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  • The Aegean is a new retirement hot-spot

    The Aegean is a new retirement hot-spot

    By Zoe Dare Hall

    12th March 2009

     

    Turkey is featuring prominently in the plans of Britons looking to retire overseas. With falling property prices, a warm and sunny climate and, crucially, no euro, the attractions are obvious.

    One in eight British people over 55 will live abroad by next year, says the Institute for Public Policy Research. But the strength of the euro has made many would-be émigrés wary of old favourites such as the Costa del Sol, while the collapse of the property market in the U.S. has put people off crossing the Atlantic.

    Instead, many people are looking to Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, where the vast majority of the 20,600 British owned properties are located, and where the cost of living is up to 60 per cent cheaper than in the UK.

    Appealing: The ancient harbour at Bodrum, which is lively even out of season

    ‘Turkey is one of the few logical choices for those seeking to balance lifestyle and financial advantage in their retirement,’ says Julian Walker, from the Turkish property specialist Spot Blue.

    ‘The warm climate in the south allows people to spend a healthier life outdoors, and the cost of day-to-day living is significantly cheaper than back home.’

    Stephen Hughes, director at Foreign Currency Direct, has seen a 36 per cent increase in British clients changing their sterling to lira in the past year, most of them pensioners retiring to Turkey.

    ‘The Turkish lira has increased by 6.5 per cent against the pound in the past year, which means that those who changed to lira find their money goes much further than before,’ says Hughes.

    He also believes that house prices have risen by 10-15 per cent in the past 12 months.

    Bodrum is undoubtedly one of the most appealing regions for those with retirement in mind. The countryside is dotted with olive groves and whitewashed houses.

    Its glitzy marinas are lined with boutiques and yachts. And as a lively working town, Bodrum doesn’t shut down as soon as the summer tourists leave. In addition, easyJet is to fly to Bodrum from April 23.

    At Cumberland’s Woodland Regency development, set in pine forests just outside Bodrum, apartments cost from £47,000, and three-bedroom houses from £158,000, with a shared spa, fitness centre and clubhouse on the site.

    In Gundogan, a 15-minute drive from Bodrum, the Seaview Regency Prestige villas are the most striking example of value for money on a sought-after peninsula, with three-storey, three-bedroom villas costing from £175,000.

    Each has indoor/outdoor living rooms that open onto private gardens, a shared pool and a citrus fruit valley leading to the sea.

    Eric Kaya, director of Cumberland Properties, says: ‘There’s no building work in summer because this is where rich and influential Turks have their holiday homes, so it’s protected.’

    Attracted by low prices, Britons have flocked to the Aegean resorts of Altinkum and Didim, where new apartments cost as little as £25,000.

    More attractive and less developed is Dalaman, says Dominic Whiting, author of Buying In Turkey, who singles out The Hills development in Akkaya as among the best.

    The three-bedroom villas near a golf course and marina cost from £149,000 – or apartments from £46,200 – through Curbanoglu Homes.

    On the Mediterranean coast, Place Overseas is seeing interest from retiring Britons in Beycik, where detached, three to four-bedroom houses at Quattro Villas cost from £219,000 off-plan.

    ‘Turkey is not in the euro zone, which makes this an interesting investment for British buyers,’ says Cameron Deggin, UK director of Place Overseas.

    Avoiding the euro zone was part of the appeal for Adam Jacks, 68, and his wife Julia, 59, who moved from Chester to their two-bedroom villa in Ovacik, near Fethiye on the Turkish Riviera, a year ago.

    Mr Jacks says: ‘We combine a good level of living on a pension with a lot of sunshine.

    The Daily Mail

  • POOR RICHARD’S REPORT

    POOR RICHARD’S REPORT

    Poor Richard’s Report                                                                        

     

                                                                                                    Over 300,000 readers

    My Mission: God has uniquely designed me to seek, write, and speak the truth as I see it. Preservation of one’s wealth while providing needful income is my primary goal in these unsettled times. I have been given the ability to evaluate, study, and interpret world and national events and their influence on the future of the financial markets. This gift allows me to meet the needs of individual and institution clients. 

