How does the quote from Jonathan Wilmot in the previous post sit with the new Risk Appetite Investable Index fund his firm launched last month?
Just curious.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, June 09, 2008
Cashhhhhhh... don't tell anybody
"There is now the distinct possibility of a simultaneous sell-off in global bonds, equities and commodities," said Jonathan Wilmot from Credit Suisse.
... reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph (I must start to read the big-words papers). Anyhow, this is what Marc Faber said months ago. Short-term, I have a feeling DE is still on for the 'flation hors d'oeuvre, with IN as the entree.
By the way, are any managers of collective investment funds actually saying the type of thing Wilmot is saying, to their clients (not the big, favoured ones, the others, the Moms 'n' Pops)?
(htp: Karl Denninger)
... reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph (I must start to read the big-words papers). Anyhow, this is what Marc Faber said months ago. Short-term, I have a feeling DE is still on for the 'flation hors d'oeuvre, with IN as the entree.
By the way, are any managers of collective investment funds actually saying the type of thing Wilmot is saying, to their clients (not the big, favoured ones, the others, the Moms 'n' Pops)?
(htp: Karl Denninger)
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Please read this man
David Parsley writes in today's Sunday Express, a piece titled "Homes Panic Is A Bank Ploy" (not yet available on the Net for free, but look for it again soon). The content is self-evident, but please, read and believe him. Spread the word. Find more such pieces by optimistic counter-contrarians, and publicise them. Blow away all that negative thinking.
That way, I may have more time to sell my house at current ridiculous market prices, which for personal reasons I can't yet.
That way, I may have more time to sell my house at current ridiculous market prices, which for personal reasons I can't yet.
Does State expenditure inflate the market?
Charles Moore comments on Jonathan Ross' £18m 3-year deal with the BBC:
... even if it is a wonderful idea to pay Mr Ross roughly 30 times more (annualised) than the Prime Minister and 20 times more than the Governor of the Bank of England out of what is, after all, tax, it is obvious rubbish that this does not push up the market. If the BBC were not competing in this field, Mr Ross’s price to commercial channels would plummet.
Deplorably, Mr Ross is unbelievably coarse, which sends a message to his (relatively) young audience. Peter Hitchens suspects that this crassness is a cynically avaricious pretence:
Ross talks on TV in an arrogant sort of loutspeak.
I wonder if he talks like that when he’s dealing with his lawyers and his accountants.
Now that would be a fly-on-the-wall documentary to screen next to Ross' show.
So, celeb wages inflated and manners undermined by spendthrift public services.
Meanwhile, Liz Jones takes a very laudable interest in the young, especially those rotting away in the complex trap of social security benefits. And again, a market may be distorted by public money:
Her room is damp, sparsely furnished, has a stinking, threadbare carpet, and Paris mostly sits on her bed, terrified to walk to the shared bathroom in case one of the boys who slouches around outside harasses her.
Drugs are dealt openly in the corridors. Each week, ‘the council’ (I’ve never heard her use the words ‘government’, ‘Labour’ or ‘Gordon Brown’) pays the £330 rent (yes, that is £1,430 a month, more than my mortgage repayments) for her box room direct to the private landlord; on top of that, Paris is given £47 a week to live on.
That is, she was, until the council got wind she had got off her backside and found a job, just three days a week, in a clothes shop in Oxford Street (she would have loved, she told me once, to have been a fashion designer).
Although her pay is less than her rent, she has been bombarded with letters and forms, too complicated for anyone, let alone someone with dyslexia, to fill in, demanding six months’ back rent.
She is now being threatened with eviction.
The negative reinforcement is too obvious to summarise, but look at this young girl's rent as a proportion of her total "income": 87.5%!
Compare that with this, from the Guardian in December 2007:
The CML said a typical first-time buyer paid 20.6% of their income to service their mortgage in October, up from 20.4% in September, while for those moving house it rose to 17.6% from 17.5%. The figures are the highest recorded since 1991 and 1992.
