The Cynical Tendency

Nessun Dorma

2012-02-15T18:06:00.000Z

It is the early hours of the morning as I surface and head towards the kitchen. It is not hunger or other personal twitches or needs that have woken me. The wind has changed and sound is coming from the town centre.

Seventy years ago in these parts I might have mistaken it for a Messerschmitt 109 that would soon be gone, one way or another but this noise will be with me now for the rest of the night boding ill for both sleep and temper.

It is contractors in the town centre digging up a road. For months now they have been digging up and refilling one after another as the various services try to outdo each other in being the biggest boys on the block. In some cases no sooner have they left one street than another turns up to do something else.

The reason we have the sound it that it is uphill and less than a mile away and as usual there is a large team using more than one pneumatic drill at a time, given wind and conditions then a large area will be affected.

The Council appears to have decreed that now any road works in the town centre, broadly defined will be done at night. A large yellow board tells me that they will be on the road past where we live in ten days time for a week or so.

So whilst the councillors prattle on about creating a “living town centre” they are making it impossible for anyone to sleep in. What they really mean is turning over most properties to become boozers and clubs to keep the High Street in tatters.

These too have noise problems often so bad that they shake the buildings for a little distance around. Some of these are listed and it is questionable how much stress they can take. The council has never heard of “collapse dynamics”. They may find out soon if the cracks on one 17th Century building widen much.

Traffic issues during the day are cited as one reason. What this means is that the Council is unwilling to pay the cost of appropriate diversion signing and the rest and the local police have long given up any attempt to deal with traffic flows.

Another reason may be that none of the Councillors nor the senior officers live anywhere near the town centre. So to hell with those who do. That some of these people live over their work or are amongst key services matters not.

By the time the Councillors have surfaced to do their work the contractors have gone home and they do not return until after the Councillors have left. They do what they have to do and draw their expenses and leave the town centre area to the diggers and shakers.

Anyone who does complain gets the usual run around and if they do make any contact simply have a blithe soul spinning the usual garbage and PR speak. There does not appear to be anyone actually in charge, it is always someone else or worse still an “Agency”.

Is it like this in other places or worse?

We'll All Pull Together

2012-02-14T17:58:00.001Z

With President Obama of the USA meeting Vice President Xi Jinping of China today to discuss matters of mutual interest, such as mutual political survival, it was a case of the bust now shaking hands with the bust future. The figures for the US Debt it seems will reach levels beyond the reach of mere mathematics.

In the meantime China is discovering that property markets and banks do not always go well together, especially if too much credit is flung around and too much fiat currency is pumped out to keep the show on the road. China may discover that it needs all the wealth it has built up recently.

If that is the case it will have less to lend and less to buy into financially embarrassed European countries. The UK has displayed its solidarity with Europe with the ratings agencies looking doubtful about its immediate prospects. Quite what this will lead to is not certain. But it is unlikely to be good news.

In Spain a village where the inhabitants were backward and mistrusting they have brought out the old pesetas they kept out of distaste of a new currency. Now they look almost at the cutting edge of monetary thinking and theory.

I recall Portugal in the mid 1970’s, months after the collapse of the regime of Salazar and his successors. It was a desperately poor country with extensive hardship. Will the Euro crisis now lead to a collapse of constitutional government and a reversion to the more traditional authoritarianism? Bring back the yoked oxen.

Don’t mention all those wars, civil and other wise in progress. The amount of explosives, ammunition and general hardware in use should at least give a much needed boost to the armaments industry. It may account for all the flying visits by UK politicians to here and there putting in a word for our chaps.

One historian, his name forgotten, my apologies, has come up with a theory that if one is looking to see where trouble has occurred in history there is very often present a surplus of young men without any employment or prospects.

If at the same time for religious or demographic reasons they are not matched by an equivalent number of unattached ladies available for company and to give favours then the men tend to get out of hand. They do not necessarily need much excuse either political or religious but one or both come in very handy to justify all the mayhem.

To complicate our thinking there are those pointing out that it is not so much money that matters but energy, its sources and uses. Money is simply a means to an end and that can only be achieved in the modern world by the ability to buy or the possession of energy.

If you are muddled then so am I, but what is frightening is that we may be a lot less muddled than all those people in the capitals and financial markets telling us what to do and why.

Luckily, I still have a few pesetas left from long ago, hasta la vista!

What's Up Doc?

2012-02-13T16:38:00.001Z

The essential difficulty with the National Health Service is rather like that of caring for grandma in your own home. Whatever you want to do, hope to do, intend to do or have to do she is always there to complicate matters.

So all the complaining about how Cameron and the Coalition should have put the NHS on the back burner while they tackled other major issues is nonsense. The NHS is so big, so complicated and so challenged by changing demographics never mind developments in the science and technology of medicine that it cannot be given a lower priority for attention and decision.

It is a very long while ago since the 1970’s and there was the local Area Health Authority which had to be attended. There similar tensions then. These were compounded by Westminster coming up with “initiatives” and “programmes” to paper over the most obvious cracks.

These came with funding for the now but not later which the politicians wanted to grab at. The mutterings of the financial man about who this might impact on future budgets were brushed aside; as were the reservations of the medical people about how these highly spun things fitted what were foreseeable added demands.

In the meantime at Westminster there were elections to be fought and personal reputations at stake. Survive at Health and you might make one of the choicer offices of state. Get a shed load of bad publicity and off you went, if you were lucky The Lords, if not to Brussels.

Our current Health minister, Lansley was always on a loser. The serial wreckage inflicted by the Private Finance Initiatives, lumpen reorganisations and the application of the fetich of modern finance and business models of the previous government were bad enough.

That the gross misspending had made it all much worse is almost impossible to sort out. Whether the ideas embodied in the present legislation will do much good is a question.

Just how far are the ideas that lie behind the assumptions out of date or no longer tenable by the time of the third decade of the 21st Century? Just how much will any government be able to spend? Who will it be spent on?

If the bill is simply yesterday’s soufflé presented at the behest of a government department over run with consultants, lobbyists and commercial interests then little or nothing has changed. We will just stumble from one chaotic form to another.

With a Coalition Cabinet infested by a Liberal Democrat party already running for cover, a spectacular lack of awareness or reliable information in the media, the protectionist stance of the existing professional bodies and a public whose understanding and information is very limited there are all the signs of yet another grim and costly debacle in a major public responsibility.

Like having grandma to stay we may be arriving at a situation where there are no answers and our NHS becomes something of a continuing major liability nagging away, wrecking the budget, impossible to deal with and to which there seems no end.

So what do we do with the extra grandma’s and grandpa’s never mind the many others who were never planned for? Did we ever expect extensive liver problems amongst so many younger people?

Is your knee beginning to play up?

Trivial Pursuits

2012-02-12T14:27:00.001Z

Those of who recall Kenny Dalglish as a player will know that often he would come from apparently nowhere to make his strike and turn the game. Another talent he has is to say as little as possible for the most part and leave it to the action.

This makes his silence in the business of Suarez instructive and the way in which it was handled. Sometimes what is not said or done matters more that what is. It is a stark contrast to the arm waving, shouting and attention seeking approach of others.

It is possible that Dalglish and the other Liverpool interests are constrained by other issues. Manchester United players have been known to run to lawyers for super injunctions at the hint of a Chinese whisper.

These, as we know, can prevent any comments or statements by others and moreover the existence of any mention of such an injunction may not be mentioned in the media or elsewhere.

As the Football Association proceedings are not courts of law, simply internal disciplinary committees, they will be bound by them as much as another group of persons. If one side also is bound by this form of legally imposed silence then there is not much to be done about it.

All this is wild speculation on my part and purely personal opinion. All I know is the occasional lip reading of footballers in action on TV screens and the very occasional voice picked up on sound, usually bleeped or missed out from replays.

What I am clear about is that in most Premiership games there is ample insult and obscenity between players, often knowingly provocative and sometimes extreme in nature. The difference is that a racial comment is one thing but the other types another however vile they may be.

The upshot is that in the game the latter kind has become almost routine and conventional and disregarded for disciplinary action unless used against referees in a limited number of circumstances.

Yet amongst some peoples and cultures that which we regard as racist can be considered the lesser of the insults motor mouthed out by some players. It should not be too difficult to think of one or two.

It is curious that a player subjected to an insult that is amongst the worst in his culture or religion cannot claim “racism” in the UK and moreover were he to attempt to bring a case in his defence on this basis he is silenced by the UK courts.

We may not have heard the last about all this, because it was a Manchester United player’s lawyers who applied the Principle of Delivery to internet traffic in relation to his case. All this is without a hacker in sight and of course Liverpool fans are not up to that kind of thing are they?

This Principle can be applied in other cases if there is due cause. If some people have been careless in their social networking sites thinking they are protected they could be in for a nasty shock.

Someone could just ghost in and strike.

How To Get Nothing Done

2012-02-09T15:26:00.000Z

Yesterday, it was a meeting. Luckily, one free of all the usual meetings problems, contending factions, power struggles, point scoring, rubbishing other peoples’ ideas etc. We were just trying to sort out a few things in a mess we had been left with and wondering what to do next.

On retirement it was my sworn ambition to avoid meetings at all costs, avoid ones involving budgets especially and anything to do with personnel matters or any of the usual administrative baggage. Been there, done that, goodbye and no regrets as one went off into the sunset.

Despite considerable success over a number of years in achieving this ambition force of circumstances has meant that some contribution is necessary. If it was bad before in many ways it was nowhere near as bad as it is now.

The basic problem was the law and regulations etc. with which we were faced. At one time decades ago a lotl of this was clear to read, decently structured on the whole and understandable for those who paid close attention. Legal cases and decisions were not quite the same but with effort some sense could be made of them.

Not anymore it isn’t. We were faced with badly written law, confusing structure, garbage text, inbuilt assumptions out of date when the drafting of it began and enough loose ends to make a Fair Isle pullover.

This means unintended consequences, risks and the potential for compensation claims. Even the expert drafted in could only say maybe this or maybe that and that a lot of it eventually would depend on decisions in courts and tribunals.

But we do not want to do this, least of all to be the first in to the fray. We are old, tired, short of brass, risk averse and I for one look forward to watching football matches with the sound off in order to concentrate on the lip reading. We compete to see who spots the most naughty words or obscene insults.

This is being selfish. The poor “ess oh dees” that work for a living have to face this sort of goings on every day. Consider that at any time across the land there are tens of thousands of staff employed by large organisations consulting thick books of guidance and advice.

Also, there are endless bad scene meeting going on thrashing out what you can do and cannot do. There are endless committees meeting time and time again to draft and redraft all the explanation and guidance.

Down amongst the small fry of the economy whilst many may simply avoid all this and take the risks, others cannot and face night after night of paperwork and compiling figures and information for the vast machinery of government.

This is the working economy; then there are all the voluntary and charitable organisations who have to do much the same. They almost cannot move now without shifting more paperwork than a 19th Century navvy shifted earth.

No wonder the economy is sluggish, people cannot move for all the rubbish law and regulation. The sheer effort of trying make and implements decisions must take up most of the initiative and direction of business and government.

And it is getting worse.

Another Boom Another Bust

2012-02-07T17:54:00.001Z

For those of us who go round just looking for trouble there is enough going on at the moment to keep us happy in the main media. The big freeze is stretching the gas supplies to the limit, our government almost in collapse, Syria, earthquakes, elections already going wrong, Iran and more Iran, Greece and terrorism.

On that last point it is just as well the Human Rights Act and our present benefits system wasn’t in place in 1945, because if Himmler, Goebbels and families had made it to Mayfair and claimed asylum they would be housed and drawing full support.

Moreover, had Britain attempted to return them to Germany for trial then the government would have been over ruled on the grounds that there was evidence to the effect that troops of the 11th Armoured Division had roughed up some of the former German guards at the Belsen-Bergen Concentration Camp after they had been caught stealing food intended for the inmates.

Back to the present, however, there were a couple of links today that suggest that all is far from well and could be markers for serious global financial problems. The first is to do with the Baltic Dry Index in Zero Hedge. Usually, if that goes bad and shipping is then laid up to any great extent, run for cover.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/shipping-rates-go-negative

The second is in Oil Drum and is a long discussion on the arcane issues of pricing shale oil and supply. This is a difficult area that not many understand, least of all civil servants and politicians. The nub of the argument is that there has been an investment boom with vast sums poured in but market prices are less than production and financial costs.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8900#more

It this commentator is right then there could be a bad bust in a sensitive and critical market. Again, run for cover, elbowing those fleeing the Baltic Dry Index out of the way as you go.

If my cold does not go away then expect a major volcanic eruption.

Herding Cattle Or Herding Cats?

2012-02-06T15:32:00.000Z

When working through local parish records in Doncaster’s Library many years ago one of the sadder entries was simply “Scottish Drover, name unknown”. The old drove roads now may be present highways but as often as not are just paths across the hills and fields, their history almost forgotten.

Across the Atlantic Islands for some time there has been precious little restriction on the movement of people or goods despite the attempts to foist either ancient tribalism or recent faux nationalism on one group or another. For a while the appreciation of the practical inconveniences and problems of division have overcome other considerations.

The issue of population movement and migration is one of the several key and complicated issues that could arise in the event of Scotland detaching itself from Westminster in political separatism. It is not simply a question of what may or may not happen at the land border, it is more than that.

There are some bits and pieces of history left over to raise questions. If Scotland has a model of intended population structure and therefore an immigration policy that departs either to a greater or lesser extent from that of the other parts of the Atlantic Isles, it all becomes very intricate and difficult to manage.

There is the Isle of Man, so who does Kelly belong to? There is Northern Ireland, there is the Republic of Ireland which has a number of residual benefits in the UK, there is Wales and as well as Man a number of Crown Dependencies to take account of. This is quite apart from who in England might want to claim Scottish citizenship.

I assume the man from Alloway who I sat next to on a train, currently resident in Dover for work purposes might have that status. But if Scotland stays in the EU and England leaves, he might decide to commute to Dover from Calais to retain his rights in Scotland.

If Northern Ireland opts to retain the English connection but the Republic remains in the EU it is possible that different migration and citizenship rules might well then favour those from Bantry above those from Ballymoney. You need to know your Ireland to appreciate that one.

This game could go on and on working its way through all the variables and all the possibilities for confusion and complication. Scotland may well have its place amongst the nations between Saudi Arabia and Senegal but just who would its nationals be?

Would they include the hordes of silver haired human rights claimants from England wanting the better benefits currently scrambling to find themselves a tartan from great great grandmother from Greenock? Or those English who can afford the second residence in their children’s names for university education purposes?

The idea of a fenced, lit, land mined border with guards sweeping up pensioners for the migrant hostel in an extension to Barlinnie is an interesting one, who knows?

The crucial question is what kind of population model and structure is the SNP talking about and what kind of migration policy? Is it a Bahamas style one? Is it a Dubai style one? Is it a Norwegian one? Is it a Hong Kong model? Given its model what kind of population structure should Scotland be looking to have by 2050?

At present there is only the silence of Scottish Drover.

Greece, Past Collapses

2012-02-02T17:31:00.002Z

Still coughing, so another something borrowed, but not blue, from 24 January 2006 as reported on the BBC News, History section. It may be bad in Greece, but at least not this bad.

Quote:

Typhoid 'caused fall of Athens', the Athenian empire was brought to its knees by typhoid fever, a Greek team of archaeologists has suggested.

A University of Athens team analysed DNA from dental pulp found in a burial pit dating back to 430 BC and linked it to the organism that causes typhoid. Scientists have long debated the cause of the plague that ended Athenian dominance of the classical world.

The study in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases says a number of diseases were suspected as the cause. “ It sheds light on one of the most debated enigmas in medical history” said Dr Manolis Papagrigorakis.

These included bubonic plague, smallpox, anthrax and measles as suspected causes of the epidemic which spread across northern Africa to Egypt, Libya and Greece. Between 430 and 426 BC the plague killed almost a third of the Athenian population and its armed forces, along with the city's leader and mastermind of Athenian glory, Pericles.

The research team investigated DNA material in three randomly selected intact teeth found in the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos which dates back to the outbreak of the disease. All teeth were washed and the dental pulp removed was subjected to a series of DNA tests.

The results were compared with the DNA profiles of a seven disease-causing viruses and bacteria. An ancient strain of the organism causing typhoid fever was found to be present in the dental pulp of all three dental samples.
Microbiological evidence

The team said in their research: "For an infectious disease to be considered as a likely cause of the Plague of Athens, it must, above all have existed at that time. "Infectious diarrhoeas and dysentery as described by the ancients imply that typhoid fever was an endemic problem in the ancient world."

The team added that it was the first time microbiological evidence associated with the plague had been analysed. Previously assumptions about the cause had been based on the narrations of a the 5th Century Greek historian Thucydides.

Earlier research rejected the idea that typhoid caused the plague because of the symptoms described by Thucydides did not fit with the modern day typhoid. But the researchers said inconsistencies maybe explained by the possible evolution of typhoid fever over time.

Lead author Dr Manolis Papagrigorakis said: "Studying historical aspects of infectious diseases can be a powerful tool for several disciplines to learn from." Dr Daniel Antoine, lecturer in bioarchaeology and dental anthropology at University College London's Institute of Archaeology, described the work on DNA as solid and said the results were very interesting.

However, he added: "It would be nice to have another lab repeat this work on a larger sample from a Greek site of the same period, before typhoid fever is attributed as the sole 'cause' of the plague, and thus eliminate the possibility of an isolated outbreak of typhoid fever."

Unquote.

Collapses can have many causes.

Digging For Victory Revived

2012-02-01T17:29:00.001Z

As Sir Fred The Shred has become Mr. Fred The Stripped and I have a stinking cold and do not want to be long at the typeface this is a repeat post from Sunday 8 March 2009.

My only comment is that by choosing the name Sands to avoid defamation issues with Goodwin perhaps this reference to things being sunk without trace was not far off the mark.

It is based on the old Rob Wilton monologues which the late Michael Williams liked to revive in more recent years.

Quote:

The day the bank bailouts broke out, the missus said to me, “So what are you going to do to save the economy?” “It isn’t up to me!” I said, “What can I do about it in any case?” “Well,” she said “you can make a start, and my hair needs cutting.”

So after we cut each other’s hair, normally free, gratis, and for nothing, this time we exchanged cheques for £1000 each. “There,” she said, “that’s a nice boost for the GDP” “But what do we do next?” I asked, and she had an answer for that, well she always does have an answer.

So we go down to at Thresher and Porbeagle Financial Services, Cookiecutter House and meet a gent’ called Fred Sands. Nice chap, the sort of Scottish burr in the voice you like to hear on the customer services helplines telling you there is nothing they can do to help, who makes us an offer we could not refuse.

They had only just set up after he had left his old firm to improve his prospects. Grabbing the cheques from our hands, he told us he could immediately lend us up to £100,000 to spend as we wanted, or to take part in a wonderful investment deal that had only turned up on his laptop that very morning, limited offer, closing in half an hour, so we had to make up our minds quick.

He wrote us a cheque on the spot for the £100,000, gave to us, and then snatched it back, saying it was now an asset and collateral for buying £5 million pounds worth of rented garages in Arizona, Beijing, and Moscow, and these would become the assets for investing in a lot of Hedge Funds, who would do a lot of other lending.

Because all the loans were assets, and not what my father told me, income was guaranteed at fifteen per cent, and the whole value would grow at least thirty per cent a year, so we could soon have our villa, yachts and all the rest, and even get invited to a Paris fashion show.

I tried to tell the missus that I was happy with our caravan at Bognor, but she would not listen, all it would cost us she said was trivial money, small change, for all the administrative fees and bonuses, and I should be grateful for everything.

Then she went into the back room with Fred and came out smiling in a way I hadn’t seen since she was a part time barmaid at “The Dragon’s Head”.

So we have now “kick started” the economy and Fred says with luck I could get a knighthood and the missus will then become a lady, at last. “It will all be worth it,” she said, “and Fred even gave me a tenner, for the service economy he called it.”

When I told my neighbour, Jim, he gave me a funny look, asked for his lawnmower back, and told me not to bother with Christmas Cards this year as he was a bit short.

Apologies to Rob Wilton and Michael Williams.

Unquote.

Ah well, time for an antiseptic.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

2012-01-31T17:10:00.001Z

There are plenty of things to worry about at the moment. This morning had the item about the Little Ice Age being triggered by a handful of volcanic eruptions, as if we did not already know.

The worse news was that the Euro might be rescued and all those Greeks putting up “Prussian Glory” on Youtube to get used to it have been wasting their time. The one that concentrates on King Frederick The Great is the best. Angela Merkel probably keeps a miniature of him in her hand bag.

One interesting item is an article by Christopher McMichael in Open Democracy, a researcher in South Africa be became interested in the militarization of major sports events in recent decades, notably the World Cup in his own country.

He points to the familiar mix of politicians, corporations, unelected international bodies and armed forces with sport as form of warfare without the noise.

Way back in 2009 this blogger was going on about the security aspect of the London Olympics and how little was being said and costed overall but now we know more, it is going to be a big deal.

Also, rather than accepting the figures suggested my deranged and daft ideas were figures for the whole Games of £25-30 billion. I mean, how insane could you get? Now it seems we are up to £24.9 billion and rising.

What nobody has yet mentioned is that similar issues relate to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games of 2014. This is another big deal and also with its own security issues which mirror those of an Olympics. Who better than a McMichael to give guidance and insight into this problem?

This is something I may return to, but The Frit Of The Day Possibly goes to this item:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/10000-control-systems-online/

Quite simply there are a vast number of critical providers of services reliant on computer systems who are wide open to attack and disruption, not just by evil organizations but any amateur hacker with the nous.

Given the interconnectedness of everything and anything at least it gives me something positive to be pessimistic about. Perhaps a job search might be better.

Glasgow are looking for managers for Recruitment and Diversity Relationships, Ceremonies and Culture Programming and Venue Overlays.

So which one needs the Main Battle Tanks the most?

Britain's Biggest Boot Sale

2012-01-30T14:58:00.001Z

While everyone has been getting very het up and posturing like fury over how much the bankers now presiding over the Royal Bust of Scotland deserve for sorting out the debts and liabilities another fine mess has crept in under the radar.

It appears that the Tchenquiz brothers have had the warrants of their arrests revoked on the grounds that the Serious Fraud Office did not manage the job properly.

The consequence has been that their business records have been returned to them and that they are now able to put some financial deals in hand. Legal action against the SFO for £100 million in damages is under consideration.

The reports, which may not be entirely accurate, suggest that they are still in the hole for around £2 billion of debt and wish to defray this by a large boot sale of their ownership of the freeholds of around 250,000 properties currently leased.

This is claimed to be around one per cent of the total UK leasehold sector. It may not sound much but as any financial sector can be sensitive at the margins it needs watching for the implications.

A delicate question arises about why all these freeholds are still in their possession to be sold. At one time most, if not all, were held in subsidiaries of their Consensus Business Group one way or another.

In March 2011 from within this Group a major subsidiary Peverel Group were taken into Administration by Zolfo Cooper because of a default on debt obligations. Clearly by this time these freeholds had been removed.

The chances are that they went to a brass plate company in the British Virgin Islands. This meant that the freeholder Landlords of those 250,000 UK properties had been sold on without notice to their leaseholders, who were left dealing with companies that had once held them but were now agents for transmitting funds.

By one of those happy coincidences so often to be found amongst our global traders generally, Zolfo Cooper, the Administrators, have an office in the British Virgin Islands. What is the old song? “Caviar Comes From The Virgin Sturgeon”?

According to reports the sale of the freeholds is to be dealt with by Lazards and targeted at “sovereign wealth funds”, see Wikipedia for an outline of what these are and the listing of the major ones are in the world today.

The asking price is £3 billion which should see off the immediate debts; leave a modest billion or two in hand and give a lot of creditors a close back and sides. The leaseholders will not know much about it. The taxman can go and whistle.

What it entails is that the ownership of a lot more property will be going abroad along with the major shifts in a lot of other property ownership to tax havens. Has either the government or the opposition taken on board the full implications of what is happening and the consequences, intended or unintended?

In the leasehold sector it means that the Landlords of a great deal of UK property are out of control of UK law or fiscal requirements and are likely to take little direct interest in the operation or impact of their investments.

Unluckily, the 2002 leasehold etc. reform act, largely based on long past thinking, provided for Right to Manage Companies in individual leasehold developments to be formed which both gave residents more say but also more responsibilities.

The leasehold sector of the 1980’s and just after had developed out of a history of different types of property provision and patterns of ownership. Just as the 2002 Act was passed and was being implemented the gathering storm of global finance had begun to impact and to radically change the way it operated.

The actual law and some decisions arising from it are muddled and it is not clear just where the real liabilities and vulnerability to things like compensation claims lie or in the absence of the real Landlord whether they are insurable.

Consequently, these RTM companies, instead of being a device for devolving decision and protection now may have been landed with a much greater liability for the Landlord functions for which they are not equipped or financed. They do not own the freeholds and the theoretical Landlords are gone to other jurisdictions.

Amongst the 250,000 properties is a large slice of the retirement housing provision with its own increasing issues of care in the community etc. Having this in the hands of offshore or foreign financial operators has some serious issues.

