The Bank Of England, Marriages Are Made In Heaven

There has been a good deal of interest in the wife of Mark Carney, Diana Fox, herself an economist of standing and with clear interests.  They met, it seems, at Oxford.  Also, they seem to have married in the County in 1994; in fact in the Registration District of Bullingdon.  Consequently for those with a fevered imagination, the name Bullingdon will allow it to run riot.

Who from the fabled Bullingdon Club might have been present at the nuptials and the reception afterwards?  Was there an ingratiating chap called Dave who was offering advice on tax avoidance schemes, claiming to be well in with some people in the know at Coutts Bank? 

When Mark told him he worked for Goldman Sachs Dave then proved difficult to shake off, offering to exchange all sorts of unlikely contact details and promises of great futures to come, if only John Major would listen to what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were telling chaps he knew in The City.

One of Dave’s friends, who called himself variously Gideon and George (not Brown) made himself something of a bore.  He insisted on clearing the table he sat at and then tried to explain the Endogenous Growth Theory with a box of matches.  When Diana asked him about the Gini Coefficient he claimed to have run out of matches.

The real nuisance and there is always one at a wedding, was a plump chap with messy hair which looked suspiciously like a dyed blonde.  He called himself Boris, but that might have been an affectation.  He had to be prised off the bridesmaids but then went round telling people about his mad schemes.

One was to build the world’s greatest super-hub airport based on the Kidlington airfield just north of Oxford by the A34 to Stratford upon Avon.  Convenient for links to major motorways it had excellent rail possibilities. 

One, the Oxford to Banbury line enabled routing to both Birmingham International Airport and Manchester to the north.  To the South from Reading there were links possible both to Heathrow and Gatwick with relatively minor works as well as the direct line to Paddington in London.

There was also the old Oxford to Cambridge line which could be reinstated at relatively little cost to link to Stansted.  If track works were to be done on all then some high speed running would give quick links across the country by rail.

A couple of other interesting people arrived, claiming to have been invited, a Peter Mandelson, a Labour Party back room boy and someone called Rothschild.  Apparently they knew well placed Russians rich in energy investments.  Oxfordshire, it seemed had not only major coal reserves but also vast oil potential in the rocks below.

This might make all the oil tar sands of Mark’s native Alberta look like a puddle on a petrol (gas) station forecourt.  Of course, it was neither the time nor the place for this kind of discussion, despites Peter’s apparent obsession with the idea.

What was touching was that when the happy couple left the reception, the three Bullingdon Boys did a skit on their old school song “Jolly Good Wedding Weather” to see them off to their Austerity and Debt Free honeymoon at Butlins at Bognor. 

Diana insisted on taking the handlebars of the vintage motor-cycle while Mark found the side car quite comfortable; so long as he remembered to lean out when Diana did some nifty overtaking on an inside bend.

Now they are all back together again, remembering happy times.