There are now very many people (about 4 million) on some form of housing benefit. Is it not possible that rents, and consequently housing valuations, have been grossly distorted by such interventions? Isn't there some other way to house people without creating opportunities for modern Rachman types?
... even if it is a wonderful idea to pay Mr Ross roughly 30 times more (annualised) than the Prime Minister and 20 times more than the Governor of the Bank of England out of what is, after all, tax, it is obvious rubbish that this does not push up the market. If the BBC were not competing in this field, Mr Ross’s price to commercial channels would plummet.
Deplorably, Mr Ross is unbelievably coarse, which sends a message to his (relatively) young audience. Peter Hitchens suspects that this crassness is a cynically avaricious pretence:
Ross talks on TV in an arrogant sort of loutspeak.
I wonder if he talks like that when he’s dealing with his lawyers and his accountants.
Now that would be a fly-on-the-wall documentary to screen next to Ross' show.
So, celeb wages inflated and manners undermined by spendthrift public services.
Meanwhile, Liz Jones takes a very laudable interest in the young, especially those rotting away in the complex trap of social security benefits. And again, a market may be distorted by public money:
Her room is damp, sparsely furnished, has a stinking, threadbare carpet, and Paris mostly sits on her bed, terrified to walk to the shared bathroom in case one of the boys who slouches around outside harasses her.
Drugs are dealt openly in the corridors. Each week, ‘the council’ (I’ve never heard her use the words ‘government’, ‘Labour’ or ‘Gordon Brown’) pays the £330 rent (yes, that is £1,430 a month, more than my mortgage repayments) for her box room direct to the private landlord; on top of that, Paris is given £47 a week to live on.
That is, she was, until the council got wind she had got off her backside and found a job, just three days a week, in a clothes shop in Oxford Street (she would have loved, she told me once, to have been a fashion designer).
Although her pay is less than her rent, she has been bombarded with letters and forms, too complicated for anyone, let alone someone with dyslexia, to fill in, demanding six months’ back rent.
She is now being threatened with eviction.
The negative reinforcement is too obvious to summarise, but look at this young girl's rent as a proportion of her total "income": 87.5%!
Compare that with this, from the Guardian in December 2007:
The CML said a typical first-time buyer paid 20.6% of their income to service their mortgage in October, up from 20.4% in September, while for those moving house it rose to 17.6% from 17.5%. The figures are the highest recorded since 1991 and 1992.
There are now very many people (about 4 million) on some form of housing benefit. Is it not possible that rents, and consequently housing valuations, have been grossly distorted by such interventions? Isn't there some other way to house people without creating opportunities for modern Rachman types?
For the record - a British MP speaking in Parliament on the EU's legislative control of the UK
From Hansard's records of Parliamentary debates (click title above for link) (htp: Peter Hitchens in the Mail On Sunday newspaper):
3 Jun 2008 : Column 644
Members of Parliament (Pay and Responsibilities)
3.35 pm
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Senior Salaries Review Body to take account of transfers of powers between Parliament and European Union institutions when making recommendations on the pay of Members of Parliament; and for connected purposes.
In virtually every occupation, it is recognised that pay should reflect responsibilities. If people receive more responsibilities, they get higher pay. If they move to a post with fewer responsibilities, they expect to receive lower pay. The same should be true of Parliament. If, as is contemplated under the Bill that deals with the European constitutional treaty, this House hands over more of its powers to European institutions, MPs’ remuneration should reflect that diminution of their responsibilities. If, on the other hand, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has promised, Parliament regains some powers, such as those over social and employment policies that were conceded in the Amsterdam treaty, that should be reflected positively when MPs’ pay is assessed.
This issue is important because Parliament is considering transferring a significant slice of its powers on energy, foreign policy, immigration and several other areas to European institutions under the Lisbon treaty. A substantial transfer of powers has already occurred under previous treaties, and this House has ceded powers on a lesser scale to devolved Parliaments and to the judiciary under the Human Rights Act 1998. The German Government estimate that more than 80 per cent. of German laws are now decided at a European level. Our own Trade Minister has admitted that
“around half of all UK legislation with an impact on business, charities and the voluntary sector stems from legislation agreed by Ministers in Brussels.”—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 29 June 2006; Vol. 683, c. WA184.]