Another interesting question is why suddenly such a major operator is dumping out of UK property large scale and urgently. Of course, they are talking the sale up as good because property values are bound to increase indefinitely.

We have heard that one before. It is all very complicated and intricate and you will not hear much from the politicians about any of the questions arising. Was this one an item on the confidential agenda of the recent visits to China?

Or is it just part of “The Great Complacence”?

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199589081.do

We may never find out.

Singing Songs

2012-01-29T16:48:00.000Z

The contralto, Kathleen Ferrier, 1912-1943, who died tragically young, left a legacy only of recorded music and little film for us to judge her. Nevertheless, those who do remember her in live performance were in no doubt about the quality of her voice and performance.

She has been held up as almost the quintessential English voice of the period in its tone and inflections. Always known as an ordinary girl from an ordinary family in Blackburn, Lancashire she has represented the wonderful choral tradition of that area.

However, it may not be as simple as that. One favourite song is “I have a bonnet trimmed with blue”, sung sweetly and with feeling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-mfhu0ZLkU

The poignancy of the song is when you know that her grandmother, born Elizabeth Gorton, very much a Lancashire lass, was a bonnet maker who grew up in the hard farming life of high country Lancashire, near Accrington.

Like many farmers in such country in the 1840’s, her family had to move on to the town to find a living at whatever level was available.

Certainly, many of the strands of her family history are very much Lancashire, but there is more to it than that. Her father was a Ferrier but her mother was a Murray, both of whose male ancestors turned up in Lancashire to take their wives.

As the textile and related industries boomed in the later 19th Century there were huge inflows of people from across the Atlantic Isles to help meet the demand for basic levels of labour.

They brought with them their own music and ideas. In many parts of England where number of Scots arrived it was common to organize a pipe band, although nearly all have gone. There is one that does exist, pictured above and formed in 1885:

http://www.accringtonpipeband.org.uk/

Quite how Scottish Kathleen’s great grandfather Murray may have been is an interesting question, the contradictory birthplaces suggest a military issue. One likely candidate is the William Murray born in Manchester to a soldier of the 1st Kings Dragoon Guards, whose regimental depot then was at Dunbar.

For the Ferrier’s again there is a military connection, this time a great grandfather who was a regular soldier and whose birthplace is given as St. Florence, near Tenby in Wales. His regiment served in Ireland, so grandfather may have been born there.

So there we have it, an English Rose of Lancashire with Wales, Ireland and Scotland probably in her family background. It would be unusual if it were not so typical.

It is worse, however, her father, William Ferrier was born at Aintree by Liverpool which makes him almost a Scouser.

Blow the wind southerly.

Getting In On The Act

2012-01-28T15:27:00.000Z

The travelling show of world leaders and others is becoming more and more like the days of the old vaudeville, music halls and variety theatres. Only in those days the acts were better, the scripts aimed at more perceptive and intelligent audiences and the performers knew their lines and routines.

There was also a hierarchy of halls and acts, the business of being top of the bill and all the performers had to be well aware that it was the impresario’s and the booking agents who were critical to their careers and futures.

President Obama rates a poor second to Jack Benny and Secretary Clinton to Ethel Merman. With Gringrich and Romney coming too close to Abbott and Costello for comfort, the US Gala Concert scheduled for this November looks like being one of those shows we would all prefer to forget.

In the UK our Prime Minister, David Cameron reminds me at times of Max Miller without both assurance and the class of tailoring. Osborne looks like Alastair Sim, Nick Clegg doing a Norman Wisdom and Vince Cable a Jimmy Edwards it is all less than convincing.

On the Opposition benches, Ed Miliband makes a poor copycat Frank Sinatra crooning act, while Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper are very like a Les Dawson and Hylda Baker double act. Harriet Harman is certainly a Violet Carson (Ena Sharples) who can afford to shop at Harvey Nichols.

Elsewhere, Sarkozy does not work as Jacques Tati and as for the other Europeans comparisons are difficult. Alex Salmond is too often like Andy Stewart on mogadon and without the humour. Look around the world and it just gets worse.

There was a time when all this travelling was out of the question. It is possible however that this inability contributed to wars. If the crisis of 1914 had not blown up during the London Summer Season and Asquith had gone to Berlin and Paris with the King in tow it might have been very different.

The trouble at the moment is that the audiences are becoming saturated with all this activity and tired of the old routines. This is displayed in the falling figures for turnout in many places on key political issues or elections. The international acts may put on a fine show for the media but not much seems to happen.

Possibly, this is because democratic or other governments no longer govern much. They are all in thrall to the financial impresarios of world finance and have to cringe for the favours of their local booking agents in their banks and trusts.

When George Formby once thought to skip the ukulele thing and do straight comedy his handler, Beryl, the missus, was told to instruct him that without the ukulele he would not be doing Blackpool, he would be lucky to do Barnsley.

So how long will it be before the handlers of our present acts tell them to sharpen up, improve the oomph, belt it out louder and jump higher?

Will someone please invent the equivalent of a political TV service and shut this lot down?

Rickets, A Return To The Past

2012-01-27T17:32:00.000Z

This, unusually, is a guest post. I am only obeying orders.

Quote:

In the early/mid 20th Century it was recognised that the disease Rickets was caused by a deficiency of Vitamin D. As it was known that the Vitamins A and D are soluble in animal fats and fish oils, it was clear that a diet which includes such foods would provide the necessary amounts.

Food was less plentiful then and took a large part of household incomes so it became Government policy to ensure that the population acquired these nutrients.

Margarine, as a manufactured product, was fortified with vitamins A and D. Cod Liver Oil and orange juice (Vitamin C) were sold at modest prices in Mother and Child clinics, along with baby formula mil powder.

Mothers were encouraged to give these daily and during the Second World War and beyond, when food was scarce, these measures proved successful in preventing the disease.

Also, children were encouraged to exercise and to seek fresh air and sun as far as possible. In more recent times people have been discouraged from consuming animal fats in all forms. Skimmed milks, vegetable oils, “low fat” products have all been heavily promoted.

Whole milk, eggs, butter and other animal fats have been discredited in an almost hysterical way aided by the commercial promotion and marketing of a wide range of food products playing on those fears.

Perhaps this is a very good reason why the incidence of Rickets is increasing so alarmingly.

Unquote.

Food for thought.

Oh Ye Of Little Faith

2012-01-26T18:09:00.000Z

There has been a fine old row about the House of Lords, led by a pack of rabid Bishops, striking down the Governments proposal to limit benefits to be about the level of the alleged average earnings of someone who works for a living.

Perhaps I should stay out of this one being an RIP (retired idle parasite) getting my own share of public largesse and even the BBC free of charge. There are times when I feel I should be paid to watch it, but that is another story.

One of the many paradoxes in this business is an unelected quasi-aristocratic body representing crony government at its most blatant is being lauded by all those on the Left as being the true representatives of the workers or in the case of benefits, a lot of non-workers.

Inevitably, it has raised the question again of just who should be in the House of Lords, on what basis and with what powers. On Wednesday, 10 June 2009 in “The End of the Peerage Show” I said my piece on all this and time has moved on.

Another paradox is that an elected government, up to a point, trying to tackle the very serious problems of the extent of misuse of the benefits system and the danger of the inherent failures sending it out of control are being stymied by people who want those on benefits to be better off than most of those paying tax.

Yet those who are instrumental in this are claiming to be on the side of the poor. In fact with housing benefit they are throwing huge sums of money at the very rich, few of whom pay much tax at all.

In London and the South East you have to be well off to afford property now and really rich to have a property portfolio. If you are in this class it is probable that you will have taken the steps necessary to avoid undue taxes.

Additionally, you may well have located the ownership of the relevant property assets off shore to gain the advantages of privacy, this has become common. Michael Meacher claims that in two London boroughs alone some £80 plus billion worth of property has had its ownership located in secrecy jurisdictions.

So not only is the benefits system as it stands together with other rules and regulations helping to push up rentals to very high levels enabling the rich investors a high rate of return but the income from most of those rents is going straight out of the country doing our balance of payments no good at all.

In short the Bishops and their running dogs in the House of Lords have done all in their power to shower the richest amongst us with vast sums from the public purse.

In effect they are granting them vast subsidies from taxes largely drawn from the middling and lower paid working classes whose real incomes are less than many of those on benefits who in turn become trapped in welfare dependency.

In the old days the House of Lords existed to serve its own interests and control the House of Commons. Isn’t the Church of England a major property owner?

Government By The Woodentops

2012-01-25T15:58:00.000Z

With all the complicated debate going on about the National Health Service and the positions being taken up by the very large number of interest groups and lobbies I have been lost in the fog as far as personal thinking goes.

As someone who remembers life before the NHS and the period of transition from local/mutual/private provision into a “national” service it is not difficult to feel that more than once we have lost our way.

Patrick Dunleavy, however, has provided a longish, informed think piece on the latest round of proposed reorganisations, reshaping and refinancing. He is very pessimistic on the costs, organisation or lack of it and the potential for disaster in the future.

The NHS clearly cannot stay the same, clearly cannot be just a vehicle for those currently employed and yet has to deal each year with a large proportion of the population. Amongst the patients the patterns of disease and illness will not remain the same.

Quote:

In her much quoted book "The March of Folly", the historian Barbara Tuchmann noted that:

“Wooden-headedness plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”

Unquote.

Link:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/01/24/hsc-bill-policy-fiasco/#more-20045

Given the rapidity of change, medical and technological let alone demographic, it is all too likely that in 2012, as in 1948 and 1974, we are embarking on a period of reform on the basis of ideas that already out of date.

And the money that was assumed would be available will not be and cannot be.

Free The Redknapp Two!

2012-01-24T12:08:00.002Z

Are Buster and Lulu about to be put in the slammer of a Kennels and robbed of their right to live in their own home? These dogs are innocent!

They may have had incidental benefits of an expensive upbringing in a top price home and being taken for walkies on the most expensive bit of seaside real estate in the Kingdom but why should they suffer?

Their owner did nothing wrong, other than choosing a tax option that is currently being showered on all the top earners by the present government. If Vodaphone is innocent according to the Supreme Court of India then so are Buster and Lulu.

What is dismaying is how the memory of a much loved dog, Rosie, otherwise known as Leg Ripper by the neighbours, is being defiled in this spiteful attempt by the police to force egalitarianism on the most libertarian of football managers.

Harry Redknapp was being perfectly frank, honest and reasonable to quote a former Prime Minister, even giving his year of birth to the bank in Monaco to mark Rosie’s personal account.

1947, I remember it well, we froze, we nearly starved, there was no TV, only a maundering BBC radio service urging us to greater sacrifices in between comedy that was rarely funny and light entertainment as stodgy as a spotted dick pudding ruined when the gas supply failed.

Most of us only had either Hollywood films to entertain us, something that British films rarely did, or to go to the local football match.

There we watched chaps who lived up the road in cheap rented housing and who went to the same pubs that we did play for a quid or two more than you could get if you managed overtime on double pay.

It is thanks to the need to cherish and house lovely dogs like Buster and Lulu that have driven their owner to greater things. Who would argue against this?

Just as the need to have high maintenance girl friends and profitable media rights have helped footballers park their fortunes offshore with the help of their friends and others.

Yes, I know government borrowing has gone over £1 Trillion, yes I know there is a bit of a problem with the tax revenues going down faster than a footballers trousers in a lap dance club, but let us stick to British fair play.

Or I’ll set the dogs on you.

The Worlds Second Biggest Economy

2012-01-23T17:57:00.000Z

In the past, there have been claims in this blog to the effect that there are in essence three parts to an economy. There is the Taxable, the Alternative, which can take many forms, and the illegal.

It was suggested that the Illegal has been growing steadily and is much larger than we think and has a critical effect on both fiscal policy and government spending.

This notion occurred because in the past the way the UK economy worked and how people managed their budgets and spending was very different.

However, in Zero Hedge an article has appeared that makes my tentative ideas look far too conservative in their estimates.

These experts are saying that it is all far bigger than we think and with major consequences with some intriguing graphics:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/forget-china-system-d-worlds-second-largest-economy-infographic

So, is it possible that across the world the size of the illegal economies amount in total to the second biggest economy? It would not surprise me.

It is arguable that the bigger the levels of government spending the bigger the opportunities for malpractice, crime and corruption of all sorts. The current row over benefits is indicative of the various disconnects in this field.

Is tonight my night for mugging teenagers?

Parliament Is Falling Down

2012-01-22T15:43:00.002Z

There are lurid reports that the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and all are slowly but surely slipping away and structural collapse could be possible.

A billion or so would put it right. Given what it has been costing us lately perhaps it would be cheaper to let it fall into the Thames, present occupants and all.

However, amending the old and loved ditty “London Bridge Is Falling Down":

Parliament is broken down,
Broken down, broken down.
Parliament is broken down,
My fair lady.

Build it up with spin and spout,
Spin and spout, spin and spout,
Build it up with spin and spout,
My fair lady.

Spin and spout will fade away,
Fade away, fade away,
Spin and spout will fade away,
My fair lady.

Build it up with laws and votes,
Laws and votes, laws and votes,
Build it up with laws and votes,
My fair lady.

Laws and votes will not stay,
Will not stay, will not stay,
Laws and votes will not stay,
My fair lady.

Build it up with debts and deals,
Debts and deals, debts and deals,
Build it up with debts and deals,
My fair lady.

Debts and deals will bust and break,
Bust and break, bust and break,
Debts and deals will bust and break,
My fair lady.

Build it up with silver and gold,
Silver and gold, silver and gold,
Build it up with silver and gold,
My fair lady.

Silver and gold will be stolen away,
Stolen away, stolen away,
Silver and gold will be stolen away,
My fair lady.

Set a man to make it right,
Make it right, make it right,
Set a man to make it right,
My fair lady.

Suppose the man blows the lot,
Blows the lot, blows the lot,
Suppose the man should blow the lot,
My fair lady.

Then we’ll all have gone to pot,
Gone to pot, gone to pot,
Then we’ll all have gone to pot,
My fair lady.

Food For Thought

2012-01-21T15:40:00.000Z

With time being short today, just a couple of links for fun.

Those who want to find their past families, or hunt heirs, make a great deal of use of a number of web sites, a leading one being Ancestry.co.uk or Ancestry.com the world wide version.

Daily Mash has its own take on this, in gloriously bad taste:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news-in-pictures/news-briefly/reader-offer-201201214798/

For those with more serious and contemporary interests there is a financial one that will equip you to sound authoritative; or at least as convincing as most of our present financial commentators and politicians:

http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2012/01/advice.html

Enjoy.

Poles Apart

2012-01-20T14:09:00.000Z

Diversity, or for that matter employment and equality law, has not yet reached down to the world of hand cash car washes in our area. The various teams engaged in this form of economic enterprise are rigorously segregated and some may well be from one extended family. My preference has been for the Polish one.

They are efficient, work as a team and do a very good job. There is often a small or longer queue so I am not alone in my opinions. What is striking is that they are all adult, some may well have families back in Poland and are clearly used to manual work and the disciplines involved.

Quite what their precise financial or housing arrangements are I am not sure. It is possible that the UK system of benefits and the rest may be a major incentive but they certainly know what they have to do and get on with it.

The other teams are all migrants from other places. Alas, I am unable to choose a Scottish, English, Irish, Welsh or British group, they do not exist. Perhaps the educational system is at fault.

None of the several universities in our general area have graduate courses in car valeting or post graduate studies in motor transport hygiene management. I enquired of one senior educator why this might be at a recent meeting only for her suddenly to discover urgent business elsewhere.

Meanwhile in the media there is a debate about how it is that so many migrants find work to do in the UK whilst an increasing proportion of our youngsters do not find work that matches their expectations or inclinations. Fingers at pointed at Eastern Europe, notably the Poles, as taking our jobs.

There was a time when in the Midlands town where we lived on a summer’s day there was a large group of Poles making their way up the main road to the beat of a bass drum. When the drum stopped and the band struck up the dignitaries in the grandstand rose as one and the thousands lining the road cheered the men on.

It was the Polish national anthem and the group were men from the 1st Independent Polish Airborne Brigade brought over from Grantham way (did Mr. Roberts serve them in his grocer’s shop?) who had fought at Arnhem in 1944 and this was July 1945 when they were being honoured amongst others.

I was standing on a Jeep courtesy of American’s of the 82nd Airborne Division who were cheering as loudly as anybody. Some wore the Purple Hearts they had earned on 6 June 1944 when they were dropped into Normandy or also at Arnhem.

Many of the Poles did not make it back to Poland for a variety of political and personal reasons. For some there was no family left to return to and for others the welcome might be uncertain from their former Soviet allies now installed in Poland.

The local Roman Catholic churches welcomed them. They provided a devout stiffening amongst the more lackadaisical local men and moreover, unlike those in the congregation from one part of the Atlantic Isles, did not head out of church regardless of the service five minutes before the pub’s opening time.

Most married into local families, there were more than enough widows or lost fiancés to avoid the usual resentments. They were found work in local factories. One was keen to recruit their footballers and especially the most able chess players amongst them. The works chess team became one of the best in the Kingdom.

This is all two thirds of a century away and it is likely that most of their grand children may have forgotten their Polish heritage or know little about it. It is possible that some of the loudest complainants about recent migrant Poles may well have that blood.

In any case if one looks at the patterns of male DNA in the Y Chromosome there are a good many in the UK from the long past who left behind cousins in central Europe as they moved north and west after the last Ice Age. So many Poles are closer to some of us than we think. Much the same applies to the maternal DNA.

The questions arising from recent mass migration, employment patterns, educational provision, benefits policy and housing and health provision are very complicated. In the case of the Poles the history is even more complex.

None the less there is a profound irony in large numbers of Poles coming over to do the jobs that many of our own young people do not want to do, may not in fact be capable of doing and in any case are able to refuse.

Which reminds me, the car needs a wash.

Many A Mickle Makes A Muckle

2012-01-18T17:11:00.000Z

So there was Ian Hislop of “Private Eye”, resident in the deepest south east but being of substantial Scots descent complaining to the Leveson Inquiry in Parliament into media antics. He inveighed against the evils of the Murdoch media empire. Could this be originally a Scottish Murdoch?

He did not mention Kelvin McKenzie, oh, another Scots name, but he might well have done. Then he went on to call into question Cameron, surely not another Scot, Blair and Brown, both men with Greenock on their CV’s as well as being substantially of Scottish origin.

Also, we learn that both the Direct Line and Churchill insurance companies have had their knuckles rapped by the Financial Services Authority for tinkering with the evidence in relation to complaints about malpractice. Pause for a moment, they are both owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

RBS were taken into public ownership after it failed by a Labour government in which the Scottish Labour Party with other Scots based in England exercised great influence. This has added major burdens to the UK taxpayer and has cost them dearly. The ramifications are too much for this post.

At present there is a debate over the mechanics of conducting a referendum on the issue of Scotland in relation to England. The leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, does not agree with Cameron and Osborne (Irish Ascendancy with a leavening of Scots Irish in the ancestry) about what might be what.

Given that Cameron and Osborne are currently engaged with others in the Coalition to attempt to unscramble and rationalise RBS to raise some money from the mess their discussions with Alex could well be formed by the needs of RBS as much as anything else. The “hidden agenda” as you might say.

Because Alex is an RBS man having spent many years in senior positions. He had a great deal to do with oil companies. The bank was generous in allowing him scope in his political and public work. He has much to be grateful for and with RBS one of the major entities in the Edinburgh financial sector it was of key importance.

When Sir Fred Goodwin ruled the roost at RBS he was much sought after. The frantic fawning of Blair and Brown, hanging on his every word, possibly led to the distortions of so many of their ideas about how The City and Edinburgh worked. Alex did not need to fawn, he was already a man within.

In the high on the hog days of the heady boom of the first few years of the last decade there was the ambition to make Edinburgh the ultimate tax haven of Europe. With RBS and the HalifaxBoS amongst the powerful international anchors and the support of expatriates in other tax havens to pull in major punters all was set to make Leith a second Nassau, minus the weather and the beaches perhaps.

This idea has contracted faster and further than the Edinburgh tram project another ride to nowhere. But there are a lot of other interesting questions about RBS and all that it entails. When it succeeded in the reverse takeover of the NatWest bank there were some choice plums to be had amongst its subsidiaries.

The main one was Coutts, taken over and reorganised by NatWest to become bigger, more active in pursuing clients and more targeted in its chosen customers. I wonder who the office in Lugano is supposed to be for? This became RBS Coutts. Could Cameron be a Coutts client?

It was and may still be the private bank for much of the Royal Family. Certainly a good many recent celebrities have been drawn to it. Also others, at present the 15th Earl of Home is listed as its chairman. How many with RBS connections might have piled in when Coutts became open to them? It was not only RBS that was bailed out, it was much of the establishment.

Given the stringent privacy attached to the financial affairs of its clients, especially those whose funds are sent winging round the world then we can know little and it might be dangerous to ask. RBS Coutts has an office in the Cayman Islands, a location whose latest form of Trust provision guarantees protection against those who might want to enquire.

In the good old days before democracy took hold everyone knew who had money, where they got it from, by and large where it was held and what responsibilities were attached. Now in our free, open and non-judgemental society we have little or no idea of where our leaders and politicians money is and on what basis.

As Ian Hislop says so often in “Private Eye”, I think we should be told.

I See No Ships

2012-01-17T14:02:00.000Z

The discussion on whether to replace the Royal Yacht “Britannia” currently listing in Leith Harbour is giving rise to the usual chatter about Royalty, money and taxpayers. Many argue because such a vessel can be used for all sorts of other things this offsets the costs.

This begs a number of questions; such as if there are other things needed why not have the relevant type of ship rather than a one size fits all? The old “Britannia” did good work in the Falklands in 1982 as a hospital vessel but why was such a back up ship needed?

There was another Royal “Britannia”, built in 1893, pictured above and see Wikipedia. It was a lot smaller than the recent one but was built strictly for racing and not for comfort or long distance transport. In its time it gained a lot more attention and favourable comment at a lot less cost. It was also fun for its handlers.

One part of the debate is whether such a vessel should be state (taxpayer) funded or private funded. If it is built with private money, then who is paying? In the end this means consumers, maybe shareholders and if tax breaks or some subsidised companies are involved then certainly the taxpayer will be taking a whack.

My suggestion is that a very big, very rich and very powerful company should buy one of a couple of aircraft carriers that will be going spare in the near future. The company could use it as a base for all its private jets, transport and as a floating main frame back up facility.

This could be offset by a below decks shopping mall available to go anywhere to serve consumers with disposable incomes, credit cards and overdraft facilities as well as private health clinics and fitness clubs.

It could be hired out to major firms or high level celebrities with large entourages and a substantial media following, for example, Blair Corp. This might offset our normal security bills.

Occasionally, the Royal Family might use it for their international travels. Prince Andrew need no longer rely on his air miles to help UK trading here or there or somewhere else.

So which aircraft carrier will have the honour of being “Barclay’s Britannia”?

Cameron And Osborne Kow Tow To China

2012-01-16T17:21:00.002Z

Looking around the web came across a post by Automatic Earth that takes a look at the UK Economy and does not like what it sees. It is a longish item but worth looking at, if only because soon others may become very nervous.

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2012/01/january-16-2012-quo-vadis-britannia.html

The part which discusses the Incredible Shrinking UK Economy is of special interest. Especially, in the news put out today about the future of the City of London, put over as good tidings.

The City of London is set to be the world epicentre for trading in the Chinese yuan/renminby money and financial sector. In other words while the previous government bet the house on one set of currencies and trading this government is placing the same bet on another.

For those with the time and interest to scout the web for information on the 19th century history of the Chinese Concessions the notion that the government of China may not just have a foot in the door but may be in occupation of the main hall of the building is not good news.

I have remarked before about the potential for an Honourable West European Company of China bent on economic and trading control and this may just be the beginning.

The picture above is of a British master mariner trading in Hong Kong in 1830. Beside me I have the cash box of another like him who was there at the same time and making his money in trading.

So will the contents of this cash box now depend on China in a very different way?

Dish Of The Day

2012-01-16T15:51:00.001Z

It appears that there has been a spat about where and who invented haggis. It has often appeared on the plate and at times not particular to season or date. I have also enjoyed it during Lent, if only as a gesture.

Firstly, a declaration of interest, the records of my personal family include the minutes and documents of the Incorporation of Fleshers held in Ayr and Edinburgh. They were major figures in this body for generations. One of the youngest sons of this family group had to go off and earn his living elsewhere.

In the Old Parish Records of Ayr on the facing page which records the baptism of Robert Burns is the baptism of one of the Fleshers of my family, albeit not an ancestor. My father was a butcher for a long time, boxing professionally as “Butcher Bill” and another near ancestor in another line was also a butcher.

I am fussy about my meat; it comes from the farm on special order. It costs more than the supermarket cheap stuff and but less than their premium meat. Even the sausages are made to order.

Thirty or so years ago the best haggis I could source came from mid Yorkshire, a butchers who supplied a substantial number of Scottish clients unable to find the right mix in the right quality nearer to home. I have found decent haggis in Borough Market in London.

There is more to it than that. It is my contention that not too long after the invention of fire and the various means of cooking foods over it some hominids found that stuffing an animal’s innards with assorted offal, ground meat and cereals and perhaps with added herbs made a filling and delightful meal.

