No more window shopping for Glazer

The "put up or shut up" deadline on Malcolm Glazer's bid for Man Utd is well-overdue. You might be forgiven for thinking that Glazer has already put in a bid for Man Utd, but he hasn't. What we have had is an "indicative offer", which has no more merit than if I put one in myself.

The worst recent example of this was when Philip Green outdid Richard Branson and Robert Maxwell in misrepresentation of reality. "Green bids for Marks and Sparks" was the headline, which was untrue in virtually all senses. This was because (a) as far as I could see most of the money being promised wasn't Green's and (b) he didn't put in a formal bid.

The farce of the Green "bid" was that both sides were wrong. Although Green's offer was conditional on the board accepting it (and thus was never formalized, because the board rejected it), Green was probably mad to even indicate it and the board was equally mad to turn him down. As most sage retail observers spotted, M&S is in a state not dissimilar to MG Rover, and Green can be like the Chinese. All he has to do is sit back and wait and he will be able to pick up the remnants for far less than he bid a couple of years earlier.

And, since M&S will by then have reached even lower depths, any kind of turnround (e.g, survival) will be seen as a sign of the Green Golden Touch, if that is not a bad kind of metaphor because of the colour clash.

The Glazer/Man Utd situation is somewhat more farcical. This looks to me to be little more than some kind of greenmail or asset-attack. But how do you attack the assets of a football club? And has Glazer not yet realized that taking over a UK football club with a view to making a profit is nothing like buying a US football team? For a start, you are unlikely to get too many death threats from your average fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I suspect the hand of JP McManus is in here somewhere. He and Magnier do not want the heat turned on them, so a deal with Glazer as a front man gives them a patsy. A bit like the fake owners of the casinos in Las vegas in the 1960s and 1970s.

More old stuff

Back in 1979/1980 I was coming to the end of my postgraduate/teaching gig in Canterbury, and one early summer's day in Keynes College there was a "mod revival" concert, attended by what I then thought of as spotty youths from the town (and, indeed, still do). This was in the wake of the Jam success. Anyway, one of the biggest bands of this short-lived mod movement was Secret Affair. Their first gig was supporting The Jam at Reading University in early 1979, so they might well have been the support that I saw for the Jam in thee sports hall in Canterbury, although I don't remember whether this was the case.

Their "anthem", as it were, was the song "My World", and their first album was "Glory Boys". But I had forgotten all of this, and I never got hold of their second album, Behind Closed Doors. But I have it now, and what a cracker it is. I may seek out their third and last album, Business As Usual.

The greatest album of this mod revival period was "So Far Away" by The Chords. But Behind Closed Doors is interesting because it is not typically mod(ish) in sound. Indeed, I'm not sure where I would place it in the Brit pop spectrum, but it is remarkably, er, refined. Muted trumpets, for goodness sake. Top notch.

DVD Recorders

I picked up a new DVD Recorder today at Richer Sounds, an 80Gb hard disk Panasonic for just under £300. It now sits in the office with the other DVD pile of junk and with the VCR. So moving stuff from DVD to DVD is now possible. And "High-speed" dubbing can be done from the Hard Disk Drive to DVD-R discs. Cool, very pleased with it.

A poker month to forget

Looking at my figures, I see that I am winning the grand total of seven quid this month. In fact it's better than that, because I haven't written any of the bonus money to book, and, because I do my accounts in sterling and am allowing for the steady depreciation in the dollar, I have to win about fifty quid a month just to break even in sterling terms.

Who would have thought it, the Birks books containing an explanation that profits would have been higher if it had not been for the deterioration in the dollar. Finally my books now actually have the dollar at a "worse" rate than reality. Not bad, considering that the assessed rate when I started playing in 2000 was $1.40 to the £. If it was still at that rate I would be nearly three grand better off (in sterling) than I am at the moment. Serves me right for never converting any of the money back into sterling, I guess. But since I am more than three grand up with FinSpreads on my short dollar bets in the past 18 months, I can't complain.

So, when we allow for the dollar deterioration and the bonus amounts (in other words, if Birks plc published its accounts in dollars and at a fair value basis) I'm actually about $300 up on the month. I suppose it's a measure of my progress over the past year and a half that I actually find this figure disappointing.

Andy Ward has talked about taking $5K, playing in bigger online games, and trying to spin up the money, without worrying about losing it (because it's all winnings anyway). David Young asked me when I was going to start playing in bigger games. But the difference between Andy, David and me is that Andy wants to give up his job and David doesn't have any other job. I, meanwhile, seem to have a bloody good job. Yesterday I produced the whole issue of the newsletter from home, linked to the office by the marvels of modern science. I wouldn't want to make a habit of it (because there is always that nagging fear that the link will break at a vital moment) but we now know that it can be done. As jobs go, therefore, it doesn't come much better.

For that reason, I don't really need the extra stress of higher stakes games, where I would need to work much harder on my game, pay closer attention to other players, and generally tire myself out even more than I am normally. That's not to say that it doesn't tempt me occasionally (since, just as a house can never have too much space, so a bank account can never have too much money) but I really feel that the mental preparation needs to be right.

Networks, PAH!

The wireless network doesn't seem to be working correctly (ever since Informa IT came in and tried to install the Mac Address security). Although it sometimes tells me that connection is excellent, it won't generate a web page or get online in any way shape or form.

I think that I will try to put a password security into the main computer, then reinstall the software and USB wireless connection on the laptop, and see what happens. All rather irritating, considering how well it was working before IT got anywhere near it.

But, not now. It's late. I would probably make things worse than they already are.