Watchful

5 hours ago, The manic said:

Thanks. I'm gonna get one. It will improve the quality of my life.

Until you get one, attach a squirt gun to your bike full of ammonium.  

It won't harm the dogs, but they hate the smell and will avoid you. You only have to squirt them once ... they remember!

10 hours ago, cyberfarang said:

 No longer entitled to receive the National Health Service, frozen State pensions, less interest on our UK bank accounts being non residents and all other UK benefits denied to us, whether we officially emigrated or not, but still eligible to pay UK tax on our savings or any other investments or incomes we receive from the UK, including our pensions. And for paying UK tax we receive absolutely nothing. This now leaves us at the tender mercies of the banking institutions who want their slice of our hard earned cash and again for the pleasure of banking with them are offering absolutely nothing. This has to be the worse stitch up of the century,

 

Cyberfarang, I understand your frustration with low interest rates. Central Banks around the world have dropped interest rates to ridiculous level in order to "stimulate" economies. There is lots of risks in what they are doing such as creating real estate and securities "bubbles", in addition to the potential for currency valuations spiraling out of control.

Given the above where you get little to no interest and the high risk of further currency devaluations, is there any reason to leave your money in UK banks? Now, I would never suggest Thai banks as moving money into Thailand seems to be strictly a "one way street", but there are other options.

For example, you can get 10 year CD's issued by US banks 100% protected by FDIC with annual interest rates around 3%. Naturally these would be strictly US$  denominated accounts. Nevertheless, in spite of Trump's desire for a weak dollar, the Fed is committed to unwinding their vast debt and is slowly returning interest rates to normal. 

I mean it just seems like there are some very low risk options to leaving money in banks paying ... nothing and watching current devaluations at the same time.

"As much as I like writing this column and running this site – and as willing as I am to continue with it – it’s too much work to do it for nothing."

It's interesting how something that starts out as a "labor of love" becomes "too much work to do for nothing". 

I've seen this exact same scenario occur on a number of sites. It seems that once monetized, the expectation changes. Early on, the hope is that people will read their "stuff". Once they begin to earn $'s, however, the expectation is that folks will pay more and more for their "stuff".

You see similar patterns with YouTube vloggers. Early on, they only want subscribers, but once the ad $'s begin to roll, the expectation is the $'s will just continue to roll. Now, that the ad $'s has been radically cut, they morph into e-beggars and threaten to stop unless people "pay up".

Problem with all of this is that with each site or vlogger that makes $'s, there are 10 copycats that want a "piece of the action".  The number of demands for sponsorship quickly exceeds the number of those willing to sponsor, leaving only small amounts to go around.

My other observation is that once monetized (sites or vloggers) they become "stale". The truly interesting ones are those attempting to expand their readers/viewers. It just seems that in that early stage, creativity is at the highest. It just might be that to breakout from the masses requires that the site or vids be unique or significantly different from all of the others. 

So, the question becomes, should we sponsor?  Well, we need sponsors in order to create that "brass ring" that the vloggers and webmasters seek. It's just that I prefer not to be one and prefer to seek out the sites/vids in the "growing/creative" stage.

16 hours ago, tukkytuktuk said:

 

19 hours ago, Ace of Pop said:

You can get a n

This is too Much!   After all I am only human.  How can anyone possibly choose between these two lovelies?

No sleep tonight. I'll be dreaming of both all night.  Maybe a threesome?