Down the millennia, there have no doubt been variations on one sort or another around many civilisations according to taste, availability or religious demands. I have little doubt that my forebears in Ayr may have varied their mix from time to time according to what was available.

Quite why locally this type of dish came to be called haggis in Scotland as opposed to all the many names it must have had in many places I do not know. Perhaps it was the nickname of a housewife who made a particularly tasty version, perhaps indeed one of my own family.

For leading politicians to go ape and posture mightily over the content of a form of meal that is so ancient speaks volumes about the quality of the debate about current issues and their contempt for the electorate.

If this is the best they can do then they need stuffing.

Labour In Vain

2012-01-15T15:59:00.001Z

We live in strange times. Clan Cameron has begun yet another feud. One might have thought that in the past they had already feuded with everyone worth feuding with.

Not satisfied with keeping it north of the border he has taken on the Chiltern thousands in buying Chinese technology for the HST2 with umpteen billions of Chinese money to be repaid by the taxpayers for the next century.

Europe is degraded, or down graded depending on your outlook and everyone is holding their breath as to the extent and nature of the financial fallout. This is looking bad.

To add to the interest one satellite channel showed a programme suggesting that Naples could soon be just a thick layer of ash as Vesuvius blows a big one and takes the Italian economy, or what is left of it, with it.

In the USA the needs of returning President Obama to office has just added another trillion or two to the national debt. And it ain’t over yet. Meanwhile the recession continues and the Bank of America is on the block.

Some contrarian has popped up in the oil web sites suggesting that rather then a major hiking of oil prices it is possible that between recession and the potential of fracking techniques the price could be more than halved.

This will be very bad for a lot of economies presently barely in surplus and again impact on Europe and the USA.

In the UK the deficits mount, the economy is sluggish and there do not seem to be any easy answer or any answers for that matter to the gathering problems.

Astonishingly, this knowledge has even penetrated the thinking of the Labour Party who are looking for what sound like policies to present to the people in the event of an implosion of the Coalition and an early General Election.

They are beginning to look for a new image and way of communicating with us lot who wonder what they are up to, other than supporting the latest business enterprises of Blair Corp.

Blair Corp is reported to be going into the business of massage parlours. They are actually supposed to be Health Clinics but you may be sure that the real purpose is to massage the figures to avoid both questions and tax. I suspect that somewhere the taxpayer will be finding the real money.

In all this Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman, pictured above, are hoping to present themselves as going back to a simple form of Labour accepting that what might be will be and setting sail in the barge of state to a new future.

Unluckily, it seems that Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee barge is cancelled for Health and Safety reasons.

Don’t blink, you might miss another crisis.

Save The Warhorse Of World Trade

2012-01-14T15:05:00.001Z

Around the web there is talk of the present situation as a form of “trade war” that is new to us and which is not fully understood. Certainly, politicians of many nations, anxious to place the blame on other people in other places are claiming that they and their economies are under attack.

There are some basic problems with this. One is what kind of war is it? Is it one where the Barbarians are at the gate or others of that kind? Or is it a modern kind of war which involves a mix of technology, diverse powers and a ruthless approach to the elimination of the enemy.

With the film “Warhorse” on release there is the temptation for me to see it in terms of the First World War. When the play was on at the “National”, at first I wasn’t interested but was urged by others to go.

At the performance I found myself next to an old soldier who had been with the Household Cavalry and I had had my moments with one cavalry regiment or another. We both found it an absorbing and moving performance. I am hoping that someone will buy me the DVD of the film.

But to return to the current financial wars, what is clear is that many, locked in the theories and assumptions of the past do not understand what is happening and what has happened in the last decade or two in global finance.

The down grading of national debt announced this weekend with more to follow in other spheres is seen as an attack when it is a simple admission of the reality that governments have lost control of the rate of interest systems.

We have had all the palaver of one central bank or another holding interest rates “low” when in fact the real markets have rates that are very different and tell a different tales. The resulting distortions are a barrage on real business.

There is the assumption that governments allied to their central banks and the banks within their jurisdictions can control the key supply of money and its major flows. It is clear that they cannot. With all the new monetary devices and so many of the big financial banks and houses off shore this control is wholly lost.

Then there is the question of taxing and spending. With industrial scale tax avoidance taking out revenues from the rich and spending locked into social security, subsidising some things but not others and declaring big prestige projects that will never ever yield any return on capital employed then this in turn is beyond control.

Also out there on the web are those pointing out that in the EU in particular, as well as in other countries the extent and depth of regulation creates a major obstacle to controlling spending or indeed being able to reduce much those areas affected. “Hanging on the old barbed wire” so to say.

In the Western Front of the First World War you were in one set of trenches or another, or worse still stranded in the fog of No Man’s Land, pocked by deep shell holes many of which might contain lethal gas and at the mercy of what ever was going on.

What financial trade war do we have at the moment in WW1 terms? Is it a Retreat From Mons? Is it a Battle of the Somme? Is it one of the Battles of Ypres or is a Kaiserschlacht?

To me increasingly it looks like we are stuck in the No Mans Land of the Third Battle of Ypres, better known as Passchendaele and the war horses have long gone.

Mittelstand, German, American and British

2012-01-12T13:36:00.001Z

To deal with this subject in full and in detail would take many thousands of words. This bare sketch can only be a slight introduction. The word “Mittelstand”, see Wikipedia, is German and refers to the extent of middle and small sized businesses at the heart of the economies of Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Such businesses were also at the heart of other western economies at one time and the changes that have occurred are part and parcel of the deteriorating conditions that are affecting so many of these others.

Essentially, between 1950 and 1990, Germany and Austria were no longer powers with any major military commitment or much of a role on the world stage. They were able to attend to their own affairs and concentrate on wealth creation, trade and building democratic and socially integrated nations. In this way they followed Switzerland who had kept out of wars and major foreign commitments.

In Austria the peculiar situation meant that Vienna did not exert the economic dominance over the rest of the country that occurred elsewhere. Switzerland has been a Confederation for centuries with Bern as its political capital since 1848 but with economic and other controls highly dispersed.

In West Germany the political capital was Bonn, a small town with the economic clout elsewhere, notably Frankfurt, but with extensive devolved authority to other major cities and centres of trade.

It was a Federal State and the consequence of this between politics and finance was to support and assist industry and trade across the board, large and small, creating a formidable strength and depth.

When I began to revisit Germany in the late 70’s the contrast between what was going on in the UK and the extent of the revival and capability of German economic activity came as a shock. The contrast with the Germany I had seen under Occupation with that of 25 years later was stark, almost as much as the decline I was witnessing in the UK.

The USA being very big, a Federal State and with its belief in enterprise and the creation of wealth also had an economy which was not the same as that of the German, but certainly widely dispersed, vigorous and allowed to develop without too much in the way of control. Also, middle and small companies had good access to capital and funding and were integrated politically into its democratic system.

In the USA now the events of the last decade coupled with the errors of the previous one have now triggered what could be a severe decline in this Mittelstand and maybe with the risk of collapse. Financial power has become too concentrated on Wall Street and Washington DC has become too inward looking and dominating in economic affairs.

The loss of flexibility, incentive, capital and the gross distortions of the financial markets in the USA have all conspired to seriously damage the basis and the functioning of the middle and lower and have shifted too much power, control and money to too limited a group of big business operations. This is not capitalism, it is oligarchy.

In the UK recently we have opened our doors to and showered favours and finance on the oligarchs of the world. But between 1950 and 2010 the centralisation of government, the concentration of economic decisions, the extensive and costly interference across the board have imposed intolerable burdens on the middle and lower sectors of business and trade.

Between 1945 and 1980 in order to prop up large scale declining industries and activities the political imperatives were to extract from profitable business so much as to deny it the ability to create its own capital. Central controls of capital made matters worse.

Neither the banks nor the City did much if anything for the UK Mittelstand, essentially chasing financial butterflies across the world instead, with the encouragement of one government or another, all London centric.

The result was to put areas with a strong UK Mittelstand into decline without saving the old industries. Given the extreme centralisation of the Westminster system the UK economy became more and more dependent on the City and other service activity. Our Mittelstand is now only a shadow of what it once was.

Just look at the UK political parties and their actual membership and see where their money comes from and who they work for. It is certainly not the middle and lower reaches of the economy, it is all for the big boys with deep pockets and the ability to walk in the back doors of 10 and 11 Downing Street at any time.

In Germany their prime concern about the Euro and its troubles is not just the issues for its many banks, it is for the Mittelstand at the heart of their economy. They now have the problem that Berlin may have become too powerful.

The USA is in economic cardiac arrest. In the UK the vampires have already done their worst.

How can the UK begin to rebuild its Mittelstand? Because if it cannot; then the game is well and truly up.

Work Is The Curse Of The Drinking Classes

2012-01-11T17:38:00.001Z

According to a report in the Daily Mail a young graduate in museum studies is going to court to ask for a judicial review arising from her being obliged to undergo training whilst claiming benefits.

It is claimed that this is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and fundamentally questions the new regulations that mean unpaid training work for short periods can be enforced to ensure that the unemployed are gaining some form of experience and awareness of the world of work.

In fairness the claim that she was undertaking unpaid voluntary work related to her qualifications whilst seeking work is true. So another issue is whether this could be regarded as a substitute for the training recommended by the Job Centre.

The work was shelf stacking at Poundland. These are shops specialising in bargain offers. They are warm, if anything over heated, clean, provided with toilet facilities for staff and offer a wide variety of potential human contact on an everyday working basis. They are open for normal shop hours in the daytime.

It sure as hell beats unloading the Grimsby Fish train at 2 a.m. in five below with a light dusting of snow coming down. After you have finished that then you might have a short break before the Paper Train arrives at 4.30 to 5.00 a.m.

Then, you, together with a lot of other sweaty foul mouthed men from vans have between half an hour to an hour to unload all the days press and magazines for a large city and get them on the road. A stint cleaning the outside of trains at the carriage sheds by the canal was almost light relief.

But I was glad of the money, not being eligible for benefits because for two years I had been off work doing a sort of forced labour. Although “National Service” this did not count for national insurance and in any case someone going on to higher education had no chance of any benefits at all.

Back at the Job Centre they have to weigh up just what chance a person has of finding a job in the field they are qualified for. In many areas of higher education because of the numbers graduating against the jobs available there will be many who never will.

So people may have to be pointed in other directions and to work which they can do and which could provide contacts, leads and experience that would enable them to vary and widen their field of choice. Added to that is life experience, always invaluable in a difficult world.

I am sure the retail sector could benefit from entrants who have decent levels of education and the ability to progress to more demanding and senior work in time. One way of finding out if they really want work or not is to take them to see how they do in the real world of the present rather than the distant past.

But these days our graduates do not expect to start at the bottom. If the courts find that this offends their “human rights” then heaven help us all. So who will do these jobs and for what pay?

Independence, Scotland's Magical Mystery Tour

2012-01-10T17:48:00.003Z

When our children were first in school the counties of Clackmannan, Radnor and Rutland all had authority and responsibility greater than the United Kingdom has at present. Even the lower tiers of urban and rural district councils might have more discretion in the exercise of many of their functions.

Even then those of a radical frame of mind pointed out that the UK was not longer “independent” by reason of its membership of NATO, the United Nations and various other international bodies as well as the requirements of its “Special Relationship” with the USA. This view was unpopular, especially as it was true.

Looking back to when I was first in school people believed in British might and authority. However, we had a number of binding treaties to conform to as well as other limiting conditions, such as the League of Nations. Again, it is arguable that even then the UK had become a prisoner of its Empire rather than its ruler.

Having been damaged by one major war The Empire became involved in a second that it could ill afford if it was to survive. The decision to fight on after Dunkirk was the last gasp of any independence. When the USA was drawn into the war at the same time as the UK’s money began to run out it bought a little time.

The rest was a polite charade when we went through the motions of independent power until that party was over and we ratted on The Empire to sign up with Europe to save our economic skins. But it was North Sea gas and oil that did that for a while and not the help of our European neighbours.

When the SNP talks of an independent Scotland offering a vision of medieval internal authority coupled with a national identity owed to the Prince Regent and Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg Gotha it is a bogus prospectus.

Even in the Middle Ages there was the Church to worry about and the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath was addressed to Pope John XXII, then resident in Avignon courtesy of the King of France. The present border was the result of a grubby marriage settlement a few years later and could well have been drawn much further to the south at some time earlier.

Indeed, Scotland may detach itself from Westminster. Given the gross incompetence of the UK Westminster government machine, courtesy of a New Labour led largely by Scottish Labour members, the vast scale of the waste involved and its real work largely a retreading of EU directives, regulations, guidance and judicial decisions it is quite sensible to attempt some sanity in their own government.

One difficulty is the way what sort of independence might be achieved and this has changed its colour and pattern down the decades. At one stage it was torn between some kind of Dominion status akin to Canada’s and the leftist preference for the East German model. Ne’er the twain shall meet.

Then under the influence of wealthy expatriates it shifted to the prospect of a second Irish Tiger or Singaporean or Hong Kong model. Edinburgh would become the ultimate tax haven and a world centre for shifty and shifting money to rival and overtake the City of London.

The implication given some of those involved was that any Scottish Currency would relate to the US dollar. This might allow a good measure of political discretion, on the lines of Delaware or California, but it would not be independence. Just look at other countries that are tied to the dollar.

The tricky question then was how this fitted in with the EU. When the Euro currency was created this posed a dilemma. If Scotland went into the EU and took the Euro shilling (sic) then it would not be independent. What may happen to the Euro now is not known, but it will be different.

If it had stashed enough international capital in the wonder banks of the RBS and BoS and their related financial bodies, allied to North Sea Oil it might have a weight and influence greater than its size. As Blair and Brown used to say, all too often, this was “punching above your weight”.

In short there are a number of things that should be known and be prominent in any debate. The key one is certainly what currency and financial structure is proposed for Scotland. Anything based on any other currency, including the pound, is not independence and cannot be

Then there are the basics of governance, The Defence of the Realm, Law and Order, the structure of local government, border controls and migration policies and what taxation systems are envisaged.

To return to money, one key area is the nature of financial regulation. Scotland, if it has its own currency will need its own Central Bank. What will be the basis of this? How will it be governed and who will be the Governor?

Step forward Sir Fred Goodwin?

London, The Dying Of The Light

2012-01-08T15:26:00.001Z

Up to London yesterday and it was quite strange. Not too many people around, plenty of seats to choose from in the gardens and an air of detachment amongst many of those about. Take out the football supporters on the march and the theatre goers up for bargain price offers and there were not many others.

Because we had time in hand we decided to wander round a few streets that we hadn’t looked at in a while. A great many places had been turned into eating outlets of one sort or another and a surprising number were out of business. Also, a good many of the old specialist shops had gone as well as local suppliers.

London has changed again, but the question is whether that change is one that is part of a dynamic progress and growth or something else. It is all very well for politicians and media people to prattle on about how change must be for the better but it does not always work out like that.

In the UK I have seen a great many communities of one kind or another go through changes and there is little doubt that quite a lot are a lot worse off than they were. Many are on almost life support systems of public sector spending and benefits.

In London there has been, is and it is proposed to have spending of a vast amount of money almost across the board. Not simply in actual spending but in subsidies of one sort or another and allowing tax avoidance on a large scale by the major parts of the financial sector. The transport works already completed, in progress and planned must rival the total for those of the rest of the UK.

Additionally, many of the large scale property developments planned before the Crash are still under way and taking in a great deal of both private and public sector resources. The Thameslink work on the railways south of the river is well under way and beside them The Shard building has taken shape.

This will offer 12,000 jobs for the future it has been said of which a huge 150 are being reserved for local workers. Whether the future workers at The Shard are supposed to find housing in central London, unlikely at present prices; or commute is not known.

If they have to commute they will need good money because the season tickets to places like Sevenoaks are now hitting £3000 a year with a good couple of thousand if you need to park your car daily close to the station.

As for the situation in schools and hospitals for the most part the less said the better unless, again, you have big money available. For all the talk of diversity there is a diminishing amount of it in the London economy. Once it was a major manufacturing area but a good deal of this has gone, never to return.

Additionally, many other activities, minor, small in scale, but serving local, regional or national needs are gone or going elsewhere if not shutting down altogether. Their going is hardly noticed and does not register in the statistics and it takes someone who knew districts from the past to be aware of this form of attrition.

This could be a very long post but my feeling is that for many reasons and complex causes London is now an urban sprawl not just on the brink of decline but one that has begun already.

The real question is how fast and nasty it could be and that poses a great many other questions for the UK as a whole.

The Secrets Of Wildlife

2012-01-06T18:09:00.001Z

David Attenborough, the nation’s expert on wildlife, appeared on BBC4 last night in a programme about Grammar Schools only to remind me of other kinds of wild life he may prefer to forget. There was an eerie moment at the beginning when an old photograph was shown of a sports pavilion in front of which was a rugger team.

David was one of them and as the photograph is clearly one of the school team then David must have been good enough to be selected. As some of the Wyggeston School team in Leicester went on to play in the 1st XV’s of a number of decent local sides as well as The Tigers, then an invitation team, and for the county then David would need to be able to play at that level.

David’s father, Frederick, was then Principal of the Leicester University College, a respected academic establishment with high standards, on the same site as the school. It is likely that Frederick would have been hard pushed, despite his position, to pay for a public school education for his three sons and two adopted daughters.

Because Frederick had begun his career as an Elementary School Teacher and had made a good career by long personal study and application. Before then his family were of ordinary Midlands working stock. By one of those strange twists he was in teaching in Liverpool in 1911 just round the corner from Alois Hitler, the elder brother of Adolf. I wonder if Frederick was ever waited on by him in the café?

The University College was founded in 1921 by local patronage and the school was one of the many decayed old grammar schools that were revived at the end of the 19th Century. By the 1930’s new buildings had given it facilities well beyond those of many secondary schools notably the creation of a strong science department. The City had grown rapidly and needed a secondary educated class.

Many of the boys were from the City’s professional, commercial, office and business families but there was a decent intake from the Elementary Schools in the mix. Most would go on to that kind of work at 16 via part time study and only a minority would have entered the Sixth Form to go to University.

It would give David a breadth of experience, contact, variety and interest lost to those who went off to boarding schools. It was a much more adult environment and the world of work and its realities were all about him. Also, as well as working hard, they liked to play hard and Leicester was a rugger town for all classes.

And David was a rugger man as a teenager. The school was adjacent to Victoria Park, then home to several local rugby clubs with the Old Wyggestonians somewhere else. They intermingled a great deal. Some of those in the school at David’s time who stayed in Leicester later went on a memorable rugby tour of Lancashire.

A few years later, one of David’s immediate contemporaries at school, Michael Green, who was a few months younger, wrote “The Art Of Coarse Rugby” as well as a series of articles about these very teams. Looking at it now, even accepting that it told less than half the tale and all of them had been in the armed services, there was some roistering behaviour that makes the Bullingdon look like a lot of maiden aunts.

But then you had to be there, but why did David give up the game for other wildlife?

Thinking Ahead

2012-01-05T15:10:00.001Z

With so many looming disasters to chose from in international affairs and finance as well as an increasingly chaotic political situation it is anybody’s guess which might be pick of the day or week.

One choice item is the appointment of a Belgian economist to the European Central Bank to head up its economic policy team. There is a joke about Belgian economists having to work out their theories in several different languages none of which can make sense of the conclusions.

It was the Daily Mail which came up with one story, the content of which was derived largely from the Wikipedia entry, on the Laacher See, a lake in Germany to the west of Koblenz apparently situated in an ancient volcanic crater. It has begun to fizz a bit and volcano experts suggest that as the last blow was 12,900 years ago and it is overdue this could be another worry.

It is potentially a big one. The last time it went up much of Northern Europe was plastered with ash and this coincided with the Younger Dryas, a very cold spell that lasted a long while. They say that whether the two are connected is speculative. Barclays probably are now pricing the risk and trying to hedge on the Asian markets.

Meanwhile Katla Volcano in Iceland, also Wikipedia has slipped out of the news but is still twitchy and the experts are keeping their cards on the table. Quite how big it might be is not known, probably enough to ground a lot of air traffic for up to a month. This would suggest a holiday season might be worth betting on.

One of my family cheerily reminded me of the Cumbre Vieja volcanic ridge in La Palma in the Canary Islands which has been studied closely. One theory is that if there is a major slip of territory following volcanic activity the ensuing tsunami would wipe out a great deal of the Eastern seaboard of the USA and much of Southern England. The Thames Barrier would not be a lot of help.

Historically, these things can come together. For example Ijen in Indonesia is on the move and can put up a lot stuff in the sky. This one went up in 1817 two years after the Mount Tambora one had radical effects on the world climate and this had followed an 1812 big one in South America. The onset of the Little Ice Age at the beginning of the 14th Century is suggested as the consequence of a series of events of this kind.

One thing that we have been confident about for a while it that we thought we all knew who or what we were, given a few trivial points of detail. But it seems that our past is more mixed that we ever thought:

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2011/12/top-10-hominid-discoveries-of-2011/

So whilst in the past we asked where have they all gone, the question now might be how far are they still with us?

There Is No Affordable Housing

2012-01-03T12:41:00.000Z

In the USA there has been a catastrophe in the housing markets of most parts of the Union. This has been attracted little attention in either the UK or in Europe because of the various embarrassments entailed. One is the role of many major British and European financial organisations in the debacle.

The massive bungling of the US agencies and authorities may have needed little help to bring about the disaster but our own leading financial bodies did everything they could to make it worse.

The fall in price levels coupled with unemployment and other loss of income has meant millions of foreclosures. Those still in their homes are looking at serious equity loss and may be trapped. Communities have been wrecked and whole areas demolished. The trading in mortgages and titles to property mean that many do not know who owns either their mortgage or the freeholds, many have been lost.

There are an increasing number of American homes now where Grandma is in the loft and the young adult children have returned to wrangle over the title to the remote controls. Their parents who once hoped for an early and prosperous retirement may now never retire or be able to sell their house.

In the UK some of the frantic financial operations have been designed to keep the property market afloat to avoid the same happening here. This has been helped by the inflow of dodgy money with dodgy people buying into London and area as a way of either keeping some assets or laundering money.

Consequently property prices and rentals seem to defy the realities of the gathering problems. On the BBC News was an item about a small terraced house in London where the rental was £2000 a week for a family on below average income. This was funded by Housing Benefit and was said to be typical of London pricing.

If the housing benefit scheme is not just supporting but enriching many of those whose untaxed funds come from the Illegal Economy it is a fair question for ordinary taxpayers to ask quite how this has come about and why.

Also, in the news is discussion about how “Care in the Community” had meant large numbers of the very elderly with little care and stuck in homes they cannot afford to run and with nowhere to go. John Redwood has asked the awkward question of whether such care is designed to protect the inheritances of the relatively better off rather than be paid for by drawing on the capital value of the homes.

Channel Four recently had a feature on the million unoccupied homes and who they might be brought into use. They did not mention the difficult issue of how it has come about that the titles and freeholds of many of these homes seem to have gone off shore and cannot be identified. This brings us back to the financial companies and the industrial scale of tax avoidance in which they are engaged.

As for the leasehold and rental sectors there is developing chaos in both these fields. It is becoming increasingly expensive and difficult for those needing homes who are in the middle and lower incomes. There is a real squeeze here that means that few who have to rent will ever be able to afford to buy.

Again because so much “investment” has been urged on in these fields in the recent past the money flows into this market on the assumption of easy capital gains have pushed the figures too high for comfort. There have been a lot of people badly caught out and there may well be a lot more to come.

Trying to keep a full account of the scale of the mess is impossible in a short post of this kind. Because the UK property market has become so badly overblown then the scale of any collapse could be very nasty. We only have to look across the Atlantic and at Ireland to see what could happen.

In the meantime there is ranting on about the government embarking on a huge programme of building “affordable” social housing. This is music to the ears of the developers and their financial backers. The trouble is that “affordable” probably means a major increase in subsidised housing supported by housing benefit or tax breaks of one kind or another.

This is the sort of thing that got us into the mess in the first place.

I Don't Know Where I'm Going

2011-12-31T16:15:00.001Z

In Open Democracy there has been a long article by Anthony Barnett from July called “After Murdoch” suggesting that the grip that Rupert Murdoch has had on British and related politics may now be on the wane and there is the possibility of some real democratic progress and rebalancing of interests.

This has been countered by Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, in a reality check to the effect that as far as the markets are concerned Newscorp, BSkyB and all the rest are very much still in business and a good bet for the future. Essentially, the whole issue turns on the nature and standing of the UK political class and their capacity for survival in a troubled world.

For those of us with longer memories the 1930’s were a time when the Press Barons also had a firm grip on much of the nation’s thinking with number of politicians and business men at the time colluding with them to steer government policy.

There certainly was a wider and more informed press and a better read public but the history of that time is of a UK that was heading in the wrong direction for the wrong reasons and urged on by the main media.

Today, Murdoch is certainly where the money is and the money is likely to stay with him if he can keep the results up. People are still buying his papers and his TV products and a number of other things. The political class may seem to be at a greater distance but that does not mean they intend to overturn the basis of his media power.

One reason may be that if they do then the only ones to benefit will be the BBC and a few others within the political class and media who are connected. There is no sign at all of a thriving alternative which attracts and inspires majority opinion. The fun and games enjoyed by the demonstrators etc. is not a substitute for a working and effective democracy.

