Latest news with #Kilburn
Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Times
How DIY investing helped me go from council flat to coastal cottage
When a cabinet minister (in this case Liz Kendall) predicts that 'tomorrow's pensioners will be poorer than today's', it is time to paddle away from what she called the 'tsunami of pensioner poverty' and become a do-it-yourself investor. Relying on the kindness of strangers is a recipe for disappointment, whether they are paternalistic employers or kindly politicians recycling other people's money. So this DIY investor is jolly glad that I began buying shares more than 30 years ago, when, in the 1980s, millions of ordinary people enjoyed making money out of the stock market. Privatisations were priced to go — do you remember, Sid? — and the flotation of financial institutions such as Abbey National and TSB delivered windfall profits that helped to turn small savers into serious shareholders. Since then, shrinking returns from many British businesses and burdensome taxes on investors have crushed dreams of a share-owning democracy. But the SOS message from the work and pensions secretary last week may serve as a wake-up call for millions who are sleepwalking toward a miserable old age. • Will you pay the price for the chancellor's pension shake-up? Let me explain how and why I began investing. Better still, for anyone lucky enough to be in their twenties, as I was when I started on Fleet Street in 1986, I can flag up some pitfalls of the stock market that I learnt the hard way. The first thing this cub financial reporter from Kilburn in northwest London noticed was that the Square Mile is full of ordinary folk receiving extraordinary remuneration. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that: give me overpaid over underpaid any day. But every penny of those City slickers' pay and bonuses has to come out of the pockets of the punters or, more formally, policyholders with life assurance-linked contracts and other old-fashioned investment funds. That's why I decided to start buying shares for myself, gaining a stake in businesses that I liked and shunning rackets that I loathe, such as tobacco. Professionals love to make their work seem complex because it helps to reduce competition and protect high pay. But anyone can see and hear where consumers are spending their money and which companies or countries might be on the way up. • Here's how to get your portfolio ready for battle That's how I stumbled on what turned into my very first ten-bagger — a share whose price went up ten times after I invested. A couple of business trips to the Far East prompted the idea of gaining a stake in Asia's ruthless work ethic, memorably summed up by the line: 'He who does not work shall not eat.' Knowing nothing about the individual businesses, I bought shares in London-listed investment trusts that were focused on China and India. Like other forms of pooled funds — such as unit trusts and exchange traded funds (ETFs) — these enable everyone to diminish the risk inherent in stock markets by diversification, which spreads our money over different companies. Long story short, shares in what was then called Fleming Indian and is now JP Morgan Indian, in which I invested a low four-figure sum at 63p in June 1996 cost £10.70 at close of trade on Friday. Newish fund managers say they intend to begin paying dividend income equal to at least 4 per cent of net asset value (NAV) later this year, which is good news after it has performed relatively poorly in recent years. Less happily, I was an enthusiastic participant in the demutualisation mania of the 1990s, when several building societies floated on the stock market. Not one of those newly formed banks remains an independent institution now and none of the shares issued by Alliance & Leicester, Bradford & Bingley, Halifax or Northern Rock is worth anything today. No wonder they say windfalls don't keep. More positively, that painful experience taught me that there is nothing theoretical about the warning that share prices can fall to zero. It also demonstrated the danger that if you follow the herd, you might end up at the abattoir. As a general rule, if everyone is investing in something, public confidence and share prices are likely to be near their peak, so there probably isn't much money left to be made. That's one reason I intend to continue avoiding cryptocurrencies, the investment craze of today. Another reason is that I prefer to own shares in businesses providing those goods and services where I can see customers paying real money, funding rising capital values and dividend income for investors. For example, watching my wife and her girlfriends enjoying the early days of the gin and tonic trend led me to the life-changing investment that is Fever-Tree Drinks. I paid £2.11 in March 2015 for shares I sold for £36.52 in October 2018, as reported here at those times, to help to buy the coastal