Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Quick-Quiz

Name the blonde billy who passed the ABSOLUTE NUTS on the end in the Omaha round of ROE Cash at dtd on Saturday night?

There were plenty of witnesses.

Name & shame.

I wasn't there, but I'm guessing it was tikay...

Nope. I was not that billy.

[NoflopsHomer]

Quick-Quiz

Name the blonde billy who passed the ABSOLUTE NUTS on the end in the Omaha round of ROE Cash at dtd on Saturday night?

There were plenty of witnesses.

Name & shame.

What sort of Compo-tition is this?

[Colchester Kev]

Does said "billy" have a warped sense of fashion in the suit department ?

[tikay]

Quick-Quiz

Name the blonde billy who passed the ABSOLUTE NUTS on the end in the Omaha round of ROE Cash at dtd on Saturday night?

There were plenty of witnesses.

Name & shame.

What sort of Compo-tition is this?

Louder please.

[tikay]

Does said "billy" have a warped sense of fashion in the suit department ?

Yup. He shares tailors with George Melly, & has the nick "Concorde".

[Dingdell]

Does said "billy" have a warped sense of fashion in the suit department ?

Yup. He shares tailors with George Melly, & has the nick "Concorde".

Was he wearing creme brulee hand cream?

[RichEO]

Compo passed?

[Rookie (Rodney)]

Yep, he was holding 3 3 5 7 - after a flop of J 3 2, i was sitting next to him and he popped up his hand so i could take a look... He checked and button boy bet about 20, Compo smooth called.. Turn is the 6 - all rainbow board, Compo checks, button boy bets 40, Compo calls, River is the 4! Compo checks, blimey, i think, hes playing this a bit cute! Works perfectly though, as button matey bets 75, to which Compo dwells for a minute - Im sitting there thinking, come on enough with the Hollywood, you only have another 40!! And then he does it, he passes! I couldn't believe it! Once he had realised what he had done, he did the right thing, and got up and went! When tiredness strikes!..

[tikay]

Does said "billy" have a warped sense of fashion in the suit department ?

Yup. He shares tailors with George Melly, & has the nick "Concorde".

Was he wearing creme brulee hand cream?

Well, he alleged it was hand cream, yes. He has a little make-up bag, you know.

[tikay]

Yep, he was holding 3 3 5 7 - after a flop of J 3 2, i was sitting next to him and he popped up his hand so i could take a look... He checked and button boy bet about 20, Compo smooth called.. Turn is the 6 - all rainbow board, Compo checks, button boy bets 40, Compo calls, River is the 4! Compo checks, blimey, i think, hes playing this a bit cute! Works perfectly though, as button matey bets 75, to which Compo dwells for a minute - Im sitting there thinking, come on enough with the Hollywood, you only have another 40!! And then he does it, he passes! I couldn't believe it! Once he had realised what he had done, he did the right thing, and got up and went! When tiredness strikes!..

Yup, he was a bit too tired, & realising that, he departed immediately thereafter. Still, I'll wager he knows what a brick frog is. In fact, I can't think of a soul on earth who would not. Oh, wait a mo.......

[RichEO]

[tikay]

Well, for RichEO's cheek, & more especially for Rooks & Kev, here's a brick story. I know you have been aching for one, and, to quoin a phrase (there, even a brick pun), you deserve this.

LBC - London Brick Company - is almost exclusively based in Bedfordshire, because that's where the clay they need is. When founded, they badly needed immigrant labour, a role filled mostly by Italians, hence so many Ities in Bedfordshire &, especially, Luton.

LBC make Fletton Bricks - commons, & tudor, rustic, heather brown etc "facings".

In the 80's, LBC was taken over by Hanson Industries, & therein lies a fascinating story. Why would Hanson want LBC, a mature business, labour intensive, & with little growth prospects? In fact, Hanson took over scores of Brick & aggregate companies. Sand & Aggregates is a low-margin business, & transport intensive. And Hanson Industries was a sexy asset-stripper. An odd industry - bricks, sand, aggregates, for Hanson to get itself into went the thinking. But Lord Hanson was nobodys fool. He had realised - LONG before anyone else, that if you make bricks, or quarry aggregates, then you dig holes in the ground, to extract the raw material. Very big holes. Like each brick "pit" is about 10 football pitches in girth, & up to 30 metres deep. Them's seriously big holes.

