. Crossrail is a government backed infrastructure project building a new train line across London. Crossrail bond scam or genuine? This advert is rather misleading as when you click on the ad itself it says it's property related to Crossrail - quite a different proposition to investing in the government backed Crossrail project! With this Crossrail bond you have the risk of losing 100% of your money. It is not backed by the government and is an unregulated investment. If you think you are investing in the Crossrail project then you are being misled and potentially ripped off. Crossrail is here http://www.crossrail.co.uk/ - this is nothing to do with -the bond advertised

It often seems to be the Leave voters who are most upset about Brexit despite being on the winning side but many Remainers are angry about Brexit too for different reasons. The more revelations that have come out over the last 2 years the more the frustration with the result has become focused as anger at the way the leave campaign was run and lied to win the referendum. As someone who voted to remain in the EU because of the bigger picture and understanding that our economy and all parts of life are very closely interwoved with the EU in a multitude of ways it gets very frustrating to hear it suggested that we can easily leave overnight on 29th March 2019 without a deal. It's equally frustrating that interviewers don't follow up with additional questions to any Brexiteer that suggests this as a desirable outcome as the impact of literally no deal with be disastrous for our country. The recent problems with the supply of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) highlight how unrelated processe

Despite dismissal as usual by Brexiteers, the suggestion by the Head of Amazon UK that civil unrest is possible within 2 weeks sounds to me like a fairly likely scenario if interruptions to basic supplies take place. This is entirely possible if we have no agreement to manage our relationship with the EU to replace current legal frameworks. You only need to look back at the Summer riots of 2010, fuel protests in 2001, Black Friday punch ups or the panic buying that happens if there is a forecast of snow disruption to see the mentality that can very quickly develop if people don’t get what they expect. No Deal Brexit Civil Disorder - Amazon UK Predictions Pictures as above of Black Friday bargain hunters getting into fights over a TV will pale into insignificance if basic food supplies run out. You can understand why the government would need to invoke a state of emergency to cope with the situation. Even most recently with the Build a Bear discount fiasco the police were calle

Until recently the general consensus was that civilization only occurred around 5000BC but more and more evidence seems to be coming out that humans were more advanced longer ago than was ever previously believed. It's usually assumed that human progress is linear but even in the recent past this hasn't been the case when you had great civilizations like the Roman or Greek empires that were followed by hundreds or thousands of years with development going backwards and disappearance of technology previously used. There are various discoveries that I think could demonstrate that ancient advanced civilizations could have existed. As a scientist I know that proof requires evidence but also over time much material that would give certainty will have decayed or been destroyed so much is likely to be from secondary sources or by observation of changes. Firstly Gobekli Tepe has been shown to be around 12,000 years old and clearly needed a lot of knowledge and organisation to be a

So Boris has finally quit because he couldn't agree with the brexit deal being proposed and didn't consider it was sufficiently bold. It's interesting that he hasn't proposed any alternatives and during the referendum campaign the details were deliberately left vague. If anything the referendum campaign means that anything that involves leaving the EU would respect the result regardless of what some hardline brexiteers might say. There were so many different variations of what was being suggested if we voted Leave that it's impossible to know which variant was actually voted for. Even now some Leave supporters are suggesting that being a member of EFTA is an option and if this is promoted by Ukip then it's hardly a Remain conspiracy. So despite the howls of betrayal from brexiteers about the proposal from Theresa May, the real betrayal was by Boris and Vote Leave by giving so many unachievable promises like his having Cake and Eat it quote.

 Northern Powerhouse Developments was previously  known as MBI Property Investments. They offer very high risk hotel room investments to high net worth individuals - these are not suitable investments for someone to put their life savings into

Basset and Gold are offering a bewildering array of different rate bonds but the common factor on all of them is that your money is at risk and you could lose ALL your money with them. These are some really important points about the Basset Gold 9% bonds Basset & Gold that you are buying a 5 year bond with was only registered with companies house on 24th July 2017. So it would seem brave in the extreme to put money into a 5 year bond with a company that didn’t exist 11 months ago. How can you guarantee that the company will be there to repay your money in 5 years time when they weren't in existence a year ago? It's hardly a stable long term company! It seems a bit strange that B&G chose to withdraw its directors' register information from the public register in May this year. May be legitimate but it seems very strange. If you think that these sort of companies are safe and FSCS protected - think again. There are other similar companies that have gone bust

One of the Basset Gold products is called a Cash Bond and claimed to be "A great savings rate with easy access to your cash" yet your capital is still at risk and there is zero mention in the website details that it's not FSCS protected and you could lose your money. Basset Gold 3% Cash Bond - Is it Genuine or Scam? It's very worrying that the website claims: No Fees  – 100% of principal returned at term Yet this is an investment product that could mean you lose all or part of your money. There is no guarantee that you will get all your money back or even get all the interest. Read the risk warning very carefully! Risk Warning Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investment through the Basset & Gold Fixed Income Bonds involves lending to companies or individuals and therefore your capital is at risk and interest payments are not guaranteed if the borrower defaults. Investors should note that it could take the time it takes to liq

Yet another scam using the photos of well known personalities to promote their ripoff schemes, this time it's Dragon's Den. Previously it has been Martin Lewis who has taken Facebook to court to get them to stop taking adverts for scams using his name and photo. Before you sign up to schemes that you believe are legitimate purely because you see a famous face attached to it do some basic checks. The chances are that the person shown has zero involvement and no knowledge of the scam

Some of the latest scams to do the rounds are based on Facebook where pages are setup purporting to be major brands that are giving away big prizes in exchange for liking or sharing a page. Invariably these are scams and nothing to do with the brand in question. Facebook TUI Scam Holiday Competition  The latest one seen this weekend is for TUI Holidays claiming they're giving away free holidays to Morocco. To be clear this is nothing to do with the real TUI holidays and they have no involvement. Facebook TUI Scam Holiday Competition Read the page and it's clear that it's fake, it's described as "friends of TUI" and only has the one post on the page with no contact info. Real TUI would have full information about the company. The only purpose of these types of page/competition is to harvest your data and to sell it on. The numbers signing up are scary. From first view on Sunday morning when the page had 5k likes by Sunday evening the page had ov

Basset and Gold are now promoting a 3.14% Easy Access Cash Bond. However despite the use of the word BOND which is commonly associated with cash savings accounts at a bank this is an investment where you could lose your money and not receive interest either. The reviews on the Basset Gold website are all very positive - but they don't highlight any of the risks. Just because something has paid out in the past doesn't mean that it will in the future. Past performance genuinely is not a sign of future performance. If you are tempted by the rates that are higher than some savings accounts then make sure you are fully aware of the risk that you may not get your money back. Personally I prefer to use bank accounts that pay up to 5% interest and are guaranteed as well as FSCS protected. The risk warning is on the Basset & Gold website but not given as much prominence on their Facebook adverts and is generally downplayed by saying that they've paid out up to now. Many