Tuesday 15 November 2011

John Pottage wants his £100,000 back

John Pottage used to be UBS's UK head of wealth management - once upon a time, as they say. / Anyway, everything was beautiful. He had an exciting and rewarding career. (Maybe he still has, I don't know.) The sun was shining on his life. Birds were singing in the trees outside his house. Probably outside his office window, too. And I'm sure he had a nice wife or a girlfriend. (Maybe he still has, unless he's into boys now, I don't know, and I won't judge.) But that was before the FSA rained on his parade. Yes, that was before the FSA thought it could steal his money! (Well, it was a fine. The FSA fined him. It's a technical point.) We're talking £100,000. That's a lot, ain't it? It certainly isn't chump change.

So, why did the FSA fine him? Well, you won't believe this. The FSA reckons that as a senior manager he should have been supervising the people beneath him. Er, er ... er ... / Oh my God! It's outrageous! Ah, absolutely, I mean ... / Apparently, listen, if you can hear me in your head, John's underlings - his slaves, basically - were getting up to all sorts without his knowledge. Oh - oh, was he supposed to have eyes in the back of his head then? Jesus! Has anyone at the FSA ever had a real job? You know, a job where you need to get results and make money. I give up with these people, I really do. Christ! I'm the world's foremost financial shaman. Do I know what every other financial shaman (and money mystic) in the world is doing right now? Well, yes, I do actually because of my powers, the great powers I possess. But you can't compare John Pottage to me. (You'd be mad to try. Honestly.) John is an ordinary man, and a mere banker. I'm practically a god these days, a serious force in the cosmos. John may have been a senior manager but how would he have known that his little monkeys were trading in an unauthorized manner?

Well, I'm sure it'll all come out in the wash, at the tribunal, I mean.

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Music update:

I was never much of a singer. However, my voice seems to have changed. Rather alarmingly, I sound like Mick Jagger on my recent rough demo. Never mind. I suppose it could be worse.

I played my guitar for a few hours yesterday. I didn't write any new songs. I learnt to play In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry though. It's not much of a consolation. I'm worried it may take quite a while to write two more songs of the quality of Gilly Marie. But it better not. I need them before Christmas, so I can start approaching music publishers after the holidays.

I'm hoping to surpass Gilly Marie - eventually. If you look carefully at my blog, you'll see that I've raised my game year on year. That's because I'm never satisfied. If I spend the next five years working on new songs I know my life will be transformed by the end of that period.

This will probably be the last update. I shouldn't really mix music with whatever this is ... . / Maybe you'll hear a song of mine on the radio soon. So, er ... watch this space. No, er, listen to that space, over there -