View from a Jeweller

I entered the Jewellery Trade in 1972 & worked for an amazing professional for almost 15 years before starting to specialise in Valuation & insurance work, finally retiring in 2015.

In all that time I never felt ashamed of my trade, through Gold booms & crashes, silver booms & crashes & The Blood Diamond debacle.

That is until 2016. On my web page & Business Facebook page I never indulged in Political posts or Religious posts as my clients political, Religious & yes, even sexual orientation was their business & nothing to do with me or our love of beautiful things.

During my long career as a Valuer, both Corporate & Independent I used many sources for my information, even the overly complicated Rapaport list, I even listened to Martin Rapaport at a conference a few years ago & was impressed with his enthusiasm & energy.

Today however I am disgusted by the reports coming out that a Victory for a Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, overgrown child in the US elections is "good" for the jewellery trade. These reports are coming from none other than Martin Rapaprt himself, and I quote, "The diamond and jewellery trade will benefit as the new policies create a more prosperous middle class and greater numbers of wealthy consumers. Global uncertainty will also increase demand for investment diamonds as a store of wealth"

How any anyone can crow that this victory is anything but a nightmare for the world but is great for the diamond trade is disgraceful & disingenuous.

Rant Over.

Hello & Soon Please Goodbye 2016

I have to start this blog on a positive note, I have had a great year personally, just over 12 months ago my wife & I moved, lock stock & dogs to Spain, to a fantastic little town in the middle of Andalucia in Jaen district & it has been a life changing occurrence.
The weather has been amazing, the people have been welcoming & we are slowly but surely learning Spanish (or as we call it Spanglish)
Why did we move? Well Mrs D has had Breast Cancer, a very aggressive form but caught early & thank goodness, operated on very quickly thanks to the wonderful people at Derby Royal Infirmary, However the operations, Radio Therapy & Chemo Therapy left her very weak & unable to work so I started my own business from home so I could be on hand for her all the time. That's good right, well it was until the New Rules decided that as I worked more than 24 hours a week, she was not entitled to any benefits.
Now my Step brother had died in the previous year of a really horrible & nasty illness & far too young & I inherited his pension, cashed out one of my frozen pensions so as we had very little money, we had paid the rent, Council tax & Bedroom tax for the whole year, when the benefits stopped we suddenly were only in advance by about a month so by Christmas we would have been on the streets.
I cashed out another frozen pension & bought the house we now live in here in Spain, for the magnificent total of 24,000 Euros.at the time, just over £17,000.
It was the best move we have ever made, my wife has lost over 30 kilos on the better diet, we can now afford fresh food & of course the walking as it so seldom rains or is too cold & miserable. We help a local Dog Rescue centre by offering Foster care, including puppies, we had over 14 a couple of weeks ago but are now down to a more reasonable 8 (only 5 are actually ours)
So as you can see, the world is rosy, everything is fantastic.
Except no, 2016 has been a bloody awful year elsewhere & I'll start with the obvious.
Lemmy Kilmister,  Natalie Cole, David Bowie, David Margulies, Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, Frank Finlay, Sir Terry Wogan, Maurice White, George Kennedy, Tony Warren, George Martin, Keith Emerson, Sylvia Anderson,  Paul Daniels, Garry Shandling, Earl Hamner Jr., Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood, Prince, Burt Kwouk, Muhammad Ali, Kenny Baker, Gene Wilder, Arnold Palmer, Pete Burns, Bobby Vee, Janet Reno, Leonard Cohen, ok Lemmie & Natalie died in late Dec 2015 but you get the picture.
This list is by no means exhaustive but you can see even from this truncated list what a crap year it has been, all of these greats & many others as well, lost for ever, stars of stage, screen, music, poetry, sport, comedy & politics all gone.
To complete the year, two other major factors have conspired to make this the year that we will not wish to remember.

Europe ruling on the straightness of bananas. This Referendum was explicitly stated to be advisory when put before Parliament, except in a pamphlet & the New Prime Minister decided to totally ignore this & stated Brexit means Brexit, the most asinine statement since... well probably ever.
Fortunately a High Court case decided otherwise & that she did not have the authority to Fire the pistol, I mean initiate Article 50 on her own, only Parliament could do so, & then in an even bigger show of arrogance, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, if she looses there she could always appeal to the European Court of Justice,   oh wait!
There were so many lies told by the Brexit side that the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) is considering a case against them under rules which proscribe the interference with political will, we shall see how that plays out. I'm thinking the £350m a week should go to the NHS, The fact that the

EU is considering Turkey could join the EU & "Flood the UK with Turkish workers", this despite the fact that of 30 points the EU demands for considering joining, only one has been met.
Then a couple of days ago, More lies, racism, untruths & downright illegality reigned in the USA, a 4 times bankrupt was elected President. One who refuses to pay people who work for him, farms out much of his capital expenditure to China, who has never held a political post in his life, is sponsored by the KKK & White Supremacist Groups, who refuses to show his tax Accounts & who wanted to ban a whole religious group from the country & an idiot who claims that Climate Change is a scam, started by the Chinese & finally one openly helped by another country, hacking emails (by the way, soliciting aid from another country in US elections is illegal)
Oddly enough, his opponent got more votes but due to the odd way the US voting system works, he was still elected, or at least until the electoral college has its say, but I'm not holding my breath.
So 2016, whilst I personally think it's been a good year for me, really we will be glad to see the back of you.