    March 10, 2000 the stock market topped out.

    March 10, 2009 the stock market bottomed. 

    This does not mean it is going to run back up. The leaders of past bull markets do not lead the charge in new bull markets. This bear market has been the second worst in our history and probably the worst ever in other countries. It will be 5, 10, maybe 15 years before the averages make new highs- that is, if they do not change the components too much. Stocks bottom when the future looks the bleakest. So I believe we are near or at the bottom of a major cycle. It is a market of stocks not a stock market.

                 I have written that the market has bottomed, but the recovery is going to be long and painful for some. We have to institute new global regulations and retrain ourselves to be more frugal. We buy a home because we love it and want to live in it, not to turn a quick profit. We buy a stock because the company has a good product, provides a necessary function for the good of the community, and over a period of time will grow.

                Countries and consumers are tapped out. The ratio of household debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose from 66% in 1997 to 100% in 2007. We are not alone. In the United Kingdom it was an even bigger jump.

                In the US the overall debt reached 350% of GDP. Only 85% is private. This figure was 180% in 1980. The next bubble to burst will be credit cards and then, if we are unlucky, we will have a debt implosion. Individuals and corporations will do their best to reduce debt. They will be shut out from borrowing because of the massive borrowing the US Government will have to do. This will be true for many other countries also.

                Today there is a debate between Socialists and their foes that want less government intervention in their daily lives. I believe the truth lies in the middle. We can not be all things to all people. In the past we have borrowed on the future and it is now pay back time. We have to downsize our dreams and expectations or we could find ourselves in the same straight jacket that the Germans found themselves in 1930’s. The American spirit is that of a “can do will try for it” attitude. Today, while you are reading this letter, there is someone trying to figure out a cheaper source of energy. Until the discovery is achieved we will have a slow recovery. I believe that day will come from an area we least expect. Have faith.

                    With a slow recovery major corporations will wallow in the mud. Medium size companies that can move and change quickly and do not have a built in bureaucracy will become the new leaders. It has been my observation that the pinnacle of leadership lasts about 10 years. That leadership is attained because the new hires believe in the company. Later hires join because of the name and it’s safety. Competitors multiply and the growth rate slows down. As Andrew Carnegie was fond of saying “shirt sleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” can apply to this corporate sequence.

                If you want to participate in this new bull market you must change your thinking. The averages mean nothing today. The market is made up of individual securities. You will want to know how your stock is doing. Not the market. Some stocks are going to drift lower because they are still over priced or because they have had a good run in the past and accounts are now overloaded with a past leader. These stocks should be sold. Taking a loss is really a good deal. First you limit your loss and you have given yourself liquidity. Liquidity means you have constant funds for your next purchase. The losses you accumulate can be used to reduce your taxes by $3,000 per year. This applies, as of 3/10/2009, before Obama changes the system. 

                Now lets say you have taken $25,000 in losses. Smile! You have just set yourself for the future. I am not referring to the next 8 years of  $3,000 worth of deductions. Let’s say two years from now that you have taken $20,000 gains in various trades and you face a monster tax bite. You can now use the remainder of your tax loss carried forward, which could be $19,000. Now your tax bite is only $1,000. This is why taking a loss is smart. More money has been lost by investors not doing a trade because of “taxes”.

                Now initially in this new market preferred stocks that have the 85% tax credit should do well, especially if it is selling below its call price. If they call it from you, you stand to make a gain. Corporate debt that is selling below par of strong companies will represent good value. Companies that hired a key person for the future while others have been downsizing is a big tip off.

                Gold is an investment for caution. The President’s strategy is to have a little inflation to support the housing market. Incidentally, the European Union and world leaders are debating over what should happen.  Some of the foreign politicians that carry a big stick are as follows: Wen Jiabao, 66, the Chinese prime minister who is under fire at home because he “put the brakes on too fast”. Angela Merkel, 54, the Chancellor of Germany who favors a “new global constitution” for financial markets. Nicolas Sarkozy, 54, President of France who regards himself as de facto leader of Europe given Gordon Brown’s domestic, political, and economic woes and Angela Merkel’s cumbersome coalition.  Gordon Brown, 58, UK prime minister who was the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and believes he is ideally equipped to tackle the crisis. He will host the Group of 20 summit of industrial and developing nations in London on April 2.

