Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Sarawak Reenacts Independence from Britain




Pointed reminder to the federal government that the state has its own history
Last Monday was the 50th anniversary of Sarawak independence from Britain. Although it wasn't a gazetted public holiday, the local newspapers over the preceding week highlighted the upcoming reenactment of the independence ceremony, in which the last British Governor Sir Alexander Waddell formally handed sovereignty over to Tuan Haji Openg, the first Yang di-Pertua –governor—on behalf of the people of Sarawak.

The ceremony, forgotten in the past, appeared to be a pointed reminder to the national government in Putra Jaya that elements in both Sabah and Sarawak are demanding a more assertive approach to the governance of their own affairs.

The British took over the role of protecting Sarawak in 1888, formally becoming a colony in July 1946. On 22nd July 1963 Britain granted Sarawak full independence, where it became a sovereign state in its own right.

Many, if not most Malaysians are unaware that Sarawak was indeed, if only for a short time, a fully independent state before it entered into the Malaysia Agreement to form the Federation of Malaysia along with Sabah, Malaya, and Singapore, which formally came into effect on 16th September 1963, the actual birth date of Malaysia. Sarawak's, like Sabah's status within the Federation was defined by the 18 Points Agreement, which gave Sarawak (20 points in Sabah) sole responsibility in governing many aspects of its territory.Read more.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

London Olympics Diplomatic Gaffe: Romney Not Smarter Than A Fifth Grader ?

Hantu Laut


American, they either thick in the head or too smart for their own good.


In November 1998 US Vice President Al Gore came to Malaysia for the APEC summit and committed the most embarrassing breach of protocol to a host country. Gore praised supporters of jailed former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim  "as the brave people of Malaysia" which in its literal sense could be construed as he's trying to incite rebellion against the government. Not only Malaysia but the whole Asean region was shocked and gnashing its teeth at the stupidity of this man,  a vice president and a presidential hopeful. Read here.


Now, the Brits are in a huff and up in arms with another stupid and arrogant American, another presidential hopeful who think no other country is greater than America and no one smarter than him, committed a diplomatic gaffe, by making negative comment on the London Olympics. Read here.


The British press are not going to take it laying down, gave the man a well-deserved trashing.Read here.

Obviously, like all smart American, he is not smarter than a fifth grader.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Ambiga, Anwar:Is The British Electoral Roll Dirty Too?

Hantu Laut

Is Malaysia electoral roll as dirty as Ambiga and Anwar made it out to be that they have to organise a huge rally calling for free and fair elections?



Our laws and parliamentary system are inherited from the British.Almost everything in government are based on the British system including our civil service and not forgetting we, like the Brits, also drive on the wrong side of the road, different from the rest of Europe and America.

We have inherited a unique system of government which had prevailed well over the decades until some smart asses came up with their stupid argument that there was something very wrong with the system. 

The 2005 U.K.Elections gave Labour only 36.1% of the total votes, but they managed to form the government on their own, against the total oppositions votes of 64.%.

Even if all the opposition parties joined forces, they still do not have enough seats to form the government.



Seats
This table indicates those parties with over one seat, Great Britain only
Seats %Votes %Votes
Labour Party35556.536.19,552,436
Conservative Party19831.533.28,782,192
Liberal Democrats629.922.65,985,454
Scottish National Party61.01.6412,267
Plaid Cymru30.50.7174,838
Others40.65.71,523,716
628

26,430,908

The Labour Party only had 36.1% of the total votes but 56.5% of the total seats.The Conservative and all other parties put together had 63.9% of the votes but only 43.5% of the seats.


No citizen and no one in the opposition complained that the UK electoral roll is dirty or the system is fucked up.The losers took the losses in their stride.

Even Raja Petra has written about this a number of times, which was a bit unfortunate, since he now lives in the U.K, he should have known better that the same anomaly exists in the British system.

