We did not stay out just to be bloody minded, and it is too easy to be lulled by the euphoria of a successful launch into believing that all the ducks will swim neatly into a row. Europe is not a single economic entity yet, and taxation, cultural and bureaucratic differences may yet throw strains upon the system.However, there is much money and prestige riding upon the successful delivery of EMU. If it does all go according to plan, then we will not be talking about Europe as a part of the geographic asset diversification of a portfolio. As Europeans living in Europe, we will be investing in European shares, perhaps buying European theme funds to gain exposure to particular industries. Investors who want to be ahead of the game should think about starting now.Brian Tora is chairman of the Greig Middleton investment strategy committee.
HOW MUCH would you pay for a fax telling you about the best mortgage deals or bank accounts? If you are not careful, it could be more than you think. Telephone watchdogs have just fined a Crewe company, Bond Associates, pounds 5,000 for failing to tell people its phone service, selling bank accounts and mortgages, cost callers pounds 1.50 a minute. Neither the company's leaflets, nor the staff who callers reached, made it clear just how much the calls cost. The fine was levied by Icstis, the body responsible for policing premium- rate fax and telephone services. Icstis has closed down the line, barred Bond Associates from operating premium-rate services for one year and alerted the police.Rob Dwight, an Icstis spokesman, says that Bond Associates' main breach was "complete lack of pricing information". But Bond Associates also broke the rules by promoting the bank account service to individuals as well as companies. Mr Dwight says: "Their permission certificate was supposed to be for a business line But all the complaints we had were from private individuals. Obviously, the service was inappropriately promoted as well."The pounds 5,000 fine was imposed just before Christmas, and comes on top of another pounds 750 Icstis fine against Bond Associates made earlier in 1998.
Bond Associates declined to comment on the fines when contacted by The Independent.Late last year, Icstis fined Nationwide List Brokers pounds 500 for a fax service giving details of special offers from suppliers such as "leading banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, loan and financial companies". Recipients were told they would receive a fax every evening unless they faxed back a note asking to be taken off the list.The faxes advertised were free. But the number given for cancellations was a premium-rate number, charging users pounds 1.50 a minute. Unlike Bond Associates, Nationwide List Brokers' promotional material does carry a footnote pointing out the cost of the call.Eight consumers in the Midlands complained about receiving the faxes. Icstis found Nationwide List Brokers was operating outside the terms of its permission certificate by sending out unsolicited faxes.Martin Fisher, Nationwide List Brokers' proprietor, says this service is no longer on offer, and that the promotional faxes were sent out by an employee who has since been dismissed.Mr Dwight says: "As well as the pounds 500 fine - which they have paid, by the way - all their future promotional material for the number they have been given permission to operate at pounds 1.50 a minute has to be cleared by us."Both Bond Associates and Nationwide List Brokers used telephone numbers with an 08971 prefix, BT's code for lines costing pounds 1.50 a minute. Other prefixes from rival operators, which carry the same charge, include the following: 09910 (Torch), 03313 and 03314 (Vodafone), 09919 (Cable & Wireless) and 089612 (Redstone).Some premium rate lines, known as "fax-back" services, ask customers to dial a number on their own fax machine which will feed out the printed information promised. But it is you who pay for transmission of the faxes you order.In 1997, Icstis fined a company called Telecom Express pounds 2,500 for a fax- back service giving details of repossessed properties in their own area, which were often hopelessly out of date.
The service charged callers pounds 1.50 a minute, and lists regularly took more than 15 minutes to come through, creating a total charge of pounds 22.50.Mr Dwight says that people getting unwelcome faxes promoting services like these should write to the company responsible and ask to be removed from their lists: "If they are still receiving faxes from the company after a two to three week period, then we may take it up as a breach of our code."You can also contact the Telephone Preference Service or the Fax Preference Service. Their job is to circulate the details of people who want to be removed from their members' lists, but you may have to be persistent to get your own details deleted.Icstis complaints: 0800 500212; Telephone Preference Service: 0800 398893; Fax Preference Service: 0541 554555. Sergeant Mark Nicholson points to two Pirelli tyres, so new that the thin rubber bridges between the treads are still intact and the treads themselves are clean. It is still a mystery to police why Jenny and Jeff Bramley, on the run for four months with their foster children - Jade Bennett, 5, and her half-sister Hannah, 3 - bought the expensive tyres for the family's blue, G-registration Honda Concerto, only to abandon the car in a residential street in York at least six weeks ago. But the Honda, which was recovered last week and is now sitting in a lock-up at St Ives police station, near Cambridge, provides the first real trace of the couple who disappeared from their home in nearby Ramsey the day before they were to hand back to Cambridgeshire social services the children they adored, and had fostered for six months with a view to adoption. Inside St Ives police station, in an investigation room plastered with already-fading newspaper cuttings about the Bramleys' flight, two large plastic bags of clothes and belongings, left in the car boot, present more puzzles.There is Hannah's pink anorak with fluffy, white-fake-fur-trimmed hood, and a similar winter jacket, in maroon, belonging to Jade Jeff, 34, and Jenny, 35, also left jackets behind. So slight and small is Jenny that hers was bought in the teenage section of a department store.Why did they leave behind the clothes - along with children's car seats, an empty handbag and a stack of plastic-wrapped tea bags - when these did not figure in any description issued by the police? Officers were unable to establish what clothes the family had with them.The car is the police's biggest - in fact, only - breakthrough.
Remarkably, it sat in the same York street for five weeks before residents reported it to police, despite all the "tug-of-love" publicity and a description of the car - still bearing its publicised registration number - having been issued by police.The Honda's discovery, and a "good" subsequent sighting of the family by a retired clergyman on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway last weekend, means hope for a police team hitherto bereft of leads. Seven St Ives officers have scurried north, but excitement is mixed with trepidation. There have already been sightings, from Ireland to Lanzarote This one, like the others, could amount to nothing. For the Bramleys, a quiet, law-abiding couple described by relatives as "Mr and Mrs Average", have proved to be formidable fugitives, as elusive to the police as quicksilver. "I expected we would find them in a matter of days," admits Mr Nicholson ruefully. "In this day and age, in this country, it is amazing they have managed for so long."Just how the Bramleys are managing is the major puzzle.