Not Born Yesterday (nby) started in late 2003 as an email circulated to mates and opinion leaders in the media, business, education, politics and mental institutions. I meant it as a showcase for my writing, so at the start it went mainly to publishers, agents and hacks. Almost all of them spammed me out within days.

From this devious beginning with about eighty names on a mailing list, nearly five years on it's a grown-up website getting an average of 1400 hits a week. In the last four months it has grown over 70%. There are two reasons for this: I've started taking marketing seriously, and events are heading in the direction we've been predicting. Blessed are they who make for the exit sign, for they shall be saved.

It doesn't have a business model. Northern Rock had one of those, so we don't. But we have a scale model of Gordon Brown into which we stick pins at regular intervals. It seems to be working to some extent, but we have some silver bullets in reserve just in case

In its lifetime, nby has had 3,296 relaunches. It'll probably have hundreds more, but believe it or not, the site is a lot more focused than it was. Grumpy Old Bookman (a former Guardian best blog winner) has written of the site 'it is prolifically funny- go there before the forces of darkness close him down'. This was both generous and pessimistic. Media Mogul Richard Eyre wrote 'He thinks everyone in public life is a tit'. Hyperbole - but broadly, accurate.

As for prescience, please send me lots. I love prescience. Ho-ho. The prescience factor has been what I'd call not bad at all - considering this is a minnow.

Most significantly from our point of view, we've been proved disturbingly right about consumer debt levels, the unfolding property collapse, the global banking collapse, buying into a FTSE at 6000, oil prices, gold prices, Chinese ambitions in Africa, Russian energy blackmail and the folly of target-driven credit provision. The Funny Business column (a victim of relaunch no. 86a) advised every investor to get out of equities entirely and into commodities in January 2007: that was early, but much better than late.

As for Northern Rock, we ran the story on the same day as everyone else. But we predicted the cost better than most. We had the inside track on Bradford & Bingley (and the TPG fiasco) as well as Alliance & Leicester. Almost alone among websites I've been to or papers I read at the time, we said categorically in mid 2007 that RBS's purchase of AMRO was a daft idea in search of a rationale. Earlier that year we published here and elsewhere a piece naming Lehman Brothers as a bank that would wobble once merger madness ended and credit payday began. It wobbled and (with some help from Morgan the Pirate) felloff its perch.

We have argued consistently that mutual financial institutions are far safer than plcs, and we continue to do so - if only because they have not suffered in the UK's credit crunch.

Nby sighted Sarkozy long before anyone else in UK media. (Spending half the year in France helps). We called him as the future President in 2004. We spotted Cameron in 2005, and predicted he'd beat Davis. We noticed Obama in 2006 and predicted he'd beat Clinton and McCain.

In March 2006, a prediction of disaster under Gordon Brown earned a charming response from Simon Jenkins, who wrote 'I agree with almost everything you say'. We were both right.

We caught Mandelson up to Hungarian nonsense of every sort in 2006; eighteen months later we're still waiting for the media to pick up on it - although the Sunday Times ran bits here and there.

We predicted that Mandelson's 'relationships' with importers as part of his 'job' as EU Trade Commissioner was bound to come to light.

Nby also fingered Prescott, Johnson, Hewitt, Purnell and Jowell ahead of most of the pack. We ran with the Miliband leadership plot two months before anyone else.

And during the last Libdem leadership fiasco, we got the naughtiness into print first. (We lack moles in the Tory Party by the way, so if you know any or are one, get in touch. But please, not Damian Green - we're in enough trouble as it is.

We predicted both the UK's 2009 borrowing requirement to within £2billion, and the steady demise of Sterling as a result of it.

As loyal readers know perhaps too well by now, Not Born Yesterday continues to see Bourse-financed free-market capitalism as a dead duck, and globalism is not only not the future, it has no future worth talking about.

You can read more about this at The Point

The fact that most of the media have taken not the slightest notice of us tells you all you need to know about the media. And us, really.

I don't write Not Born Yesterday for money, but if I could do that without compromising the gags and diluting the venom, I would. (Here at Fort Yesterday we suffer from fuel, pension, caution, food and wealth poverty.)

Thank you for your visit. Come again.

John Ward

Updated, December 2008

Home