Don't You Dare Call Me Crap

Here's a good way to make a living of sorts; go round being  absolutely pants at something and then seek damages from anyone who points out that fact. Still, you need to be doing something which can be easily quantified; not sure it applies to the blogsphere.

The PMC Gets Its First Ever Complaint!

A reader who simply goes by the name of Mrs S., writes to us:

"I have taken the opportunity to view your blog, and can I just say that it is the most bizarre, hideous, ineptly written, ill conceived, poorly thought out, smug, obnoxious and mean spirited load of utter tosh that has ever offended my computer screen. You obviously have nothing better to do with your time than tapping out this utter sputum in the vain hope that someone will read it; and then what? Sleep with you? Offer you a publishing deal?
For the love of God, what you're doing is really quite baffling, and I only hope that you don't do any damage to anyone other than yourself.
I note that you are a former ESL teacher, so you could still have been imposing your version of the English language on fare paying customers, so things could have been worse. Marginally.
My children are aged 9 and 14 respectively and they can come up with better than this for their homework assignments when they've got the flu and the new series of 24 is on.
I showed this to my husband and he agreed. He actually would like to meet you for a fight! Are you up for it? He is ex paras so I would advise you to just walk away, walk away from that and from this half arsed repository of egregious dross - they used to rack people for less than this in earlier times.
Take a look at the blogs out there, and compare them with yours; I fail to see how you're contributing to anything of substance and am in fact raising it at the next Conservative committee meeting, with a view to bringing it to the attention of our local sitting MP (who was a Major in the SBS) so that he can get a private member's bill to amend the law to stop small, anaemic little weeds like you from offending right thinking, decent and proper people or wasting any more of anybody's time.
I can only hope and pray that you finally see your errors for what they are and do the honourable thing and commit cyber sepuku and take your grimy 'blog' with you"

Oh well, our critics are less kind then, eh?

A Kind of Press Freedom

I quite liked this story about a UK foreign office official paper which made a mockery of the Pope's forthcoming visit to the country, not because of the sentiment, which is offensive even to a non-catholic, catechumenate orthodox like myself (at least if you're gonna have a religious dig, make it witty, this was pathetic stuff).
No, what encourages me is the sheer and utter (is that an acceptable combination of adjectives?) ineptitude and incomptence of the department; makes me feel much better about the odd email that slips out pre-spell checker or without capitals in the right places.
 But this wasn't just an email, or someone filmed on a mobile down the pub, this was an OFFICIAL foreign office document. How the hell (pun not really intentional) did that happen, the document must have been printed, proofread by somebody, and put out there, wherever there is (actually looks like it was leaked to a broadsheet) before anyone twigged. Questions have to be asked - I guess it shows that the F.O. publications rival the PMC in terms of readership numbers.
Apparently the person responsible has been 'assigned to other duties'; I hope these are duties befitting the audacious success of what they did, maybe editor of the Catholic Herald would be a good start.

How to Manage Time the Patriotic Way

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Aaron... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. With a career spanning over half a decade, he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You and Become a Billionaire Whilst On The Toilet, Walt is the Puumaja Crew's personal realization and fulfilment coach, whatever that is.   Today, Walt helps us truly understand the truth behind time management and spreads a little of his South Dakota charm along the way.

Some days ago one of the so-called contributors to this blog posted with his half baked ideas on time management.
He didn't even think to consult me, Walt Gleeson, on a subject which is so close to my heart (and therefore wallet).
I don't know this contributor but I can guess what he's like, so dope smoking, militant, activist, draft dodging limey greenhorn bum, no doubt, and I urge the PMC's good readership, both of them, to avoid what was written like the plague.
Since I didn't get to contribute to the movie 'how to do it', and it's accompanying boardgame, I think my cellphone must have been switched off or on silent when the call probably came through, and then probably deleted itself, I'll set the record straight and then you can waste no more time on this neo-liberal, pinko garbage and get on with getting rich:
Time CAN be managed, just ask anybody from Germany, a country in Eurasia which was one of the great post war economic success stories and, whilst no way as good as the US, was pretty god damned good, admittedly by odious, yellow-bellied european standards.
It simply has to be broken into units, and then smashed into smaller and yet smaller units until they're so small you could use them to season your corn grits in the morning, that's all. None of this ABCED listing baloney, or something about eating a raw crayfish for lunch, just straight, honest to goodness pragmatism and knuckle-headed guts.
Now, get outta here and get on with your day, 'cos if you don't, you're gonna be mighty sorry you didn't when the other fella gets in ahead of you, like he did me the other day, thanks to my phone being off.