I have heard hon. Members claim that only 10 per cent. of our laws are made in Brussels—a figure that they attribute to a Library paper, but that paper says no such thing. It remarks that the number of statutory instruments laid under the European Communities Act 1972 amounts to about 10 per cent. of all the statutory instruments passed by the House, but points out that EU statutory instruments typically enact a whole directive, which is often the equivalent of an Act of primary legislation, whereas domestic statutory instruments implement regulations. To compare the two is like comparing apples and pears, or rather pumpkins and pears given the disparity in their size. It also ignores the most plentiful fruit that comes from the European orchard—regulations, most of which are never considered by this House and which hon. Members find difficult even to obtain.
The total scale of EU legislation is enormous. Last year, the EU passed 177 directives, which are more or less equivalent to our Acts of Parliament, and 2,033 regulations, which become directly enforceable in this place, not to mention 1,045 decisions. Even that huge tally ignores the extent to which our powers are diminished by our inability to do things that we would like to do because they would conflict with European law. When I was a Minister, officials would frequently say, “No, Minister, you can’t do that”, because something was within the exclusive competence of the European Union.
If the Lisbon treaty goes through, a further salami slice of powers will be transferred to the European institutions. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who served with distinction on the European constitutional convention and who knows more about the implications of the Lisbon treaty than almost anyone else in the House, except for my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), recently told the Fabian Society:
“If the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified and devolution...continues apace, in fifteen to twenty years this House of Commons will have only two functions...to raise taxes and...to authorise war”.
She went on to say that we are making “fewer and fewer decisions that matter” to people’s daily lives, and that she could not tell her constituents that the buck stops here.
Admittedly, declaring wars kept Parliament pretty busy under the previous Prime Minister, as does raising taxes under the current incumbent of No. 10. However, our constituents want us to wage fewer wars, raise fewer taxes and focus on the huge range of issues that affect their daily lives, over which they assume and hope that we retain the powers that they pay us to exercise on their behalf.
Few voters, or even Members of this House, fully realise how many powers have been, or are about to be, transferred elsewhere. There are three reasons for this. The first is that Governments of all persuasions deny that any significant powers are being transferred. The second is that, once powers have been transferred, Ministers engage in a charade of pretence that they still retain those powers. Even when introducing measures that they are obliged to bring in as a result of an EU directive, they behave as though the initiative were their own.
Indeed, Ministers often end up nobly accepting responsibility for laws that they actually opposed when they were being negotiated in Brussels. They took the rap for costly and troublesome home improvement packs—which have added to the woes of the housing market—even though they were actually mandated by a Brussels directive. Similarly, they took the rap for fortnightly bin collections, hospital reconfiguration and a number of other measures, even though they had all been triggered by directives from Brussels. At first sight, it is odd that Ministers—who, in this Government, are not normally slow to blame others—should nobly defend and accept responsibility for Brussels’ legislative progeny, in whose conception they have often played little part. They prefer to claim paternity rather than admit impotence—the fate of the cuckold across the ages.
The third reason is that the transfer of power occurs not all in one go but by a process of salami-slicing, and it is easy to close our eyes to what is happening. As a result, there is a danger of Parliament sleepwalking into becoming little more than a provincial assembly. If that is what is happening, we should be paid accordingly—just as district councillors get less than county councillors, and county councillors get less than Members of the devolved Assemblies.