                Central bankers include the following: Jean-Claude Trichet, 66, President, European Central Bank who believes politicians and central bankers must do their utmost to shore up economic confidence. Zhou Xiaochuan, 61, Governor, Peoples Bank of China who has held that position since 2002 and is considered a principal supporter of faster market reforms. Fluent in English he can hold his own among economists. A sleeper is Mario Draghi, 61, Chairman, Financial Stability Forum and governor, Bank of Italy who is a US educated economist, former Goldman Sachs executive, and a respected transatlanticist.

                Regulators of note are: Adair Turner, 53 of the UK. Sheila Blair, 54 Chairman of the FDIC. Mary Shapiro, 53, Chairman of the SEC.

                Economists include: Robert Shiller of Yale. Montek Singh Ahuwalia, 65, Deputy Chairman, Indian Planning Commission. Robert Zoellick, 55, President, World Bank. Pascal Lamy, 61, who is Director General of the WTO. Paul Volcker, 81, Chairman, Economic Advisory Board. Fed Chairman in 1979-1987. He warned early and powerfully about subprime mortgages. Paul Krugman, Professor at Princeton University and columnist, NY Times. He has carved out a niche as the democrats’ liberal conscience. Then we have Leszek Balcerowicxz, 62, Professor of economics, Warsaw School of Economics.  

                Bankers to watch are: Lloyd Blankfein, 54, Goldman Sachs chief executive. Jamie Dimon, 52, Chairman of JP Morgan. Stephen Green, 60, Chairman of HSBC since 1962. He has voiced strong views about the need for reform of banking.  A lay preacher and author of a book about reconciling religion with free markets, he has criticized the industry’s excesses during the boom along with Peyton Patterson, Chairman, President, and Chief Financial Officer of NewAlliance Bank.  

                At the top of the list is President Barack Obama, 47, the revues on his economic rescue plan are mixed, but much detail is awaited.  In the meantime, the president is pressing ahead with radical domestic reform agenda encompassing healthcare, the environment, and education. As promised, it has a strong whiff of both audacity and hope. Then we have Ben Bernanke, 55, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve who is a scholar of the Great Depression. He has knowledge of measures that the central banks can use at times of great crisis and he has had ample opportunity to put his theories into effect, using an expanding range of tools too try to arrest the slide.”

                With this list of partial names one can see that this is a global problem; global problems need global answers. This will take time and patience. This is why I recommend the sales mentioned above and a hefty cash position. Sure, the market is trying to bottom, but the prudent way in the 21st century is to wade in step by step. One should also check in with a professional – like me.

     Cheerio !!!

    Richard C De Graff

    256 Ashford Road

    RER       Eastford Ct 06242     

    860-522-7171 Main Office  

    800-821-6665 Watts

    860-315-7413 Home/Office

    rdegraff@coburnfinancial.com

     

    This report has been prepared from original sources and data which we believe reliable but we make no representation to its accuracy or completeness. Coburn & Meredith Inc. its subsidiaries and or officers may from time to time acquire, hold, sell a position discussed in this publications, and we may act as principal for our own account or as agent for both the buyer and seller.

     

     

    This analysis is courtesy of the Financial Times and this assessment is by Lionel Barber, editor.  March 11,2009 page 7

  • Army chief condemns ‘callous killers’

    Army chief condemns ‘callous killers’

    The head of British forces in Northern Ireland has paid tribute to the two “magnificent” servicemen shot dead by Real IRA gunmen outside an Army barracks. Skip related content

    Brigadier George Norton condemned the “callous and clinical attack” outside the Massereene Barracks in Antrim on Saturday in which Sapper Mark Quinsey, 23, from Birmingham, and Sapper Cengiz Azimkar, 21, from Wood Green, London, were killed.

    “These were magnificent individuals, and we mourn their loss,” he said.