The 2010 U.K.Elections was highly contested that ended in a 'hung' parliament.No single party has sufficient majority to from the government. The result below.







UK - NATIONAL SEATS AT A GLANCE

  • Prediction
  •  
  • 326 to win
SEATSCHANGE
Conservative
307+97
Labour
258-91
Liberal Democrat
57-5
Democratic Unionist Party
8-1
Scottish National Party
60
Others
140

SHARE

  1. CON36.1%
  2. LAB29.0%
  3. LD23.0%
  4. OTHERS11.9%

SWING

5%From LAB to CON




Labour lost the government on 5% swing to the Conservative, yet the Conservative can't form the government on their own.

We are different from the American system as far as elections are concerned.The American president is indirectly elected by the people through what they called electoral colleges, but members of the federal legislature, the Congress are elected directly.

I have great faith in our democracy and our electoral system, it may not be perfect, but than no system is perfect, everyone has a fair chance of winning an election, without fear or favour, as can be seen in March 2008. The opposition did not win the federal government then was because of the system, not of cheating or dirty electoral rolls.

I challenge Ambiga and Anwar to show substantive proof that there had been massive cheating in past elections and that the electoral rolls are dirty.

Monday, December 12, 2011

British PM Cameron's Fiasco


Nick Clegg promised to rebuild the government's shattered relationship with the rest of Europe and risked opening a coalition rift by going public with his "bitter disappointment" at David Cameron's decision to block a new EU agreement.

The deputy prime minister said Britain risked becoming "isolated and marginalised" from the European mainstream and, along with seniorLiberal Democrats, spent the weekend contacting European leaders in a "strategy for re-engagement to recover lost ground", according to a senior government source.

Several high-profile figures, including the former leader Paddy Ashdownand the party president, Tim Farron, joined Clegg in a wide-ranging attack on Cameron's resort to a British veto.

Clegg will hold a meeting with business leaders this week to convince them "they had not completely had the door shut", according to an aide. There is growing concern that the 26 EU countries who agreed on greater fiscal integration last week will now be able to strike deals affecting British banks and businesses.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, who warned the prime minister in Cabinet last Monday against the strategy he went on to follow in Brussels, is concerned that global companies including banks and pension funds will now shun investments in the UK, having previously favoured it as a "gateway" to the continent.

Clegg was biting in his critique of developments in Brussels but spoke of correcting the path chosen by Cameron by getting "back into the saddle". "I'm bitterly disappointed by the outcome of last week's summit, precisely because I think now there is a danger that the UK will be isolated and marginalised within the European Union," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.Read more.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

London's Streets Of Rage

The Daily Beast

Britain’s estates are full of frustrated youth. A look inside their broken world.

On a recent night in Stockwell, an up-and-coming swath of South London, a police van prowled the streets. The neighborhood, five kilometers from Parliament and a short walk from Battersea Park, sees its Tube stop fill with young bankers at rush hour and its pubs bustle at night. But two weeks earlier its darker side had taken hold. Hooded youths took over the streets, smashing and looting at will, as the area became a picture of the chaos that swept through London during last month’s riots.

The van slowed to a stop near a scraggly patch of lawn, where a cluster of young men huddled beneath the blocks of the sprawling housing projects, or “estates,” that sit smack in the center of Stockwell. The spotlight on the van’s roof tracked toward the group, bathing them in blinding white. In unison, they turned away, and waited. The spotlight went out, and the van disappeared into the night.

“Rage,” said one of the young men, an 18-year-old with cornrows and a cold gaze. He pulled papers from his pocket to roll a spliff. “It’s everywhere. Just everything in general for the youth. How man lives. Rage is peak.”