I do not have a masochistic desire to see MPs’ pay cut, but I want still less to see our powers diminish. The best way to prevent the latter might be to link pay to responsibilities. I do not know any Member of Parliament who entered Parliament to become financially better off. None the less, just as the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully, so the prospect of finding our pockets a bit emptier at the end of the month—and having to justify that to our spouses—might wake up those who have shut their eyes to what is happening. If we do not face up to what is happening, we will find ourselves being progressively relegated to what Bagehot called the dignified part of the constitution. As Tony Benn once rhetorically asked:
“I wonder how long it took for the yeomen of the guard to realise that they were no longer part of the regular army.”
My Bill is designed to provide a wake-up call whenever we risk going further down that route, although I accept that it has little chance of becoming law in this Parliament. Those who support the transfer of power from here to supranational institutions should logically accept that our pay should reflect the diminution of our responsibilities. But, strangely, all the Euro-enthusiasts whom I asked to sponsor the Bill declined to do so without explaining why. Too many Members are happy to avert their eyes from what is happening, so long as they retain the prestige and emoluments that were appropriate to a fully sovereign Parliament. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas.
If any Labour Members oppose the Bill, I hope that they will come out and object to it here and now, rather than trying to dispose of it by subterfuge one Friday morning. I look forward to hearing them argue for having their cake and eating it. I doubt that they would convince many of their constituents that, unlike any in other occupation, MPs’ pay should be divorced from their responsibilities.
Hugh Bayley (City of York) (Lab): We have just heard a witty and amusing speech. I was not aware that this issue was going to be raised today, but I was sitting in the Chamber listening to Transport questions and suddenly the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) rose to his feet and made this proposal. He said that he had asked a number of Euro-enthusiasts to back his Bill; I regard myself as a Euro-enthusiast, but he did not ask me. Had he done so, he would have given me advance notice that he was going to make this nonsensical proposal, and I would have been able to prepare a better speech. However, I shall certainly try to rise to the challenge that he has thrown across the Chamber.
The right hon. Gentleman argues that the volume of legislation to be considered by the House will decline as more and more powers are passed across to the European Parliament, but he knows as well as any other Member that the volume of legislation considered by this House continues to increase year by year. We have never suggested that that is an argument for increasing Members’ pay pro rata—
Stephen Pound (Ealing, North) (Lab): That is a good idea.
Hugh Bayley: I note what my hon. Friend says. Nor should the passing of some legislative powers from this House to Europe be an argument for moving in the opposite direction.
I must say seriously to Members of the House that I do not think that the European Union provides a good model for the remuneration of Members of Parliament. I have just checked with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who is a sponsor of the Bill and well versed in EU matters, and she tells me that EU spend is about 0.5 per cent. of EU wealth. The spend of our national Government is probably about 40 per cent. of our national wealth, which is 50 or 60 times as much as the EU spend.
If the right hon. Gentleman is arguing that there is a serious transfer of financial responsibility from the House to Europe, that is just not based on fact. The Lisbon treaty not only does not change that fact, but it delegates some powers back to national Parliaments. The public want to see more information about MPs’ pay and allowances, but they would get less information if our pay was tied into and buried under bureaucracy from Europe. Surprisingly to my way of thinking, the Bill is proposed by a staunch opponent of Europe whom I would have thought could see that point himself.
The right hon. Gentleman is making a political point about Europe, not a serious proposal for greater transparency in the pay of Members of Parliament and greater accountability to the public for Members of this Parliament. I hope that the Bill does not receive its First Reading.
Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 23 (Motions for leave to bring Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Peter Lilley, Mr. Michael Ancram, Mr. Peter Bone, Mr. Graham Brady, Mr. Frank Field, Mr. James Gray, Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory, Mr. Edward Leigh, Mr. John Redwood, Ms Gisela Stuart and Mr. Charles Walker.
Members of Parliament (pay and Responsibilities)
Mr. Peter Lilley accordingly presented a Bill to require the Senior Salaries Review Body to take account of transfers of powers between Parliament and European Union institutions when making recommendations on the pay of Members of Parliament; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 17 October, and to be printed [Bill 113].
3 Jun 2008 : Column 644
Members of Parliament (Pay and Responsibilities)
3.35 pm
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Senior Salaries Review Body to take account of transfers of powers between Parliament and European Union institutions when making recommendations on the pay of Members of Parliament; and for connected purposes.
