Deutschland Unter Alles

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.

Muscles Make A Man Or Woman

As the day has been taken up by other matters, this is simply an item taken from the web in 2009. It is in line with some of my own ideas and as times are going to be hard it is arguable how far modern man is up to real challenges.

Quote:

“Modern man 'a wimp', says anthropologist”. From Reuters - Wednesday, 14 October 2009

Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 metres record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions. Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.

Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle. These and other eye-catching claims are detailed in a book by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister entitled "Manthropology" and provocatively sub-titled "The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male."

McAllister sets out his stall in the opening sentence of the prologue. "If you're reading this then you - or the male you have bought it for - are the worst man in history. "No ifs, no buts -- the worst man, period...As a class we are in fact the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet."

Delving into a wide range of source material McAllister finds evidence he believes proves that modern man is inferior to his predecessors in, among other fields, the basic Olympic athletics disciplines of running and jumping. His conclusions about the speed of Australian aboriginals 20,000 years ago are based on a set of footprints, preserved in a fossilized claypan lake bed, of six men chasing prey.

An analysis of the footsteps of one of the men, dubbed T8, shows he reached speeds of 37 kph on a soft, muddy lake edge. Bolt, by comparison, reached a top speed of 42 kph during his then world 100 meters record of 9.69 seconds at last year's Beijing Olympics.

In an interview in the English university town of Cambridge where he was temporarily resident, McAllister said that, with modern training, spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, aboriginal hunters might have reached speeds of 45 kph. "We can assume they are running close to their maximum if they are chasing an animal," he said."

But if they can do that speed of 37 kph on very soft ground I suspect there is a strong chance they would have outdone Usain Bolt if they had all the advantages that he does. "We can tell that T8 is accelerating toward the end of his tracks."

McAllister said it was probable that any number of T8's contemporaries could have run as fast. "We have to remember too how incredibly rare these fossilizations are," he said. "What are the odds that you would get the fastest runner in Australia at that particular time in that particular place in such a way that was going to be preserved?"

Turning to the high jump, McAllister said photographs taken by a German anthropologist showed young men jumping heights of up to 2.52 meters in the early years of last century.

"It was an initiation ritual, everybody had to do it. They had to be able to jump their own height to progress to manhood," he said. "It was something they did all the time and they lived very active lives from a very early age. They developed very phenomenal abilities in jumping. They were jumping from boyhood onwards to prove themselves."

McAllister said a Neanderthal woman had 10 percent more muscle bulk than modern European man. Trained to capacity she would have reached 90 percent of Schwarzenegger's bulk at his peak in the 1970s. "But because of the quirk of her physiology, with a much shorter lower arm, she would slam him to the table without a problem," he said.

Manthropology abounds with other examples:

Roman legions completed more than one-and-a-half marathons a day carrying more than half their body weight in equipment.

Athens employed 30,000 rowers who could all exceed the achievements of modern oarsmen.

Australian aboriginals threw a hardwood spear 110 meters or more (the current world javelin record is 98.48).

McAllister said it was difficult to equate the ancient spear with the modern javelin but added: "Given other evidence of Aboriginal man's superb athleticism you'd have to wonder whether they couldn't have taken out every modern javelin event they entered."

Why the decline?

"We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial revolution really kicked into gear," McAllister replied. "These people were much more robust than we were. "We don't see that because we convert to what things were like about 30 years ago.

There's been such a stark improvement in times, technique has improved out of sight, times and heights have all improved vastly since then but if you go back further it's a different story.

"At the start of the industrial revolution there are statistics about how much harder people worked then. "The human body is very plastic and it responds to stress. We have lost 40 percent of the shafts of our long bones because we have much less of a muscular load placed upon them these days.

"We are simply not exposed to the same loads or challenges that people were in the ancient past and even in the recent past so our bodies haven't developed. Even the level of training that we do, our elite athletes, doesn't come close to replicating that. "We wouldn't want to go back to the brutality of those days but there are some things we would do well to profit from."

Unquote.

When I travelled along the line of march of Wellington’s army in the Peninsula I wondered how on earth they did it. How many of our men could do it now?

Cockle Picking For Financiers

Not long ago there was a tragedy in Morecambe Bay when a large group of people brought in to pick cockles were swept away by the incoming tide. They had little or no experience in the conditions at the Bay and neither did their gang masters. They were there to serve the demands of distant traders and others in the food supply business.

