Everyone wants to get rich it seems, so I thought I would put in my two pennies worth of wisdom on the subject. As I am opposed to the schemes that are ‘Snake Oiled’ around the place, my ten ways to get rich do not involve pyramid marketing, Ponzi schemes or stuff in capsules or bottles. So here they are. Ten easy ways to get rich.

1. Do not pay bills. This is the simplest way to get rich. Just do NOT pay anyone. Watch your bank balance grow at a phenomenal rate with this idea.
2. Rob A Bank. So simple and effective. The best place to find lots and lots of money. More than you could ever need in fact. Just be polite when you point the gun though. Never forget your manners.
3. Poison A Rich Relative. This one requires a bit of research first. Make sure they are rich, and that they love you to bits before you spend your money on expensive poison for their tea.
4. Blackmail. Always a party favourite this one. Just keep all those naughty photos of ex boyfriends, girlfriends and spouses and wait for them to achieve celebrity status, fame and fortune, then go for it with a tabloid rag newspaper. Either way you will win. Your ex or the newspaper will happily pay.
5. Fake A Back Injury At Work. So old, yet so effective. A never fail scheme this one. Just make sure you groan a lot when you go to the insure’s doctor.
6. Marry A Lawyer. I know this one has been around for a long time, but it is another one of the never fail ideas.
7. Do Not Leave Home. This is for the younger readers. Just stay put and Mum and Dad will do it all, and pay for everything for you. Keep banking what you make from small drug deals, shoplifting and petty theft and you will be rich in no time at all.
8. Marry Someone Really, Really Old. Forget your pride and start looking for someone decrepitly old, lonely and with money. Preferably with no children really ups the ante here. A few years of horrid embarrassment is truly a great investment.
9. Do Not Procreate. This one is one of the most difficult ways to get rich, but if you can keep your libido under control you’ll potentially pocket yourself nearly one million dollars of unspent money over your lifetime.
10. Move To A Third World Country. Such a a simple one this. Simply take whatever small amount of money you have and emigrate to an impoverished country. In no time, you will be well known for your wealth.

So there you have it. Simplicity is the key.

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Not everyone had a seven times Formula 1 champion living just down the road. My wife is even closer as his house is right opposite where she works. In the Swiss tradition though, we let Schumi lead his life and don’t bother him if we stumble over him when shopping on a Saturday morning.

The news that he is now confirmed to come out of retirement after three years and once again race in Formula 1 was a very big surprise. Us locals had envisaged Shumi enjoying his retirement here along with a few of his predecessors. However we all really wish him the best of luck on his return to the track and hope he wins another title or two.

Why? Because he pays tax here and that is just wonderful for our little community. Since Shumi retired, the flowers in our round-a-bouts just haven’t been as abundant and stunning as they were when he was earning mega-bucks. You need to understand that here in Switzerland our governments have for a long time offered, well, let’s say financial incentives for the rich and famous to relocate to Switzerland.

For the rich, this is a good deal financially as well as socially as us Swiss are well used to living around actors, tennis players, Formula 1 drivers, rock musicians and any other sort of rich or famous celebrity. We just leave them alone, and happily accept their tax to make our roads, schools, gardens, kindergartens and bus services so much better. This is on top of the fact that they help reduce our own individual taxes. Not a bad deal all ways round.

So, go, go, go Schumi! Win every race and bring all your loot back home.

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How many times do I read how easy it is to work from home and make money, get rich, make cash and retire, all while sitting on your sofa while watching TV. It constantly amazes me how ‘Get Rich Schemes’ never go out of fashion. Affiliate marketing, Social Leveraging, SEO Traffic, Webspace Advertising but sadly no encyclopaedias, insurance or vacuum cleaners.

The products have changed, the door is no longer wedged open by a trained size 12 shoe, but the aim is the same. Today’s door to door salesmen and women have it so easy. No traipsing around wearing out shoe leather and knuckles bruised from knocking on countless doors in search of a sucker.

All they need is a cheap computer and an internet connection and they can bang on a million doors an hour. Ups the odds of finding the sucker they are in search of and saves a lot on shoes.

