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Sinclair Research company plane??

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Matt Rudge

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Feb 24, 2010, 12:21:11 PM2/24/10
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Maybe you can blame this on being forced unwillingly into the murky world
of accountancy, but I've been really enjoying reading the Sinclair
Research accounts that are published on Chris Smith's site at http://
www.zxdesign.info/sinclair/

It's interesting to see how they go from the mono-spaced type of standard
accountant's reports in 1981/1982 to slick and professionally printed in
1983 and 1984, before back to the mono-space in 1985.

One of the things that struck me was in the 1982 accounts - the purchase
of a company aircraft for £580,000! I'd never heard of a Sinclair
Research aircraft before. I went trawling the Internet and all the on-
line Spectrum magazine archives, but couldn't find any mention of it.

Maybe they're a fairly standard thing to buy when you've just turned over
£27m in your second year of trading and just given yourself a £1m bonus,
but I'd have thought some reference to it would have appeared somewhere.

Anyone know what kind of an aircraft it was? Or even heard of it?

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Matt

OwenBot

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Feb 24, 2010, 1:12:57 PM2/24/10
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On Feb 24, 5:21 pm, Matt Rudge <mru...@googleswebmailservice.com>
wrote:

> Anyone know what kind of an aircraft it was? Or even heard of it?

The what do-I-do-with-all-this-cash plane of choice was the Learjet.
Clive would have bought-British though so my money would be on a
British Aerospace BAe 125.

Brian Gaff

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Feb 25, 2010, 4:07:31 AM2/25/10
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Probably some kind of tax fiddle I'd imagine. You then sell it at a profit.
At least in those days you could.
Brian

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Brian Gaff

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Feb 25, 2010, 4:08:24 AM2/25/10
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Sounds a bit on the cheap side for one of those to me.

Brian

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Matt Rudge

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Feb 25, 2010, 5:08:58 PM2/25/10
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I was also interested in the £144,000 cost of product repairs in the 1982
accounts. Unfortunately this categorisation vanished in later years - I'd
have been interested to know the amount by the time the QL came out!

On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:07:31 +0000, Brian Gaff wibbled:

> Probably some kind of tax fiddle I'd imagine. You then sell it at a
> profit. At least in those days you could.
> Brian

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Matt

mwic...@gmail.com

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May 9, 2017, 12:22:26 PM5/9/17
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXBFud9zEoA

It’s talked about in this interview, starting at 51:45.

Brian-Gaff

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May 12, 2017, 9:06:33 PM5/12/17
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Well, I suspect it was some creative accounting for tax purposes.

Brian

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<mwic...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXBFud9zEoA

Itâ?Ts talked about in this interview, starting at 51:45.

On Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 9:21:11 AM UTC-8, Matt Rudge wrote:
> Maybe you can blame this on being forced unwillingly into the murky world
> of accountancy, but I've been really enjoying reading the Sinclair
> Research accounts that are published on Chris Smith's site at http://
> www.zxdesign.info/sinclair/
>
> It's interesting to see how they go from the mono-spaced type of standard
> accountant's reports in 1981/1982 to slick and professionally printed in
> 1983 and 1984, before back to the mono-space in 1985.
>
> One of the things that struck me was in the 1982 accounts - the purchase
> of a company aircraft for ÂŁ580,000! I'd never heard of a Sinclair
> Research aircraft before. I went trawling the Internet and all the on-
> line Spectrum magazine archives, but couldn't find any mention of it.
>
> Maybe they're a fairly standard thing to buy when you've just turned over
> ÂŁ27m in your second year of trading and just given yourself a ÂŁ1m bonus,
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