For those who know it or know about it the Bay is notoriously dangerous and can catch out even the most aware and cautious who go out on to the mud flats. There is the unpredictable movement of the waters coming down from the watershed going out by changing channels.

There is the mud and sand which is constantly changing its shape, form and mix. Above all are the tides which can go far out leading to a false sense of security. Because when they come back in they are racing faster than a man can run and how fast and high will depend on season, winds and water.

So those who know the Bay and depend for their incomes either on guiding people or picking cockles or taking other forms of seafood need to have knowledge, their senses fully attuned and an innate caution and readiness to leave at any hint of danger. Some may say they regulate themselves, they do not they are ruled by the forces of nature and need to know that.

If you apply this thinking to the world of finance and the politics that bears on it then explaining what has been going wrong is a simpler task. Those in charge of very many of the financial organisations, public sector or private, did not know what they were getting into. Their gang masters (senior executives) often did not tell them what they were doing, they just delivered the results.

The gang masters themselves thought it was just a question of getting there first, taking out as much as possible and that they could control the situation. The authorities who might have reminded them of the potential complexities and dangers did not.

They thought they had found ways of changing nature, or of exerting absolute control over the elements by decrees or pumping water (money) in or out according to formulae which they were assured were mathematical certainties. In the Bay, the tide tables are a useful guide but you need to look at sky, water and the mud to judge what can happen.

Financially, when the weather changed for the worse and the conditions began their usual shape changing under the various pressures then the tide started coming in and to their horror began to sweep away their pickings.

What we have going on now is that some are running, some are seeking advice on how to get out of the quicksand they are in and some are piling up mud to try to stop the water.

There may be a few that survive, others might be rescued, but who and to what effect is far from certain, the incoming tide has not finished and it is a high one.

And for us, the customers, there are going to be many fewer cockles to be had and we might not like the taste.

Animal Crackers

Out of curiosity last night put up the Channel 4 broadcast on Tony Blair and his new found riches together with a saved documentary on The Royal Welsh Regiment, point and counterpoint. Today there has been the customary dispute between those who are sceptical about Blair’s money and those who feel that he is entitled to take whatever cut he can get.

In the Blair item there was much solemn mention of millions, the estimated total and where it might all be. What struck me as strange and omitted was that the people and corporations who were shelling out were some of the wealthiest in the world. To them the odd million or two or even several millions was just small change. The recurring theme was oil and gas.

It was on a par with magnates and aristocrats of old rewarding Head Porters and Concierges of their hotels with good big tips to ensure their continuing loyalty and service. The more the programme went on the more the comparison seemed to be valid. Clearly, we already knew who his friends are and how well connected they were, so what changes?

The real question they tried to address but did not follow through was what value for his money Blair was and just how much useful work he was doing. Evidently, there was the odd favour he extracts occasionally. But too often he reminded me of being the sort of well meaning ignoramus that you dread to see coming through the door offering to help.

What is a lot more worrying is that if this is the way critical international relations and problems are being handled and by whom then the Almighty help us all. It is little wonder that bad problems worsen, people’s revolts and extremism are on the rise and communities disconnect. In the UK Blair’s bungling, ignorance and arrogance has more or less done for the UK.

That he is now trotting around poking his nose into some of the most difficult and dangerous world situations is enough to make fall on our knees and offer prayers. In that department, we can hope only that when Blair’s time comes the Almighty will be applying the needle eyes and camels test on entry with full rigour.

The programme on the Royal Welsh Regiment was interesting and balanced. The men (and women) these days seem much more restrained, polite and well behaved than in my day although their foot drill made me wince. But in the field they were doing the job very well indeed and could not be faulted.

What was intriguing was that as one of their predecessor regiments was the 24th Foot, whose 200 plus “B” Company held Rorke’s Drift in 1879 against the Zulu Impis.  Not only does the regiment celebrate rightly the heroism of those men but that it still remains a feature of their organisation. Another feature is that the regimental mascot is a billy goat who is given the rank of non commissioned officer.

There was no mention of the delicate issue of why a large column of British Troops should have gone into Zululand in the first place. This was the great age of British expansion into Africa driven by the need to be there before other European powers, a natural hunger to possess land and very importantly to have what lay underneath the land in the shape of precious metals, gemstones and other ores and metals.