cottage on the Isle of Wight where I am sitting now. But the rump of Fever-Tree shares I still own have gone somewhat flat since then. This reminds investors that paper profits are all very well but we haven't really made a penny until we sell. Of course, this DIY investor could have stuck it all in a tracker fund after Richard Branson — as he was then — paid me to write about investing in funds that follow stock market indices 30 years ago. But I don't think aiming to be average would have taken this poor boy from a council flat when Kilburn was still a slum, to where I am today. Times change but the truth about pension planning and stock market investment remains much the same. Buying when confidence and prices are low is more likely to lead to wealth creation than waiting for perfection, and the sooner we start the better. But before you invest anything, consider carefully how you will feel when markets fall. That should reduce the risk of doing something silly, like selling after prices plunge. Investing little and often is safer than a lump sum because regular savings diminish the danger of bad timing or buying heavily before a fall. AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown and Interactive Investor — Britain's biggest online platforms — all accept as little as £25 per month, without any commitment to continue. • Full disclosure: Ian Cowie's shareholdings Tax wrappers, such as Isas and pensions, allow us to place some of our savings beyond the grasp of HM Revenue & Customs. Make the most of both while you can because any imminent tax raids are unlikely to be retrospective. Pension perks or fiscal advantages have certainly become much less generous during the decades I have been benefiting from them. Which reminds me that, long ago at another newspaper, a senior colleague used to smirk about how boring he thought pensions were. To which I replied that they were not nearly as boring as poverty in old age was likely to be. Young investors have one big advantage over wrinkly rivals — time. None of us can opt out of growing older, short of doing something drastic, and the state safety net seems to be sagging lower as more folk fall into it. Sad to say, it might be even worse tomorrow.
The Sun
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Spencer Matthews reveals he'd down 10 pints and secretly take shots of vodka from bottles at depths of his alcoholism
SPENCER Matthews has opened up about his alcoholism - saying the first step was calling a famous pal who ordered him to drop everything and attend his first AA meeting that same night. The former Made In Chelsea star - who quit drinking to save his marriage to Vogue Williams - said he was shocked by the tough love urgency, but he did go along and initially felt out of place. 4 4 4 Opening up during a chat with fellow reformed alcoholic Ulrika Jonsson Spencer said: "I suspect this will come as a shock, because I haven't really spoken about this level of detail. "I reached out to somebody that I don't really know - but a famous person. "My agent was managing a very famous person who was sober, and she got me his number and I called him and he said 'you need to get yourself to a men's meeting today'. "I was just like 'What's the rush? I've taken this step to say I'm going to sort myself out, I don't have time to go today'. "And he said 'You're making excuses, if you've got kids get yourself a babysitter, if you've got a meeting cancel the meeting - get to this meeting, you absolutely must attend this meeting if you're serious about changing your life'." In a bid to turn his life around, Spencer said: "I went to the meeting and it was the Kilburn mens' meeting. I felt like I didn't really belong there. "Different people's problems are all relative, but I certainly felt like I was maybe fresher in the scale of what was going wrong. There were people there who were high on drugs at the time and very suicidal. "It was very eye-opening for me - which I suppose was the point. "I sat down next to this guy and he looked at me and he goes 'you look alright' and I thought 'Ok, thanks', and I actually felt out of place because I was deeply ashamed of my drinking and behaviour but I was a little bit like 'I'm sure I can find a maybe more appropriate meeting'. "And the guy at the end was like 'Listen, you probably can find a more appropriate meeting, but you're not a million miles from this, and if you are concerned about what you're seeing here you should be because you're a year away from this. "'If you carry on you'll lose your wife, you'll lose your kids, you'll lose your job, your family will move away from you potentially'. Vogue addresses rumour that she has split from hubby "It was a real wake up call for me." He said it then dawned on him that the more troubled addicts he saw around him had initially been where he was on the scale. Matthews, 36, said: "Of course they didn't all start there." Spencer also told how whereas