If it is not possible to create a new balance and a constitution that reflects the needs of the population as a whole then something has to give. Given the grotesque incompetence of the Westminster machine in recent years as well as endemic corruption of our own special kind then there is no hope in London.

Europe may have been the option at one stage but that is another entity that is on the point of breaking down or at best going into long term paralysis. Scotland thinks about looking to the North and to recreate the old world of the Baltic Trade and the Hanseatic League. It’s a nice idea but with them all now limited in manufacturing and food production it cannot be enough.

People point to the apparent prosperity in London as though it will revive the economy. Unluckily all those shoppers are buying goods that are largely imported and any profits made will be going offshore. All we have is a lot of low paid labour presiding over flow in and the flows out. The City is now simply a financial entrepot for the movements of capital and cash with little left for the rest of us.

As for the rest of the UK just who owns what? Where are the profits going? Who is taking them? How much stays in the UK economy? When I look through my bills I see a great deal of things going to firms in foreign ownership. Even a good many of our government buildings today are owned offshore.

So what is the reality? We are in the hands of others with not too many choices and even fewer in prospect. It is going to be an interesting year. And I would rather not be living in interesting times, to paraphrase a Chinese saying.

I wonder who will have the last say in the events of 2012 on the future of the UK?

Going Going Nearly Gone

2011-12-29T18:18:00.000Z

As we teeter on the brink of a New Year, western style, the emphasis is on looking back at 2011. We might be better off looking forward and taking deep breaths.

What things which are in place next week will no longer be in place at the end of 2012? There are too many potential choices to list in any brief blog.

How many governments will go?

Who will start fighting who and who else will be involved, no bets will be taken on the UK?

How many banks or financial organisations will go?

How many currencies and economies will collapse?

How many geophysical disasters will occur and where?

How many hyped up events or happenings scheduled will fail or be a fiasco?

Which famous people will be found out and doing what?

Who amongst us will depart?

Who will make the most monstrous blunder?

Who will be right and who will be wrong?

Who will be richer and who will be poorer, no prizes for this one?

Where and who will be at the wrong end of the biggest disaster?

Who reading this has started to worry?

Catching Trains To Go To Market

2011-12-28T16:19:00.000Z

There is so much going on in the real world and so little in our UK domestic main stream media that scratching around elsewhere is the only option.

One item that did attract my attention was picked up on Some Assembly Required with a link to the article below on Baseline Scenario.

As it involves the history of US railways with a different take on the wonders of the late 19th Century so-called “market economy" together with political corruption, fraud and all the rest I could not resist it.

The writer suggests that if we are going back to the past then this is where we are headed, if we have not already arrived.

http://baselinescenario.com/2011/12/27/state-of-nature/

Anyone for HST2?

Season's Grumbling

2011-12-23T17:18:00.000Z

As the last few days have been spent in running round like a scalded cat dealing with this and that, none of which has to do with festivities, cheeriness is far from being the mood of the moment.

So despite all those messages that people have been sending to each other blissfully wishing happiness, prosperity and bright futures for all, I have picked up on a couple of items which fit my current state of mind.

They are both from Zero Hedge, the laugh a minute commentary on the state of world finance. The first explains why central planning, particularly in money matters, is likely to devastate the world economy.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/black-swan-fund-creator-explains-why-central-planning-has-doomed-us-all

The second is a take on how governments manage to go about this. The fun thing is the lead item which mentions government selling unwanted buildings. In many cases these will be not just the army barracks and offices suggested but also hospitals, schools and care homes, UK style.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/peak-heist

May I take this opportunity to hope that I will be completely wrong and it will not be half as bad as many suggest.

As for geophysics, it has been quite a few days since a really big earthquake whilst there have few quite damaging events, notably Christchurch in New Zealand. Let us hope the next big one is deep sea and nowhere near an urban area.

Time to sign off for a few days or so.

Join The Pudding Club

2011-12-21T14:36:00.001Z

We liked to think of the Empire as a big club of the right sort of chaps all as one in a common cause of mutual trade based on a single currency. To that end were many ways of getting the message across.

The King’s Christmas Pudding was one of them, the recipe from around 1930, give or take five years is above.

How many happy families in Britain were persuaded that this was for them is not known, but there must have been a few who made the attempt, indigestion or IBS regardless.

Our Empire is long gone as are the trading patterns on which it is based. We bought, or rather were sold, into Europe.

This was intended to be a union of the right sort of chaps all as one with trade in common and with a single currency.

So what might be the equivalent Euro pudding of today?

Superannuated frog meat marinaded in retsina tossed with sauerkraut fried in olive oil and laced with bitter Seville oranges?

The US version might be anything you find in a Walmart throwaway bin cooked in The Grapes Of Wrath.

Weighty Matters

2011-12-20T16:39:00.001Z

For a change, here is something completely different from the Irish Times.

Rosita Boland looks at the first edition of “Women’s Weekly” in 1911 and finds much of it strangely familiar. The picture comes from 1911 Census dot co dot uk.

It is unlikely that my Mum saw it at the time or the following editions in the next few years. Grannie had other priorities and little time available. Also, in those days every penny counted.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2011/1217/1224309123142.html

As the article points out it would not be long before the world became a different and more dangerous place.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Finding False Figures And Flying

2011-12-19T15:48:00.000Z

Was it like this when the dinosaurs disappeared? Was it a gradual collapse of the ecology and environment necessary to their survival and reproduction? Why did all those magnificent creatures, large, dominating, strong with immense powers fail in their struggle to exist?

So what has been the “ecology” and “environment” of the human race over the last fifty years and perhaps a little more. In all the many and various economic and political theories created to explain what we are and do and how the ordinary business of life is transacted we seem to have lost sight of what happens.

It now appears that in a world where markets, economies and money are critical we have built our present systems for survival on false markets, false economic systems and with false money.

So it is all beginning to break down. Unluckily we think we have governments that have authority and powers and are able to deal with matters. In turn many of us are beginning to realise that amongst the falsities is false government in many forms.

The USA, proud of its democracy and independence is now neither democratic nor independent. Europe, once a series of combinations of national governments has become a supra-national entity that cannot even govern its own administrative services.

The constitutional mess that is the UK cannot even govern its politician’s expense accounts. Go round the world and there seem to be very few states that can exert anything like the powers they once did.

Where does sovereignty now lie across the earth? Not much of it is with governments, if any organisations have that quality it seems to be corporate bodies in finance. These have the advantage of not being based anywhere except in places where they store information in their computer systems.

But they are dependent on the way they create false money and the ways that is sent around the various false markets and how far the false economies can be kept going to provide the base for it.

Also they depend on the false governments to co-operate to keep the peasants quiet and paying and able to continue piling up the debt on which the whole financial ecosystem depends.

Santa Claus may not be around next year. He will have maxed out his credit card, failed his criminal records check, be unable to pay off the elves and also barred for not doing the due diligence. Also, no border control will let him in.

That is, if you believe in Santa.

Puff Puff Politics

2011-12-17T12:54:00.000Z

Looking at the EU and Eurozone crisis to day reminds me of the past. Going back to the 1960’s and beyond one of the main causes of problems on the railways and difficulties in operation was trying to keep all the freight moving as well as providing the passenger services that people wanted to have.

What happened in this juggling was that too many compromises had to be made for the whole system to work properly with bottlenecks all over the place and the differing requirements of the various kinds of traffic.

So British Railways came to regard passengers as a necessary nuisance whilst trying to keep hold of its freight traffic against the competition of roads and then motorways. It did not succeed.

At that time a lot of freight was coal when much of the economy and household heating depended on it. This was carried in five ton wagons which did not have air braking; had four wheels, often in poor condition and were prone to derail in the bumping and banging involved in halts or crossing complex points, especially when in a train of “empties”.

So it could take only one small truck at the wrong point in the network to cause chaos because it came off the track in routine working. This problem had been known for nearly a century yet neither the railways companies, the government nor in its first years British Railways been able to sort it out.

Going into the 1960’s British Railways were faced with major conflicting issues and one of the keys to this was dealing with the problem of the five ton coal trucks.

The EU today reminds me vividly of one of those coal trains with a long line of trucks clanging and banging as they start, stop and try to change direction. Such coal trains because of their lack of effective braking could not go at any great speed, indeed 30 mph was high risk over much of the track.

In short the model of the EU and the Eurozone and its place in the network of global finance and politics has become unworkable in the conditions of the second decade of the 21st Century. It may have served up to a point through until the 1990’s but has become increasingly prone to chaos in its routine working.

It cannot go at speed, it takes up far too much time to move from one place to another, it is continually derailed by basic working failures, it is a traditional way of functioning that is hopelessly out of place in modern conditions and it is now in state when it prevents any satisfactory solution to communication or other problems.

I recall working on the platform when a coal train was going through and seeing one of the trucks suddenly jump the track and everything stopped. We had express trains due and worse with major cross country parcels trains following. I said to the foreman “How does this work?” He replied “It never expletive does.”

Looking over the Channel I have exactly the same feeling.

Seasonal Sparks Of Ill Will

2011-12-14T15:02:00.000Z

So much for Christmas joy and good will; our electricity company, EDF, has done a Scrooge possibly on a good many of its customers.

And guess what, they have stuck us with a bill that bears no relation to our past payments and has come a month after we paid off our last quarterly bill both on time and in full. The bill has to be paid by 27th December, if I am right the day of St. John the Evangelist, a nice choice.

It is lucky we keep an annotated copy of past bills and the rest, the result of a bitter row over their misuse of direct debits several years ago. So any estimate or costing can be disputed on the basis of their own figures.

The essence of the problem, as you may guess, is the introduction of a new online system embodied in an “improved” computer service. This has taken a long while and has caused a lot of grief, notably to all those people with either little time to spare or who lack the obsessive capacity to pursue a disagreement relentlessly.

Sadly, this all new computer system, which has required new customer numbers does not have access to any previous bills or payments. It does have the last meter readings, although the listing of those does not match the actual readings on many of the meters installed.

However, our meters were actually read by a man from EDF who came a couple of weeks ago checking all the local meters. These readings do not appear on their website and apparently it is not the practice to use them for billing.

Are you still with me? So just before Christmas I and many others are being asked to fork out another quarterly bill at a level of about 50% more than the actual use costs around a month after than the last quarterly bill.

These figures are fixed by EDF with apparently no appeal and have the effect of a direct debit even although I have made it clear that this kind of billing system has been a cause of dispute in the past.

Which rules are they trying to get round by forcing this on customers?

Why are they doing this? Well, for one it would mean a huge cash flow free of interest into their accounts and one that would rack up in coming months. We would all be giving EDF a large free loan with no benefit whatsoever.

EDF is a French company, so are us poor Brit’s providing an indirect bail out to French banks in trouble?

I think we should be told.

Changing World

2011-12-13T19:06:00.001Z

According to research by members of Tel Aviv University on a site of human occupation of around 400,000 years ago, even before my time, they suggest that one of the keys to human development was the elephant in the habitation.

The old Homo erectus they believe existed largely on a diet of elephants. These are animals that are slow moving, very big, easy to spot and bring down, they provided a rich long term store of nutrients at relatively little effort or thought.

Then for various reasons the elephants died out and those humans faced an era of severe austerity for which they were ill equipped. From somewhere another breed of humans emerged, faster, quicker and much cleverer and able to find, kill and feed on a wide range of smaller and more mobile animals.

Homo sapiens then made the world their own and happily chased all sorts of animals for food until a relatively short time ago they decided on a different form of diet, one based on farming. This was thought to have a number of advantages.

One of these was the creation of urban areas which became power blocks to dominate their local areas. These power blocks became bigger and bigger and with the growth in the number of this breed of humans more and more became based in urban areas and their immediate hinterlands.

For many reasons these humans retained a capacity for thought at an advanced level together with a variety of skills of survival, social interaction and substantial physical capability. When we look at what recent generations could do and did it is astonishing in comparison with most of the humans of today.

Now when looking at my fellow humans and their activities they seems to be an increasingly useless and physically incapable lot. They know little, have few skills, have poorer and poorer language capability, more and more limited abilities in complex social interaction and are completely dependent on others.

As I look about me and think back not too many years they seem to be another species in the long chain of human development.

The question is whether homo sapiens is giving way now to homo stupidus?

2012, Jubilee, Olympics And A Snap Election?

2011-12-12T17:33:00.002Z

When Her Majesty succeeded her father in 1952 she was monarch of an Empire in the process of being ended in collapse by her Ministers and a United Kingdom glued together by increasing social spending and promises for the future. It was pinch and scrape for most but there was a hope for better things.

By 1977, at 25 years the glue had begun to fail because much of the spending had been badly handled and too many promises could not be afforded. So her Ministers had opted for a rough and ready merger with Europe, dumped what was left of the vision of Empire, collapsed the nation’s finances and had brought in the IMF to supervise her Silver Jubilee.

In 2002, at the 50 year Golden Jubilee the difficulties in her family and other changes made the celebrations more muted. Especially in that she now had Ministers pathologically resentful about being upstaged by anyone or anything. This lot on the back of cheap oil and cheap money had sold out to financial interests and allowed Europe to collapse our sovereignty.

So in the 2012 Diamond Jubilee, Her Majesty will be presiding over Ministers who have witnessed the collapse of Europe triggered by a collapse in the financial sector with all the prospect of a collapse in any real future for the UK. The question now at the end of 2011 is which Ministers might these be?

There are all the signs to an ancient election watcher that the Prime Minister could be in process of getting his nags to the starting tapes for an early snap election when the runes and the weather forecasts are right. Could it be February?

If he calls the race right we could be looking at a Conservative Government very different in membership from the present Coalition Collection, now going at sale price as the lease runs out.

If he is wrong we will be looking at a Labour Government whose functioning model will probably resemble Fred Karno (see Wikipedia) more than any of the usual political philosophers. These Ministers could finish the job off in the way of collapses.

Either way the Olympics Ceremonies may be amongst the last she undertakes of a UK in any visible shape economically or politically. She will have gone from being the heir to a huge Empire to being the last monarch of the UK. What will History make of this?

By the time of the next Jubilee Her Majesty may find herself in Tamworth as Queen of Mercia, or if she is lucky down at Winchester as Queen of Wessex. If it is worse it will be Edinburgh as Queen of Scotland trying to sort out all the factions. The really bad one would be York or Durham as Queen of Northumbria.

The locomotive above was built for the LMS in 1935 and was named “Silver Jubilee” for King George V.

Happy New Year.

When Digging Holes Know When To Stop Digging

2011-12-10T17:56:00.000Z

With Cameron saving the Hedge Funds, Sarkozy trying to save his skin and Merkel desperate to save the Landesbanks, it was always going to be very difficult. Then there is the disconnection between most of media reporting and reality.

Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England says the situation is impossible for the UK to control. President Obama on the other hand has implored Cameron to exercise some control to save the Euro in order to save his Presidential election prospects from a Euro bust.

However, something is changing notably the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation that might deliver a cooler spell in the coming years, hat tip AK Haart, which could have marginal economic effects at a time when the margins are critical.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/09/the-november-amo-index-goes-negative-first-time-since-1996/

Amidst all the excitement at what is going on in outer space with planets in far galaxies and super Black Holes, Nicholas Shaxson points out that there is a Black Hole rather nearer home:
http://treasureislands.org/yet-more-evidence-of-the-london-financial-black-hole/

As for what was really going on in Brussels, another hole of a different kind, Richard North has his own ideas:

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/12/uncertain-situation.html

I hope that the first footer for 2012 will be able to find a piece of coal. We might need it.

Happy Holiday

2011-12-08T14:56:00.000Z

With many of the Western economies unable to stand much in the way of oil price increases and many of the Middle Eastern countries unable to cope with much in the way of oil price reductions the basics are not looking good.

At the same time China needs to keep trading to keep its economy on the go and to enable their balance of payments surplus to fund the need for savings and growth. The same Western economies recently run on consumerism, debt and many with balance of payments deficits cannot continue on this basis.

Elsewhere, it is being pointed out that the Euro crisis is not simply about debt. It is about gross distortions and imbalance in the balances of payments as well. To do something about the debt will impact on the balances.

The whole lot has been kept going by free and unlimited flows of capital in a global market and these are dictated not by national interests or indeed rational markets but by the need to rack up the figures and keep things moving.

So some are saying that just as other things will have to change so will the whole notion of free capital flows and unchecked financial operations, much of it tax light or free. But the means to do this are beyond most governments.

Also, some governments see their role is to defend these free capital flows because of their local interests and the influence wielded by those running the companies involved.

Consequently there is little coordination of policies despite all the meetings and the spin as politicians frantically try to put together deals to keep the various shows on the road.

The chaos mongers are taking bets on which is the next big one to go in the world of banks and finance. There are a select group of leading candidates any one of which could cause a major panic and lead to bigger but not better bail outs and the rest.

Enjoy the festive season.

Prayer For Today

2011-12-06T17:06:00.000Z

Today is St. Nicholas’s Day, celebrated around Europe and the Balkans by a number of Christian faiths. The story takes various forms and different aspects but essentially he was a one man benefits agency over the turn of the 3rd and 4th Centuries.

The story has taken another form in some particular Western countries with the Saint being better known as Santa Claus or metamorphosed into Father Christmas. In our way of thinking he comes up with gifts and goodies for the kids until they learn better.

This week we have stories that suggest that not only are saints or the lessons they taught not much taken notice of but that the essence of our society is taking away rather than giving.

One of our leading banks, HSBC (aka Shanghai Lil’s) has been fined and required to compensate by the FSA for £40 million because of gross malpractice. Apparently, after HSBC took over a known and respected financial firm NHFA in 2005 the targets they were set and the methods of operation they were encouraged to use royally screwed vulnerable 80 year olds trying to cover any future care costs.

Also, their has been disquiet in Parliament that because of the lack of financial controls in the companies that own Care Homes and the extractive policies they have adopted there is another major crash impending.

Southern Cross last year failed putting 31,000 very old in care homes at risk. This is a sector in difficulty and now failing to provide for or deal with the most extreme cases of need.

Not only have the aged had a pensions squeeze of one sort or another and the interest rates on savings drastically reduced many have been the losers in one bank fiasco or another.

Sir Fred Goodwin, late of RBS, may have accepted a reduced pension to the pittance of about half a million a year but some of his former customers were reduced to almost zero.

The reductions in local government spending are alleged to mean reduced care cover and less financial support coupled with higher charges with what is called “Care In The Community”. Many of those affected will be getting much less and their home districts now do not offer much in the way of community.

Those living in retirement flat developments also have been on the wrong end of property management services putting financial extraction to meet targets set by speculative investors way ahead of services. A large part of this sector is now in trouble and may end up controlled by some of the most rapacious private equity firms.

Recently, some of the stories emerging from the NHS and the hospitals have been suggesting that absence of care or of any expertise in dealing with the old in the context of a target driven management culture has caused major failures.

Perhaps all we can do is pray to St. Nicholas.

The End Of Government As We Know It

2011-12-05T18:30:00.000Z

Well, I told you so. Today a brief item slipped into the news mentioned that there is to be a hurried recruitment of 24,000 people to beef up security for the Olympics. Quite who they will be is not clear but added costs of £271 million are flagged.

Also, not clear is how they are to be organised, trained and deployed. This is not looking good. The costs admitted are probably only the calculation of what will be paid out. What will not be admitted is all the other hidden costs. Think half a billion or so and you may get close.

Was it on Tuesday 12 May 2009 when I posted a longish think piece on Olympics Security, never mind other later items referring to this? How come the vast number of civil servants, consultants and those in all the agencies and organisations who were charged with running the show did not realise what would be needed?

It is just another gross example of the gathering collapse of government and administration in the UK. “The Mail” today had an item in its money section that has been picked up on the web. Within the HMRC tax authority there is now a group of whistle blowers called “Dissent” campaigning against what they call the endemic corruption, ineptitude and mismanagement in that department.

So we have a financial crisis in which fiscal policy is a critical area and where the government needs to raise its revenue effectively and fairly. Yet the HMRC staff is up in arms against the failures of their bosses to run the revenue collection either fairly or properly.

Add to this some of the other blunders and barmier passages of events in the last few months, there is a long list of them and it raises the question of can this lot do anything right or trusted with any of our money?

Last night, Robert Peston in the first part of a two part series “The Party’s Over, How The West Went Bust” attempted an explanation of the present troubles. At least he was not being optimistic. One striking aspect of this was when he was talking to people in China about their urge to save.

The message was simply that they needed to have money in hand in the event of illness, to pay their way without credits and for their old age. China may be communist but there is a singular lack of social security or cheap health facilities.

The inference, which was not picked up, was that we can no longer continue to have open access and provision on demand for either social security, pensions or health. In short the implication is that we cannot afford to have a National Health Service of the kind we have had in the past.

So what kind of mess will our government make of the transition from a society which has come to expect so much to one that is going to get so little?

Money May Not Make The World Go Round

2011-12-04T15:28:00.000Z

Managing a currency is not easy, even if a state has considerable control over its affairs and has a high level of self sufficiency. Managing a currency that serves many other countries one way or another, has an international role in trade and banking but is critical to the health of your own economy is exceptionally difficult.

Looking down the centuries of history the lesson is that it is impossible to do without periods of severe stress, endless difficult “no right answer” decisions and the certainty of eventual collapse due to the internal contradictions, war or unforeseen disaster.

In other words, the game is up for the period when we have had three major currency systems operating on this basis. The Euro issues are well enough known in our media as we see what is happening at present.

The Dollar, once under the control of the US Government but which has come to have a life of its own has just been used to save the Euro. The price will have to be paid by additional strains on that currency which is already vulnerable and in trouble.

The UK pound, that once ruled the waves, is in a kind of Mexican Standoff with both the Euro and the Dollar. Were the UK to be remotely independent and in control of its own affairs then it might find its own solution.

But it has handed so many powers to the EU, for so long has been Airstrip One for the USA and has allowed The City to become so embroiled with Wall Street activities that it now in a deep deep hole.

The USA wants us to help to sort out and buttress the Euro. The Euro wants us to give financial support but otherwise stay out of the way because we will only mess up. The City wants us to use the opportunities offered by the Euro’s troubles to bash the Euro. Wall Street also wants to bash the Euro but nobody to know.

At one time London was central to the financial and money systems of the Empire. We know how that ended after we ran out of money in the 1940’s. Then we had thirty years of trying to run an economy that kept the Sterling Area afloat. That ended badly with a wreck of an economy saved by North Sea Oil and Gas.

On that basis we moved on to a “service” economy expansion with financial services being a major feature, tied in to a network of tax havens and global systems. That is now at an end but we cannot accept that it has gone for good.

Also gone is the Euro as it was intended to be and whose future is clouded at least. Then there is the dollar and how long it can continue in its present form. The one certainty is that its past role is finished as well.

So what are we left with?

Hide And Seek

2011-12-02T17:38:00.000Z

Number One Hyde Park has been well publicised in the media as the ultimate London property development. The prices are said to be from £3 million plus for a shoebox one bedroom flat to £36 million for a posh penthouse.

In its way it is a microcosm of the insanities of the UK property market as well as an extreme example of how wrong our money system is going. The latest information is that a large number of the flats are not paying in council tax to the local authority.

This is Westminster Council, the home of our seat of government where you might expect a greater attention and drive to get in the revenues. But it seems there are obstacles. The first is that the developers and sellers of the flats claim that they do not “know” who owns them.

That the Candy brothers are less able to identify their customers than the chap who sells garden sheds down the road from us is a source of wonder to me given the extent and nature of administrative and legal services available to them, but there you go. Even the biggest beasts can be totally incompetent.

Or perhaps it might raise some interesting questions about the sales tactics. One matter is how the prices were originally “benchmarked”. There is the smell of the “huckster’s plant” about this. Have someone put up a big bid early and all else will follow.

Candy brothers are well connected with other London property players so they would not have too much trouble finding a helpful friend. Especially, as amongst their closer contacts there were some who really needed to protect whatever wealth they could rescue from the demands of anxious creditors and others.

Legally, of course it is all shipshape and trim and not a speck to be seen. The owners of the flats are all business people with complex financial structures. These are the kind that disappear wealth from beyond these shores through a chain of secrecy jurisdictions to a place that nobody can find.

Least of all the tax gatherers of Westminster City Council. What is really odd about the whole business is the annual Council Tax payable is reported to be £1375 a flat. This figure may surprise most readers and it is likely that very many people would be delighted to have any flat or home, Knightsbridge or wherever where the total Council tax payable was as low as this.

How did they manage it? If it is correct it must be legal. Yet there are the most elaborate arrangements in place to avoid it on behalf of some of the richest people on the planet. Or would they rather not be identified for reasons we can only speculate about?

The problems relating to this kind of thing in the property world are well known. Apparently, the covering up of ownership information enables avoidance of stamp duty and a range of other taxable charges and expenses.

Quite how much in total a wealthy property investor can avoid or evade is astonishing. The national estimates for this are staggering in the context of our present fiscal situation.

From what is known about some of the flats from the back of my personal random memory between the ears came a little voice saying “’Ullo, ‘ullo, ‘ullo.” Names emerged from the mist of Scotch there. These are well known to many people in and around the London elite and their connections.

