Today I address readers who cannot invest because they have no savings.
I will not patronise you by suggesting you get on your bikes and get a job. You want Big Money (PG Wodehouse, 1931) and why not. Sadly in Afghanistan there is a brisk business selling kidneys. Never forget however bad things are in Ukraine it is worse in Afghanistan.
But I digress, there’s easy money, low-hanging fruit, here in England. How many do you know? I know two, three if you include Novax Djokovic, anti-vaxxers. They pay you ready money to take their jab. A friend volunteers at a vaccination centre and met a vaccination surrogate; a young man. First question at Reception is date of birth. Marco seldom checks if it’s right because who doesn’t know their DoB but by chance he checked and it was wrong. Subsequent questioning revealed ignorance of middle name and post code.
There are other ways of making money. Imagine you register a brand name in 2000 and are a start-up in 2001. Now you have a business that pays you a salary of £422 million and top that up with £48 million in dividends. It’s Bet365 founded by Denise Coates (CBE) who is worth more than $12 billion. She lives in Cheshire and has personalised number plates on her Aston Martin – yuck!
It would be easy to write her off as a bookie’s clerk who has made it big time and is vulgar, vulgar, vulgar but that would be wrong. She has her name on the walls of two rooms in the recently re-furbed Courtauld Gallery. I visited on Thursday to see a slew of Van Gogh self portraits – a hot ticket among the London middle-aged, middle classes. I admire Denise Coates’ philanthropy more than the van Goghs; too many whiskery, gingery, manic Dutch portraits for my liking.
At the top of the stairs there is a picture you may not have seen and it’s arresting and excellent.