    He also rejected claims that security at the front of the base was lax, and said: “The Army is living in Northern Ireland as part of the community.

    “We have to lead as normal a life as possible, and ordering pizzas of an evening is something everybody does around the community, as indeed do people leave and enter their houses routinely.

    “Are there other ways we can go about doing these things? That is something we will be looking at at the moment.”

    The dead soldiers from 38 Engineer Regiment were wearing desert fatigues and taking delivery of pizzas before leaving for Afghanistan. Two other servicemen and two pizza deliverymen were also seriously injured.

    At one stage the killers stood over their victims and fired a second volley. Security chiefs believe the gunmen were prepared to murder all six in front of the main gates of the barracks.

    Prime Minister Gordon Brown has visited the army base and met servicemen and military commanders.

    He is now holding talks with Northern Ireland police chief Sir Hugh Orde and political leaders at Stormont.

    The shooting has sent shockwaves through the province and has shaken the peace process.

    The Real IRA, which has claimed responsibility and branded the pizza deliverymen as British “collaborators”, is the same organisation that killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, in the bombing of Omagh, Co Tyrone, in August 1998.

    All sides in Belfast denounced the shooting, and even though republican party Sinn Fein’s condemnation stopped short of expressing sympathy for the soldiers and their families, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former IRA leader in Londonderry, demanded the dissidents call off their campaign.

    He said: “I was a member of the IRA, but that war is over now. The people responsible for last night’s incident are clearly signalling that they want to resume or re-start that war. Well, I deny their right to do that.”

    Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams added that the perpetrators had no support and he urged party members to help the police investigation.

    The MP said: “The attack was an attack on the peace process. It was wrong and counter-productive.

    “Sinn Fein has a responsibility to be consistent. The logic of this is that we support the police in the apprehension of those involved in last night’s attack.”

    The Real IRA “South Antrim unit” claimed responsibility in a phone call to the Sunday Tribune paper in Dublin.

    In a statement, the paper said: “The caller said he made no apologies for targeting British soldiers while they continued to occupy Ireland and also said he made no apologies for targeting the pizza delivery men who, he said, were collaborating with the British by servicing them.”

     

    ITN

  • Why the CIA has to spy on Britain

    Why the CIA has to spy on Britain

    Tim Shipman
    Wednesday, 25th February 2009

    Tim Shipman says that Britain is now so overwhelmed by Islamist extremists and terrorist plots that our foreign policy has become subservient to our desperate need for intelligence

    On the night of the Mumbai attacks I spoke to an old security source of mine, who has friends in SIS, MI5 and defence intelligence. There was only one thought on the minds of our security chiefs that night: ‘Are they British?’

    In the bar of the Travellers Club and the pubs and tapas restaurants of Vauxhall Bridge Cross, drink was taken in double and treble measures amid grim assumption that the terrorists would turn out to have links to the UK. It was a fair assumption since, where international terrorism is concerned, Britain is no longer part of the solution; we are part of the problem. Where once we exported football hooligans, now we are among the world’s most prolific suppliers of Islamist extremists. Mercifully, the Mumbai terrorists had no discernible link to the UK. But as the industrial-scale intelligence arse-covering exercise groaned into action that day, no one would have been surprised to discover that another suicidal cell of British militants had slipped through the net.

    Serving and former intelligence officers on both sides of the Atlantic say that the UK’s status as a hotbed of militancy and an exporter of terror means that obtaining intelligence, once a by-product of good international relations, has become a goal as much as an instrument of foreign policy. Take one recent example, the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently returned from Guantanamo Bay. Trying to discern the truth from David Miliband’s public pronouncements on the affair has been a little like preparing an intelligence assessment — the publicly available facts are sketchy and the true motives of the participants are concealed behind layers of cant, hypocrisy and not a little squirming embarrassment. The foreign secretary allowed critics to assume he is lying when he claimed the US threatened to cut off intelligence-sharing if the full details of the torture meted out to Mr Mohamed in a CIA black prison were laid bare in the High Court. Mr Miliband was more content with the suggestion (accurate as it happens) that he was concealing evidence of British complicity in the interrogations rather than admit that British intelligence has become dependent to an unprecedented and embarrassing degree on the CIA, a relationship he could ill afford to threaten.