Thought For the Day No. 14 - With His Eminence Sethie Godiney

"Just because you have someone's email address doesn't mean you have the right to email them".

Seth Godin

Don't Know Who is Laughing More Right Now, People in Iceland or People in Southampton

We at the PMC are reassured to find that when football clubs go down financially they really go down...
...if we were administering Portsmouth F.C. we'd look at addressing the most important debts first and worry about the rest after the FA Cup victory. First up would undoubtedly be the 40 quid owed to Pukka pies, though that might just be as an incentive never have cat food (or cat meat) wrapped in crap pastry ever foisted on us again. Trent potteries can probably wait, as can the scouts though the intriguing 626 quid claimed by the Ministry of Defence might merit some attention.
Football agents, being the utter effluvium of human existence, can whistle for it.
There, that initial consultation from the John Harvey Jones of the PMC can be for free though the hourly rate (which isn't going to break the bank any more than it already has been) might have to kick in thereafter .

Thought For the Day No. 13 - With the Rabbi Anders Weiss

.religious leader, psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

 "Here on earth, there is no peace, nor should there be. Life is striving toward an unobtainable goal, and as such, there can be no peace or pause".

L. Tolstoy (again)

Buying a House - Seth's Blog

A long post from my big brother Seth Godin on home ownership in the US (see, he's a real estate expert as well!) which is well worth checking out...

My response to it would be: he's got the nail on the head with the idea that buying a house is a decision which tends to be accompanied by much more emotion and other trappings than any other purchase, this is how it can sometimes go awry. But I'd seek to get away from the emphasis on capital gains, something that seemed to have the UK in a fever-like grip when I was living there ('you bought at the right time'...oh yeah? How do you know?).

As he indicates there are different types of people and if you're a play-it-safe employee then a mortgage presumably goes with the territory (it did when I was anyway); however, if you're a freelancer, entrepreneur or investor without a guaranteed income, it's much riskier (the banks know this all too well I expect). Lose your job and there are all sorts of checks and balances in place (like getting another job in the same field) which can mean that foreclsoure's far from inevitable. If you don't have a job in the first place you don't have that luxury.

One possibility is to consider renting; It ain't necessarily throwing away good money after bad; depending on the downpayment you make and the nature of your mortgage it can potentially be cheaper month on month than buying these days with a lot of legislation aimed at protecting the tenant (notably in the UK as another PMC contributor has been finding out) and managing agents if things do go wrong. There's that old paradox, the monthly payments for buying can be less than renting (though I guess that's all changed now) and yet you can afford to rent somewhere that is nicer than you can afford to buy...if you want quality of life then why stake everything on somewhere that's not as nice?

Doesn't mean you shouldn't have a mortgage, but the mortgage should be on something that is a real asset, ie something that generates some sort of income, however small. Unless you wanna take on a lodger, it means buying to let of course.

B2L investors are well known for paying less for a property than many homeowners (perhaps 'cos it's not an emotional decision for them) so your mortgage may end up being smaller for a comparable property, if you're patient.

But in any case, don't bank on capital appreciation, that's called gambling, and if you do make anything on a sale, treat it as the icing on the proverbial cake.

So there you have it, rent your own home and have a mortgage on an investment property...not quite was Seth was saying but we both agree that property ownership ain't a bad thing..


Disclaimer: the PMC knows nothing at all about real estate investing and was merely thinking out loud with this piece.