Tensions had been running high in the Stockwell estates, and in poor areas throughout the city, since the four nights of rioting ended on Aug. 10. Some buildings in places like Peckham, another hard-hit area in South London, were still boarded up. The police reinforcements sent from across the United Kingdom remained, and the streets were full of cops, whom the kids call “feds,” though England has no FBI. Police were kicking down doors in search of pilfered riot loot, and the hated stop-and-searches were in full effect. The annual Afro-Caribbean street carnival, meanwhile, which the previous year had ended in a shower of bottles and Molotov cocktails, was set to kick off in a few days. There were whispers about more trouble to come, and authorities made plans to pump the festival with record numbers of police.Read more.

Friday, August 19, 2011

London Riots' Racial Blame Game


A former member of parliament, now, running for mayor of Birmingham, writes an anguished account of the riots that have ravaged Britain.

Few British mosques are places of mosaic or minaret. They are not fine buildings from which muezzins call. They are the adapted back rooms or upstairs quarters of working-class Muslims. The carpet I sat on in the Handsworth district of Birmingham on Aug. 10 was woven through with a religious motif, but was threadbare.

I was part of a circle of 20 barefoot men, their palms turned upward in front of their chests, making their dua for two brothers killed in “riots” the night before. The prayers were now led by the murdered men’s uncle, replacing their father, who was ushered away in distress.

Between prayers, the men took sober phone calls, talked mutedly, and sent text messages. A surviving brother, sobbing, wandered in and out. Outside, a crowd of young Kashmiri men milled. Some were in traditional dress, some in suits, most in the universal uniform of American hip-hop.

Fourteen hours earlier, at 1 a.m., the two brothers, along with a third man, had been “protecting their community” on the streets of Birmingham’s multiethnic Winson Green district. The night before had seen attacks on shops and looting in the city center and nearby Soho Road. As trouble seemed, on the second night, to be moving in their direction, Sajad, Haroon, and Abdul were part of a large group “defending” their area. In the chaos, a suspected looter drove his car directly at them. All three were killed. A 32-year-old man was almost immediately arrested on suspicion of murder.

This is my city. I grew up here. I love the place. I sat for nine years in the House of Commons as member of Parliament for the Erdington district of Birmingham. Last year I stood down in order to campaign for, and ultimately to campaign to be, our first directly elected mayor.

As a practicing politician in a city gripped by disorder, I find this article difficult to write. I have privileged access to private situations, afforded to me on the basis that I might help, not so that I can write it up in NEWSWEEK. But telling the story so widely is another unusual privilege. So I take the risk.

From the family of the dead brothers I went to a small, closed meeting of Afro-Caribbean community leaders called by one of the city’s two Muslim M.P.s, Khalid Mahmood. They are frightened. The man arrested on suspicion of the murders was black. Facebook is heavy with young Kashmiris venting fury and threatening reprisals. “We will take three blacks for the three that was took from us” is one message reported by a veteran community activist. She says it is the most scared she has been for 30 years.

Overlaid onto the fear of reprisals is the worry that such threats by themselves will provoke a response from gang-influenced Afro-Caribbean men.

BRITAIN RIOTS

"The rioters are not furious or alienated. They are bored.", Kerim Okten / EPA-Corbis

That would be a massive escalation because, hitherto, this nationwide civil unrest has been largely the work of children. The marauding bands that set London alight and shut down town centers across Britain were made up, unprecedentedly, of often very young teenagers. This has not been an uprising of the dispossessed, the unemployed, or particular ethnic groups, but a violent convulsion of kids on holiday from high school. According to the Metropolitan Police, just under two thirds of those arrested on the second day of the London disturbances were teenagers. Many were 13, 14, 15 years of age. Everyone who saw them was shocked.

“They were just kids, not more than 15,” the owner of a wrecked mobile-phone shop in Birmingham told me while waiting for the police to arrive in the cold light of that Tuesday morning. “The scarf covering his face fell down and I couldn’t believe it—he was so young,” said Miles Weaver, a young academic watching from the window of his city-center apartment as a gang looted a shop in the small hours of Tuesday night.Read more.


