Renault Vauxhall

P-bike is fixed and I've been persuaded by Hay to take an offer on the Triumph Daytona. She promised to make up the shortfall between the offer and my asking price and thus owes me £200. 

I've just become aware of a small irony. 

You know that the government has given undisclosed bungs (aka taxpayers' money) to both Vauxhall and Nissan in order to persuade them to keep their factories open? 

Well, Nissan's primary shareholder is Renault, with 43.4% of voting shares, which gives them control, as well as 15% of non-voting shares. Renault's main and controlling shareholder is the French government, with 15% of the shares - thus Boris is paying the French to keep one of their factories open in the UK.

Similarly, Vauxhall is a 50/50 merger between Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot and is Dutch domiciled since January of this year, thus Boris is paying the the French/Dutch to keep one of their factories open.

I'll bet that caused a few red faces in Tory circles and it's something they would rather be kept quiet...

On the plus side, however, a friend has informed me that we're due part ( or possibly all) of an £18bn windfall from the EU for fines imposed on tech giants by the EU, although I can't find any reference to it myself. That said, we'd get that within the EU anyway, so it's not really a gain and was afforded only by virtue of being in the EU in the first place.