Andy Hayter

7 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Interesting! So if the main shareholder is a big lender too, are there any financial shenanigans it could engage in, such as making Hornby deliberately miss debt repayments, so the firm could be wound up and it gets all the assets for almost nothing?

 

 

No.  Not like that anyway.  Hornby make the interest payments; not the shareholders.   But why would they want to kill the golden goose?   Unless of course you have a better way of generating cash at 13 precent or better.  

The most they could get back would be the money they had lent and the shares would effectively be worthless although they may have some contractual claims giving them preferential treatment..  

Freezing cold all day - literally, as in below zero.  

Lunch spent with our walking group in a local-ish hostelry*.  Excellent company and value for money - 20€ for 3 courses, aperitives,  wine and coffee - and excellent quality to boot.  In total 3.5 hours which demonstrates the benefits of slow cuisine in the company of good  friends. 

*  7 miles away but 2000 ft lower down.

I am sure the full profit/loss account for these guys will be quite complex but in a simplified view provided Hornby remains as a going concern they are on a winner.

All the while the results are OK but lacklustre then the loan facility remains in place and is a nice source of income.  Following a period of sustained profits, the share price should rise and given a scarcity on the open market (since they are the majority holders) the price could move significantly.

Win Win with the only downside being financial collapse of the company, upon which, I am sure we would find, they have first dibs on assets after HMRC.

13 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Throwing good money at stuff that loses money is a Hornby tradition. What's really clever is that it keeps getting people to give it money to waste.

 

This is interesting

 

https://davidamerland.com/seo-blog/820-case-study-how-Hornby-lost-the-olympics.html#gsc.tab=0

 

 

 

I understand the comment and if you or I were to buy a few shares that would certainly apply.

However regarding the main shareholders, there is something you overlook.  The principle shareholder has given Hornby a revolving door credit of (IIRC) GBP 10m.  Hornby can call on this as and when they require for short term cash flow or investment.   The accounts show GBP 653,000 being repaid as interest in the 6 months.  Simplistically you could double that for the year as an annual rate (In fact it is more than double but let's keep things simple.).  So 1.3m return on a 10m loan facility (13 percent) is a nice little earner and a lot more than we could get from the savings account.  

You may think these boys are silly but they are a sight smarter financially than me.

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

We don’t have lemon trees but our olive trees stay outside. 
 

But I will hazard a wild guess that Essex does not enjoy regular winter lows in the high minus teens or occasionally twenties.  

A lot of folk don't understand or believe that we can get such cold winters this far south in France until I remind them that looking across the Rhone valley I can see the peaks that people ski from.

12 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

Good moaning from a Charente where Jack Frost called during the night.  It's a good thing that I took the lemon tree inside yesterday afternoon. 

 

While I will admit that my lemon trees have been brought in  about a week ago, they (and olives) are surprisingly frost resistant with most varieties able to withstand -10°C or worse.  That reminds me:  must bring the olives in.

1 hour ago, ColHut said:

Eh?

 

Inasmuch as the comment I was commenting on could be taken to suggest that if the jobs had gone to Australia rather than India I would have found that okay , I was disagreeing with that.  I would be equally unhappy despite being in Australia myself (and likely a beneficiary of cheaper product).

 

My further comments were pointing out the reasons:  If you keep making stuff overseas, and you do not make things yourselves that other people want , then eventually you go broke, and that there is also a damaging impact on the environment  when goods are shipped halfway across the world.

 

YMMV

 

:)

While those comments should apply to major industries such as steel, vehicle production, cement; I don't think they are transferable to niche industries like model railways.   The opportunities to split production close to the markets around the world must be vanishingly small.  The argument also misses the point that it is possible to manufacture in another country and still repatriate the profits back to the home country.