That the owners are truly anonymous is highly unlikely. If I am right not only do many know who they are but they are also major donors to the Conservative Party with a direct line to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

And nobody dare breathe a word.

LSE Resignations Required

2011-12-01T16:10:00.001Z

The Woolf Report on the questions arising from the Libyan connections at LSE and the award of a Ph.D. degree to Saif Al Gaddafi has been published. There has been a good deal said about this in the past and the damage done to the reputation and standing of the School. The full report is here:

http://www.woolflse.com/dl/woolf-lse-report.pdf

It is lucky perhaps that the report has emerged in a week when the Chancellor of the Exchequer has presented the Autumn Statement, the strike of public sector workers over pensions has dominated the media, notably the BBC, and the Euro and world financial situation had reached crisis point.

Additionally, in the last couple of weeks in the UK media there has been a lot of attention paid to the nature of investigative journalism. It is striking that so much of this is directed at personal interest stories and there is almost a complete absence of attention to major political and financial matters, such as who is buying whom?

From my reading of the report and the questions that arise in my mind in my purely personal opinion it is time for Peter Sutherland, Chairman of the Council and Court of Governors of the LSE to resign forthwith. It is also my view that Cherie Blair, unmentioned in the report, should consider her position as Governor.

The picture above is a bridge school in the Student Common Room possibly at about the time when Lord Woolf was studying there. Would he have been going to win the rubber or just engaging in a defensive ploy?

Statement Of Fact Or Fiction?

2011-11-29T18:12:00.000Z

The Autumn Statement was invented to allow The Treasury to set out its plans and ideas for the coming financial year for the financing of government and for the consequential direction of economic policy.

It was intended to overcome the months of speculation, leaks, misleading claims and general nonsense that had come to be part of the March Budget statement capers down the years.

In other words it was happily assumed that the government could more or less determine what would be going on from four or five months ahead and in the following year. In the past, there had been interim or crisis budgets but these were asserted to be “special” as a result of unforeseen circumstances.

Increasingly the Autumn Statements have become less exercises in reliable planning and forecasting and more abstract Futurology sessions as the pace of events has quickened and the uncertainties increased.

Much of the data they depend on is already months old. A great deal of data now is becoming more and more suspect and unreliable with the radical change in the way the Civil Service operates and the figures are manipulated. It is less an attempt to set out real information, it is far more advocacy on perjured and corrupt evidence.

By the time the data is analysed and further sanitised it has become remote from what has actually happened. As the months pass over the winter and the markets move and change as well as many other things then by April it is has become far removed from the realities of a changed situation.

If a government and Parliament do not and cannot know what is the now there is precious little hope of this group of anchorites ever being able to cope with the future yet we spend enormous amounts of time and effort over the pretence that there is some sort of sense to it.

For the UK and all its parts what may or may not happen or how and when or to what effect is no more in our own hands than in what might happen geologically in the Ring Of Fire in the Pacific and it may be the East which will have the real influence.

As for any prediction or Statement that might be made why is my Ouija Board rocking so much?

Free Advice

2011-11-28T15:45:00.000Z

Today, the Nassau Guardian of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas has an editorial titled “Reality Check” about their current economic situation.

It is a short plain totally jargon free item in old fashioned English that says what it has to in terms impossible to misunderstand.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if amongst the hordes of those in London who are there to inform and advise us there were any who could be as clear as this?

http://www.thenassauguardian.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17629:reality-check&catid=48:editorial&Itemid=87

If only………..

Deleveraging For Dummies

2011-11-27T15:42:00.001Z

Today is the First Day of Advent, once a major date in the Christian calendar now the start point for the Great Shopping on which so much of the economy and the credit card industry depends to meet not just its quarterly but its annual targets.

Unluckily, there is a cloud over it all this year caused by the problems in Europe, the risks entailed and other international uncertainties, for example how much will President Obama give Ben Bernanke and Goldman Sachs for Christmas? They will be hoping for a lot more that one extra live turkey.

I have known worse. On the same occasion in 1945 the situation was grim beyond despair also across Europe. Three days later in Paris the French Government nationalized five banks in an attempt to contain a gathering financial and employment crisis. A month later there were riots in Paris and Rouen because of severe shortages of bread.

Also just after this date an Anglo-US Loan Agreement was signed in Washington, Britain having is own serious problems. In the US there was more interest in the later news that General Patton had hit a truck in his car and was soon to die.

When this happened his troops in Bavaria were routinely searching women employed as manual labour in many US Army facilities. There were few German males around at the time. The ladies had hidden pockets all over their clothing to contain scraps or food items taken were they could. Butter they smeared over their arms, other items were tucked in different parts of the anatomy etc. etc.

Across Europe many starved that winter, many froze and many died because their bodies could not cope with routine ailments, even colds never mind flu’. There were no antibiotics save for Allied servicemen and virtually no other drugs.

In many areas the problem was the absence of a viable local currency, huge parts of the economy operated by barter or quasi-money commodities, notably cigarettes. Crime was rife and punishment harsh and not necessarily within the legal framework.

In this context there is a triple bill of serious items for today. Automatic Earth sees that the only way this can go is for a massive deleveraging of the European Banking system. This would be big nasty and everyone would get badly hurt.

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/11/november-25-2011-deleveraging-there.html

One web contributor, The Slog, who has put in a huge amount of determined work now asserts that the European answer is to put us all in hock to the banks, let them off the hook and by doing so “forgive” a lot of debt. We will pay for it, we will have no option and we will suffer the consequences. The Euro and banking elite will not.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/eu-crisis-bombshell-how-the-eurozone-plans-to-sell-us-out-to-the-banks/

Zero Hedge contributors have been relentlessly critical of the political shambles over the Euro and the handling of the relevant problems. Their story is that even in the depths of the Foreign Office someone is beginning to worry.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/britains-foreign-office-prepares-riots-europe-sees-euro-collapse-when-not-if

It was later in December 1945 that the IMF and the World Bank were established. In June 1946 the Inaugural Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations met in London to be welcomed by King George VI.

But in February 1946 IBM had revealed a machine for electronic calculations, ENIAC. It needed 18,000 valves to work. It was widely regarded as a curiosity with limited potential functions.

So perhaps in 2012 HM The Queen could see the whole international edifice created then collapse in part due to human mishandling of electronic means of calculation and communication.

But others will be hungry again and going round offering family heirlooms or prized possessions for food or fuel.

Would You Adam And Eve It?

2011-11-25T15:37:00.001Z

“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then The Gentleman” was the title of a sermon given by the rebellious priest, John Ball, 1338-1381. It led eventually to his head being stuck on a pike at London Bridge to the relief of King Richard II, the Bishops, the Nobility and the Burghers of The City.

Within 25 years of this event, the King has died in Pontefract Castle in February 1400 and Bolingbroke had grasped the throne as King Henry IV. If it was February in Pontefract it was probably pneumonia, the freezing fog there clings close to damp valleys around it.

More prosaically, a blunter view is “You can paint a pair of sausages blue and green. But they are still a pair of sausages.” This is owed to the composer Anton Bruckner, a simple and very devout man whose music is anything but simple and of another world. He liked sausages so he knew his sources.

Within 25 years of his death, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, qua Holy Roman Empire that was the centre of his world has disintegrated and few composers shared either his beliefs or ideas. After that things became a lot rougher.

We are now in a world where truth is a difficult commodity to find, facts are never what they seem to be and regiments of highly paid leading graduates of major universities issue material which can never be taken at face value and need a great deal of knowledge and expertise to unravel.

On “techie” matters here is a choice one about selling new gizmos:

http://daringfireball.net/2011/11/fun_with_numbers

The Coalition (or is it Collision?) after a start that did not begin to fly has retreated into the familiar Westminster pattern of government by stunt and spin. There have been two in the last couple of days.

The first is the venture into sub-prime mortgages to keep the building industry and money men happy. This is taxpayer money aimed at a small minority. I wonder how many marginal constituencies are involved or those with interesting choices should the revamp of the electoral arrangements take place? Simon Jenkins of the Guardian is critical on this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/22/cameron-sub-prime-homes-kick-start

He does not mention the wholesale shambles that is developing across all sectors of the property market resulting from the gross distortions created in the last decade or more or the other factors that bear on the several margins. The emphasis is on the problems of the young but there is an even bigger one developing in the housing of the very old, especially those unable to care for themselves or to buy it.

Another “initiative” is to throw a billion at training unemployed young people. There has been a lot of comment on the web about the real issue that too many are unemployable but I will assume that there are still very many who want to work and make some progress.

Given the numbers involved and growing a billion does not go near it and only touches on the real problem finding the regular and reliable work opportunities to go to. As young labour was priced out of its market in the recent past and many sent off to meet the education targets elsewhere the net effect was to create a situation were many recruiters did not bother to look for them.

Also, according to all the employment agency material I see, it is very difficult to see just where a young person can fit into the kind of employment market that has developed. Things are just not like that anymore. So the “jobs” created are false jobs and another stunt to massage the figures.

Meanwhile we have the Great Pensions Strike of 30 November when anxious Trade Union Leaders, Headteachers, Doctors, Senior Nursing Staff and Managers almost all on six figure salaries with protected inflation proofed pension entitlements of many tens of thousands will lead processions of lower paid public sector workers in protest against changes to contributions and conditions.

The difficulty here is that the simplistic media coverage relentlessly suggests that somehow or other “private pensions” and “public sector pensions” are two monolithic and separate systems. This is nonsense.

As I have pointed out the public sector arrangements have a wide degree of variation with many significant differences. Very many are in serious financial disarray because of the gross government failure of the last two decades to begin to contain and prepare for the impending problems. In fact the situation was worsened rather than improved.

For the private sector the present is very different from the past. One of Gordon Browns first targets was to raid private sector schemes to help balance his books. The consequence of fiddling the figures has closed a great many, reduced more and put most others into serious difficulty. Together with recent policy of hitting the savers to help the borrowers this has worsened the situation further.

But it is the private sector that provides most of the effective tax base for state revenue. If the public sector workers are demanding now that state spending should include funding the very substantial deficits on all forms of public sector pensions then this will simply not be sustainable.

To suggest that it might be is what might be called a Greek Myth. Just like so much of the other spin we are getting. For those who know their Greek Myths a great many end very badly indeed and that is the direction we are going in.

Snort Cough Sneeze

2011-11-23T12:49:00.000Z

This is a Triple A plus stinker and slow to downgrade.

So not much is going on here. And it is time to sack out again for a while.

If I was finding everything confusing before at the moment nothing is making sense.

So perhaps I am on the mend?

Over The Garden Wall

2011-11-21T15:42:00.001Z

Meanwhile in the USA we have entered a period of twelve months hiatus. This is something that happens quite often, notably when an incumbent President has been having difficulties and it going to have to campaign hard and come up with a lot of popular measures to ensure his (or her) return to Office.

It is a very muddled situation there. The Republican Party has had already a number of persons put forward as potential candidates but none of them seems to convince either their own party or most of the voters. The voters want somebody to cut the cackle and do the business but are getting too much cackle and too little sense.

President Obama is in trouble because the USA was in deep trouble when he took over. It has not got any better and the signs are that it is not going to. The debt is still rocketing, large areas of the economy are badly stressed and he has not had either the ability or the chance of picking the kind of team he needed. But there are no Democrats in sight able to challenge him.

And things keep happening, as they do. In most countries this may matter less but in a country where religion is a major deciding force then the wrath of whatever god is in a bad temper is to be feared. Geophysicists, who are wise enough to keep their heads down may worry but prefer to explain after the event then to warn before.

As the USA is very big and straddles a continent between the Atlantic and the Pacific the chances of something changing that will be inconvenient to humans in the area is higher than in most places. It could be anything, but the hot money (sic) is that in the mid West there could be a long drought impending.

The USA also has a failed state to the south, Mexico, which is exporting its troubles to a number of States in the south west of the USA. In the Caribbean a number of small places could suddenly demand a lot of expensive attention.

With all this and the increased dependence on Chinese money and other Asian inputs the USA has now turned West (again) to its Pacific neighbours and is looking to keep some sort of lead and initiative.

This will not be easy. In my experience creditors do not take kindly to debtors who lecture them. They will not the pushover that so many European states have been in the past.

This had led the USA not so much to withdraw from Europe but to regard it as a kind of maiden Aunt who is suddenly in need of care. All its eccentricities have now become intolerable and something to stay away from and they can’t be trusted with the money any more.

Which is unlucky as Wall Street is embroiled with the City of London and parts of Europe to the same extent as it ever was and to the same effect. President Obama may want to politically steer clear of European troubles but Wall Street will not let him. This could become very complicated if the Eurozone crisis worsens.

Also Wall Street is involved in the same network of tax havens and the same shifting of money and capital as are the The City, the Swiss and others notably amongst the big international magnates who call the shots. Enter the Russians, the wild cards in this great game of the 21 Century.

We should remember that the backyards of Russia and the USA overlook each other and there are signs that like housewives of old they have begun to chat over the garden wall away from prying eyes and ears.

So when we look at our own media and see the stories that are being covered the one thing we should really know is that we are being neither informed or advised about the USA and its problems and therefore very little of the reality of our own.

Anything can happen and will.

Looking Ahead

2011-11-20T14:20:00.001Z

Now and again the vibes begin to twitch and the urge to predict something strikes. The trouble is being certain that it is the vibes and not just wanting to express an opinion about this or that.

Sometimes, it is not the vibes but the simple application of thought processes that others seem to have missed or not want to think about. The latter is more common. If the way life is and is going and it does not look good then it is easy to avoid thinking and coming to conclusions that you do not like.

If you are in politics and depending on the opinion of others it is much harder to face up to problems. You are expected to deliver the goodies whatever happens.

The vibes are there again but I do not know why. A lot is going on out there. Nobody seems safe and anything can happen not just in politics and money but many other things. I do not like the look of the run of earthquakes off Tokyo but the big one that is due may not happen for decades.

Up in Siberia apparently the Russians are flaring off huge amounts of natural gas because it would be too costly to deal with and to transport to the markets for it. What other forms of massive waste occur around the world? There could be a very long list for this.

In terms of money, banks, debt and the rest around the web there are a lot of grim looking graphs. Things rocketing up should not be going up. What are going down is all our incomes, pensions and future prospects.

Sooner or later, those states in hock to vulture funds because their debt has been sold on by the people they borrowed from will stop paying. Also soon peoples who have been massively ripped off by their rulers will revolt and also decide that enough has been enough.

Meanwhile, we have Europe and what is left of it. Just what are Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy doing? I have thought long and hard about this and have come up one possible way of describing their current joint approach to all the problems. It is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuxSl_4yLz4

As at present this is the best I can do. As for the vibes, they may not be reliable. As I am on heavy doses of ginger, lemon and honey to shift the congestion it may be doing things between the ears that alter the neurone paths.

But it could still be right.

Lions Tigers And Other Wildlife

2011-11-19T13:45:00.002Z

A couple of weeks or maybe more ago, tucked away in a late schedule was a programme from BBC Wales about the 1971 British and Irish Lions Tour of New Zealand introduced by Eddie Butler. Martin Johnson was still in his nappies and Rob Andrew an eight year old still wondering why a ball should be that shape.

It was from the 1971 Tour that the Lions returned having defeated New Zealand’s All Blacks twice and drawn once in a series of four games after playing some wonderful rugby. The archive film was glorious to watch, old rugby at its best and a game that differs greatly from that of the present. For one thing the players were all shapes and sizes and not identikit lumps turned out of gymnasia.

In this year’s World Cup the New Zealander’s were looking good, at home and up for it. It was always going to be difficult to stop them. France, unexpected finalists, made them work hard for the title but the All Blacks ground them down. Amongst the other teams in contention there were three or four who might or might not and did not. England was one of them.

To call this a “disaster” is really very stupid. Yes, they failed, but so did all the others except the All Blacks and it was in a game against France which was one of those where it did not work as it should have done. Been there, done that, games which might and should have been won but were not.

Unluckily, the defeat was compounded by players who were not alive to the nature and immediacy of modern communications and media coverage when they thought they were allowed to let their hair and other things down. But we have been here before.

In 1960, Peter Wilson of the Daily Mirror, their leading sports journalist and “The Man They Can’t Gag” made a rare excursion into Rugby Football to express his anger in an article entitled “This Hooliganism Must Stop”. It was to do with conduct by some players after the match that was rather livelier than the present England side in that just about all were former servicemen.

They made the error of assuming that there would be no press coverage to worry about. But that is another story. It might be simply coincidence but this bunch of daft blighters who were well past their teens were all from Johnson’s home patch in Leicester. Indeed he may have come across one or two in his early years.

However, the press conference given by Johnson and Andrew this week had its delights. The media did not much change from them and it was very refreshing to see all too evidently that they did not care much for the press and did not have a high opinion of them.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of Johnson’s going it was good to hear a plain Midlands accent laying it out simply and directly and an old pack leader getting his head down to take the pressure. He did not give much away, but he never did on the field. It was not so much assurance as dignity and sensibility.

The real delight was Andrew, a former fly half fleet of foot and accurate of boot who gave a display of good hard hand offs. “That is a hypothetical question. I am not answering hypothetical questions.” When asked what he was going to do, “We are going to work hard to find out how things can be done better.” Asked when he replied “As soon as I can get out of here.”

When a leading question suggested that the single defeat raised issues about the whole structure of the RFU he replied to that the problem was that the media seemed to know little or nothing about structures notably those with complex responsibilities and varied tasks.

He pointed out that the England Squad were just a smaller part of a larger whole and distinct in terms of its “elite status”. This more or less suggested that the media knew San Fairy Ann about most of the work of the RFU and were only interested in a single immediate aspect.

Andrew was at St. John’s College, Cambridge, founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort one of the most formidable and talented women in recorded English history (see 25 October 2011 on Shakespeare). She must have been grinning up there.

Johnson, as a youngster began his rugby with Wigston, a minor local club in Leicester. Later this merged with a more senior one, Westleigh and the new club took the name Leicester Lions, which I thought a bit naff, but there you go. After a couple of good seasons in League 2 North, the Lions are not doing so well.

So if Martin has some spare time, could he nip down to Blaby and apply some of his skills there?

A Digital Theory Of Money

2011-11-16T13:39:00.000Z

Digital money comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Anything can happen in between. We do not know how much of it there is or where it is or why.

This is intended to be a short post so explaining all the past theories of money and connected theories of economics in the meantime will have to be skipped. All that needs to be said is sometimes they connect better than others and too often they do not connect at all.

What the economists have said about how things work and how the money men have actually operated and the issue of who is using what kinds of money to what purpose is difficult at all times. It is more difficult during periods of rapid social, political and technological change.

Which is what we have just had in the last couple of decades only this time round it has been speeded up. Moore’s Law (Wikipedia) has come to apply not just to computing but a great many other things arising from their impact.

The notion of “creation of credit” has been around for a while. Simply it was the ability of banks and finance houses to enable credits to be given to borrowers to a greater extent than the assets held by the banks etc. At one time this applied to holdings of “hard money”, physical precious metals or stones, but later became “fiat” money and the figures in ledgers.

When it was largely “hard money” that was acceptable the only way to get it was to dig it up, engage in trade or conquer territories where it could be dug up. This put a number of limitations and constraints on governments in that in the last analysis there had to be physical or trading controls of varying types.

As governments developed and grew in power the shortages of “hard” money arising from their ambitions, growing populations and extending trade meant the use of “fiat” money.

As this began to supplant “hard” money and as “fiat” money came to be under the control of governments we had a phase when politicians could chirp happily on about economic planning and controlling the economy and everything in it and being able to throw money at those things which conferred political advantage.

Having achieved a high degree of control and looking for still more ways to find money to please their clients many came to “loosen up” the regulation and control to let the money men indulge in much more “credit creation”. Governments still thought that their control over the issue of the “fiat” money and some rates of interest would do the trick of keeping matters in hand.

One of the features of governments as a whole in the last three decades has been the astonishing lack of understanding of what computers are and can do; their remarkable incompetence in dealing with their own systems and inability to find out what is really happening out there in all those main frames.

It has not been helped by a matching inability of the top levels of management in very many of the banks and financial companies to understand what goes on. The one thing they did understand was that the geeks together with Professors of Mathematics and hard nosed traders delivered what appeared to be huge increases in both total activity and related profits.

To do this they created beyond the control either of governments or their own top management unlimited amounts of digital money. This came as what appeared to be ordinary money and credits but added to that a huge array of highly complex forms of quasi-money and financial instruments representing an end value of money.

They were able to do this anywhere they wanted, move it about anywhere and at any time they liked and increase it at any rate they chose so long as the figures looked good and convinced the wondering ignoramuses in the Treasuries, the Central Banks, the Boards of Directors and most of all in the governing cabals of the world.

Governments have lost control over the world’s supplies of money and credit. Because of that they are losing control over their economies. As this happens they will begin to lose control over their populations and other people. Quite where this will end is not certain. What is certain is that there are a number of states that have failed and others that are about to fail.

All the old theories or certainties about money, economics and politics are gone.

Those who do create the digital money demand governments pay for their errors and continue to support them. The money men have no interest in either control or the effects of their decisions on ordinary people other than that they have the ability to extract money from them at the bidding of the money men.

It is 28 June 1914; the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is visiting Sarajevo with his loved wife Sophie. They are not using the old fashioned horse and carriage form of transport. They are in vehicles of the new automobile form of personal transport, said to be faster, more efficient and a more effective way of moving about.

There is confusion in the seating arrangements, one of the cars is damaged and then there is an error in the giving of directions. When the driver tries to reverse the car it stalls, and the political assassin Gavrilo Princip shoots.

The world began to change.

Flying High

2011-11-15T18:07:00.000Z

There has been a flurry of comment in some of the media about the impending takeover over Europe by Germany. Here we go again is the response of many especially those with long memories. So what is the source for this?

For those interested it was likely to be an article picked up from the German web site The Local, Germany’s news in English, which relayed Herfreid Munkler’s article on “The Need for a Centralization of Power”.

This suggested that democratization of decisions at national level was a potential for disaster and Europe’s elite should get their act together fast and do the necessary to save Europe for Germany and at least to save Germany.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,773071,00.html

What was it that Martha Stewart said before she was arrested in 2004 for dodgy tax dealings? “Only the little people pay tax.”? In parallel with this call to the great and good, or may be not so good it is being argued that the German approach to dealing with tax avoidance and evasion in relation to Switzerland is not quite what it seems to be.

In the UK similarly things are not quite what they seem to be and it is amazing how the information only turns up by accident. But with most of government policy at the moment seeming to be the products of accidents this is not a surprise. One choice gem is that those flying in on private jets recently have not had to bother with border controls at all.

Quite unlike the little people nervously wondering whether the passport sold to them in a bar in Bucharest will pass the officials. It seems only right, therefore, that the officials dealing with the hoi polloi should stop checking any passports in the name of social equality.

However, the little person still could find himself not welcome, but if you have millions there is no problem, come on in, we need you. More to the point if you can persuade a bank, maybe Barclays, to lend you the money on the basis of assets claimed to exist in a tax haven this will be OK as well.

That the fortune claimed may be the result of either pushing money round accounts or the gentle art of money laundering would be an invasion of privacy to ask about. This may be why the UK is said to be the biggest criminal money laundry in the world.

Our politicians of both left and right have told us that these are just the chaps we need to keep our finances afloat, and keep our sporting and certain entertainment facilities amongst the most desirable in the world. Where would we be without them?

What worries me is the closeness of these people to the elite group that are supposed to be taking charge of Europe and all our taxes and spending. In fact they are so close as to be almost indistinguishable.

It might explain why some of the property investments lately discovered to be bought with their expenses by people in Parliament seem to be located in “red light” districts.

Knock, knock, who’s there?

Olympics Ring A Ring A Roses

2011-11-14T18:12:00.000Z

Amongst the many stories this morning confirming the view that chaos is with us and is not going away was one about Olympic Security. This has coincided with a story about how Suffolk Churches are being encouraged to raid their Poor Boxes to put on a light display bathing the Houses of God in the Olympic Colours next summer.

Given the fortunes being made by some of those running the show as well as all the profit and marketing opportunities arising from both government and local spending drawn from the taxpayers it can be said that emptying the Parish Churches of their cash is almost surreal.

That the row over security provision has emerged only nine months before it all happens should make a lot of people worried. As for the USA sending in the FBI, well they usually do, but this is only indicative of the wider problems. This blog has been here before.

On Tuesday, 12th May 2009, yes 2009, an item “Olympic Security Costs” was posted in this blog setting out the essential issues, the dangers and the likely costs of providing for adequate security arrangements. It was not extreme, nor was it alarmist; it simply tried to spell out what was what in terms of the present and the experience of past Olympics.

One question was how far the Armed Services would be able to help out, as in 1948, in terms of numbers and cover for critical areas. We can be fairly sure that because of continuing commitments and other problems there will be little to be had.

There has been the control and monitoring of people coming in during this period. From the stories and information on the crisis in the Borders Agency coupled with a huge influx of illegal and other barely checked migrants it is clear that we have lost the plot.

Also the failure to both deport and identify many high risk criminals, terrorists and extremists already staying here which presents an unknown quantity to working out who, what, where and how.

What we have had is a load of media happy hype with whipped in “ambassadors” and “volunteers” who are little trained cheerleaders and gofers almost all of whom are clueless about security and the rest.

