Feeling a tad unfocussed for posting. Consequently, there will be no table of blog contents this afternoon. Today is the day before my birthday so I must remember to make the necessary change in my blog.co.uk profile.

I’ve been busier than usual with work opportunities. A couple of weeks ago I read an advertisement for contributors and associates in my favourite financial e-newsletter so I wrote in to express interest. They wrote back to request some samples of writing. That was better than a poke in the eye and this week the big chief of this newsletter e-mailed to say that my details and the sample had been passed on to the UK part of his organisation (he being an American). Even if they turn out to be not interested, I’ve got another item for my e-scrapbook.

This week I’ve had some interest in my blog writing in a professional capacity through Elance. This has meant more samples of my writing being sent off and I’m still waiting to hear if they want to take things further.

Here in the South of England it’s been warm all week and some of the plants (especially the ones in pots) are starting to wilt already because it’s been dry, too. One advantage is that the grass isn’t growing too fast. The seedlings are coming on nicely, particularly the sweet peas. It looks as if five of the cosmos seedlings will survive. This weekend is going to be the peak for blossom. I’ve still to dispose of the tree trunk that’s straddling the boundary at the back of garden. The fence panel completely disappeared under the impact of the tree falling back in January. Hopefully, I’ll be able to sort out a replacement before the owners (some property developers) notice what happened to their fence.

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The April issue of Money Observer had an article by Ceri Jones about MarketStars, a ‘screening’ service sold by Digital Look that ‘provides a massive range of data on UK shares’. One of the screens in MarketStars enables one to create a list of hidden gems on the UK stock market. Remembering the struggle I had with hidden gems when reading a Sunday Times article a few months ago, I thought I’d take a look at the MarketStars criteria to see if I fared any better.

The Robson Rhodes theory of Hidden Gems as explained in the Sunday Times rested on recent and forecast cash flow figures. Ceri Jones and MarketStars begin with companies that have a price earnings ratio of 15 and a price to book value of 1.5 (I guess that means the ratio of share price to the value of the company’s assets). A further criterion was that earnings per share had to have grown by 10% a year over six years – I think. After that I came unstuck again because Ceri Jones stipulated a ‘relative strength reading’ of 25 to 40%. She explains that the RS Index is based on a comparison of share’s previous losses and gains that shows you if the share has been over-bought or over-sold. Clearly, one needs to invest in MarketStars to get at this kind of information.

Equally clearly, though, this definition of hidden gems depends on profits rather than turnover and isn’t dependent on the industry sector of the company so MarketStars and Robson Rhodes seem to be talking about two completely different kinds of hidden gem. One of them should copyright the phrase to prevent confusion.

So I’m still frustrated but impressed to read that had you followed this strategy since 2002, £10,000 would have grown into £29,200.

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Naturally, I’ve been following the news coverage of the sale of the Iran hostages’ stories to the tabloids avidly. The Conservatives certainly seem to think that they’re on to something and it’ll be interesting to hear what happens when Des Brown has to make his statement to the House of Commons on Monday. The opposition presumably hope to find a trail of responsibility leading to No. 10 but, given that Des Brown is a brownite supporter, the story could just be that the Prime Minister’s aides chose not to warn the Defence Secretary that he was hurtling to disaster. A non-intervention of this kind would be almost impossible to prove and I’m inclined to believe in Lords Ramsbotham’s suggestion that there may have been no one around at No. 10 to sound a warning because it all happened over a bank holiday weekend.

As usual, Gordon Brown has been totally silent on the whole matter. Apart from his good ideas for third world education, debt relief and development, he doesn’t seem to have anything to say about foreign policy or defence. You wonder if he thinks all these problems are more likely to go away if he ignores them. If he's not careful, William Hague and Liam Fox are going to run away with the foreign policy agenda.

Yesterday’s Today Programme had an interesting interview of William Hague by John Humphries with Humphries querying Hague’s claim that the tabloid stories would interfere with an investigation of the circumstances of the hostage taking. It doesn’t yet look as if the Opposition are going to be able to make a lot of political capital out of the capture of the hostages. Hague didn’t seem to be inclined to question the need for the searching of shipping in the Shatt al Arab and he had to remind Humphries that there were supposed to be well-authenticated instances of Iran supplying sophisticated explosive devices to terrorists in Iraq (as reported on the Today Programme).

This aspect of the affair, the possibility or likelihood of Iranians smuggling the wherewithal for terrorist atrocities into Iraq, is the most important one. Of all the different ways of meddling in Iraq that Iran might employ, smuggling explosives across the border is the single most likely one to add fuel to the flames of the allies suspicion of Iran’s nuclear intentions. Western intelligence services need to know what they are up to but the US and other western governments need to keep cool heads so that these different strands don’t become muddled and lead to a military crisis.

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I'll stop now. Tomorrow we're off to Bird World at Farnham to see the penguins being fed. having watched Orang-utan diary on BBC 1 last week I would really like to see some of them. Three years ago we visited a n ape and monkey zoo called Apenheul, near Deventer in the Netherlands but I don't know of anywhere like that in England. I strongly recommend Apenheul for children and adults, if you're ever in the part of the world.