On the  points made by others:

Autonomous brand separation - my thoughts on reading this was exactly the same as those posted by @wombatofludham.  Having been through this personally in the 80s with the eventual divestment in the 90s, such brand separation does open the doors to divestment.  It also allows management to get a clearer view of profit and loss in each product*.  None of this means that the Hornby brand is up for grabs though.  It may well be that the focus will fall on other brands.  It will be interesting to see how far the autonomy is created - to individual brands in the modem railway sphere (Hornby, Jouef, Arnold etc) or whether model railways will be treated as a cohesive business group.   There are arguments for doing both - negotiating with Chinese producers being one advantage of keeping a widely embracing group; while it could reduce the opportunity to easily sell off an individual railway brand.

Has Hornby had its day? - Well judging by this thread, with this group of posters/analysts, I would say its importance has certainly waned.  10 years ago when I joined RMWeb,  the discussion of Hornby results a couple of days in would have run to close to or more than double figures of pages, yet here we are on page 2.   Competition has certainly reduced the importance of Hornby to the serious rtr modeller.  However the fact that we would seem to hold Hornby as less important does not mean that it is less important in the overall market.   It could just be that we are the dinosaurs and not Hornby.  

*  This can be a two edged sword, since it is likely to overlook the benefits of working as a group.  The opportunity to sell all brands through the same outlets in a simplified way, as already noted, being just one.  It might also annoy the trade outlets if for  example they have to order individually for each brand and get invoices and have to make payments similarly - assuming they don't have to do this already.

Winter has arrived here.  Doing the nightly rounds of cleaning litter trays, feeding cats, letting in those cats that should be in and letting out those who prefer to be out overnight etc, in my travels between the house and the grange it was noticeably snowing a fine snow.  I doubt it will settle, the ground still being a bit too warm but a couple of door mats have a light covering.  

As a pre-grouping modeller, pre-orders are pretty much a way of life.

Either it is a requirement from the manufacturer/commissioner or the models sell out just before the reviews come out.   

Liquid flux man here.

I have used Carr's for years but when the bottle ran dry I was forced to switch to home made.  The nature of the product is that it cannot be sent by international post.  So 85% phosphoric acid let down to a little under 12% seems to do everything Carr's red label did.  If you cannot wash the joint off, then a light spray with dilute bicarbonate of soda in water will take care of any acid residue.  

34 minutes ago, Hroth said:

@polybear I prefer my green boxes on wheels to have as little yellow (preferably none) on their ends as possible!

 

I also note that Hunt the **** has announced an 8.5% increase on the state pension from next April, but the Personal Tax Allowance remains frozen.  By my estimation, this means that part of the munificent pension increase will be clawed back in income tax, which is Not Very Helpful.

 

Hey ho....

 

I had a similar problem with a worker who complained that with the bonus I had arranged for him, he would fall into the higher tax bracket.  I offered to rescind the bonus but he decided it was better with than without.

2 hours ago, Philou said:

 

 

Rinse and repeat tomorrow morning starting at 5am!! You may well ask why. Well, in the view of much colonic cancer about and on Mrs Philou's side especially, we're both having a camera up our ............ yeah, well, you get the picture :)).

 

Er No!   I think it is the oncologist that gets the picture. 

It's a bum job but someone has to do it.  (  Just getting my hat and coat)

11 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

As mentioned above BBC1 is showing 'Children in need' which I and quite a few others are avoiding. Tomorrow night is going to be worse (IMHO) as its the final of Strictly come prancing. 

Oh that it were the final Phil.  It's just Blackpool ballroom week.  Several more weekends of "enjoyment" to come before the final just before Xmas

I got some embossed Faller stone card from FB Systems a few years ago.  Beware though, the sheets are smaller than A4 plasticard sheets.

http://www.fbsystems.com/page00010b65.php

4 hours ago, Dungrange said:

.... Great Eastern Railway .... 

 

Anything else, apart from the odd new tractor or other equipment that would have required a Lowfit or Lowmac wagon?

 

I’m also interested in knowing about the seasonality of these imports as well and if anyone has any details of tonnages of various produce conveyed, I’d be interested in that as well.