In virtually every occupation, it is recognised that pay should reflect responsibilities. If people receive more responsibilities, they get higher pay. If they move to a post with fewer responsibilities, they expect to receive lower pay. The same should be true of Parliament. If, as is contemplated under the Bill that deals with the European constitutional treaty, this House hands over more of its powers to European institutions, MPs’ remuneration should reflect that diminution of their responsibilities. If, on the other hand, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has promised, Parliament regains some powers, such as those over social and employment policies that were conceded in the Amsterdam treaty, that should be reflected positively when MPs’ pay is assessed.
This issue is important because Parliament is considering transferring a significant slice of its powers on energy, foreign policy, immigration and several other areas to European institutions under the Lisbon treaty. A substantial transfer of powers has already occurred under previous treaties, and this House has ceded powers on a lesser scale to devolved Parliaments and to the judiciary under the Human Rights Act 1998. The German Government estimate that more than 80 per cent. of German laws are now decided at a European level. Our own Trade Minister has admitted that
“around half of all UK legislation with an impact on business, charities and the voluntary sector stems from legislation agreed by Ministers in Brussels.”—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 29 June 2006; Vol. 683, c. WA184.]
I have heard hon. Members claim that only 10 per cent. of our laws are made in Brussels—a figure that they attribute to a Library paper, but that paper says no such thing. It remarks that the number of statutory instruments laid under the European Communities Act 1972 amounts to about 10 per cent. of all the statutory instruments passed by the House, but points out that EU statutory instruments typically enact a whole directive, which is often the equivalent of an Act of primary legislation, whereas domestic statutory instruments implement regulations. To compare the two is like comparing apples and pears, or rather pumpkins and pears given the disparity in their size. It also ignores the most plentiful fruit that comes from the European orchard—regulations, most of which are never considered by this House and which hon. Members find difficult even to obtain.
The total scale of EU legislation is enormous. Last year, the EU passed 177 directives, which are more or less equivalent to our Acts of Parliament, and 2,033 regulations, which become directly enforceable in this place, not to mention 1,045 decisions. Even that huge tally ignores the extent to which our powers are diminished by our inability to do things that we would like to do because they would conflict with European law. When I was a Minister, officials would frequently say, “No, Minister, you can’t do that”, because something was within the exclusive competence of the European Union.
If the Lisbon treaty goes through, a further salami slice of powers will be transferred to the European institutions. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who served with distinction on the European constitutional convention and who knows more about the implications of the Lisbon treaty than almost anyone else in the House, except for my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), recently told the Fabian Society:
“If the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified and devolution...continues apace, in fifteen to twenty years this House of Commons will have only two functions...to raise taxes and...to authorise war”.
She went on to say that we are making “fewer and fewer decisions that matter” to people’s daily lives, and that she could not tell her constituents that the buck stops here.
Admittedly, declaring wars kept Parliament pretty busy under the previous Prime Minister, as does raising taxes under the current incumbent of No. 10. However, our constituents want us to wage fewer wars, raise fewer taxes and focus on the huge range of issues that affect their daily lives, over which they assume and hope that we retain the powers that they pay us to exercise on their behalf.
Few voters, or even Members of this House, fully realise how many powers have been, or are about to be, transferred elsewhere. There are three reasons for this. The first is that Governments of all persuasions deny that any significant powers are being transferred. The second is that, once powers have been transferred, Ministers engage in a charade of pretence that they still retain those powers. Even when introducing measures that they are obliged to bring in as a result of an EU directive, they behave as though the initiative were their own.