    By MI5’s own admission, there are 2,000 terrorists suspects in the UK, perhaps twice that number who are susceptible to recruitment. As Jonathan Evans, the director-general, put it in January: ‘We don’t have anything approaching comprehensive coverage.’ MI5 deserves great praise for thwarting numerous attacks but sources say the Security Service can monitor, at most, two live plots at a time.

    Into the vacuum have stepped the Americans. The CIA is now running its own agent networks on an unprecedented scale in the British Pakistani community. A British security source told me that somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent of CIA activity designed to prevent a new terrorist spectacular on American soil is now directed at targets in the UK. This is a quite staggering number. I ran the figure by several former CIA officers in the US, all of whom still have close links with the intelligence community. The consensus was that the 40 per cent figure is about right. ‘If you’re talking about total global operations, that would be an exaggeration,’ one national security official said. ‘If you’re talking about operations to deal with threats against the US homeland, that’s the ball park.’ This has caused some tensions in what my old tutor Dr Chris Andrew, now the official historian of MI5, calls ‘the most special part of the special relationship’. A former CIA officer who still does freelance work for the agency, said: ‘Britain is an Islamist swamp. You don’t want to have to spend time spying on your friends.’

    As far as our closest ally is concerned, Britain is not part of the problem, Britain is the problem. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East expert on the NSC for three presidents, who has just been appointed to head Barack Obama’s overhaul of Afghan strategy, told me: ‘The 800,000 or so British citizens of Pakistani origin are regarded by the American intelligence community as perhaps the single biggest threat environment that they have to worry about.’

    In short, the US believes that if there is to be a repeat of 9/11, it is most likely to be carried out by British Muslim terrorists.Robert Mueller, the head of the FBI, used a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington this week to announce that the bureau is now specifically targeting extremist splinter groups seeking to enter the US through the visa waiver programme.

    Intelligence gained by American operatives from British people in Britain has thwarted several attacks and helped locate Rashid Rauf, an al-Qa’eda operative who was implicated in Operation Overt, the alleged plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, who was killed in a US missile strike last November.

    It’s understandable that the government’s response to the Binyam Mohamed affair was shaped by the need to protect this flow of information. But it is not an isolated example. Tony Blair’s decision to lean on the Serious Fraud Office and bring a halt, two years ago, to the corruption inquiry into BAE’s dealings with the Saudi government came after a Saudi threat to cut off intelligence co-operation.

    The initial reluctance of the British government to point the finger at the Russians for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko owed a lot to anguish in MI6 at the likely loss of FSB intelligence on Muslim terrorist suspects, drug-smugglers and people-traffickers through the Balkans. British policy towards Pakistan is similarly defined by the desire to balance political reform with the need to maintain a steady flow of intelligence from the Pakistani military and those bits of the ISI intelligence agency that are not a wholly owned subsidiary of al-Qa’eda. Their information was vital in understanding how the London bombers of July 2005 were radicalised and trained.

    Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said: ‘Once Britain has become seen as a net exporter of terror it’s understandable that other nations concentrate their intelligence efforts here and those links become increasingly important.’

    The subordination of foreign policy to intelligence needs goes even further when it is shaped by the desire to avoid antagonising potential militants in the UK. Contrast Tony Blair’s support for Israel’s war in Lebanon with Gordon Brown’s immediate calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. Then listen to the security minister Lord West: ‘Tony Blair would never accept that our foreign policy actually had any impact on radicalisation; well, that is clearly bollocks. This business in Gaza has not helped us at all in our counter-radicalisation policy.’

    You don’t have to support the Iraq war or Israeli aggression to know that governments need to be free to make decisions in the national interest without trimming their sails to avoid annoying potential homegrown terrorists. But the quest to prevent a new atrocity has become the secret driving force of British foreign policy. The reason is the debilitating fear of what would happen if British militants succeeded in an attack overseas. David Miliband’s trip to India after Mumbai was a diplomatic disaster. Imagine how much worse it would have been had British extremists, as was originally feared, been behind the attacks. British India policy now would be a protracted effort to placate and apologise.

