Derek Evans Thoughts

I completed this ride in July 2024. The experience is much more than the ride itself, and for those doing the route from South to North, which is generally the preferred option, it really starts before you board the ferry at Oban for Castlebay, and maybe, if you stayed in the town the night before, then someone you met is also getting the same ferry, (there's usually only one a day) so with the people that you meet, you talk about your plans for your journey, where you plan to stay, and how far you will be travelling. So I met a man from Northern England with his bike, who had taken the train following completing a shift at work, and had a good night's sleep at the hostel I was also staying at. Harbourside, I met a man originally from the UK but who lived on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada and also a young couple from the same general place. There were others also in the bike queue including a lady from Dijon, France. Check in is harbourside next to where the ferry docks, and you ...

I really do not write that much it seems. This is mainly a therapeutic pleasure, given the humdrum of one's working livelihood (dare I say it). And yet it was interesting that my director said upon the result of the vote that we would have to work harder, because that has not happened, and I would even say that individuals are using methods to look as if they are doing more whilst doing less. There is a loss of control of what you can do, the influence of technology in doing what you do; analysis being almost automated (but that has always been the case - I read a financial report written by someone I used to know at a company where I used to work and it was written in the same way that it was over 20 years ago and that to most people is incomprehensible). So just over two years ago I wrote a short piece about what I thought Brexit as it is commonly referred to meant. Looking back at it I still think it was a reasoned effort although the unrushed move to invoke Article 50 was soo...

With a new Government, effectively, and clearly not in any rush to invoke Article 50, with some questions asked and answered about our relationship with Francde and migration, but others being posed unrelated to Europe and thought to be a way of taking this subject away for the centre of everyone's attention, but as far as I am aware, nobody is actually asking why did people vote for Brexit, except for the highly charged migration issue. However, one thing is clear and that the statement "taking back control" had more to it than migration. So here is my views on what Brexit which is actually an erroneous term will be. Firstly, this will not be the pure form of total divorce. It just does not work. The only problem is that both sides are providing people with polarised egos to sit at the negotiating table. So what if they do not negotiate, does that mean that the real work is done elsewhere, and maybe that is the plan, by both sides. What does "Taking Back Control...

The court case was lost. Unsurprisingly really. The jury took a common-sense view of the relationship between personal assistants and their pay masters. So the facts are that two sisters were employed by Nigella Lawson and her, can I say it in jest, ex-husband (not sure about the divorce situation but it would seem to be in process), as personal assistants. They were given carte blanche ability to use credit cards and in any expense agreements, all had been signed off by their paymasters. Unfortunately for Lawson/Saatchi, this involved significant spending on other items. So the jury said, that they should have been wary, and undertaken a professional approach, which would have prevented most of this excess. But they did not. So now the case was lost, the bickering continues, the sisters should be unemployable, with their reputations known publicly as well as their names, and life goes on as normal. Whether the protagonists will learn from this lesson is debatable, but people do what...

Formalities are. I am a parent of a madly loving football daughter, or soccer to those who are not aware that this is the original football. Most children move up with their teams as they grow older, and the size of teams and the size of pitches evolves. This is supposed to ensure that the game encourages skills but also a competitive environment to build on the training sessions that also take place weekly during the season. Teams are put into divisions or sections as they now call them, and between September and December each team should play the other in the league on one occasion to fulfil the league fixture list. Additionally, there were three cup games in a so-called group stage, against teams in the higher or lower section, and I guess that this was also used to see the relative strength of one division against another. She is currently at an age where playing alongside the boys is fine, and that continues until she turns 12 or 13. In general the league is well run, results and ...

Others more qualified than I can write reams about the life of Nelson Mandela, about the intricacies of his life, and about his political operating abilities. However, all must be taken into context with his life and how he was a well educated person, but clearly had a moral upbringing that ensured he had a political belief that he took into the life he then had and how he retained that modesty in him through the many years of being incarcerated on Robben Island, and then finally when there was a realisation on all sides that the status quo could not continue that he has wise to bring as many people along with him as possible but that his ambition was there for him to realise what was probably a personal dream of becoming the President of the Republic of South Africa. His political wisdom continued in that he set in motion a movement to create an enduring rehabilitation of the population of the country, by also improving the life chances of the black and minority peoples, in education ...

