14 Comments
User's avatar
Alex's avatar

Check out the book ‘Material World’ by Ed Conway for the extraordinary lengths gone to, to eke more of this metal out of the Earth. I’d never buy gold since reading it. We’re quite bonkers as a species. 😂

Ryan's avatar

Great recommendation - one of those great nonfiction books that leave you seeing the world slightly differently after reading it.

Wheeler's avatar
5hEdited

"Then there’s the young welder in dungarees who walks in and buys a one ounce gold coin with a wad of cash from his paycheck. Nicole feeds 192 notes through the counting machine, the sound of which crackles and whirrs through the intercom. “I don’t trust my money in the bank,” he says. He plans to put the gold coin he’s buying today, worth about £3,800, under his pillow along with the other one he bought a few weeks ago. The two coins amount to about half of his savings"

Assuming this isnt being declared to hmrc, this is straight forward tax evasion. This is an offence and our guy is either going to wind up getting audited by hmrc when their lifestyle is not consistent with their declared earnings, or getting robbed and losing everything.

Sentencing for defrauding the revenue is years in prison.

Mike Dowler's avatar

Ilford in north London? Is this another example of the Islington-ification of London politics?

Jim Waterson's avatar

Going to blame trying to cut down repetition of "Ilford North" for that one.

Tim Hannay's avatar

Lobby!? It's a foyer. Heavens. But do keep up the good work.

Alex's avatar

Also — APRIL? Wow. ☂️

Mike Wendling's avatar

Fascinating insight into who buys gold; nearly every far-right podcaster of any note has a gold business on the side, so when the conspiracy people pop up you know who sent them.

HoosierSands's avatar

Will any of the gold sellers I wonder advise the "electronic music producer" that the Financial Sevices Compensation Scheme increased the covered sum to £120K. And that's per bank or building society.

I'm sure he'll do well with his Bitcoin. Oh, hell, wait: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgl2je65klo

Adam Cooper's avatar

Isn’t a lot of this just money laundering? Buy gold for cash and then sell it at a different place and get the money as a bank transfer or bitcoin.

Joey den Broeder's avatar

Considering the 25% markup there are cheaper ways. Have you considered opening a souvenir shop?

L Tuck's avatar

Streeting’s Mandelson connection could also be problematic