A lot has been happening since the summer.
Firstly we sold our house in Laveno and moved back formally to the UK. Now we are living in Godmanchester which is a small village on the edge of Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. Since the apartment here is much smaller than the house that we lived in for the last 15 years in Italy, we have had to throw away a huge amount of stuff. However now we are finally finished after redecorating, a new bathroom and new floors – it is finally there.
Secondly, I am responsible for the service company in Colletta and we have gone through a political battle for over a year seemingly over who has more influence and power. Quite why a beautiful village which needs supporting by all people just to keep it sustainable needs a struggle of this magnitude is beyond me. Some compromise has now been reached I hope and now we can move forward.
Thirdly OSVision is evolving and developing new systems which now better meet people’s needs. We are now getting more interest. Over the last 2 weeks I have been in London, Denmark and Sweden discussing the future. Back in London next week.
Meanwhile I just finished a brilliant book describing the financial meltdown of 2008 which we are still suffering from. The book is “Too big to Fai” by Ross Sorkin from the New York Times. It was the bankrupy of Lehman Brothers which triggered the massive crash in confidence and run on the banks. What surprised me was the following :
1. Barclays agreed to an 11th hour deal to buy Lehmans trading arm while other Banks and institutions were on the verge of guaranteeing the toxic real estate investments. If you believe this account, the Barclay’s deal was vetoed at the last moment by Alastiar Darling and the UK government on the Sunday evening. Lehmans filed for bankruptcy on monday morning. The consequent collapse of Lehmans was the final trigger spooking world markets.
2. Lehmans trades were allowed to unwind on the Newy York exchage but elsewhere all trades were frozon. This triggreed a massive sell off as hedge funds and banks sought to restore the own liquidity to survive. This then led later to fear and a domino effect effecting most major banks.
So how is Britain after so long time? Seems to have become more controlled – for example Health and safety and regulations have taken their toll. I discovered that window cleaners can no longer climb laders – it is clearly too dangerous ! They now use long polls with a squigy on top and basically mess up the windows leaving streaks and dirt on the sills .
Some things are better of course……. to be continued.