In the last few weeks we have had some nasty riots and also a great many demonstrations and other activities which have clearly stretched the existing capability of police forces.

Personally, I hope against hope that there will not be trouble in London. This is for the purely selfish reason that quite often we go there and we do not want to find ourselves in the midst of a security shutdown or disaster.

Nor do we want to suffer the unending inconvenience of encountering high security activity everywhere we go.

Life is too short for that, especially if we are paying for it.

Dance To the Music Of Time

2011-11-13T16:49:00.001Z

Shuffling my way back in after the first interval with a lot of others there was this big bloke by my side. It was worrying; if he trod on one of my best trainers he could get an earful that might spoil his family occasion. My trainers are expensive footwear. Because of my feet I need to have those designed for athletes and such.

Then I realised who he was. So now I may claim to be a source close to George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer and indeed might have had his ear. For a fleeting moment the thought came to say something. It would on the lines of the Soothsayer in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”. “Beware the endogenous growth theory!”

Then I remembered it is probably written in the blood of a Special Adviser on the walls of his office at The Treasury, left from the time of the last Chancellor, Alastair Darling. Perhaps it had been written by his predecessor, Gordon Brown, as a change from throwing hardware about and left by Darling as a dreadful reminder of hubris.

That might have spoiled the occasion even more. George was escaping from the fantasy world of Europe of the last few days and all the strange and improbable stories he had been told by other ministers and experts there. It would have been good to be away from all the posturing and demands for attention and approval and craving for an audience.

We too found it refreshing to be at a performance which mingled expert attention to detail with comparatively social realism and an appreciation of the true moral imperatives that should underlie human conduct. Where the Good might be paramount and the squalid selfishness and greed of others denied.

It was The Royal Ballet “Sleeping Beauty” at Covent Garden. It was clear that they had been doing a bit of quantitative easing of their own in that the costumes were new, more highly coloured and with subtle changes. The last time the costumes for this signature production were renewed was when the Royal Ballet went to the Kennedy Arts Centre at Washington DC and did a gala for President Clinton.

Famously, back stage when being introduced to the Principal who had danced the Lilac Fairy, the character who sorts it all out and puts both things and people right, he said that “We need a Lilac Fairy at the White House.” Unluckily, the US Media being short on humour and ballet plots and long on speculation came to some very strange conclusions over the meaning of this. It went down badly in Texas.

But the meanings of it all, what were the signs and portents? Red Riding Hood’s coat was much redder. Does this mean more EU regulation and control of credit such as those of the mid 20th Century? The wolf was clearly of a more Russian, even Siberian type and not one of the previous Yellowstone breeds. Is Europe going to be forsaken by the US and needing to turn to Russia?

The Lilac of the Fairy I am expertly advised had a costume that was magenta rather than Lilac. Whereas the colour lilac was associated with Empress Eugenie of France who popularised silks made with the new synthetic chemical dyes, magenta was the prime colour of the banner of the old Holy Roman Empire that finally ended with World War 1 after its major decline in the 19th Century.

So republican France may be forced to give way to the German inheritors of the old authoritarian imperial tradition? There was worse. The four suitors for the hand of the Princess Aurora in the Rose Adagio showed those of the East being more stylish and strikingly attired than the overdressed and out of date clothing for the period of those of the West.

However, Princess Florine and the Bluebird were much the same. Was this to assure the Chancellor that the Royal Ballet is on his side? There are other mysteries difficult to unfold. At least the happy ending was the same. But George will go away with much to discuss and to consider in his dealings with Europe.

Let us hope that he doesn’t get caught in a “Nutcracker”.

The Answer To Everything

2011-11-11T18:01:00.004Z

Money and finance have become divorced from the real economy.

It is as simple as that. They have been able to develop a life of their own increasing removed from the realities of getting and spending. “Investment” now is no longer what we understood it was. It is now shuffling digital “money” around, largely figures plucked from the fevered imaginations of the financial sector.

Some of it may find its way into the real economy, much as alimony is paid to former spouses. But in this field it is not a judge that decides the figures it is the guilty party in the divorce.

The trouble is that the money created which leaks out of the system increasingly goes to bought governments and agencies and large commercial firms which pursue policies and actions that allow further extraction of figures which help to churn the money through the computer systems, i.e. the economics of extraction.

Many of the more damaging credit crashes of history, going a long way back, feature this kind divorce in differing ways. The ledger based money, the tallies of merchants or the paper money created goes out of any synchronisation with a real economy and the result is one disaster or another.

In the late 20th Century we got our hands on computers and both speeded up the process and by thoroughly globalising it created digital money that could be whirled through space and time zones in an ever increasing frenzy.

To keep the party going debt was turned from a danger to the lowest earners into a necessity to survive and huge credits urged on people who had little ability either to pay or to manage them. Amongst the wealthy we had casino capitalism with the high rollers going ever higher.

Inevitably, politicians, dictators, civil servants and the rest bought into the wonders of it all both for prestige and personal profit. So most, if not all, of the world’s governing systems are locked into it without any real exit.

In the past empires have collapsed, mass migrations occur, wars and hunger litter the history books and perhaps whole past civilisations began their decay or disasters.

So what are the markets telling us today?

The Crisis Ain't Over Until The Fat Lady Sings

2011-11-10T13:44:00.001Z

Apparently, I learned from Fraser Nelson, the G20 caper was held at the Frankfurt Opera House. The original Alte Oper was reduced to a shell in 1944 by some of our American friends who were then just down the road, how we cheered them at the local Victory Parade in 1945, and not rebuilt for some time.

Now there is a big new Opera house, winning awards for its productions. The Alte Oper has been restored as a concert hall and the standards are very high. The G20 were given a treat in the shape of a concert conducted by Claudio Abbado. He is one of the best and we have seen him in action and on Sky Arts 2 a good many times.

Born in Milan, he has La Scala, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Opera, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on his CV.

He was just the person to be on the podium with Italy under the cosh and its Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi heading for the exits.

The trouble with the G20 is that too many of those involved are not only compromised or seriously affected by their recent track records in past dealing with the collapse of systems but they are up for election shortly, or under threat or up against entrenched vested interests.

For the USA, the President has already begun his election campaign that will last a wearying twelve months, Sarkozy is due to face the people, Merkel has trouble and Cameron’s coalition is looking shakier by the week. Italy and Greece we know about but there are others frantically making personal financial arrangements for their impending retirements.

Our UK Parliament being filled with student politicians, former PR people and lobbyists, lawyers and media people largely unable to fill in an accurate expenses return is not a reliable body from which to draw any government, not just a polity going in serious decline.

The US Congress on the other hand whilst being more broadly based is almost all on the payroll of one lobby, financial interest or other interest group. As they are all going to face an angry electorate in the next few years they are doing their best to put the blame onto others, any others.

The G20 is always going to be weeks, if not months behind events and the way things are going. Even if they were competent, reliable and well informed the immensity of the task might be too much. They are none of these things. The key player is Merkel and the big aria is yet to come.

It was in 1937 that the Frankfurt Opera premiered Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” (lots of it on Youtube and Wikipedia) that begins and ends with the chorus “O Fortuna” and includes ditties such as “They who here go dancing round”, “I lament the wounds that fortune deals” and “If the whole world were but mine”.

The G20 audience, however were given some Mozart and the rest. Perhaps “Carmina Burana” may have touched too many nerves.

Hell Is Other People

2011-11-09T18:12:00.000Z

The row of the week over the excess of comings over goings that have embroiled the Home Secretary, the former head of the Border Agency and others ought to be instructive for a number of reasons because it features so many of weaknesses and insanities of our present ways of government.

The special weakness is because of the media need for simplicity and to have issues put into slots and the equal need for politicians to deal with only one thing at a time because that is all they are able to do results in separation of related issues.

In fact it is all much more complex and is interwoven with a number of current other questions that are demanding attention. They may seem to be separate but they are not. The consequence is that what should be a seminar turns into something more like a student riot.

If you look at the question of airport capacity, hubs etc., the need for airlines to stay in business, the tourist industry, the higher education industry, employment policy, the benefits system and Europe, they all affect migration matters. We do not plough much money into real research, only into retailing recent history together with ideas and assumptions from the past.

For airlines to function, stay solvent and even grow they need passengers and airports. The more people they can put into aircraft and the more that can be moved cheaply through facilities designed for mass transport the happier they are.

As this is associated with top business people, but also families, ordinary working needs, with persuading large numbers that a holiday must entail flights and that the beaches furthest away are the most desirable it creates a large market. Moreover, all these people on landing in the UK want to be on their way as soon as possible.

This creates major political imperatives to subsidise airports and flying and in particular ensure easy mass transit at public expense on the ground and other communications. So the numbers become very large. When I walk along the road to town the vapour trails tell me that in the few minutes it takes there are thousands of people up there above me.

In the era of cheap oil and with the growth of mass air transport the idea that the tourist industry is a good thing has been an easy get out for trying to plan economic activity for many places. Clearly, those that are sandbars in the ocean unable to either grow or make anything will not be able to support more people without money coming in and being spent if the population can increase.

Most people in the UK have bought into the notion that tourism is essential to the economy and not simply an add on for quaint places and less populated areas. Because so many of us go to places which exist only by tourism it is easy to assume that it might be a good thing for us.

Similarly, the belief that any higher education is good so long as it is post 18 and attracts students has created a large sector for that purpose. This has gone beyond the point where the taxpayer can stand the racket, which leads to awkward choices. One is that the UK students might pay more another is to market UK provision to overseas students as desirable.

Clearly if large numbers of people are being invited in because we want or have come to need their money and some decide to stay it is not only inevitable but somehow seems unkind to insist on throwing them out once they have put in a lot of cash to keep us going.

Many foreign students are from nations with surplus males and their piece of paper will buy them at home only middling clerical work at best at local incomes. They will often have a single life in a corner in a crowded home somewhere where white collar jobs are short in supply. Little wonder that they like to stay in the UK, draw benefits when needed and can live free from the restraints of the home cultures.

Around a decade ago when at a meeting discussing the world environment the speaker talked about the “footprints” of major urban areas to indicate how much of the world’s resources were required to keep this city conglomeration or that alive. The subtext was that the uncontrolled growth of many areas was not sustainable.

There was one man who popped up to comment, one of the Prime Minister’s close advisers to declare that UK immigration should be unlimited and there should be no restrictions for all sorts of worthy reasons. That the UK has a large number of urban areas did not worry him, it would all take care of itself.

Later we had major reorganisations of government departments and a lot of work was devolved from the civil service to agencies of all descriptions. Many of these seem to be exercising power without responsibility so if the Borders Agency is doing the same it would be nothing new.

As the heads of so many of these bodies at present were appointed by the previous government then this will not help to try to brings things back together again.

Then there is Europe and the power we have handed to it and the added difficulties of trying to manage to deal with their policies and decisions. These have brought additional large numbers into the UK in recent years, substantially in the lower income levels.

Apparently, there has been a flood of Greek money into London in the past few months taking advantage of our arrangements for the better off to rescue their finances from the disaster to come. It is likely that we may have numbers of Greeks coming in to join those already here to follow the money.

Quite the worst event if international finances deteriorate will be the mass migration that the UK government and especially the opposition do not want to see. It is all those older UK citizens who went away to sunnier climates in the last couple of decades returning spent up, homeless and angry.

Will we welcome them in the same way that we do the tourists, the students and the financiers?

Restore The Ottoman Empire

2011-11-08T19:02:00.000Z

The past is full of examples of how things might have been different, if only this or that had been changed. One of these is that the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed just before the immense wealth under the soils of it vassal territories became the staple fuels of the world economy.

If by one means or another, at the centre of the Empire the rulers had been wiser, better equipped and more determined they had managed to survive, remain a real power and avoided becoming involved in World War I. They might have stopped the dismantling of the Empire and its loss largely to western powers.

With the wealth that they were literally able to tap what future would that have brought? Would we really be that much worse off? The Ottomans would have been able to stop the later wars starting by simply turning off the pipelines at an early stage. It is very likely that by 1918 they would have been able to dictate the peace that ended the first war.

There were some who argued that for all its faults and bouts of foolishness the Ottomans were a source of greater stability and enabled other states to deal with one overall authority instead of the present multiplicity of petty warlords. Even the Greeks may wish to rejoin.

Perhaps a visionary somewhere might seek to create a new joint authority in the Middle East. It would be a counterweight both to the failing EU and the erratic course of US ambitions and errors. Because of the belief systems it would have within it and the differing cultures it would not be the same as the EU.

It could be a political force to balance Russia and China in a way that India cannot and nor can Brazil or other large powers. If it could achieve both the ability to rule with a sensitivity to the needs of its many peoples then it could act as a catalyst for dealing with the many divisions of these other powers.

If for example it managed to contain rampant usury and demand a moral dimension to international finance it would do us all a favour. If it released science from the control of the mega corporations who have so distorted learning then the medical progress of the old Ottomans could be restored to the present.

Who could be the man to do all this? Tony Blair, your time has come with perhaps Mandy as the Grand Vizier, Gordon as the enforcer, Scimitar Man and Big Ed as the keeper of the harem, after a minor operation. But who would be the Janissaries?

Regretfully, they would not be for me, the Varangian Guard are more in my line.

Waving Goodbye To Tourists

2011-11-07T17:39:00.000Z

There was a brief news item yesterday; overtaken by more Olympic matters later, that suggested that for next summer at present, the bookings for tourists in London are much reduced. It is said that they are being put off by the prospect of increased prices because of The Games.

Normally, I would amongst the first to charge the Olympics with the guilt for this alleged misfortune, but in this case it goes beyond a “Not Proven” verdict, the nod to Edinburgh’s claim that they will benefit. However, whether the attraction of the most expensive tram lines in history will work is another matter.

With sixty plus years of traipsing around London from time to time back to the 1940’s to recall, it is not a matter that London in 2012 will cost a lot, it already does and in the last decade has become rapidly worse.

“Spending a penny” was once a statement of fact for doing natural functions in public toilets and then discriminatory in that men paid only for when it was required to sit whilst women, who always sit paid for both the fore and aft functions. Now in some London toilets it is 50p for entry, men and women, or 120 old pence. Whether inflation is the right word for this is doubtful, but it is typical of the rise in costs.

Normally, extractive industries are described as “primary” and refer to taking resources from the ground. Then there is using them, which is secondary, whilst tourism has been classed as a “tertiary” service industry. But in our new money based and financial world it may be that tourism has become very much an extractive activity.

There are figures quoted that tourism has come to amount to 15% of the London economy and it is possible to believe it when just looking around at all the hotel rooms that have been created, the numbers and types of food outlets and the amount of retailing now provided.

The trouble with extractive industries is that there is a pattern. First they are profitable in the early stages of expansion to meet increasing demand and then there might come a “peak” of production. When that is passed not only do the stresses of production take their toll but a combination of rising prices and reduced take up can occur whatever the laws of supply and demand might suggest.

What does strike me is that central London now for some reason has lost its way, has become less attractive and the hordes of people apparently simply milling about have become a deterrent to enjoyment. Unless you have serious money to spend you are fed a diet of processed food and pay a heavy price for anything to drink.

When we see the groups of blank eyed people being marched about, the coaches with tired groups hoping against hope for at least one decent night’s sleep; the endless noise and the mingling of the mob, what are they here for? It is not the haven of Heathrow or the gardens of Gatwick that is the draw. It is a “heritage” now looking very tatty and at very high prices.

As the world economy changes so will tourism. With so many on middle incomes being squeezed, savings eroded, pensions diminished and others with risky futures just how much tourism can there be in a future when travel costs increase with fuel and other price rises? In the last couple of decades millions of people have visited. Just how many have gone back to say to others that there are better places to go to?

Additionally, how many of the younger generations will have much time for or interest in our particular brand of heritage and media culture? The Games may well be the last hurrah for London tourism and it will go into a decline that might be slow but could well be steep.

The implications of this are interesting if anyone cares to think about it.

Spending Other Peoples Money

2011-11-06T15:26:00.000Z

The Guido Fawkes blog does not relate much to other bloggers. It is part of his bread and butter and understandable. Also, he normally goes for short and punchy pieces to keep the attention and move the story on. You know when you look it will short and acid.

Today, Sunday, however, he went long. A former investment banker he knows what it means to go short. The subject of his post is the Michael Lewis book, “The Big Short” which attempts to show what has been going on in the boiler rooms of the trading houses.

Briefly, they have been taking huge risks with big money and this has been other peoples. When it went bad, because of the politics and the involvement of politicians now we all have to pay.

Here is the link, it is worth reading and even better saves me the job of trying to explain what Michael Lewis has to say:

http://order-order.com/2011/11/06/moral-markets-and-other-peoples-money/

Personally, I am glad to see that there are better informed people on the inside who have described so well what some of us have suspected.

The whole business went out of control and the question now is can it ever be brought back to any reality, or will the whole shebang just go up in flames?

It was Guy Fawkes night yesterday. On Discovery was a programme trying to show what would have happened had he managed to light the fuse in 1605.

There would have been nothing left.

Lies, Lies, And More Lies

2011-11-04T18:07:00.001Z

It is a commonplace to suggest these days that we have an “information overload”. That is from the wealth and variety of sources there is now so much to read and study on almost any subject that it is impossible to either absorb it all or really understand what is going on out there.

This starts from the basic assumption that all this material is either reliable or is intended to be reliable. This can lead to difficulty. I may well believe that the moon is made of green cheese and can cull sources from history to support my case. But the weight of evidence would be against me.

Therein lies a problem. The weight of evidence may be in one direction for a number of reasons but as we have learned too often might well turn out to be wrong because there is a built in assumption or theory that turns out to be far from the case.

Think of ulcers and their treatment. In the past it was believed that bacteria could not exist in the stomach or the gut. When a backwoods Australian decided to see if it did the consequence was to undo a great deal of medical practice and theory.

This is science and even in this sphere it is necessary to be careful about what is said to be or not to be. With increasing reports of now how much “science” is controlled by particular interests who want the results to go their way and therefore both the honesty and reliability are in question then these are troubled waters.

When it comes of politics, finance, economics and the realms of “social studies” and the rest in our modern world it is all to play for. In the past the desire for rational analysis and reliable information led to a hunger for figures and facts. For the most part in the early stages the intention was to be honest but as soon as politics was involved then the use made of them became increasingly dishonest.

Essentially, there are three categories of information. The first is that which is intended to he an honest assessment or statement of what is known from which conclusions are offered which are supposed to relate to the information.

Even with this category the information and conclusions are only as good as the original data. If this has taken time to collect and work on then by the time it appears things may have moved on. Whilst the data is not “false” but maybe has flaws by the time it becomes available it may no longer represent reality.

The second category is information put out as data but which often is more opinion or information twisted or used to present support for a policy, action or idea. Often the data might be incomplete, distorted or ordered in presentation to make a case rather than be a rational and impartial analysis.

The third category is information which is deceptive. There are two classes of this, one is material known and intended to be a deception. The other and the very dangerous kind, is where people have in fact deceived themselves to justify what they are doing. That is acting more in hope or theory than knowledge.

When you have a group of politicians or financiers who have more or less abandoned the first two categories and have come to rely almost entirely on the third then you have deep trouble. This is worse when you have the lethal mix of the two kinds that was characteristic of the Blair/Brown years and at present of the EU and high finance in the USA.

Given that so many regimes in the world are deeply corrupt and that so much of finance is about the economics of extraction when their leading representatives come together to decide on the fate of the world when faced with a chaos of their own making then their deliberations are entirely based on false data and false premises.

They do not know what they are talking about or why so the result is likely to be chaos, or rather worse chaos than we have at present.

Are You Looking At My Bird?

2011-11-03T15:23:00.000Z

Estimates from a number of places towards the East suggest that in many states the number of young males in the frantic age ranges for female company now exceed those available by a substantial amount because nature has not been allowed to run its course.

Of those many fewer females who are allowed to exist there will be a proportion, greater in some places than others who are withdrawn from what might be called the “open market” for internal family reasons.

They are needed domestically in the parental home or on the farm or because of religious beliefs. Also here and there are other reasons why women are shielded from the full force of male attentions and removed from ready contact.

Those UK males forced to spend time in grim garrison towns in the past will realise the implications of this. When there are a lot of loose men and a serious shortage of loose women, broadly defined, there is always trouble of one sort or another.

Recently, some historians looking for reasons for one upheaval or series of events have wondered whether some of the happenings of history might not have their origins in past situations of this kind rather than fine philosophies or higher thoughts.

One place that occurs to me is Boston, Massachusetts in the late 18th Century. There are British troops garrisoned there (see above) and it is a port with both mariners from trading vessels and seamen from Royal Navy ships. It attracts migrants from many parts of Britain and Ireland, the great majority male.

Add to that the settled townspeople are almost all deeply religious and worship in many churches that demand high standards of faith and personal conduct. So their womenfolk and female servants are closely guarded and watched over day and night. They take great care over the marriages they make.

In short, a lot of loose men, many with money competing for the few loose women about and a situation in which there are many more losers that winners. The main losers are local young men who are priced out of the market for the few females who are more available.

Inevitably, there is trouble and a natural, literally natural, desire amongst young Bostonians to see the British go home. Apply this logic to many other places and times of serious trouble in history and see how often it might have occurred and where. There are many more of them than you might think. You could try humming “Lili Marlene” while doing it.

Now, here is a test of your skill and judgement. If you are a surplus frantic male where there are very few loose women and you are a poor catch in your local marriage market to where do you go? Which country advertises the ease of access to its young females (and others) widely on the net and on TV and has more or less open borders?

All you have to do is hop on the back of a truck.

DIY For Drawing Maps Of Europe

2011-11-02T15:26:00.002Z

During my own lifetime the map of Europe has been knocked about a bit. As for the world many of the names I learned painfully (a whack when one was wrong) from the map on the classroom wall are no longer there. When my parents first went to school they would have been looking at a very different map, but any whacks would have been much the same.

When their grandparents went to school (if they did) places such as “Italy” and “Germany” were simple geographic guides and not existing nation states. They had yet to be formed. As for their grandparents the map of 1815 above would have seemed like a radical set of changes.

Which raises the interesting question, is “Europe”, as we understand it at present, worth bothering with? Why not just let fate takes its course for us to move onto a very different set of political entities with different structures?

In the last five hundred years there have been far too many gaggles of ambitious families, oligarchs and gangs of politicians trying to set up a mega state in their own narrow interests and failing after a disastrous, usually bloody and always very costly series of wars and conflicts.

The latest Brussels version is just one more typically arrogant, tired and corrupt way of trying to impose authority on peoples whose ways of life, beliefs and the rest are very varied and not cohesive. The reason for the present “Europe” is the usual one. It is the extraction of wealth from the many to the few.

This time round it has necessitated whole scale bribery of many of the masses. It has been done by creating debt fuelled booms together with forms of inflation that give the appearance of increasing wealth when the reality is different.

Just as the DNA of the Habsburgs began to fail to produce Emperors able enough to command and rule so the financial systems created to sustain our present Europe have begun to fail to kept the racket going. Big bangs may implode as well as explode.

We are in the position now of not being able to go back to the monetary systems we had a generation ago or before, not being able to sustain the present one without strains that are potentially impossible and without any idea of what to do in the future.

It reminds me of the car mechanic looking under the bonnet of my old Renault and shaking his head sadly. He told me the best thing to do was to sell it for spares at the local breakers yard. It was worthless as a whole and its future existence lay only in the bits that could work in a different machine.

If we are now looking at not simply a failure of the Euro but potentially the political integrity of a number of the components of our present “Europe” which way could it go?

Could Verden revert to Sweden? Could Hamburg and Bremen become City States once more? Could HM The Queen ascend the throne of Hannover in the name of women’s rights? Could Westphalia be, well, Westphalia?

There are more likely candidates for a relapse into separatist polities, Italy being the prime example but there are others. It could make a very good party game for the Christmas Market to see who is left with what. The winners get Switzerland, Monaco and Luxembourg and the losers Greece, Sicily and Ireland.

The dice have begun to roll and my money is on Iceland hoping to draw the card that says “You may have the Big Bang of your choice.”

Speaking In Tongues

2011-10-31T15:27:00.001Z

Yesterday we found ourselves with a group of people again who we first knew around a decade or go and after. It was good to see them and enjoy chatting about matters of common interest, largely music and performance. But this time there was a key difference to the nature of discussion.

Then we might disagree or wonder about matters of simple fact in the way that people do. There was also the question of how to find information, where, when and at what cost. On top of that who to contact to find things out and what advice they might give from their knowledge or books. “If she was here she would know….” Etc.

This time there was none of that. A small device held in the palm of the hand linked to a myriad of sources and with immediate contact to any number of people could give a stream of information and guidance. Later, on the train home, we noticed very many of the other passengers clicking away.

This time I had my own back on the technology. The train was diverted for scheduled works. The passengers suddenly did not know where exactly they were and the details of the changed route were not there. Only I knew, for the simple reason of long experience and the knowledge acquired over many years.

But this is no reason for smugness because the use of all this is now routine and often necessary to the way of my life. A couple of days before someone we knew had been in deepest Surrey and did not know the rail system. So sitting at home and looking at the screen I was able to tell them on their old mobile phone where they were going and what to do next at the London Terminal.