I have a statement to make. I use Google maps and the roadmap images to see what houses and areas look like. I also believe that certain members of my family use the same facility to effectively spy on me. The reason that I believe this is that until recently a member of this branch of the family sent occasional correspondence by post to us. However, recently Google has updated their images in this area, they are now showing images taken either in 2012 or 2013 and not 2008 or 2009 as was previously there. Funnily enough there is a vehicle on the driveway at the front of the house. It is not ours, and even somebody who knew us could tell that because the vehicle is not one that we would have, it just would not be one that we would have. The fact is I know whose vehicle it is and can therefore tell on which day of the week this picture was taken, even though I cannot tell on what date it was taken. Therefore, we are not receiving correspondence from this branch of the family (we do not g...

The UK and the EU: in or out of the Union? | euronews, the network The problem with the EU is that it is changing what it wants to be and that change irritates those countries that have differing agendas across areas where EU agreement in participation is not guraranteed such as defence. The UK is not alone to some extent with this viewpoint, the Nordic members are in a similar position regarding the mission that the EU has. So what is the purpose of the EU and where is it going. Well it was a European Economic Community, based on breaking down trade barriers and valuing the ability to buy and sell on a cross-border basis, without excessive red tape. What it is becoming is a supra-national state encompassing all the remits of a normal national parliament of economics, internal relations, foreign relations, defence, education etc. Put together with a situation where there are multiple currencies in a free market global economy and you increase the tensions, as valuations are dependent...

If you have not kept up with the news then one you have missed is the taking out of children from a fostering environment in Rotherham and the reason given was that these people had voted for UKIP and that that was detrimental to the children they were fostering at the time. Naturally the facts have not been fully given, spin is all that seems to be endemic in this day and age so it is difficult for real comments and analysis to be undertaken without some form of if statements. We are aware that these children had been taken out of their parents and placed with this couple in emergency. This is common as sometimes the time from finding out about children at risk and action being undertaken is short. It must be considered that although the aftermath may not be particularly pleasant, the health and safety and general wellbeing of children take priority so it is a better to be safe than sorry measure that social workers are required to take. There have been too many Baby P etc. and as l...

I have a new smartphone. The phone plan that has enabled me to have this phone is in my opinion very good even though it is a 24 month contract. However, what is really scaring me is how easy it is to now become connected with apps and websites unexpectedly such as Google plus or the television screen in the next room when showing a photo to a member of the family. Technology is all very good but is this just another egotistical fix or a way of losing one's privacy without knowing it.

July 3rd 2012, and Robert "Bob" Diamond, CEO of Barclays Bank resigned from his post following the further revelations of inappropriate business practices at the bank, relating to the setting of the London Inter-Bank Interest Rate or LIBOR. This follows the now infamous sounding out of the tax avoidance, or could it have been actually evasion schemes that the wealth management arm of the bank had been found out on and subjected to investiagations by the UK's HMRC. July 4th and he is required to attend the Treasury sub-committee of the British Parliament. Credit should be given that he did actually attend, unlike the CEO of Kraft Foods, but his performance in trying to show innocence as a whistleblower does not stack up. This is a part of a pattern where the whole banking sector is trying to play against each other in more and more desparate ways in order to substantiate profitability and justification for extremely high basic and overall salary packages. Shareholders ar...

It has now been a week almost since Gary Speed took his own life and the inquest is ongoing. It is very likely that if a note had been left that certain parts that might give rise to a painful response for one or more persons will be left out. Given the speculation that there has been either publicly on the internet or privately in wondering why then I suspect that this will remain except for the few who will know or unless somebody (most likely the police service) leaks the contents of the note in full to the media - I am assuming a note was left because there were no suspicious circumstances. So why did he take his own life. Alot of people think that this is the easy way out but I would argue that it is the reverse. It may be easier to go on through what normality that could follow but that taking one own's life could be a one off painful event that at least would not give rise to a longer period of painful existance for all members of the family at least. So what would have dr...

I think that the end of the Euro as a pan national currency is very much on the cards. The recurring sovereign debt issues together with appropriate analysis even by historians (see Norman Davies's article in the FT on Saturday October 29th) bear this out. The only way out would be for the greater EU, those EU countries that have the Euro as their currency to become more like the United States. Why do I say this? Well if you look at the US it is clear that the different states have different economic conditions and economic strengths and weaknesses, from the highly industrialised states to those which was large agricultural and also tourism led. This is largely the same in Europe. Germany and then France are the two strongest and largest economies but they largely consume only from within their own "states". Yes the abiltiy to trade goods and services across these nation state borders has made economic flows move more in terms of volume and faster but this is not worked ...