Thursday, August 18, 2011

Learning from Britain’s Moral Rot

Posted by Thomas Sowell

The orgies of violent attacks against strangers on the streets — in both England and the United States — are not necessarily just passing episodes. They should be wake-up calls, warning of the continuing degeneration of Western society.

As British doctor and author Theodore Dalrymple said, long before these riots broke out, “the good are afraid of the bad and the bad are afraid of nothing.”

Not only the trends over the years leading up to these riots but also the squeamish responses to them by officials — on both sides of the Atlantic — reveal the moral dry rot that has spread deep into Western societies.

Even when black youth gangs target white strangers on the streets and spew out racial hatred as they batter them and rob them, mayors, police chiefs and the media tiptoe around their racism and many in the media either don’t cover these stories or leave out the race and racism involved.

In England, the government did not call out the troops to squash their riots at the outset. The net result was that young hoodlums got to rampage and loot for hours, while the police struggled to try to contain the violence. Hoodlums returned home with loot from stores with impunity, as well as bringing home with them a contempt for the law and for the rights of other people.

With all the damage that was done by these rioters, both to cities and to the whole fabric of British society, it is very unlikely that most of the people who were arrested will be sentenced to jail. Only 7 percent of people convicted of crime in England are actually put behind bars.Read more

Friday, August 12, 2011

The Moral Decay Of Our Society

The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom

Peter Oborne

David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.

But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.

I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.

Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.

Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.

I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip’s businesses could never survive but for Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.Read more.


Thursday, August 11, 2011

London Riots:Of Black Scums and White Trash

Hantu Laut

What should we call the people who ran riot,looting, destroying other people's businesses and properties for the past four days in half-a-dozen British cities?

Do you want to be politically correct and called them protesters like what the BBC and the British media did.

What are they protesting about? Asking for fair and free elections, against racial discrimination or just pure badness, madness and criminality?

A rioter in London poses in front of a burning van

Genuine protesters do not loot, attack the police, torch properties and vehicles.

The West was quick to brand any form of extremism involving Muslims as terrorism.What do they consider those black scums and white trash as? The incendiary attacks on properties and human lives, are they any different from terrorism?

Obviously, the Western type of laissez-faire parenting mixed with the black voodoo culture has muddled the gene pool of offspring mired in badness and indiscipline.

Buildings burn on Tottenham High Road, London after youths protested against the killing of Mark Duggan by armed police in an attempted arrest

Buildings burn on Tottenham High Road, London after youths protested against the killing of Mark Duggan by armed police in an attempted arrest

I have no time for political correctness and indulge in niceties with these monsters, an evil manifestations of its nurture and conditioning.

Are they not thugs,scumbags,hooligans, criminal opportunists and last but not least terrorists? The products of bad parents and bad parenting.

Here, an eleven-year old caught for looting. He was just unlucky there were probably more of his delinquent that got away.Where were the parents of these young punks, were they also involved in rioting and looting?

I am always against any street demonstration, no matter how peaceful the organisers claimed it to be.The London riots are reminders that it takes only one man to start a feeding frenzy.

Ambiga and Bersih beware!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Anarchy In The UK:Between a Rock and A Hard Place

Hantu Laut

The rioting is no more confined to London it has spread to other cities.Manchester, Salford, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Leicester and Birmingham with shops being looted and set alight.

A separate crowd in Manchester's Market Street has set fire to a Miss Selfridge shop. They then moved on to damage and loot other stores.

Is David Cameron "between a rock and a hard place" that till now he has not been able to make a sensible decision how to put out this flame of outrage.

If the UK government do not impose curfew in the trouble spots and order the police to shoot (with live ammo) on sight those who broke the law there will be complete anarchy in the UK as seen in Paris some 6 years ago.The one in Paris was better contained as it was only confined to the suburbs and did not touch the city proper.

The Sex Pistol's "Anarchy in the UK"



This the country that want to export and impose its brand of freedom and democracy to the third and developing world.