It was going to be a couple of hours before they were due so in that time other things needed attention. Another person was badly strapped for time and with a web site to care for and a post due. So I spent half an hour scratching round the relevant expert web sites, set up a few links and passed them on to be redone as the item needed.

Quite how much library time and photocopying once would have been required and then later reading and editing in hard copy for documents to be despatched is not easy to calculate. But it would have been a lot of time and work.

Then to something of my own, looking into the family history of someone who asked for help and seeing what gave and if there was anything of interest. This one was a lucky run, much of the information needed was there for the taking and not only that there was one reliable source to enable confirmation.

There was just one issue, a twenty year gap for great great grandfather, so what was he up to? After a little work the National Archive delivered the goods in the shape of his complete naval records and then other sites gave pictures and the histories of all the vessels on which he had served.

About round an hour or so it took to research, give or take a cup of tea. Also, the cost was tiny. Not so long ago this work would have taken days or weeks, long sessions in libraries and a good deal of travel, the cost would not have been small.

Not just that, the number of intermediaries was nil, it was all between me and the machine. Clearly, the effort was in putting the information and advice on the web by someone somewhere but this cost had been carried in other ways and at my end was really minimal. The way the world works has utterly changed.

Beyond that there is much more. We are no longer confined to what the main media decide to tell us or the many and various fictions our politicians or the material sitting in one place or another, often distant. Also, we do not have the business of access it is all there for the taking.

Within hours or even minutes of an official statement or story or the rest there can be a flood of comment, information and often genuine expertise and knowledge to draw on to balance and examine this for those inclined to look.

Add to that the way we can now communicate immediately and extensively, if not always effectively. The world has changed but there is little sign that government, the main media, security forces or others have even begun to catch up with it.

So where will I be pitching my tent tomorrow?

Boris Island A Penal Settlement For Taxpayers

2011-10-28T14:52:00.000+01:00

Around the South East numbers of high maintenance executives, public and private sector, together with a large array of consultants, financial experts and all the others will be spending quality time (and our money) talking about Boris Island. The cry is that because this is “infrastructure” it has to be good no matter how much it costs.

This is not to be a penal settlement for people who cycle on pavements, more the pity, it is a plan for a vast new hub airport for the south east on an island in the Thames Estuary created out of the surplus of mud and garbage there. It is the brain child (or storm) of the Mayor of London.

At precisely the same time a bitter debate is going on about allowing Manston Airport, 25 miles away, with a long runway and facilities, 8 night flights. Also, in that general area there has been debate about the improvements to Southend Airport, about 15 miles away. Biggin Hill has given up trying to attract airlines because of local issues and will stick to executive and other air traffic.

In the farm shop we go to we adjourned to the fields where lettuce is being grown to decide which to have and they were duly pulled. Most of the other produce had been pulled earlier that morning. There was a discussion on the local chicken farms.

The reason why we have to go the farm is that the former infrastructure for taking such produce to the local towns has been wiped out by the supermarkets and their operations. With it has gone the flexibility, the responsiveness to local needs and also the outlets for the local farmers.

So at the supermarkets we can buy chickens from Thailand, lettuce from Spain or Africa, other produce from anywhere in the globe you can think of, but not anything from a farm just down the road. Nor can we check its provenance or try to calculate just how fresh it is. They have ways of calling it fresh.

These wonders have been delivered to us by the vast amounts spent on what is called “infrastructure” which by air and road allow networks of trucks working out of a limited number of national depots to cart the stuff about. The reason it costs so little is that the virtual slave labour out there coupled with huge taxpayer subsidies enable this to happen.

The UK at present is littered with runways all over the place of one sort or another. The reasons why we need “hubs” is because the potential for linking a variety of locations has never been explored properly. Worse still, the existing rail links are not made use of and there are no plans for other rail links.

Could someone somewhere in the vastness of Whitehall sit down and try to look at just what the possibilities might be and the advantages of having a large number of runways with a flexible network of links are? Given the amount of time people have to spend both travelling to and from and at major hubs it might even be quicker.

Boris Island has all the makings of a huge prestige project financial disaster if it were to happen. It is still a disaster if it were not to happen because of all the time and effort wasted on a dubious project which could have been better directed.

Last week a snail emerged from a cabbage so we took out into the garden. I asked the farmer if it had arrived home yet. He said not, but would keep a look out for it.

Merkel's Battle Of Kursk

2011-10-27T16:34:00.000+01:00

The way the mind slips around and mixes things up is a curious thing. Perhaps I should take more water with it. There I was watching the BBC TV documentary on Bletchley Park out of interest and up on the screen comes information about the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943.

Battles of the past do not come bigger than this one when in 1943 the Soviet’s turned the tide against The Third Reich although there might have been some battles of ancient times where relatively the numbers could have been comparable.

Meanwhile the discussions in Brussels had reached a similar crunch point as the bureaucrats and the bankers battled for the hearts and minds of politicians. The question of who won will not be known for a little time but most of us are already aware of who will be the losers.

In the summer of 1943 the Third Reich had major forces on its Eastern Front having taken control of the states to the east of Russia. The Greek campaign had meant a major military commitment in that territory.

It had lost the North African war and this meant it had to make up its mind between whether Italy or Greece was most at risk. Europe was substantially under its control, those countries that were not had to pay close heed to what The Third Reich wanted.

But from the Battle of Kursk onward the Third Reich was in retreat. By the end of 1944 the Allies were poised to conquer Germany and reduce it to dependency status in thrall to states who had the resources to dictate to it what its political structure would be and how it would be organised.

Moving on to 2011 and the Battle of Brussels in which issues arising from Greece, Italy, Eastern Europe and the rest have come together to bring about the end of an EU dominated by German money and French treachery as a world force.

So who now will be calling The Great Game? Brazil, Russia, India and China it appears may be bankrolling the bail outs with added help from North Africa and the Middle East.

Brussels 2011 may be our financial equivalent of 1943 Kursk and again it is Italy, Greece that are the liabilities.

How long will it be before the BRICS occupying forces and their associates are camped out in the centres of Europe more or less telling us all what we can do and what we cannot?

In London, this is less of a problem, they are already here.

Shakespeare, Family And Friends

2011-10-25T17:30:00.000+01:00

It is Agincourt Day, so perhaps the right time to comment on William Shakespeare. The debate on his authorship has been restarted by the film “Anonymous”. This is one of many attempts to deny his claim. The prime difficulty of nearly all of these is that they concentrate on a limited circle of poets and aristocrats who are reckoned to be superior in many ways.

There are few attempts to place Shakespeare in the real world of Warwickshire and London at the time and even fewer to search around the sources on the many and various families who had some sort of connection to him. These are largely omitted from or footnotes to the general and even literary histories.

For the most part they are minor gentry, merchants and similar who are there to be found. This post is almost entirely factual. There is very little theory or debate and less speculation other than one or two common sense observations in this item.

Yet this is a bare outline concentrating on the main strands only. If one took account of all the others known, connected by marriage or contact and their lives, which relate to the main strands we would be looking at a major piece of work.

It is very complicated but there is a simple proposition. At the time of Shakespeare there were just too many people who knew him or of him for the authorship to be much of a secret. It is possible to give a sketch of those people to put it all in place.

Down the later generations taking the known and direct links, some of which do reach into the higher aristocracy and monarchy there is a growing number of people in each generation who connect and into the 18th Century they lead directly into the literary and theatrical life of London and The Midlands in that period.

If they accepted Shakespeare it is difficult to see how, with their background, it could be any other person. We begin with the Somerville family who are known to be close to Shakespeare, notably in his later life on retirement to New Place at Stratford.

In the 15th Century in the Guild of St. Anne at Balsall, near Coventry there were displayed the Arms of the Aylesbury family. Also in membership were some named Shakespeare. Where John Shakespeare, father of William or his family came from is not known. What is known is that his mother was Mary Arden understood to be related to a collateral branch of the major Arden family of Warwickshire.

They were based at Park Hall, now enclosed in Birmingham. The Aylesbury’s were based in Eastcote in the 16th Century between Birmingham and Coventry and not far from Balsall with holdings elsewhere. Late in the 15th Century the senior member of the Aylesbury died leaving only an heiress, Joan, who took with her on marriage the estate of Edstone, in Wootton Wawen just north of Stratford upon Avon.

She married a Somerville, so their estate in the immediate later generations was owed to the Aylesbury inheritance. Meanwhile the next male Aylesbury heir remained at Eastcote. At some time the Aylesbury’s acquired a property in London, Holborn in the Parish of St. Andrews, now overlooked by Mirror newspapers.

So in the time of Shakespeare William Aylesbury and his first wife, Anne Poole of Sapperton in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds were in and around Holborn, London and Warwickshire. At the same time the Somerville family had made a Corbett marriage.

The Poole’s were a major family at that time in Gloucestershire with as neighbours the Whittington’s who had moved down from their original estate at Pauntley. There had been a marriage. Also amongst the marriages are another major family, the Bridges, later Dukes of Chandos and rather further back a Rawley of Devon.

A short distance from Sapperton were the Marsh’s of Edgeworth, probably originally rich wool merchants from Cirencester who became minor landed gentry. Their story is a little later on. As well as those mentioned there were a whole clutch of families intermarried and in activities that inevitably must have transacted with those of the burghers of the major trading town of Stratford on Avon.

To return to Stratford, who was close in location and connections? At Alcester, there was the Willoughby family with a lineage in the maternal line derived from the great magnates of the 14th and 15th Centuries through a marriage to a Welles.

At Coughton there were the Throckmorton’s a family at the very centre of Elizabethan politics and The Court of Queen Elizabeth I. Across the river at Charlecote were the Lucy family, notable, if not at the highest levels.

Look at Edward Arden*, c1542-1583, who married Mary Throckmorton* and whose son-in-law was John Somerville*...Amongst the many Throckmorton marriages was a Bridges. One major branch of this family were located in Northant’s of which Sir Nicholas Throckmorton*, a major figure was the head.

Sir Nicholas married Ann Carew*, the daughter of Sir Nicholas Carew* and their daughter, Elizabeth (Bess) Throckmorton* was Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth I* before Sir Walter Raleigh* closed in married in haste and they both finished in The Tower of London where their first child was born.

Sir Nicholas Carew was related to Queen Elizabeth I by virtue of their shared ancestry from Sir Thomas of Hoo*. Lord of Hoo and Hastings. His father, also Sir Thomas of Hoo was at Agincourt as Knight of the Pennant to Thomas, Lord Camoys who commanded the Left Wing of the army. The younger Sir Thomas married twice, firstly to Elizabeth Witchingham and secondly to Eleanor of Welles.

Queen Elizabeth I descended from Geoffrey Boleyn and Ann of Hoo, daughter of the first marriage, whilst the Carew’s descended from the second marriage to Eleanor.

In 1578 the Queen visited Norwich and worshipped in the Cathedral. Her throne was directly opposite the tomb of Geoffrey and Ann and with the arms of Boleyn, Hoo, Witchingham, St. Leger and St. Omer emblazoned above it.

Lionel Lord Welles* died in 1461 at the Battle of Towton*. . His second marriage had been to the widow of John Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, Margaret Beaufort born a Beauchamp and mother of the Margaret Beaufort* who became Countess of Richmond and mother of King Henry VII.

Sir Nicholas Carew was one of the Companions and also Master of the Horse to King Henry VIII and Knight of the Garter until his beheading in 1539. He was of Plantagenet descent which if the Beaufort descent were disallowed on the basis of the births outside marriage of their ancestor meant he had a better claim to the throne than King Henry VIII.

One of the plays that Shakespeare is said to have had difficulty with is “King Richard II” dealing as it did with the overthrow of a rightful King. In this play there is the merest of hint of wider knowledge in the passing mention of Sir Robert Waterton.

Waterton was one of close followers of Bolingbroke, later King Henry IV* who may well have ridden with him in the Lithuanian Crusades. He was Constable of Pontefract Castle when King Richard II died there. Also, Waterton was the grandfather of Cecilia Waterton, the first wife of Lionel, Lord Welles and they are all buried together at Methley Church in the same tomb.

I did say it was complicated.

Back to Holborn in the time of William Shakespeare and to look at someone who was around, Sir Thomas Aylesbury 1st Baronet* (picture above), son of William and Anne Aylesbury of Eastcote and Holborn above and also brother to Anne (later).

His daughter, Frances married an up and coming lawyer, Edward Hyde* later Earl of Clarendon. Their daughter Anne Hyde* married James, Duke of York, later King James II* and was mother of Queen Mary II* and Queen Anne*.

Sir Thomas, in his poetic youth, apparently knew Richard Corbet or Corbett*, later Bishop of Oxford who frequented the Mermaid Tavern. Corbet was another poet whose works are largely forgotten.

Meanwhile, his sister Anne Aylesbury had married Francis Marsh of Edgeworth. His parents were Henry Marsh and Mary Leigh, daughter of Sir Nicholas Leigh of Addington*, in Surrey.

Sir Nicholas Leigh had married Anne Carew, sister of the Sir Nicholas Carew above and therefore Aunt to the Ann Carew who had married Sir Nicholas Throckmorton.

Another member of this Leigh family was Charles Leigh (died 1605)* a voyager of the later Elizabethan age who experiences seem to be close to those of the travellers in “The Tempest”.

The grandson of Francis Marsh and Mary was another Francis Marsh, Archbishop of Dublin* appointed by King Charles II* who was godfather to one of his sons, Charles Francis Marsh, in that he was close cousin to the Kings nieces, Mary and Anne by James and Ann Hyde. Charles Francis Marsh had a daughter Barbara Marsh. Queen Mary II was patroness to Henry Purcell, the composer who made use of Shakespeare.

The Archbishop’s wife was Mary Taylor, daughter of Bishop Jeremy Taylor* one of the leading Anglican clergy of his time and formerly Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles I* having joined him at Nottingham in 1642 when he raised his standard against Parliament. Her mother was Phoebe Langsdale or Landisdale which brings us back to Holborn.

Phoebe’s father was Gervase (or Jarvis) Langsdale or Landisdale a leading Merchant who resided in Holborn and was buried at St. Andrews. In his will of the late 1620’s as well as money and property was £100 worth of tobacco. To be holding that amount of tobacco at that time suggests a range of business contacts that are interesting. Also, he was in Holborn and busy at the same time as the Aylesbury family.
In 1715 Barbara Marsh went on to marry the Very Reverend Wettenhall Sneyd and have 21 surviving children. This Sneyd family was wealthy gentry in Staffordshire; the University of Keele is based on the Keele Hall which was their major estate. In the 18th Century there were other branches in Staffordshire by Lichfield and in Ireland. Their lives were interwoven.

Also, close to Lichfield at this time were the Somerville family, having removed from Wootton Wawen and the senior Arden family removed to Yoxall, an early example of flight from an expanding Birmingham. It was at Lichfield that both Dr. Samuel Johnson* and David Garrick* enjoyed being mentored by Dr. Gilbert Walmisley*. There was quite a literary circle visiting.

Richard Lovell Edgeworth* was there from time to time, he married four times, twice to Sneyd girls. Anna Seward*, The Swan of Lichfield was in the area. A little further afield a Mrs. Ralph Sneyd became the lady on the Wedgwood pottery. For a time Richard Brinsley Sheridan” was MP for Stafford.

Which takes us to the Irish branch of the Sneyd’s and the family of Archdeacon Wettenhall Sneyd and Barbara Marsh based at Kilmore in Co. Cavan. This family were close to the Sheridan’s for several generations at one time being linked by marriage. Also in the area were Oliver Goldsmith before he went to London and the Nesbitt’s, of whom Arnold with others also went to London.

Arnold married Susannah Thrale, sister to the Henry Thrale whose wife, Hester was patroness of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Arnold, having no issue by marriage, and an MP made up for it by his affairs with actresses. To say that they were all intimately connected to the theatre of the time is no exaggeration.

Another complicated strand to all this is the Herveys, Earls of Bristol, the same Hervey’s whose Isabel had married Sir John Leigh of Addington, father of Nicholas. There are a number of other family possibilities and this is just a prime one.

To return to William Shakespeare and where he lived in London or who he spent time with other than the theatricals. There is very little known about this. But he had a wife and family in Stratford and possibly did not want much in the way of being responsible for a household in London.

So who did he lodge with and with whom did he eat and take his time? Moreover, who might have the room to give him space? If it was not one of the great lords it might well have been someone he knew and trusted from the wide circle of contacts from his home and district some of whom were wealthy enough to take in a non-paying guest with useful contacts.

More to the point, there were very many people close enough and knowing enough in both the London at that time and Warwickshire to know what he did write and what he was involved in. It is unlikely to have been much of a secret because so little was kept confidential in those times.

And that is not including the servants, the gossips and all those people unable to keep quiet about anything.

O for a muse of fire…………………

The Retreat From Sanity

2011-10-24T17:38:00.000+01:00

For those with a passing interest in old military matters what is often more instructive is what can be learned from defeats and great retreats than victories and conquests. The difficulty is that the latter tend to receive more attention than the former in national histories.

In the discussions on the EU, the financial crisis and the world economy it may be that we are all on the brink of a great retreat. How well or how badly it is handled will determine what will happen to us all.

It was in October 1812 that the Emperor Napoleon began The Retreat From Moscow after discussions with the Russian had failed and it had become clear that the French position was untenable.

The figures are a subject of debate but the French may have started out with over 600,000 assorted troops, not just French but many Germans and ended the campaign with less than 70,000, few of whom were fit for further service.

The diagram above prepared by Minard in 1860/1, illustrates the scale of the disaster and was one of the early examples of effective graphical illustrations of statistics that conveyed meaning and information.

In 1810, in the Peninsula of Spain and Portugal, Arthur Wellesley later the Duke of Wellington had conducted a fighting retreat to the Lines of Torres Vedras from which a revived Army emerged in 1811 to drive the French back to France by 1812. There were losses but not enough for his Army to lose its structure and integrity.

We are now in the middle of an increasingly bitter European financial and political war over the future of Europe as the internal structures of some states appear to be at risk of collapse and the loss of any coherence. The efforts in Europe at the moment seem to be those of a Napoleonic strategy.

In London there is a great deal of clatter and debate over whether we might have a vote on Europe with evidently a majority of the voters wanting to have their say. Our political leaders do not like this and want to prevent it.

The idea of the UK detaching itself from Europe and its directives and rules does not suit those in the villages of Westminster and The City.

There was a time when I took part in the gentle art of issuing the orders to move an Armoured Division around the countryside. The lessons learned were that you had to make the decisions when they needed to be made, put them into effect with direct instructions and accept the difficulties and the uncertainties you faced. There was little time and little scope for complications.

It is possible that a Europe led by French and Germans are in for the economic equivalent of a Retreat From Moscow. So what should the UK do?

The equivalent of The Lines of Torres Vedras would be a far better option.

Oh Ye Of Little Faith

2011-10-23T12:20:00.001+01:00

As it is Sunday, for a change some attention to religion is paid, or rather the catechisms of capitalism. The unholy business outside St. Pauls Cathedral and the closing of the doors of sanctuary has excited a lot of attention.

According to Mathew 21:12 in the King James version “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves”.

This suggests that those on the outside are more Jesus people given the nature of their protests than those inside. St. Paul’s costs a lot of money to keep going and it is important that people enter in large numbers and leave with less money than they had on entry.

Doves may not be on sale but a wide range of knick knacks and souvenirs are as well as some religious tracts and books. Indulgences are not available and nor are much in the way of holy relics, other than the Duke of Wellington down below. But there is a decent café with a reasonable choice of goodies, cake as opposed to communion.

The present St. Paul’s is a creation of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the previous medieval church being lost to the flames in the Great Fire of 1666. It was a Stuart period enterprise embodying the Stuart love of expense with the inability to find the money to fund it.

Quite what it cost the economy to put it up during a period of serious economic difficulties is a question. It must certainly have diverted a lot of capital that might have been used for other purposes. Figures I have seen suggest it must have put a strain on whatever the GDP was then. Since then it has been a high maintenance item.

Its present iconic status is owed a great deal to its survival during World II and especially the striking photographs of it standing proudly whilst around it flames engulfed the ruins of much of The City. It did symbolize the idea that Britain could take it and survive.

Now it struggles to keep its dome seen between all the buildings that are going up both close and near. There is a deep irony that The City now dwarves St. Paul’s. Mammon is winning and is triumphant.

Meanwhile the Chapter of St. Paul’s produces it accounts according to the litany of modern accounting management and its annual reports speak the language of the MBA faithful and not those holding the inferior Doctorates of Divinity. The Chapter orates the familiar financial gospels with faith in the figures rather than the word.

It has yet to work out how to make its prayers and services an income stream. In earlier times this was not difficult because they provided leverage for the faithful to put their trust in eternity. Today in The City the overriding need is create credits to enable an eternally rising money flow.

This is not the cause of the closure of its doors. Nor is it the doubts or heresies of the Clergy, the Metropolitan Police, nor the Health and Safety people, although all are castigated as the sinners.

The ones who are responsible are the mysterious anchorites of the security services who from their walled up cells have uttered prophesies that the faithful must give heed to.

It is that St. Paul’s is a soft target and if you allow a large mob composed of fervent sects of other faiths, secular or religious, to camp out at an open entrance then within them will be not just the creatures of Satan but of other trouble makers from around the world. This time the bombers are on the ground and not up in the air.

And it might not just be the incense burning that you could smell.

Greek Myths

2011-10-22T14:54:00.001+01:00

When I was young amongst the many forms of preaching endured was politicians telling me to live an austere and frugal life the reason being that “Whitehall knows best”. It didn’t. Now Emperor Barroso, taking on the mantle of Charlemagne is telling me that Brussels knows best, it doesn’t.

A blogger on Friday, Raedwald, reminded us that in the 1970’s Greece was a very different place, very much poorer and with simple life styles. After it was given a great deal of money to play with by Brussels it has changed radically as have the expectations of its younger generations.

Greece has persistently manipulated its figures to justify its appeals for that money and more recently in order to keep the game going recruited Goldman Sachs to help it. Rather like going to the public executioner for a close shave. This has created a problem.

But because its affairs are so interwoven with other members of the Eurozone, so may of Brussels activities and so many of the major European banks it is now all our problems and because it is so big and difficult to control we are not sure of what to do except throw more money at Greece.

In Greece itself we have the unhappy situation of a major budget deficit in a country where almost all the wealthy and higher income groups evade tax and make use of tax havens whereas most of the lower income groups are dependent either wholly or in part on state benefits and public sector spending.

So the money sent to Greece will substantially leak out to where nobody knows because as well as its real economy, there seems to be an illegal economy almost on the scale of the UK’s. The hope is that in transmitting this money around various accounts sufficient fictions can be maintained to keep people happy.

Until the next time and historically with Greece there will always be a next time. This is because in Greece the last two millennia have been consistently turbulent and its location, geography and strategic importance will always make it so.

Before then it had been turbulent, put “Alexander The Great” into Wikipedia for a small part of the story in terms of time but not of the nature of Greek ambitions and activity effecting other parts of the world.

Our problems of perception arise from the magnificent legacy the Greeks left in terms of written learning, philosophy, science, literature and the arts. At the same time it was an Imperial power under Athens and continually engaged in conflict. It’s “demos” was not a democracy as we understand it.

When the Greeks entered the Common Market it was rather like King Leonidas welcoming the Persians and ensuring them safe passage at Thermopylae instead of fighting them to the death. There was a second Battle of Thermopylae in 1941, this time the New Zealanders and the Australians taking on the Germans.

Perhaps the UK might have been a lot better off sticking with the Dominions and other world connections instead of joining an EU that is going to fall under German domination arising from events in Greece.

The destruction of the Agora, the central meeting place of ancient Athens took a long time under various Persian, Roman and Slavic intruders and the Ottoman Empire.

This time round it may be accomplished much more quickly.

History Ancient And Modern

2011-10-21T16:48:00.001+01:00

As our media tends to deal with only one or two main stories at a time, to avoid confusing the viewers and having them switch channels to the detriment of the viewing indexes, it is an interesting question of whether there is anything in common with the current stories of Dale Farm and Libya.

The recent residents at Dale Farm are largely persons who do not share the same ideas about civil society as their neighbours and have also not bothered too much about the issues of local democracy and governance.

As for Libya, given the history of that territory over the centuries it is a debatable question of whether it is has ever been a “nation” in terms of most of our modern ideas about nationality are and will function on a different basis, perhaps mainly according to the religious beliefs of the locals.

Just what sort of “nation” it might turn out to be is something I think will tax the resources of the local population and possibly all those who have made it their business to intervene and involve themselves.

To add to that there is the issue of whether or not we should have a referendum on the subject of EU membership, if only on the grounds that we now have two generations of citizens whose opinion has never been sought.

For those who were old enough to vote there are many of us who resent finding out that out the time we were fed a diet of lies about what was intended and what the future of a large European trade area might be. Now more of the truth is out we might want to change our opinion.

In all the debates and conflict there is something in common and probably few understand the mindsets and basis of thinking involved. What is a “nation”, how it is made up, what sort of civil society it is and how it relates to other parts of the world and other societies are fully realized.

For example, the link below is about a young man who lived many thousands of years ago in the far north. Just what did he and others like him around the world think about how his immediate and wider population grouping was organized. It is unlikely to be anything remotely the same as our modern thinking.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111020084819.htm

Then in western Scotland we have the Ardnamurchan Viking burial. In some reports he is described as an “invader”. It looks to me more like someone who was well settled there so where was the boat built? What kind of family/group/wider system of polity did he think he belonged to?