Indeed, Ministers often end up nobly accepting responsibility for laws that they actually opposed when they were being negotiated in Brussels. They took the rap for costly and troublesome home improvement packs—which have added to the woes of the housing market—even though they were actually mandated by a Brussels directive. Similarly, they took the rap for fortnightly bin collections, hospital reconfiguration and a number of other measures, even though they had all been triggered by directives from Brussels. At first sight, it is odd that Ministers—who, in this Government, are not normally slow to blame others—should nobly defend and accept responsibility for Brussels’ legislative progeny, in whose conception they have often played little part. They prefer to claim paternity rather than admit impotence—the fate of the cuckold across the ages.
The third reason is that the transfer of power occurs not all in one go but by a process of salami-slicing, and it is easy to close our eyes to what is happening. As a result, there is a danger of Parliament sleepwalking into becoming little more than a provincial assembly. If that is what is happening, we should be paid accordingly—just as district councillors get less than county councillors, and county councillors get less than Members of the devolved Assemblies.
I do not have a masochistic desire to see MPs’ pay cut, but I want still less to see our powers diminish. The best way to prevent the latter might be to link pay to responsibilities. I do not know any Member of Parliament who entered Parliament to become financially better off. None the less, just as the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully, so the prospect of finding our pockets a bit emptier at the end of the month—and having to justify that to our spouses—might wake up those who have shut their eyes to what is happening. If we do not face up to what is happening, we will find ourselves being progressively relegated to what Bagehot called the dignified part of the constitution. As Tony Benn once rhetorically asked:
“I wonder how long it took for the yeomen of the guard to realise that they were no longer part of the regular army.”
My Bill is designed to provide a wake-up call whenever we risk going further down that route, although I accept that it has little chance of becoming law in this Parliament. Those who support the transfer of power from here to supranational institutions should logically accept that our pay should reflect the diminution of our responsibilities. But, strangely, all the Euro-enthusiasts whom I asked to sponsor the Bill declined to do so without explaining why. Too many Members are happy to avert their eyes from what is happening, so long as they retain the prestige and emoluments that were appropriate to a fully sovereign Parliament. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas.
If any Labour Members oppose the Bill, I hope that they will come out and object to it here and now, rather than trying to dispose of it by subterfuge one Friday morning. I look forward to hearing them argue for having their cake and eating it. I doubt that they would convince many of their constituents that, unlike any in other occupation, MPs’ pay should be divorced from their responsibilities.
Hugh Bayley (City of York) (Lab): We have just heard a witty and amusing speech. I was not aware that this issue was going to be raised today, but I was sitting in the Chamber listening to Transport questions and suddenly the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) rose to his feet and made this proposal. He said that he had asked a number of Euro-enthusiasts to back his Bill; I regard myself as a Euro-enthusiast, but he did not ask me. Had he done so, he would have given me advance notice that he was going to make this nonsensical proposal, and I would have been able to prepare a better speech. However, I shall certainly try to rise to the challenge that he has thrown across the Chamber.
The right hon. Gentleman argues that the volume of legislation to be considered by the House will decline as more and more powers are passed across to the European Parliament, but he knows as well as any other Member that the volume of legislation considered by this House continues to increase year by year. We have never suggested that that is an argument for increasing Members’ pay pro rata—
Stephen Pound (Ealing, North) (Lab): That is a good idea.
Hugh Bayley: I note what my hon. Friend says. Nor should the passing of some legislative powers from this House to Europe be an argument for moving in the opposite direction.
I must say seriously to Members of the House that I do not think that the European Union provides a good model for the remuneration of Members of Parliament. I have just checked with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who is a sponsor of the Bill and well versed in EU matters, and she tells me that EU spend is about 0.5 per cent. of EU wealth. The spend of our national Government is probably about 40 per cent. of our national wealth, which is 50 or 60 times as much as the EU spend.
If the right hon. Gentleman is arguing that there is a serious transfer of financial responsibility from the House to Europe, that is just not based on fact. The Lisbon treaty not only does not change that fact, but it delegates some powers back to national Parliaments. The public want to see more information about MPs’ pay and allowances, but they would get less information if our pay was tied into and buried under bureaucracy from Europe. Surprisingly to my way of thinking, the Bill is proposed by a staunch opponent of Europe whom I would have thought could see that point himself.