during his earlier life as a City trader he'd openly knock back ten pints a night, he had already progressed to a point where he'd secretly swig booze from a bottle at home and lie to his loved ones. Speaking on his Untapped podcast, he added: "When my drinking started to creep into the earlier hours of the day I would just trot down the stairs, neck a double shot of whatever, put it back, come back upstairs like nothing's happened. "I would use vodka because there's no smell. "If anybody did say 'Have you had a drink today?' you'd just lie. "Ordinarily I'd just brush it off and say 'No, why would you think that?' "For me it was the shame. We also have a cupboard upstairs, I'd open the door and have a quick shot and then shut the door and even if there was somebody else in the house they'd be like 'What were you doing there?' - 'Oh nothing, I'm just looking for something'." Spencer said the secretive drinking made it difficult for him when he had to dispose of bottles he'd finished - in case someone either saw it in the bin or spotted it had disappeared from the drinks cupboard. He said: "I used to find it quite difficult when you would work through the whole bottle - over the course of several days - and then all of a sudden the bottle's empty, so it's like 'What do you do with the bottle?' "Do you throw the bottle out or do you keep the bottle - people might know that the bottle was there." Spencer has not relapsed since 2018 and has turned his life around and become a super-fit athlete. Last year the dad-of-three set a Guinness World Record while running 30 marathons in 30 days in the desert. 4
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Southwest Airlines' $28M investment expands cargo capacity in Denver
DENVER – Southwest Airlines on Thursday unveiled a new cargo facility at Denver International Airport that more than doubles throughput capacity and triples the amount of cooler space for refrigerated products to support growing demand for airfreight service in the metropolitan area. Southwest Airlines invested $28 million to build the 27,000-square-foot facility, which is now the largest in the company's cargo network. Southwest Cargo previously shared a leased space that was less than half the size of the new facility, Brian Kilburn, vice president of cargo, provisioning and ground support equipment, said in an interview prior to a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The facility is small by comparison to ones used by major widebody carriers like United Airlines and American Airlines but is important for the large community of freight forwarders that rely on Southwest for domestic air transport. Members of the Airforwarders Association have named Southwest the Domestic Carrier of the Year for at least 15 consecutive years because of the attention to service and reliability, and an extensive point-to-point network with thousands of daily flights. Southwest Airlines flies Boeing 737-700, 737-800 and 737 MAX narrowbody new Denver warehouse boasts seven truck loading docks and four refrigerated rooms, compared to two docks and two coolers at the previous location. The cold-storage units are also larger, creating three times more space for perishable products than before. Last year, Southwest Airlines handled more than 10 million pounds of originating and destination cargo in Denver. Denver is the busiest market in Southwest's network, with nearly 300 daily flights during peak seasons to 95 destinations. Large customers that ship out of Denver on Southwest include fish farm Colorado Catch, Labcorp and Tricor, a construction company. The top inbound shippers are Hasset Logistics and UPS Mail Innovations, according to a Southwest fact sheet. 'We continue to see a fantastic opportunity to connect businesses and customers all across the country. This facility is meant to enable that growth,' Kilburn told FreightWaves. Southwest's new policy to charge $35 per checked bag for those without a Southwest Rapid Rewards credit card from Chase, after decades of allowing bags to fly free, could benefit cargo customers by opening space in the belly hold if more travelers opt to carry their bags on board, officials said.'We carry about 50% more bags than most airlines. So the bag policy change will absolutely decrease the number of checked bags, which will absolutely open up payload and room for more cargo. It will decrease the number of times we have to restrict cargo' because of space limits, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in brief dialogue with a couple of reporters. Kilburn took over this spring as Southwest's cargo chief after the retirement of Wally Devereaux, who continues to serve as an unofficial adviser for the cargo division. Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch. Southwest Airlines VP of cargo Wally Devereaux to retire The post Southwest Airlines' $28M investment expands cargo capacity in Denver appeared first on FreightWaves.