They prefer to let freedom prevails at the cost of massive destruction to properties and lives of innocent people rather than taking tough measures to protect lives and properties from hordes of scumbags rampaging the streets, looting, burning buildings and cars at will.

Najib did the right thing to take preemptive action against Bersih.

It is a breath of fresh air looking at what is happening in the UK right now.The sight of burning buildings and cars are just too much to ingest.People's homes and businesses being burn down all for the sake of mindless violence.


Malaysians should be relieved the government did right to stop the massive rally from taking place.

Of course, the antagonists and potential troublemakers would not agree.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Tottenham riots: police let gangs run riot and loot

Hantu Laut

A peaceful protest developed into one of the ugliest scenes in recent UK history as sections of London went up in flame and rioters clashed with police.

This can happen in Malaysia if Bersih and Pakatan Rakyat were given their ways.


Yeah! Democracy. Yeah!Freedom.

London's burning because the cops were afraid of being accused of police brutality.




Britain’s biggest police force is facing criticism after it let looters run riot in north London for almost 12 hours, in some of the worst scenes of street disturbances seen in recent years.


The Metropolitan Police said it was focused on containing violent disorder in Tottenham on Saturday night, which left dozens of officers injured and saw squad cars, shops and flats burned to the ground.

But its tactics meant gangs of youths were free to break into stores at nearby Tottenham Hale retail park and in Wood Green, with looters forming an orderly queue in broad daylight to steal from a sports shop.

Riot police did not intervene to stop the looting in some areas until 7.30am the following morning, almost 12 hours after the riots began, and last night there were fresh disturbances in Enfield.

Police defended their actions, saying that their priority was to avoid loss of life in the violent clashes that started after a peaceful gathering outside a police station, held to protest a fatal shooting by Met officers on Thursday.

Metropolitan Police Commander Adrian Hanstock said that police took a decision to devote resources to the scene of the riot rather than the looting.

He said: “What you have to recognise here is that this is opportunistic criminality. These individuals who stole, looted and rampaged through businesses, businesses which are struggling in the current climate, took advantage at a time where police were dealing with some serious incidents that posed a threat to life.

“Of course we are going to focus on fires and people potentially in danger.

“You have got a situation where people have been violent and are setting fire to things. Police officers have to remain in position even after the initial violence dies down.

“It is a very delicate balance. Officers have to consider that by staying here [the riot scene] can I prevent someone being seriously injured or should I intervene when someone is committing a theft that we might be able to investigate afterwards.” Read more.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

If you don't speak English you can't belong in Britain

Malaysians who can't speak the national language take a leaf out of this story.

By David Green

8:13PM BST 27 Jul 2011

When the last Labour government introduced a requirement that immigrants who wished to marry a British citizen must learn English before coming to live here, it struck most people as a perfectly reasonable expectation. But that requirement is now being challenged in the High Court on two grounds. First, it is said to be racially discriminatory, because it impacts disproportionately on certain ethnic groups; and second, under the European Convention on Human Rights, it is said to obstruct the right to family life.

The case has been brought by Rashida Chapti, who wishes to bring her husband to the UK from India. Her barrister claims that the language requirement contravenes Article 8, the right to family life, and Article 12, the right to marry. Mrs Chapti is reported to have travelled back and forth between India and Leicester for about 15 years, but now wishes to settle here with her husband.

The Labour government planned to bring the requirement into force in July 2011, but it was brought forward to November 2010 by the Coalition. When Theresa May, the Home Secretary, announced her plans, she said: “I believe being able to speak English should be a pre-requisite for anyone who wants to settle here. The new English requirement for spouses will help promote integration, remove cultural barriers and protect public services.”

The requirement is not too exacting. Applicants will have to demonstrate English at “A1 level”, which requires them to demonstrate a basic command of conversational English, currently the same as the level required for skilled workers who have been offered a job in the UK. Similar expectations apply to immigrants seeking work throughout the EU. Since 2006, France has tightened up its rules. Anyone without a job, and especially if they lack scarce skills, must go through the French consulate in their home country. They have to prepare a petition showing why they should be allowed in. If they can’t speak French they have little chance.

