Lies Damned Lies And Statistics

I said yesterday that I would be having a quick look at Lincat's results to see how we are faring compared to the rest of the market. So I did a search on Google News and two headlines came up. "Lincat Profit Slips" (London Sharecast) and "Lincat Group full year pro-forma pre tax profit rises" (snappy headline eh)from RTTNEWS. Which just goes to show that you can use statistics to say whatever you want.The most interesting bit of information that I gleaned from the accompanying reports was Chairman Martin's comments that sales for the first two months of this year were 18% down which gives us a bit of comfort as our sales for the first two months of the year were just 5% down and for the first 3 months only 1.8% down. So if things go well with the sous vide launch we may see a small increase for the full year.



Just got an email from the bank manager. The good news is that she likes "The Colour of Money". The bad news the annual overdraft fee is going up 100% and the bank charges for money transactions are going up by 25%. What was that inflation figure the Government came up with last week? The email doesn't mention me putting the Guardian tax avoidance memos on the blog. It seems that all business customers are now going to be charged these fees even the ones that don't mention the Barclays Tax Avoidance scandal.It's enough to make you go down Threadneedle St and put something through a bank window. I read that whilst the G20 protesters were doing just that some smart Alecs were waving £10 notes at them from office windows. Proves there's a recession. It would have been £50 notes a year ago.



I've got a new friend on Facebook called Oscar Stomatopod (profile photo above). God knows who he is but hey, when you've got as few friends as me you need all you can get. Mind you we've got four friends in common so he must be family or something. Better poke him and find out. Looks like he might go down well in a curry.



Friday today which means just one thing - bacon butties. Whilst Nat's away in Barbados her mum will still be slaving over the sausages, eggs and bacon and delivering them right on time for the lads' break at ten thirty. Gorgeous. (And the butties are nice too)



With the news that house prices were up in March by 0.9%, it's an interesting time for the US repossession auctioneers REDC who are holding a number of auctions of repossessed houses in the UK this week. It seems that most of the properties up for auction in the first sale in the North East sold but whether or not this type of thing will become popular over here remains to be seen.If you go to one of these auctions, here's the way to do it (not).





Don't forget "The Colour of Money" has yet another time slot this week. After building a solid 4.2m regular viewers at 6.45pm, last week it moved to 8.20 directly against Casualty and lost over a million viewers. This week it's 7.50pm Saturday ITV1. Watch it!