Business Upturn
05-06-2025
- Business
- Business Upturn
Kilburn Engineering secures Rs. 30.81 crore worth of new orders across chemical and tea segments
By Aditya Bhagchandani Published on June 5, 2025, 13:05 IST Kilburn Engineering Limited has announced the receipt of fresh orders worth Rs. 30.81 crore, according to a regulatory filing dated June 5, 2025. The company disclosed that the new orders span across two key segments—chemical and tea processing—and are part of its regular course of business. The first order, valued at Rs. 29.89 crore, pertains to the granulation and drying package for Ammonium Nitrate and Nitric Acid. This deal is expected to enhance Kilburn's presence in the chemical equipment space. The second order, amounting to Rs. 92 lakh, is for the supply of tea dryers and related spares and services—reaffirming Kilburn's consistent engagement in the tea industry, where it is already a known player. These orders follow an earlier disclosure by the company on May 15, 2025, and add to the company's execution pipeline. Kilburn Engineering is headquartered in Thane, Maharashtra, and operates in the industrial engineering domain, manufacturing drying systems and equipment for various industries. Disclaimer: The information provided is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial or investment advice. Stock market investments are subject to market risks. Always conduct your own research or consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions. Author or Business Upturn is not liable for any losses arising from the use of this information. Aditya Bhagchandani serves as the Senior Editor and Writer at Business Upturn, where he leads coverage across the Business, Finance, Corporate, and Stock Market segments. With a keen eye for detail and a commitment to journalistic integrity, he not only contributes insightful articles but also oversees editorial direction for the reporting team.
News.com.au
30-05-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
SA Supreme Court rules Cynthia Ellen Rigney was not ‘mentally incompetent' during Maria Luis killing
The young woman who stabbed a drug dealer 34 times allegedly over a $50 bag of marijuana will stand trial for murder after a Supreme Court justice ruled that she was mentally competent at the time of the frenzied attack. Cynthia Ellen Rigney stabbed cannabis dealer Maria Luis 34 times within three minutes in the Adelaide suburb of Kilburn on December 7, 2018. Police raided Ms Rigney's unit at 10.51pm that night, finding her asleep under a blanket in her bedroom with a plastic resealable bag containing marijuana attached to her leg and arrested and charged her with Ms Luis' murder. A search of the premise uncovered knives secreted in the bedroom and lounge room as well as a black handbag spattered with a bloodlike stain, which DNA analysis connected to the 61-year-old dealer. Ms Rigney, now 25, has pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder. Her defence team and prosecution have agreed to the 'objective facts' of the case, that Ms Rigney stabbed Ms Luis, but the long-running trial has turned on whether the young woman was mentally incompetent at the time of the alleged murder and whether she was fit to stand trial. Ms Rigney has treatment-resistant schizophrenia and she claims not have remembered stabbing Ms Luis. Expert witnesses provided reports on Ms Rigney's complex swirl of mental health problems, which together offer a conflicted picture the young woman's capacities. In one instance, a psychologist concluded it was hard to say whether Ms Rigney's inability to recall events on the day of the stabbing was a consequence of psychosis or whether Ms Rigney had feigned memory loss. Some experts also altered their opinions on Ms Rigney's mental competence as more information came to them. On Friday, Justice Anne Bampton ruled that it had not been established 'on the balance of probabilities that at the time of the stabbing, Ms Rigney did not know that her conduct was wrong; that is, that she was completely incapable of reasoning about whether the conduct, as perceived by reasonable people, was wrong'. Justice Bampton's detailed 112-page judgment also concluded that it had not been established that 'she was totally unable to control her conduct'. 'I am not satisfied it has been established, on the balance of probabilities, that Ms Rigney was, at the time of the stabbing, mentally incompetent to commit the offence of murder,' she said. Justice Bampton ruled 'there was no evidence either from Ms Rigney herself or any other source proximate to or at the time of the stabbing that Ms Rigney's actions were guided or directed by psychotic phenomenology'. 'There is no evidence before me that the stabbing was the result of florid psychosis or a delusional belief arising from her treatment-resistant schizophrenia,' she said. 'However, there is evidence of a credible, non-psychotic alternative explanation for the stabbing.' Justice Bampton also said the 'frenzied nature' of the stabbing or number of stab wounds did not point to either a psychotic or non-psychotic motive for the young woman's conduct.
