How much will you be down on “Money Burning Day”?
Are your end year bets as bad as mine?
December 31st is generally an important day for political punters because so many bets are linked to the end of the year. And for me, New Year’s Eve 2009 looks set to be one of the worst ever. In fact I don’t have a winner but I have a lot of losers.
It’s generally quite instructive to look through your losing bets to pick up ideas that might contain losses in the future.
So this thread header is both instructive to me and a bit painful. For here are my December 31st losers :-
“Will Baroness Scotland remain in her position until the end of 2009?” – a reasonably-sized bet staked on September 22nd when things looked a bit doubtful. She’s still there.
“Will Alistair Darling cease to be Chancellor in 2009?”. Two chunky bets staked on April 24th and June 7th at 9/2 and 3/1. That looked like a winner until the Chancellor refused to give up his job to Ed Balls in the June re-shuffle because Brown was in such a weak position. Balls had even gone as far as saying farewell to what he thought was going to be his old department. Darling is still there.
“Ed Balls to be Chancellor on 31/12/09”. A nice sized bet staked at 16/1 on January 5th 2009. Ed didn’t make it.
“Gordon Brown To Leave PM Office in 2009.” A big bet placed in May 30th at 5/2. Brown is still there.
“Peter Mandelson (200/1); Jacqui Smith (200/1); Alistair Darling (50/1); Jack Straw (40/1); Harriet Harman (25/1) to be PM on 31/12/09” mostly modest bets staked in January 2009. None of them made it.
“David Blunkett (100/1), John Reid (100/1) and John Denham (33/1) to be home secretary on 31/12/09. Smallish bets staked in January 2009. None of them made it.
Looking back at them they all seemed reasonable punts at the time and I don’t regret any of them. And lest you feel sorry for me the total losses represented above were made up many times over by my 9/4 on Jacqui Smith going in 2009, 6/1 on Fred Goodwin paying part of his pension back in 2009 and the 5/1 that Tony McNulty would be ordered to pay part of his housing expenses back in 2009.
And there was, of course, in November the 50/1 that Cathy Ashton would get the EU foreign affairs job (Thank you MORUS for the great tip)