At the end of watching the second programme I realised suddenly that just as in George Orwell’s book “Animal Farm” when at the end the other animals realised that they could not tell the pigs and humans apart, I was unable to work out which was the blustering Blair and which was the grazing goat.

Oil Peaks Off Peaks And Economics

As well as the financial issues at present gripping the attention of the media there is also the longer beat of change in energy, food, water and population. In The Oil Drum today is a long article of near 3000 words with diagrams going into the economics of it all.

These are not simple. It is a very complicated area which takes in the whole scale of human activity given the critical role played by oil in nearly all our economies and ways of life. The article attempts to deal with what is involved.

The link is below with the conclusions quoted.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8410#more

Conclusions Quote:

"Unless and until adaptive responses are large and fast enough to constrain the upward trend of oil prices, the primary adaptive response will be periodic economic crashes of a magnitude that depresses oil consumption and oil prices.

These have the effect of shifting consumption from incumbent consumers—the advanced economies—to the new consumers in the developing economies.

This is exactly what happened in the last recession when between the start of the recession in January 2007 and its effective end in 1Q 2011 demand rose by 4.3 million b/d in the non-OECD area and fell by 4 million b/d in the OECD area."
Unquote.

In the west we have a lifestyle and indeed social structures essentially built on an era of cheaper oil which is readily and immediately available. Also, our food supplies are largely dependent on oil based agriculture and transport.

Add to that the complex financial arrangements originally designed to deal with it which have recently taken on a life of their own, but dependent on that lifestyle and structures.

It is not looking good.

Pretty Pictures

Events have crowded in this weekend, so only some nice pictures for you to relax with.

This Is Cameron Enterprises How Can I Help You?

With all the gathering gloom and everyone climbing on the economic disaster bandwagon it is time to look at things on the lighter side. One hilarious item was the reports that our Fifty Best Businessmen will each be given a “buddy” in government to help spur our economic revival.

Given the track records of some of our designated “best” businessmen of recent years then the chances are that what the government could get would be quite the opposite. It would not be the ascent of the mountain it would be down faster than your average downhill skier could manage and just as likely to end in a pile up.

What is striking is how quaint a notion it is. In the USA they are much more organised and caring about such things. The Supreme Court, I believe, will have no truck with limiting political contributions or restricting such activity. So there is a free market for both politicians and political favours.

The difficulty in the USA is that so many politicians are damaged goods and are unreliable in use, but by and large they satisfy their purchasers. That what appears to be the US Constitution and policy turns out to be very different from what really happens out there and who benefits is another issue.

The “buddy” principle to us what look at some history is an abiding feature of British politics. Know your friends and know your enemies and anyone who is not your friend is an enemy has been the basis of political interchange in Britain these centuries past.

One of the classic illustrations of the “buddy” principle at work emerged in the Marconi Scandal of 1912. Another is how Britain dealt with some things. Rothschild gold helped win the Battle of Waterloo and in Disraeli’s time the same family coughed up £5 million overnight for us to buy into the Suez Canal and Egypt. More recently Peter Mandelson became their friend.

Country House weekends have been a fixture in all this for a very long while. At one level the Cliveden Set operated and other levels different gathering in many places.  Amongst the Tories and old Liberals it was a matter of which club you joined. Also for many Tories which Hunt and which Grouse Moor you joined could be important.

Canny businessmen would join the favoured haunts of both parties. When Labour became the other party it became more intricate. For someone around then the quiet cosying up of the business chiefs they liked to many of the government ministers was little secret.

This could put someone in an embarrassing position. My parents bought me a Gannex raincoat as a wonderful Christmas present to make up for all the treats not available during my childhood and later years. How could I explain to them that this branded me publicly as a fan of Wilson and his more opportunistic business friends?

Perhaps for a time at the end of the 20th Century all this disintegrated to some extent and there was a scramble for other ways and means. The Blair centralisation of political influence also restricted the market. Now it seems more open but the essential structures for contact more uncertain. It is unlikely to be the open and free market of the USA.

Given the performance of many call centres to day I hope our Best Businessmen do not have to put up with what ordinary people have to endure and make the right kind of contact in the right way.

If everything does go bad what happens if the Cameron Call Centre is outsourced to Shanghai?