Tractors in pregrouping period would be very unusual almost anywhere and especially so in rural East Anglia.  However agricultural machinery and tools would certainly have been imported.   Most heavy kit in use would have been horse drawn but some may have been worked by traction engines and some of these may well have been itinerant and the engines imported as needed.  Ploughing would be most likely over winter and most lime would be applied at the same time.  Things like threshing machines and their motive power would be needed latish summer.  ditto reapers although these might well be owned by the farm  and would only be imported on purchase.   Small farms might well still reap by hand  with scythes.

Other imports -

tinned foods for the populace.  Probably not vast quantities but regular traffic.

Packaging for outbound crops - jute sacks (probably originally from Dundee as finished sacks or maybe jute on the reel); wooden crates new and returns;  wicker baskets new and returns

If there was a local brewery then malted barley and hops, if not then bottled and cask beer - farm work then was thirsty work.  If there was a local maltings then special coal (anthracite)  deliveries and barley. 

Timber - for construction and building farm machinery - wagons and the like.

Bricks, slates, roof tiles - maybe even reeds and long straw

Fish - fresh and preserved 

Iron for the blacksmiths - tool manufacture as well as a lot of horse shoes

A  lot of that probably did not change much until closure.

5 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Has PB’s gustatory anomaly become contagious?

Haven't you heard of fusion cookery?

6 hours ago, polybear said:

A purely hypothetical question......

 

Would a Mini Pizza (just for argument's sake let's assume Pepperoni) with new potatoes & mint sauce and peas be considered "weird"?

Just askin' for a friend you understand.....

Nothing wrong at all with that.  Just store the recipe alongside the Curried Risotto and Paella Chow Mein  

4 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

40F is around 4.5C. That's T-shirt and shorts weather! We had -16C one night last winter and back around 2010 it was going down to -23C overnight and never went above 0 for days! 

 

Jim 

You were lucky.   (Time for a Monty P saga.)

In 2012 we had daytime high temperatures that were minus double figures for 10 days in a row and the lowest daytime high was just better than -20°C.  The water main feeding the house froze and we were without piped water for 19 days in total.  I was working in Turkey during the week (where it just snowed) and was not flavour of the month with OH.

One of ours has to have a daily tablet for kidney problems.  Either the pills taste very nice or he is very obliging but it is no problem at all.

I wish I could say the same of the others

Am I wrong in believing that it is illegal for a male to pee in his apartment toilet overnight unless seated?  This to avoid noise transmission to neighbours.

That does not sound like good noise insulation to me - or perhaps it is a Canton thing and does not apply where you live.

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

Not sure if you mean Zebra mussels or turmeric root.

The turmeric looks like this. It isn’t that easy to peel. I haven’t seen anything fresh like that , just capsules or powder in Holland & Barrett (as on their website) but I shall make a diversion by Tesco  tomorrow if they now stock the fresh stuff. We have loads of powdered turmeric, labelled as Haldi, but MiL wants the fresh root. 

Looks similar to ginger and IIRC it is distantly related.  I peel ginger root with a teaspoon;  Crazy though it sounds dragging a spoon across the skin does remove it.  It might work with Turmeric.  

https://www.castorama.fr/panneau-polystyrene-expanse-unimat-120-x-60-cm-ep-50-mm-r-1-30-m-k-w-vendu-au-panneau-/3334160465940_CAFR.prd

€6.30 per panel 50mm X 1.2m X 0.6m

All of the packaging material I have come across has been expanded PS not extruded.

Cutting expanded(except with a hot knife cutter)  gives you all of those little balls of plastic that get everywhere; whereas you can cut extruded and create almost no mess.

16 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

The blight has been very bad this year. The weather was ideal for it I understand. I've had it bad on several hedges and am mulling over what to do. I did get it several years ago, but managed to nurse the plants back to health however it's much more obvious where it's struck this year.

There are two maladies.

Box blight which essentially kills the box and there is no cure.  Box might hang on for a year or two but it is a losing battle

Box Moth Caterpillar which is an imported pest.  The caterpillars de-foliate the box but with established plants, they may recover in future years.  There are treatments for this, mostly nasty poisons but you can get a pheromone trap which lures and traps males so they cannot reproduce and the females create caterpillars