    Then consider the reaction in France, whose security services were first to coin the phrase ‘Londonistan’ to describe that Islamist swamp, if British Islamists ever struck across the Channel. We’d put even fewer past M. Sarkozy in the corridors of Brussels if that ever happened.

    Finally, consider the case currently before Woolwich Crown Court, where eight British Muslims are on trial charged with plotting to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in August 2006. These men are innocent until proven guilty, but the knock-on effect of the case has already been felt in the intelligence world. It was the prospect of the airline bomb plot that initially persuaded the US to step up their espionage activities in the UK.

    In the eyes of MI5, one British intelligence official said, ‘The fear is that something like this would not just kill people but cause a historic rift between the US and the UK. If an American aircraft carrying American passengers had been brought down out of the United Kingdom by British subjects, you can imagine the fallout. That is the sort of thing that brings governments down.’

    That thought is why the spooks were downing double measures, David Miliband is dealing in half-truths, and somewhere in West Yorkshire the CIA is dining on chicken madras.

    Source:  www.spectator.co.uk, 25th February 2009

  • European Identity in a Multicultural Society

    European Identity in a Multicultural Society

    Food, drink, good company, and wise words …

    Dear Friends,

    Liberal Democrat Friends of Turkey is delighted to invite you to a pleasant evening with two excellent speakers; former Liberal Democrat Leader Charles Kennedy and Turkish Barrister Emma Edhem.

    As later this year the European elections we will be contested, we have chosen a European theme for the evening, “European Identity in a Multicultural Society”. People are sceptical of government, but in Scotland the Scottish identity was strong enough for people to vote for their own Parliament. Previously we saw ourselves as European and we voted in favour of joining the EU. But what do we think today? And what about the perceptions of ethnic minorities, many of whom think of themselves as British rather than English. And does that also include being European?

    Charles Kennedy is the former Liberal Democrat leader, president of the European Movement and Member of Parliament.

    Emma Edham is the president of the Turkish British Legal Society and Company Secretary of the Turkish British Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

    We are meeting at Shish (www.shish.com), one of our favourite restaurants conveniently located near Old Street tube in Central London.

    313-319 Old St, EC1V 9LE

    24 February 2009
    Time: 19:30 – 21:45

    The entry price of just £12 (£10 if on a low income) includes your food. Vegetarians will be well catered for.

    For further info contact: 07799142527, info@ldfot.org

    We have great speakers and this will be a great event. Confirm your place now, before it’s too late!

    To book a place please reply with the following information:

    First name:
    Last name:
    E-mail:
    Phone:
    Zip code:
    Comments:

    Join Liberal Democrat Friends of Turkey on Facebook at:

  • INTERNATIONAL MOTHER TONGUE DAY

    INTERNATIONAL MOTHER TONGUE DAY

    The Azer Turk Association of Yorkshire

    (ATA-Y)

    Presents a celebration of :

    INTERNATIONAL MOTHER
    TONGUE DAY  

    Programme includes traditional music, dance plus classical poetry.

    Mon 23rd Feb

    4pm-7pm

    Compton Road Library

    Harehills,

    Leeds,

    LS9 7BG

    (UK)

    Dünya “ANA DİLİ” günü ile bağlı olarak

    Leeds Şeherinde 23.02.2009,
    saat 16:00’dan 19:00’a dek
    Compton Road Library,
    Harehills Lane,
    Leeds,
    LS9 8BG
    (UK)
    adresinde Azerbaycan qonaqlığı olacaqdır.

    Muzik, Raqs, ve Şeir.

    Hörmetli qonaqları görmeyi ümid edirik.

    Giriş serbestdir.  

    All welcome

    With thanks to:

    Leeds Libraries & Information Service
    Community Alternatives Team, Adult Social Care
    Touchstone BME Community Development Service
    Voluntary Action Leeds
    Leeds Connecting Communities
    Leeds Voice
    Cllr Roger Harrington

    To RSVP or discuss, go to