It is so often said that the more things change, the more things stay the same. I think this is a perfect example of that truism. The old tried and true trades of selling snake oil, sex and wild dreams have always been the first to adapt to change, and with modern technology, they now change rapidly and often.

Credit where credit is due though. They are a tough breed that never say die.

I am now off to clean their daily handy work from my computer.

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A very simple blog post for me today. Just a copy of today’s best selling Fiction & Literature on Amazon. Check the number of free books in the list. Then the number of Kindle books. Then look at number 10. The first real book in the list.

The next real book appears at number 20 then at 29.

Of the top 50 best selling books, 21 books are free Kindle books. Now, I don’t want to be seen as a party pooper here, but since when can a FREE BOOK be a BEST SELLER? It hasn’t been sold. It’s a give away.

It seems clear to me. Write for free and only publish electronically.

So, now I can only hope my local supermarket joins in the fun and has food for free too!































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The last eighteen months has seen our global political leaders huffing and puffing, threatening and legislating, posing and promising and then failing miserably. It has been one of the most clear demonstrations of weakness I can ever remember witnessing. Think back to the mind boggling amounts of money they threw at banks, car manufacturers, airlines, insurance giants and Wall St gamblers. Not millions, or billions, but trillions! Unimaginable amounts.

So where are we now? Our pathetic politicians are now running around in circles like headless chickens because these bailed out businesses are now making money again and want to get back to business as normal. That is, paying themselves disgustingly huge bonuses and back door dividends and, really upsetting the politician’s electorates.

What is so obvious to me is that politicians are extremely temporary and thereby very weak, and totally disposable. Think George Bush. Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair. George, Jacques and Tony who? Where the real power lies is in Wall St offices, Swiss banks and multinational conglomerate boardrooms. Places of the faceless.

So what do we do? We blame our politicians. Who else can we blame?

This is because we do not know who it is that is really pulling the strings. It doesn’t take much to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t our politicians who had the idea of giving trillions to business. Remember two years ago, the CEO’s of Detroit turning up in Washington to ask (demand) billions? It started there. What a great way to offset a temporarily weak stock market.

Call me cynical, but I just cannot escape the notion that democracy simply gives us the choice of two clowns employed by the same oligarchy. The difference with communism is that the oligarchy just don’t bother with the electoral sideshow. It is business and the holy dollar that runs our world, Not pathetically weak and so soon forgotten politicians.

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It is reassuring to know that this holiday season, that we, the collective consumer ants who colonise this massive ant’s nest called Earth, have the opportunity to save the world from economic meltdown by spending every last cent we have on Chinese toys. Every last dollar we have on iPods, iPhones and iMacs. Every last dime on socks, cheap sexy underwear, Barbie dolls, handkerchiefs and fondue sets. Every last cent of our collective savings, retirement accounts and insurance policies on Christmas tinsel, plastic trees, imitation snow and polyurethane holly.

It is our opportunity to save the world economies after our bankers, governments, insurers, multi-nationals, economists and fast food giants had the incredible misfortune of getting hooked on greed, sub-primes, junk bonds and highly addictive bonuses. We all know how hard our governments have worked this last year in trying to get industry, commerce and financial institutions to kick their junkie bond habits. To go cold turkey. To enter rehab. Counselling. Our governments have set up money clinics. Places where our financial addicts can go when they are desperate and be injected with a few billion tax payer dollars.

So after all this hard slog, and not forgetting the pain of banker’s bonuses being reduced by 000.0001%, the economists now say that this was not enough. It is up to us ants this Christmas to save the world. The baton of responsibility to spend our collective way out of recession and depression has been passed through the hands of our stock markets, industry, commerce and governments to us.

Well I say, “Shove your baton!”

In the last year I have seen my business go flop, my friends lose their jobs, my retirement savings almost wiped out and faces of people I don’t know wracked with fear of losing their houses. I have seen unemployment queues, fire sales, desperation and anxiety. I have seen depression that is a medical affliction, not a financial term. I have now seen the long term effect of Gordon Gekko’s greed. It is not good, it is a crying shame.