Alot has been said about what is turning out to be a switch and backup malfunction which has affected all non business based Blackberry users such as I. However, I along with many others may have then looked at their emails directly using the webmail services most ISPs offer. What I have seen is that there have been no emails available for periods of around 2 hours on at least two occasions during the day. Therefore, the question has to be asked, is this more than just a Blackberry problem and is this in effect a concerted attack on the whole email mechanism by someone or organisation that is therefore affecting general email availability on the backbone. My thought is that there is more to this than what is being said, at least publicly, but the chances of us knowing more about this are probably slim. However, that does not stop me asking the question and perhaps this is one that users need to ask their ISPs along with the actual speed of connection in the future.

In my profession the big rock is the conversion requirements and preparation for moving to IFRS from a local GAAP. That local GAAP includes USGAAP and therefore the version of IFRS that we would move to will be a USGAAP inspired ethos. In Europe the differences between the GAAP applied to say United Kingdom and Ireland and Germany, and France is significant so that even an EU applied IFRS is probably going to have different treatments depending on that origin. Then we have Australian IFRS at least so we will always have at least two accounting operaitons in use for each company, being USGAAP IFRS and local GAAP IFRS and hopefully the methods will be very similar.

I was reading an article in this weekend's FT about the broadcaster Ed Stourton's experience with moving from hardbacks or paperback books to using an eReader and his mixed response to it. I have not yet moved to using an eReader for two reasons. Firstly, an eReader is a limited product, surely something akin to a tablet would have more use but then I believe that the tablet is a limited product where if you are able to type you will leave finger marks or residue unless the screen design is able to clean up without too much intervention. Secondly, it also means you are carrying more kit around and naturally the storage has to be enabled and of course you separately pay for soft and hardcopies potentially of that book. I therefore remain old fashioned with my book purchasing.

So S&P have downgraded the US's AAA debt grading. Big news given the overall depressive state of their economy and it is and been that way for a long time. Finally the excessive consumptive nature of that country is there to be bitten yet again I say. The US has been saved at least twice in recent times. Firstly by Japan, which in turn led to the reduction in Japanese consumption as outflows of funds led to what has become the Japanese economic problem. It has never recovered and that is why even with interest rates at virtual zero the exchange rate is having to be manipulated by the Central Bank because of its strength which seems to have no logic to it. The second more recent time was basically by the European banking system which was the precursor to the crisis of 2007-8. Greenspan was involved that time and laughed mocking the Europeans for being so dull and stupid, as the losses increased beyond the banks means to hold the financing. So here we are again. Debt ceilings bei...

We have just seen the end of an era with the final touchdown of the space shuttle atlantis. This leaves the Russians and potentially the Europeans and maybe the lesser space nations in carrying the can for the International Space Station. In many respects this ending is similar to that of Concorde. The financials did not add up and yet this is what sometimes happens to a technically advanced piece of kit. Consider this that the Shuttle was effectively a reusable vehicle although rocket boosters were not really recyclable and that such a gliding plane like configuration was generally well received. Also like Concorde it had its defining disaster (not totally killing the project at the time but effectively ending development). So will there be another like it for manned exploration at least up to an orbit around the planet Earth, or just like Concorde is the possibility of this sort of travel off limits for at least the next generation of 15 years or more.

The problem with politicians is that they can make some really dumb decisions and this is a good one. This authority had such a unit a few miles south of the town of Maidenhead, at the village of Holyport that had been in use for some time. I am not aware if the building was deteriorating beyond repair (probably not) but to go and build what was the special school at Holyport at this site and then expect income from other authorities that use this facility to go from £35 per night per person to £350 per night per person is either extreme optimism, a lunatic, or a ploy to get out of the provision and to convert it quickly to an equally income/margin generating facility. I thought local authorities were there to provide services that benefit their population and as sharing has to go on in this highly devolved environment as it currently is then is this not self defeating. Could this be a case of a white elephant?

Whether the Murdoch empire at least in the UK implodes due to the NoW affair or not is not my concern but what does concern me is the whole method of what could be described as investigative journalism. Phone hacking is an illegal activity. However call or information interception undertaken through official warrants and other statutory instruments by authorities is not, be that the police or the other security services. Unfortunately, the conduct of the police with preventing such illegal activities or enforcing the law where it is not does not give the public confidence. Therefore, we need to ask what is investigative journalism today. Has it beoome one where the speed of getting the story has superceded the need of getting it done thoroughly and comprehensively and therefore getting it quick using such activities is what has made it important.