So he paid an arm & a leg for a lot of holes, in essence. Empty holes, too. Some of the holes were not yet empty, or not yet, technically -  holes (when does a hole become an empty hole?). Scores of them, hundreds maybe. But he had a cunning plan. If you buy a brickfield, you buy clay deposits. You dig out the clay & make bricks out of it. And you are left with holes in the ground, being the spent clay pits. What to do, then, with these holes?

Simple. Fill them with London's garbage. So much of London's refuse collections end up in these disused clay pits. So let's examine the model again, then.

Buy the clay pits.

Extract the clay, & earn nicely out of the end product - bricks.

Fill the disused pits with refuse, charging Local Authorities & Waste disposal firms a fortune "per lorryload".

So now we've dug the hole, & made money out of the contents. And filled the hole up again. Again, charging a pretty penny for it's use.

So, hey presto, & we have our land back again, (you know, land, the stuff of which Mark Twain said "buy it, they don't make much of it any more") after a little top-dressing, & methane extraction engineering.

Which Hanson then sold as building land. Upon which Housing was built. With brick-built houses.

How neat is that?

Hanson Industries began as Hanson Trust. It was run by James Hanson & Gordon White, James looking after Europe, & Gordon in the USA. They ran an ad campaign briefly (before realising that PR Companies are parasitic tossers) - "a company from here, doing rather well over there".

Hanson purchased businesses by the then novel method of issuing it's own, much over-valued paper (Hanson Shares) in return for Companies that owned undervalued assets. Hanson NEVER paid cash.

In later years, conglomerates went out of fashion, so their shares became lower-valued by City institutions who were briefly in the grip of the soon-to-burst spectacularly dot.com boom - & so their use as a currency with which to buy businesses floundered. So they then began selling off all those assets. For cash. And the Magic Roundabout has completed it's full orbit......

Both Hanson & White became Lords, & Lord Hanson, once married to Audrey Hepburn I believe, died a few years back. Hanson Industries was itself sold to a German Company last year, I think.

There, a brick story & a business story, all in one. For Rooks & Kev, the first in a series of 93. Next up, after I get my Diary up to date with the DTD weekend, is Microsoft, Yahoo, & stuff.

Tell me you are not utterly fascinated. Go on, I dare you.

[TightEnd]

I was once Hanson plc's biggest institutional investor

I had begun selling, early, as conglomerates were over-priced and with inflation heading rapidly lower the main method of their growth, raising prices, was becoming more difficult. That, and the accounting was desperately opaque (code)

I piled out of Tomkins (Greg Hutchings, a Hanson disciple..later disgraced), BTR and Williams (Derby company run by McGowan and Rudd)

Hanson invited me out to dinner, in an attempt to get me to stop selling

His inducements to do so were, shall we say, old school.

Now, living in Bedfordshire, I pass the Stewartby Brick works where the Hanson brick operations were based, most days. The site closes next year and names such as Butterley Brick and London Brick..disappear for good.

[tikay]

I was once Hanson plc's biggest institutional investor

I had begun selling, early, as conglomerates were over-priced and with inflation heading rapidly lower the main method of their growth, raising prices, was becoming more difficult. That, and the accounting was desperately opaque (code)

I piled out of Tomkins (Greg Hutchings, a Hanson disciple..later disgraced), BTR and Williams (Derby company run by McGowan and Rudd)

Hanson invited me out to dinner, in an attempt to get me to stop selling

His inducements to do so were, shall we say, old school.

Now, living in Bedfordshire, I pass the Stewartby Brick works where the Hanson brick operations were based, most days. The site closes next year and names such as Butterley Brick and London Brick..disappear for good.

"Opaque accounting". These days it's openly called Financial Engineering......

Wiliams - jeez there's a memory, in fact, I knew Nigel Rudd, who lived in Derbyshire quite well, via John Kirkland. Williams got into Fire Extinguishers & Locks etc, via Chubb, & APT (?) I think.

The Stewartby Brick Works can be seen fom the Midland Mainline. Always worth a gander & a muse, those huge holes filled with money.

Did you ever have dealings with Slater Walker, Rich? (Originally, Gee Walker Slater).

[TightEnd]

Slater Walker was a bit before my time

I did though have to deal with John Gunn..British and Commonwealth and was pitched to by Asil Nadir..Polly Peck

I also did two months due diligence on Equitable Life after it went "wrong" (nasty mis-management) and was interviewed by the police (as an investor not a suspect!) pre Guinness trial

Plenty of stories about the "old" city,but none for public consumption