This Christmas I will spend every last second of time that I have with my family and friends. Spend every last emotion on them. Spend my time thinking about how bare the tree will be this year. Spend no time at all sympathising with banks and economists.

Bah Humbug!

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Why is he so happy?

In the current economic climate it really makes sense to invest in infrastructure projects. In Bern, the capital of Switzerland the local authorities have decided against boring bridges, roads, school, clinics, hospitals and child care centers. They have come up with a brilliant way to spend CHF 24,000,000. (That's about $26,000,000.)

And it is? Of course, a new home for two bears in it's zoo. Now don't get me wrong here. I'm really happy for the bears. They must have got their application for a first home owner's grant just perfect. (That they are the symbol on the Bern flag helped too I suppose.) In addition, their new home has been finished just in time for winter. Very comforting for them as they prepare for hibernation.


Courtesy of Swisster

Well, this is the catch really. The price the bears pay for their new state funded, river side, seven story, luxury penthouse is that people can look at them going about their bear business. So, for this deal top come off, people need to be able to see these bears. I'm sure you are with me here.

Yes. What happens when they hibernate? Will they be slugged with arrears for not keeping up with their end of the bargain? Or will we just be happy with adding a bear in Photoshop when we get home?

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A word of warning!

If you have been following my blog, this story is probably worth a pass.

If you haven't been here before you're in luck. Why? Because today I want to do an update of my new career. That's the one I have now because the last one died an awful, bloody and painful death in May this year. Similar in fact to the one before that. Another career that burst into flames overnight and self combusted in a puff of smoke before my eyes. I think I have set the scene for your here.

I am old enough to have had a few careers implode in dramatic fashion, so at the unfashionable age of fifty something, I decided to take the bull by the horns, ditch conventional wisdom, fly in the face of reality and become a multi-media-mega-star in the traditional manner of inducing an over night success for myself. Why? Well, after the huge number of rejections I received from applications for your run of the mill 9 to 5 job, I had to come to grips with the fact that maybe I was too old to be consider a human resource!

So, instead of suffering bouts of depression with every rejection letter, telephone call or email, I decided to do something where rejection would at least be fun! So here I am. Author, songwriter, poet, guitarist, singer and general day dreaming lay about. Now millions of people can reject me every day, and I don't even know or care. Much less suffering on my part. I am left to day dream in a protected bubble.

That's not to say I have not had some small snippets of success. So many in fact, I can make a list of achievements.

1. Earnings to date from Google Adsense: $0.90 (Payable when I reach $100.00)
2. Earnings from music royalties: $2.30 (Payable when I reach $100.00)
3. First book on sale here at Amazon. Sales unknown. Earnings report awaited.
4. Three CDs on sale here at Amazon. Sales unknown. Earnings report awaited.
5. Second book approved today for sale on Amazon in two weeks.
6. Third book almost ready. Probably late November.
7. Learned to use Twitter. (That was hard!)
8. Now know what html is.
9. Started writing my fourth book.
10. Improved my ironing, cleaning, dusting and shopping skills.

So there you have it. A remarkable list of achievements I believe in such a short period of time. Callback in a few months to check my progress.

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Big day today. The first report of actual SALES!!! I know it doesn't look like much, but it's a start. If I add the $0.80 I have earned from my webpage ads, it nearly makes me a millionaire. Now I just need to wait for my books to take off and may get to my next earnings tartget. $5.00!!

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Just spent the whole morning trying to complete all the forms necessary for the US Internal Revenue Service. This was a lot of time for someone who is not a US citizen. But apparently, as I want to sell my books and CDs on the net, I need to be registered with the IRS so I can avoid paying 30% withholding tax in the US on top of my tax obligations here in Switzerland.

I think the internet is a wonderful tool, but I am starting to wonder about it. As much as I love it, governments and agencies such as the IRS must think it is 'Wonderland'. All the information they can gather on people. Or in my case, they do not need to gather as I will have to send it to them with the cost of my own stamp.

So what really. With biometric passports, ip addresses, credit card details, tax declarations, ID cards etc, what harm can a bit more information about me do?

I might include hair and nail clipping samples in the envelope so my DNA can be recorded.

If that isn't ALREADY on record.

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