The right hon. Gentleman is making a political point about Europe, not a serious proposal for greater transparency in the pay of Members of Parliament and greater accountability to the public for Members of this Parliament. I hope that the Bill does not receive its First Reading.
Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 23 (Motions for leave to bring Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Peter Lilley, Mr. Michael Ancram, Mr. Peter Bone, Mr. Graham Brady, Mr. Frank Field, Mr. James Gray, Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory, Mr. Edward Leigh, Mr. John Redwood, Ms Gisela Stuart and Mr. Charles Walker.
Members of Parliament (pay and Responsibilities)
Mr. Peter Lilley accordingly presented a Bill to require the Senior Salaries Review Body to take account of transfers of powers between Parliament and European Union institutions when making recommendations on the pay of Members of Parliament; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 17 October, and to be printed [Bill 113].
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Stock up your larder
Reading "The Grumbler" today, I was struck by Rosie Boycott's article on our vulnerability to oil and food shortages, particularly now that so much of our food supply is dependent on the supermarkets' just-in-time logistics.
I believe the Mormons have a rule that members of their church must have 12 months' security set up for their families - I remember an old colour supplement article with a picture of a Mormon sitting on a year's supply of baked beans. Doesn't seem so daft now - and it's worth remembering why landlocked Utah is the Seagull State.
More generally, there is now a feeling that the government has failed to prepare for material and financial shocks. Genesis 41 has been obscurely referenced by George Osborne ("Our competitors used the fat years to prepare for the lean years"), though back in 2002 Treasury Committee member Dr Nick Palmer was using the same analogy, but in Gordon Brown's favour ("in the first years [Gordon Brown] repaid a lot of government debt so as to give us a really strong basis for difficult times as and when they arose").
On the financial front, I think the government cracked in 2003, when extra liquidity (simplified graph here) began to be released into the system, over-hydrating the housing market. Radix malorum est cupiditas, and that applies here if you interpret "cupiditas" in the general sense of over-attachment to worldly things, especially to power and its accompaniments.
I believe the Mormons have a rule that members of their church must have 12 months' security set up for their families - I remember an old colour supplement article with a picture of a Mormon sitting on a year's supply of baked beans. Doesn't seem so daft now - and it's worth remembering why landlocked Utah is the Seagull State.
More generally, there is now a feeling that the government has failed to prepare for material and financial shocks. Genesis 41 has been obscurely referenced by George Osborne ("Our competitors used the fat years to prepare for the lean years"), though back in 2002 Treasury Committee member Dr Nick Palmer was using the same analogy, but in Gordon Brown's favour ("in the first years [Gordon Brown] repaid a lot of government debt so as to give us a really strong basis for difficult times as and when they arose").
On the financial front, I think the government cracked in 2003, when extra liquidity (simplified graph here) began to be released into the system, over-hydrating the housing market. Radix malorum est cupiditas, and that applies here if you interpret "cupiditas" in the general sense of over-attachment to worldly things, especially to power and its accompaniments.
Buffett eyes Europe
A most interesting article by Matthew Lynn in this week's Spectator. It's certainly worth reading in full, but here's a few points and questions arising:
- Buffett's got $35 billion in cash to go a-shopping, and thinks Europe is more promising than the emerging markets - partly because Europe is already in recession.
- Have European companies endured because many have remained family-owned? Is the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism too erratic and destructive?
- How important are hunches in investing? Lynn says, "Buffett doesn’t believe in extended due diligence or complex financial models. He chooses his investments based on what he feels about the people in charge, and whether he likes their products." And recently, George Soros said that for all his research, he pays attention to his own psychosomatic backaches.
- How much vital business information is conveyed - or betrayed - by tone of voice and body language? Mark McCormack said that he liked to go to meetings on his own, so that he wouldn't have to worry about unconscious non-verbal signals given away by an underling's reactions. For the same reason, he loved the opposition to come with company. Is the most important bit of investment reserach the site visit?
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