Australia requires applicants for work visas to have “vocational English”, which means they must be able to read, write, understand and speak English well enough to hold down a job. Applicants may be required to take an independent test of proficiency. Canada requires proficiency in either English or French, and also requires applicants to take a language test from an approved agency.Read more.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

British Trash !

Hantu Laut

The mind-boggling price tag is too good to be true.Which Malaysian has RM15 billion net worth let alone buy a RM15 billion yacht?

Even Robert Kwok, the richest man in Malaysia is only worth US$12.5 billion, which at today's exchange rate would be roughly RM37 billion.Being a very prudent businessman would he spend half his fortune on a yacht, a fast depreciating asset?

Below, the 10 richest men in Malaysia.











Which one of the above is mad enough to blow RM15 billion on a yacht?

Whatever you read on "Forbes Riches Of Malaysia" or the world are mostly paper worth, in another word they are "unrealised wealth".These wealth are based on what is known publicly such as stocks,bonds and other tangible assets minus his debts.That would be his net worth.

A man could be richer than what is known publicly if his private holdings are kept secret.

A good example is Daim Zainuddin, whom most people know is very very rich but no one can evaluate his wealth.His private holdings are not opened to the public.

The most expensive ocean liner is the Royal Caribbean’s "Oasis Of The Seas" which only cost US1.24 billion and is 1,180 feet long, and carry 6360 passengers. It’s the most expensive ship in history, and it’s longer, wider and taller than the largest ocean liner ever built, (Cunard’s QM II), 43 per cent larger in size than the world’s largest cruise ship, (Freedom of the Seas) and remarkably, bigger than any military ship ever built, aircraft carriers included.

The Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship which cost over £810million to construct, is shown during sea trials

Oasis of the Seas


Would you expect anything better from junk journalism?


The reporter need to have his head examined.

Read the story below.


One hull of a price tag: Luxury yacht that would make even Roman Abramovich jealous sells for £3bn

By Ted Thornhill


Talk about splashing out – an anonymous Malaysian businessman has spent £3billion on a yacht made from solid gold and platinum.

The History Supreme was assembled using a staggering 100,000kg of the precious metals.

They were used throughout the boat, from the base of the vessel – which is wrapped in solid gold – to the deck, dining area, rails and anchor.

Expensive: If you want one of these Stuart Hughes luxury yachts, you can wave goodbye to £3billion

Expensive: If you want one of these Stuart Hughes luxury yachts, you can wave goodbye to £3billion

The hefty price tag is also the result of an amazingly luxurious master bedroom. It’s adorned with platinum and has a wall feature made from meteoric stone and a genuine T-Rex dinosaur bone.

It's enough to make even Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich turn a distinct shade of green.

He has a £300m yacht called Eclipse that comes complete with two swimming pools, a gym and a submarine - but it's missing the all-important platinum and gold adornments.

The History Supreme is the handiwork of Liverpool-based jeweller Stuart Hughes, who took three years to complete it.

It represents one of the 39-year-old’s more extravagant projects, and this is a man who specialises in turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Luxury: The History Supreme's bedroom is covered in platinum and the odd prehistoric artefact

Luxury: The History Supreme's bedroom is covered in platinum and the odd prehistoric artefact

He started his bespoke upgrade service in 2002 with his wife Katherine and has since applied his golden touch to all sorts of objects.

His Aquavista Panoramic Wall Aquarium, for instance, is made from 68kg of 24ct gold and is yours for a cool £3million.

Then there’s Mr Hughes’ iPhone 4, worth a mind-blowing £5m.

Gold standard: The boat is covered in precious metals - even the anchor has been given a special makeover

Gold standard: The boat is covered in precious metals - even the anchor has been given a special makeover