"Bristol Crown Court heard how almost 10,000 people booked to visit the brothers' Lapland New Forest attraction.. in the run-up to Christmas 2008. They were lured by promises of a "magical tunnel of light", a "bustling Christmas market" filled with log cabins covered in snow, and Father Christmas himself at the centre.. But instead of entering through the gates of a place "where dreams really do come true", visitors found themselves driving down a potholed lane past a rusting pile of scrap cars guided only by a traffic cone with a piece of paper on top, the court heard.
Rather than being welcomed by elves, they were met by men in high visibility jackets collecting ticket stubs and directing them to a muddy car park. Inside, the promised "magical tunnel of light" turned out to be a row of fir trees with patio lights strung between them.. In the event, the ice rink was continually out of order, resembling what one visitor described as "two puddles". Local trading standards officers were flooded with complaints from disappointed families and media reports featuring disgruntled elves smoking cigarettes."
- 'Lapland theme park brothers guilty of dishonesty', John Bingham, The Daily Telegraph, 18 February 2011.
These are testing times for investors. Look beyond the headline stock index returns – in no small measure fuelled by unsustainable monetary stimulus – and the underlying market environment “feels” unhealthy. There is no shortage of cracks in the artifice of apparent stability to write about. Cash deposit rates remain pitifully low for savers, heavily outweighed by rising food and energy prices. Those same energy prices are likely to remain elevated but in a context of broader volatility given the revolutionary fervour sweeping through North Africa and the Gulf states. Small businesses continue to complain of being starved of capital by the banks. Here in the UK, the electorate is bracing itself for the impact of swingeing cuts in government spending, in the aftermath of raised consumption taxes. Further afield in the western economies, and not least in the US, governments remain in denial about the increasingly urgent requirement to bring their budgets back even vaguely towards balance. And yet the markets continue to rise.
The pragmatic investor is now forced into an uneasy compromise. In recognition of the fact that the game has changed, at least for the moment, he or she is obligated to take…