Despite all our recent myth making and imposition of modern ideas on the past I think it might have been substantially removed from our ideas of nationhood.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15366336

Staying with long ago history one question that has always fascinated me is why didn’t the Roman’s with all their technology, capability and command of man power ever get round to making use of coal as a major energy source?

The reason may have been that as they were already committed to other forms of energy source with a major social and financial investment in it when that society and its financial resources came under severe strain they were unable to put into place the new economic and government systems that would have enabled it.

Which is why an article like this one below, taken from an Oil Drum link should have us all worried. If the Romans could not make the changes because they could not summon up the political will or financial power, can we do any better in making the changes that we need to make?

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap/

Our current political structures and world business are based on present and very recent energy sources. This means all our so-called “nations” and various entities that have arisen either as world wide bodies or continent wide, such as the EU.

Moreover all our thinking is underpinned by this as well as our myths and forms of propaganda.

So will we revert to the social organizations more familiar to the Viking or more radically to those of Stone Age Man?

Evicting The Aged

2011-10-19T14:18:00.000+01:00

Hot on the heels of the attempt to deal with Dale Farm residents, property speculators in a small way, comes the suggestion that older retired people living either alone or as couples in family sized properties might be encouraged to shove off somewhere else.

It is alleged that this would release a lot of homes for people with greater needs. These are not specified but we can imagine. Some are supposed to be families who cannot at present afford the costs of buying houses.

The delicate issue that a sudden flush of selling might drive the property prices down when the financial authorities are frantically try to prop them up for the sake of their investment returns and all the dodgy mortgages given out in the last decade has not been mentioned.

Additionally, there are all those older people who have been enticed into equity release schemes which effectively can trap them where they are.

The other issue is where all these aged might go to. “Down sizing” is the theme but this is a lot more complicated than it seems. We have already had one major shift in recent years, those who have already cashed in on London area homes to go somewhere else, leading to rocketing prices in rural and seaside locations and putting the locals out of the market.

Some of the older people in turn have been able to borrow money to go in for the “second home” or the “holiday home” capers. There are a lot of these. In how many places at present there are once working class cottages, which are now used for these purposes and often left empty for half the year or more. Many have benefited from tax breaks for one reason or another.

Can you see any of our politicians leading the charge against not just the aged but the connected ownership of second and holiday homes? Just how many homes vacated by the ancients in desirable areas might become only second (or third) or holiday homes for those with access to credit?

You will see where this is leading to. If the market is going to be directed into ensuring the “right” people are buying the homes then this means control over sales, credit and financing. Inevitably, price control might be in the offing with the other matter of the nature of property taxes becoming a major factor.

There could be unforeseen consequences. “Down sizing” means going from larger detached and bigger “semi’s” into smaller homes. The very size of home needed by first time buyers and all those “singles” who are now around struggling to get into the market.

In order to sell those larger places then people with smaller places must have to want them and the higher running costs and mortgages involved. Given the way the economy is going just how many families with middling and lower incomes want to take all that on?

Then there is the element of speculation. If you are trading up you increase the element of risk. In the last three decades increasing the risk has been funded and encouraged on the basis that investment in property is better than saving for income or pensions. We know where all that has led to.

In looking at the aged there are increasing numbers of those of greater age and in need of continuing care and support. These are often people especially reluctant to have to move despite all the difficulties. In any case where do they go to?

At one time the retirement flat sector was an option but this is in serious disarray at present thanks to their property management falling into the hands of big finance intent on maximising income streams, securitising them and engaged in major leverage of all the assets. This has gone badly wrong.

Instead of reducing their worries, work and liabilities people in their 80’s and more are having to watch, calculate and administer in ways far beyond those had they stayed back in their own homes. For some it has become a nightmare.

With both pension incomes and savings income of the old being squeezed giving very many problems at the margins the outgoings now arising from this kind of “down sizing” now make it a much less attractive option in the later years of life.

The same financial and speculative drives have had major impacts on the care home provision and other residential facilities for the old. There has been a surge of scandals and disasters in this sector.

Add to this the major reduction in the number places at a as a consequence of increased regulation and the nature of the property market at the same time of increasing numbers of the old there are further strains. Care in the community means a lot of little trained ladies rushing about in cars to do their best, if they can.

On feature of both care homes and hospitals is the changed culture of “care”. One community nurse of the old school told me that she was tearing her hair trying to tell many care home providers that hydration and nutrition mattered not just feeding the residents on anti-depressants prescribed by “flying doctors”. It is a lesson now being relearned the hard way.

What will our politicians come up with to deal with all this? Holidays in Switzerland with one way tickets?

Travelling In Hope But Not To Arrive

2011-10-18T15:18:00.004+01:00

In her first time out as Secretary of State for Transport, Justine Greening has encountered the attentions of Boris Johnson the big bully of the politician’s playground. The Mayor of London demands that she take action to give him a hub.

This time he means a big brand new airport for London, replete with runways, services and all the shopping opportunities that his sponsors and favourite lobbyists could wish for. Heathrow is such a mean little place, Gatwick fit only for tourists and the others around London not worthy of attention.

My theory on this is that if all of Central London between Liverpool Street Station and Kensington Palace, north of the Thames and reaching up to Marylebone Road were to be flattened and used as the site of such an airport there would be many advantages.

Especially if other areas in London were put to a better use. Kensington and Chelsea would make a good sized trucking depot and Hampstead turned into the world’s biggest shopping mall. There would be other bonuses.

If no compensation was paid this would stop the property bubble in London at a stroke. Also, it would be a major correction to the imbalances in our national finances that could pay down a great deal of debt. Add to that it would redress the contrasts between the poorer parts of the UK and the richer South.

In the meantime, train buffs will have noticed the news item about a first ever, allegedly, rail journey starting at Euston and ending at Swanage. It was a steam special and done purely for fun. During WW1 and certainly in my memory in WW2 there were many train movements that had never been made before arising from the demands of war and disruptions from bombing.

No matter, in order to make this journey, if I am correct, the train will have crossed the Great Western Main Line, which has links, on which the Heathrow Express runs and then gone on to join a Southern line which allows routing to Gatwick and Manston.

This blog has already mentioned, more than once, the existing opportunities for links between major airports as well as a number of minor ones. The south east has many runways already in civil use with a number of former or other military ones. Around the rest of the country there are quite a number of others.

Has anyone in government, notably at the Transport department, set out to consider seriously all the possibilities and just how quick the trains could be on the basis of existing or available technology, without spending squillions on the fantasies of lobbyists acting for commercial interests anxious to raid the coffers of government?

Why is there so little interest in at least trying to work out a flexible dispersed and more responsive airport network fully linked? Boris wants to put all our eggs as well as his into one big basket regardless of cost as the ultimate political stunt of his career. Perhaps he should be offered the choice of either flatten London or forget it.

For Ms. Greening, all I will say is that Sir Edward Elgar’s mum was a Greening, so could she come up with a different tune?

Sporting Frenzy

2011-10-16T14:33:00.000+01:00

On Friday in Wales a number of poor children were dragooned out into the freezing wind by the BBC and their Headteacher to shriek, jump, yell and wave their hands at the camera. The reason was that some years ago, the Captain of Wales Rugby XV, Sam Warburton, had attended the school and he was urged to great deeds in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup against France.

He lasted 18 minutes and was then sent off by the referee for a type of crash tackle, once conventional but now banned as dangerous, that he was alleged to have committed. There is dispute about this, fanned by the revelations that the referee had a French father. There has been only passing mention that Wales missed some kicks that might have won them the match.

In the meantime in soccer, Rooney, currently England’s Great Blotchy Red Hope is being questioned as being suitable for the squad for the national European soccer contests next year. He is banned for three games. He will be joined very likely by a groin strain or two, the odd metatarsal or cruciate ligament case with maybe one or two others not quite on top form because of treatment for something confidential.

There are other things in other sports. The common feature is that the greater the hype, hoopla and frenzy the more chance of it going very badly. The trouble is the sponsors who demand it, the media who feed on it and the money involved. In a saner world those in charge of the squads would keep clear of any of it and go gently and quietly.

In our preparation for the Olympics and the European soccer contest nobody has yet worked out what might happen if we have a bad winter. This is not a prediction, just mentioning the possibility. In soccer a serious fixture backlog could cause many problems next spring. In other sports a long and difficult period of disruption will have all sorts of unpredictable effects.

Moreover, Earth is twitchy again. For those who look at these things there are some worrying signs. I hope against hope that nothing will happen because we will all suffer one way or another. There is a volcano in the Canaries rumbling. In Iceland Katla, a large one, is having a noisy stretch, will it wake up?

But on the listing of those showing activity there is both Tambora and Krakatoa and at the same time. One or other would be bad news, both together catastrophic. There is a theory, amongst others, that the sudden end of the Medieval Warm Period and the coming of the Little Ice Age were caused by volcanoes erupting in series. What was all that about Global Warming?

Also, the Sun (that thing in the sky now and again, not the Murdoch rag) is said to be in a funny mood. For those who have a firm belief in deities it is a commonplace that they look on human pride and arrogance with disdain and at their leisure may wreak whatever punishment they think suitable. Watching our media at present anyone with basic human superstitions should be very anxious.

At least if all the satellites do go off I have plenty of reading to catch up on. If the power supplies become erratic there are the old woollies in the cupboard. But how will the rest of us fare if it is back to the past and no sport on the telly?

Taking The Wheel

2011-10-15T14:18:00.000+01:00

On the garage forecourt yesterday to top up the petrol tank at vast expense I saw next to my car a 1973 Morris Marina. Once in a fit of unwise patriotic fervour I decided to buy British and chose one of those. The outward design may have been decent for the period but the build quality and performance were shockers.

The revelations that major meetings between the Prime Minister and key staff of the Civil Service who taking crucial decisions during the period of the last Labour government were neither minuted nor recorded are being cited as a prime example of the breakdown of UK government and the collapse of the Civil Service as a reliable and effective body of administration.

In the debate on this and how government should be conducted we are being given the old tale about how the Civil Service was once a “Rolls Royce” service in comparison. This notion is a polite fiction.

During the 1970’s sharing a teapot and plate of biscuits with Roy Mason and others when he was under the cosh as Defence Secretary someone remarked about our Civil Service being a “Rolls Royce” to which Mason muttered “More like a Morris Marina”. He had good cause at the time having realised that the UK was by now unable to defend itself without American support.

At this I was grinning and nodding having had my own run-ins with high level civil servants. Their documents, the prose, the command of language, the structure and the sense of authority may have first class but the essential thinking behind it was often total rubbish.

One issue was a medical matter and the related support that might be given. It was a condition that was thought to be rare and few cases had been identified. We were being told exactly how many cases we should have on the basis of calculations made by a handful of civil servants and medical men.

The difficulty was that none of them knew anything about statistics and especially the problems when dealing with small numbers in a field that was clearly complex and little known or understood at the time.

But they had come up with some figures and they were “the experts” and could not accept the many questions that arose, let along the impossibility of calculating what the exact figure was likely to be anywhere.

The idea peddled in the mid 20th Century that “Whitehall knows best” is one of the major reasons for the disastrous course of policy in this period from economic to foreign policy to financial management to social reform.

The Civil Service was running a machine that existed as a beautiful concept of self but largely out of touch with either reality or the changes that were in train.

It is a commonplace of the history books that the central administration of state in the early 19th Century was antique weak and unreliable. The reforms that were put in place took decades not years to take effect.

For the first part of the 20th Century the Civil Service struggled to make sense of anything in a world in turmoil. During World War 2 it was forced to become more effective but its wartime role made it unready for peacetime.

What it did do within the Service was to make the procedures and structure reliable and to maintain records and keep itself organised properly with a role in relation to politicians that was fairly clear.

When all that was dumped at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st Centuries at the very same time that “big” central government was being inflicted on us by both Whitehall and Brussels then chaos and uncertainty were bound to follow.

One of the central functions of government should be to retain the integrity of the currency. When I recall what my Morris Marina cost in the 1970’s and the price of a gallon of petrol then and look at the prices now for equivalent motoring it is clear that there has been a conspicuous failure of government in the last forty years.

And it is getting worse by the year.

Counting By Numbers

2011-10-13T15:30:00.001+01:00

If a link is long or complicated it is better that the post be short. The link below is not long but does require careful reading.

Given that so many of our troubles arise from issues related to accounting and the presentation of financial data that is assumed to be reliable but all too often is not it is a thought provoking article.

http://econerdfood.blogspot.com/2011/10/benfords-law-and-decreasing-reliability.html

The article was sent to me by someone who can handle the mathematics and knows how figures can be worked through systems and computers.

If the writer of the article has established that much of the data and information we have available to make crucial decisions essentially is rubbish then the decisions will be rubbish.

Perhaps we already know that.

Amazing Grace

2011-10-12T15:42:00.000+01:00

Slumped in front of the goggle box having wondered what was going on in the world the Army arrived, or rather a programme about the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards once the Royal Scots Greys and the 3rd Carabiniers. There was instant recognition, firstly the barracks at Fallingbostel and then the Desert Rat flash on the uniform.

It was a long time ago. A phrase that was common then when describing a major foul up or series of errors was “The biggest shambles since Mons.” Since I have learned that whilst a very difficult retreat in 1914 the Army did manage to stop the Germans and prevent their Master Plan succeeding.

The Kaiser may have called them “a contemptible little army” but his soldiers did not as the casualties mounted and it became clear that their firepower and discipline was remarkable. The consequence, however, was years of trench warfare and at the end of it the Kaiser had gone and the map of Europe was utterly changed.

The Royal Scots Greys were there as they had been at Waterloo seeing off the Emperor Napoleon and French pretensions to be the masters of Europe. It put the posturing of President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel into perspective.

It seems they have a Master Plan and they jointly plan to dictate to Europe what it should be doing in the great war against global finance. Except it is not a war more of an abject surrender where we give up the prosperity of future generations to pay the bills that are falling due.

Like the Emperor and the Kaiser they think they know the answer. It is the one being peddled this time not by ambitious generals but by implacable traders and bankers. The answer they think is to fling more money at the problem rather as the generals of the past flung more men into the front line.

Some of us do not agree and have thought for a time now that the problem is debt and not money. In yesterday’s “Guardian”, George Monbiot, claims at last to have seen the light on this. He joins an embattled minority trying to stop the tide of money overwhelming what is left of our defences.

We have little to offer unluckily, perhaps only a long period of financial entrenchment in what may become an increasingly embittered and impoverished world. But if this is not done then everything might be lost by the sheer destructive power of inflation and the quickening pace of the collapse of governments and civil society.

Even more unlucky it will take a lot more than a cavalry charge by the Greys to stop it. Put “Amazing Grace Royal Scots Greys” into Youtube for some soothing music.

A miracle might happen.

The Fox Has Left Its Lair

2011-10-11T16:50:00.000+01:00

We have heard a great deal about Mr. Fox and his friends in the last few days.

It is difficult to know what to say about how our government functions or not.

Perhaps this says it all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRdJ5wBXpo

But which one is Cameron?

Kicking Things Around

2011-10-10T18:42:00.001+01:00

One of the given’s in the way global finance and media has affected the UK in the last decade or two is in the promotion of the English soccer Premiership to the status of one of the major financial and commercial operations in the sports industry, or should that be sector?

Like many other global operations of this kind it has its odd features. In soccer it is that player pay and benefits are mopping up a very high proportion of the total spend. Theoretically, this is unsustainable but is kept going by the desire of magnate backers to be part of the big time whatever the cost.

It can go wrong. The major chicken and egg suppliers of India (or egg and chicken), the owners of the Venky Company, you name it we stuff it, who took on Blackburn Rovers may have made an acquisition that has a nasty dose of the football equivalent of salmonella.

The cure is likely to be an expensive one and not guaranteed to succeed. Blackburn, one of the original Football League clubs has spent most of its history in the second or third levels before Jack Walker bankrolled them around 1990.

It could end in tears. A number of other clubs s in recent years have gone down fast. Looking at the Conference Premier, not in the old main Football Leagues there are no less than fourteen clubs out of the 24 that have come down from the League of whom two once had a spell in the top division.

In general for betting men, one interesting punt is which club will be the next to go into administration or face bankruptcy. There is no shortage of possibilities and the odds are often short. But betting itself has lurched into the mainstream of football provision.

Sky Sports has a very irritating main advertiser for its screened games urging viewers to phone now for the latest special betting offer. The advertising bill boards at the games have a rich choice of betting sponsors and many clubs are also funded by them. Gambling, which was once a side shoot to the game has become central.

There have been a number of major scandals recently involving betting in sport to the effect of players acting to do things that matter to the gamblers rather than to the game. There is nothing essentially new about this, it has just gone global.

If anything the Premiership has been a central plank in world gambling with across the globe the nations come together to wager on which player will score first or when or be sent off. In this context the stories relating to the Rooney family over the last few days have almost an old fashioned look to them.

Wayne is sent off playing for England with a straight red card for a silly reaction that is owed entirely to his bad temper whilst his father has been charged with alleged fixing of matches in company with others. The one will affect the odds on future England games; the other will add interest to the advertising.

As father does not look to be the cleverest cabbage on the patch I suspect he is the sort of inveterate gambler who given a tip in the pub or overhearing some chat on the train between Moorfields and Bootle Oriel Road is on the mobile in seconds without a thought for the reliability or accuracy of the sources.

The trouble is that footballers down the years as well as being unusually prone to some human failings are often gamblers operating at a high level of stupidity. When one of my relations in the 1920’s was offered a professional contract to play for Liverpool his fiancé told him flatly that it was either football or her but not both.

He had a job with a decent wage for the day and promise for the future. He would have been no better off. Also, she was much attached to her family and did not want to risk her husband arriving home one day to announce that he had been transferred to some far distant place, Alloa, Accrington or Aldershot and they were to leave tomorrow.

Her major fear though was the gambling and drinking were part of the culture in football then and when his career ended there would be nothing and the chances were that he might be left as a casual labourer.

These days with the rewards at the very top footballers should have enough invested despite the celebrity lifestyles to eek out the decades after football. Unless, of course we have a big crash that takes the present structure of English football with it.

As for Wayne, my guess is that he is of a build and an athletic type to have knee problems sooner rather than later so he may not have long to go at the top.

It might be worth having a quiet flutter on that one.

Helping Hands

2011-10-09T11:27:00.000+01:00

One of the imperatives of history is that if you call in a bunch of the heavy mob to help you then they are likely to help themselves. All too often it is a lesson that is learned only once and by the time you have realised the consequences it is too late.

When certain tribal leaders at the south eastern end of the Atlantic Isles thought that those Romans with their desirable lifestyle might help them to discourage their neighbours from being aggressive they did not know what it would lead to.

Rather later all those princes and rulers in the Indian sub-continent who saw a temporary advantage in availing themselves of the services of those rough people from the west who seemed happy only to go back home with pots of bullion made a similar error.

More recently we have had an unlucky conjunction of our supposed leaders from around the world when faced with complex issues calling in help from an assortment of all too willing people. Blair, Brown and Balls gave the keys to the City of London to a group of financiers assisted by Rupert and his friends. There is no sign of them going away. They are still in charge despite all the hand wringing.

On the continent, no longer isolated since the early 1970’s the EU sought help from a select group of political interests who told it that the economics could be made to fit if one currency could be installed. It didn’t and not only is the EU itself out of both financial and political control the currency system supposed to be basic to the economics has tanked.

The same political and other interests propose another set of arrangements to deal with the situation, if only to retain their powers of extracting whatever money can be had to shore up their position. Now the EU is at their mercy.

In America the leaders of the major corporations and financial houses have such a grip on Washington DC that they are never likely to lose it short of the collapse of the Union which theoretically should not happen. Just like the collapse of many past empires theoretically should not have happened.

There is a debate on what sort of economic principles are now the key to US policy and what their effect might be. The reality is that there are few principles to be found and the politicians could not apply them because of their backers. To others the model seems to be that of the former Enron company. Certainly Enronomics seems to be abiding working model at present.

Russia has its billionaire magnates wreaking havoc not only at home but in many other places including London. The Chinese seem to be willing to help anyone and once installed will stay. The Indian magnates are very willing to help any politicians anywhere, at a price.

Then there are the people whose assets are from energy sources and who have their own ideas, notably in the Middle East. Some of these ideas are religious, some “economic” but all intent on bolstering their own positions and supporting those of their followers and hirelings wherever they are.

In the meantime our child politicians are playing their games of charades. The US is already in the throes of a Presidential campaign that is meaningless in terms of the administration having any real control. The UK Party Conferences have been stand up comedy routines, “Clap hands here comes whoever.” The EU leaders are a travelling circus and the other world leaders are like a tribe of groupies following the latest financial hit band.

In the past it was easy to know who really ruled because of all the flummery and ceremony attached to Kingdoms, Empires or political centres and their workings. In the 21st Century it is hard to tell because you cannot see where the money is.

Quite simply, it goes and where it is kept is secret. The means by which it is moved are secret and the inner workings of the relevant corporations and agencies for the most part are also secret. And now nobody can do much about it except protest.

Eventually all the economic and political systems of the recent and more distant pasts have collapsed for one reason or another. For our present way of living and doing things it may be only a matter of time.

It might only need one more very big bad one, whatever it might be.

Travellers Guide

2011-10-02T17:09:00.001+01:00

This is a short post because there is travelling to be done on family affairs over the next few days.

In the meantime there could be some difficulties in world or other finance.

Here is a brief guide to the nature of the problem:

The Euro

A monetary system without the system.

The Pound

Once based on a home owned working economy but now on a foreign owned financial service.

The Dollar

Once a world currency based on a world economy now without the world power or much of its economy.

The Renminby

Once based on a closed economy now on a trading economy that does not want to trade in its currency.

The Yen

Once based on a trading economy that is losing its trade.

The Rouble

Once based on a planned economy that is no longer planned or anything else.

The Rupee

Once based on a peasant economy but now without the peasants.

Given my past record while I am away something will happen.

Heading For The Buffers Again

2011-10-01T17:45:00.000+01:00

So the Conservative Party Conference is at Manchester again. It was there in 2009. What has poor Manchester done to deserve this?

They stopped voting for the real Liberals years ago.

On Monday 5 October 2009, I posted an item, link below, about it and I wonder how much will be really changed?

http://thecynicaltendency.blogspot.com/2009/10/tory-party-conference-will-it-hit.html

The picture above should be compared to the other one for a reflection of my views.

Other than that there is nothing to add.

Deutschland Unter Alles

2011-09-30T18:17:00.000+01:00

The net and other media are full of stuff about Germany at present. Something to do with Europe and having to find the money to keep it in the style to which it has become accustomed.

Then reading around, I discovered that the Reichstag (or is has it changed?) were alleged to have coughed up the money to save us all, but first the Greeks, then the French and other banks who had lent Greeks a lot of money, then the governments who were propping up the banks and incidentally the European Union in passing.

Perhaps the media in general felt that this was a little too complicated to explain to a public who needed more important information about a deceased American singer who died in tragic circumstance and an English footballer who was terribly upset when a lady of close acquaintance told all or nearly all.

But what was not clear was that what the Germans had decided was that they went along with the deal agreed a few days back but that this was likely to be “thus far but no further”. As we are being told that another big bill is on the way five times larger than the last one that this might be problematical was not discussed.

From time to time one or other members of the UK Cabinet chime in with passing comments about as useful as the helpful advice given to referees by the crowd standing behind the home side’s goal at a football match. They may offer insights in what is going on in front of them but not to any real purpose.

Meanwhile, David Cameron was spotted in the director’s box at the Queen’s Park Rangers game at the weekend. Whilst I was glad to see he was supporting his home side as opposed to slumming it at Arsenal or Chelsea it was intriguing that Lakshmi Mittal, one of the leading magnates of India was there beside him.

He may have been trying to explain the offside rule to Cameron, whose politics lead me to assume that this is not one of his strengths, but there may be other matters. If the UK is going to need all the help it can get if the Reichstag goes up in flames again then it is to Asia he will have to look.

One particular talent that Mittal has to offer is how to ride a gathering inflationary storm of the kind that is now going on in India. Another is that he is so involved already in the UK economy and property that he is a key player in any decisions relating to our economy. Ed Balls we recall, relied greatly on the advice and help of Sir Fred Goodwin, let us hope that Mittal can do better than that.

So there we go then. If Europe collapses and takes Germany with it the UK may just about survive the storm with the support of Asia, notably India. What might Mittal suggest? A new company created, perhaps to preside over the remains of Europe?

Call it the Honourable West Europe Company and allow it to put in Governors, District Officers, Political Advisers and small forces of troops, the Bengal Lancers would do very well with a few regiments of Guides. It might just work, if so then perhaps Sir Paul McCartney could knock out an oratorio or two as a change from ballets and stuff, to be premiered in Hamburg where his band performed not long after Western Germany were given back their sovereignty.

They could now be about to lose it. I was there at the time and when giving the opinion that it would never last was derided for my lack of belief in the future. One reason for that was that the value of the mark rose against that of cigarettes and I still believe that ciggie’s are a more reliable currency.

Start stocking up and soon.