Expectations may be unjustifiably inflated

Expectations may be unjustifiably inflated.Common sense tells me that the FTSE 100 indicator is of academic interest and has little or nothing to do with the state of my personal portfolio. Most of my holdings are outside the 100 and I buy shares because I believe the price will move on the performance of the companies.Now experience.My experience is that the key ingredient for a company’s success is management experience. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and I want to see management who have been through the mill and know their business and their competitors’ businesses too.My experience is there is no substitute for personal research When you identify a share to buy, the job is only half done. You cannot show a real profit until you sell the share and you can only judge the timing if you know the company and its business well. My experience is that the building sector is one of the safest and most undervalued in the market today. It is lean, healthy and profitable.My experience is that love hurts.

Never make the mistake of being so enamoured of a share that you will not admit it when the rest of the market fails to recognise its merits.My experience is that, sadly, I will never be able to think like a woman or young person. Therefore my judgement on such subjects as fashion, retailing, computer technology and mass modern entertainment is flawed. My solution is to belong to a variety of investment clubs where I can rely on the accuracy of information on these matters.My experience shows that fear and greed really are the two deadly sins when it comes to investment. Fear is why most small investors bail out at the bottom of the market. Greed is the reason they hold on even when a share rises to the point where it is overvalued.Now, get to it.

Spend some quiet quality time marshalling your own thoughts and forming your personal opinions. Then apply your common sense and experience to your investment decisions.terry.bond hemscott . After years of fiddling with variable speed limits and cone hotlines, traffic chiefs have come up with their most cunning plan yet to cure the ills of the M25 ­ asking drivers to stay away in the first place

After years of fiddling with variable speed limits and cone hotlines, traffic chiefs have come up with their most cunning plan yet to cure the ills of the M25 ­ asking drivers to stay away in the first place.
The Highways Agency has issued a leaflet suggesting that the best way to avoid chaos during forthcoming roadworks on the notorious London orbital route is to stop using it in the rush hour.Urgent repairs to the 117-mile motorway, which is used by 700,000 vehicles a day, mean that seven sections of carriageway will be subject to speed restrictions and lane closures throughout the summer.In an effort to allay motorists’ frustration, the Highways Agency has printed thousands of leaflets detailing the location of the roadworks and their duration alongside a plea to avoid peak periods.Kevin Delaney, traffic and road safety manager for the RAC, said: “The Government has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here. For years we have been asking for prior warning of roadworks. They have produced a helpful leaflet, only for it to completely backfire by adding the daftest piece of advice I’ve heard for a long time.”The leaflet, which is being distributed at service stations, channel ports and airports, lists a series of points on how to cut down on congestion. It starts with: “If at all possible, avoid travelling during busy periods, generally from 7am to 9.30am and 4pm to 7pm.”The Highways Agency defended its advice and denied it was worried that the M25, which was completed in 1986 and opened its first stretch in 1978, could no longer cope with its daily load.

“All we are saying is that these delays are going to happen,” it said.. Two councillors were jailed yesterday for a massive vote-rigging scandal that may have cost Labour control of a London authority

Two councillors were jailed yesterday for a massive vote-rigging scandal that may have cost Labour control of a London authority.
Police said the plot in the borough of Hackney by the Conservative Isaac Leibowitz and the Liberal Democrat Zev Lieberman was probably the largest attempt to “subvert the democratic process” yet seen in Britain. Leibowitz, 36, was jailed for six months and Lieberman, 29, for four months after Judge Jeremy Connor said their “enthusiasm for public office” led to fraud and a violation of the election process.They engineered a 2,000 per cent increase in proxy voting, registered Americans as local voters and tricked pensioners into handing over voting rights. During the nine-week trial, Wood Green Crown Court was told the councillors misled voters between 1994 and the elections in 1998 to gain more votes for the Liberal Democrats.Non-British citizens, including 88 mainly American Orthodox Jewish students at a religious college, were added to the proxy vote list although they were ineligible to vote.Pensioners were tricked into handing over proxy voting rights, including one who thought she was signing a petition to have rubbish collected and another who had voted Labour for 57 years but found her vote cast for the Liberal Democrats. The fraud was designed to ensure Lieberman, a school administrator from Stoke Newington, was returned in the Northwold ward.He and Leibowitz, a child carer from Clapton, were both successful at the election in which the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party won 31 seats to the Labour Party’s 29. Labour Party officials complained to the police but, despite an 18-month Special Branch investigation costing an estimated £80,000, police remain uncertain about the full extent of the fraud.Detective Inspector Robert Garratt, who headed the inquiry, said it was probably the “largest” vote-rigging conspiracy in Britain.

“We made attempts to looks for similar occasions but found nothing on this scale,” he said.Judge Connor told the two men, both Orthodox Jews, it was sad their enthusiasm to do “good works for the community” led to an agreement to “cause the violation of the electoral process It was fraud. No doubt that fraud arose from a clear intention to elect particular councillors, but fraud it was and fraud it was proven to be.”The men were convicted of two counts of forgery and one of conspiracy to defraud.. The tune is not as stirring as the Red Flag, it’s not as catchy as Things Can Only Get Better, yet by June 7 the whole country should be thoroughly sick of it

The tune is not as stirring as the Red Flag, it’s not as catchy as Things Can Only Get Better, yet by June 7 the whole country should be thoroughly sick of it.
Labour chose Lifted, the upbeat 1996 hit for the Lighthouse Family, as its general election theme tune yesterday. The song, which reached number four in the pop charts, will be played at all the party’s important rallies during the run-up to the contest universally expected on June 7.Labour strategists hope it will work the same magic as D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better, which became the musical accompaniment to Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.Lifted, with its never-give-up theme, urges the listener to remember that sunshine always follows rain by looking for the “ray of hope, coming through the blue moon”.A Labour spokesman explained: “We’re in politics to make life better for the people of Britain We are lifting Britain up and taking it to a better future. With the voters’ backing, we can carry on with the job.”Last night Lighthouse Family proved they were on the same wavelength by saying they were “flattered” their song had been chosen to represent New Labour.The band said: “Lifted is a song about being optimistic about the future. It’s a song about people and about life.”But the left-wing singer Billy Bragg, the driving-force behind the anti-Thatcher Red Wedge pop movement of the 1980s, detected “watered-down Conservatism” hidden in the lyrics. He pointed to the words: “It’s undisturbable the peace we’ve found/In a bright blue space up above the clouds.”Bragg, who plans to vote tactically for the Liberal Democrats to oust his local Tory MP, said: “I would have preferred something a bit edgier I think it is very bland.”.