Catalan Briefing (alternative), by JD

As your newly appointed Catalan correspondent, I feel duty bound to bring you the latest musical news -

1. the flight of the payaso (=clown)


2. a cry for help


3. the Barcelona F.C 'himno' (played before every game in the Nou Camp)

Catalonia - not so simple... by JD

A few more thoughts based on my reading of many of the Spanish newspapers as well as some phone conversations with friends in Spain.  My friends vary in other opinions from 'not quite reactionary' to 'not quite republican' but they are unanimous in regarding Puigdemont as deranged! This evening's news that Puigdemont thinks the Spanish government has carried out a coup d'etat against Catalonia is proof that he is living in a parallel universe...

Nice touch to have TinTin observing the landing! Elsewhere on the news pages a previous catalan leader, Josep Tarradellas,  is quoted as saying in his memoirs that 'in politics, everything is acceptable except ridicule' Once you become an object of ridicule you are finished. 

The Spanish newspapers online have readers' comments, as they do in the UK. A large percentage of those comments regard 'El Puchy' as a joke. In fact I saw in one of the papers a photograph of a Puigdemont Halloween costume complete with baggy suit and oversize 'Beatles' wig.

This scorn and contempt began after Puigdemont had called a meeting of his political party at which he was expected to announce regional elections. While party members assembled and waited for his announcement he was in a car travelling to France and, after boarding an aeroplane in Marseille, he turned up in Brussels to plead his case 'at the heart of the EU' instead of before his own people. He ran away from the conflict which he had created. At that point he lost all credibility. His own supporters were extremely angry and even called him a traitor. And then Rajoy called the election for him.

 Last week the former Spanish PM, Felipe Gonzalez, said that Puigdemont running away to Brussels was an act of cowardice. In Spanish that is a very serious accusation. You can insult a man by calling him 'cabron' or 'coño' or say he is 'de puta madre' and they will have minimal impact but to call him a coward will produce a volatile reaction because that is to call into question his manhood. Many of the online comments have reflected this view.

There have also been more than a few comments about who is paying for this long and expensive stay in Brussels. "Is it coming from an anonymous bank account in Andorra or from the famous 3%, (a reference to the backhander extracted on all public contracts in Catalonia.)"  The two previous Catalan parliamentary leaders, Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas are both currently under investigation for fraud and two of Pujol's sons have served prison terms in connection with the aforementioned 3%. So it is logical to expect that people will ask those questions of Puigdemont.

Another thing I have noticed in the Spanish press is the exasperation and irritation at how the press of other countries view Spain in terms of stereotypes; flamenco and bullfighting and sunshine and vino. But invariably they view Spain in terms of the Civil War and through rose tinted glasses. They rely on the romantic fiction perpetrated by Orwell, Hemingway and going back as far as Washington Irving. And it is very definitely romantic fiction! 
Even the historian Paul Preston finally acknowledged on ‘Start the Week’ on Radio 4 in 2012  that Orwell's book, Homage to Catalonia was about as relevant to the Spanish Civil War as Spike Milligan’s Hitler: My Part in his Downfall was to World War Two. 

The foreign press and commentators all rely on the same tired clichés about Spain: they focus on ideals instead of common sense. They are more in love with Don Quijote than with Sancho Panza. They ignore the reality and the seriousness of the current farce, a tragic farce.

"The escapade has damaged those former ministers who faced up to their responsibilities in Spain by seemingly creating a push for them to be subject to strict precautionary measures because they constituted a flight risk. Indeed, eight of them are currently being held in pre-trial custody. Puigdemont’s behavior must be entertaining for some, but it is tragic for those who were unlucky enough to be in government with him.

"The decision by Puigdemont and his ex-ministers to call themselves a government in exile is laughable in that they are responsible for nothing, in contrast with the Catalan and republican governments based overseas during the rule of Franco. They oversaw the protection of exiles, assets and archives, while also being responsible for institutional relations with other countries that recognized them."

"The comparison between the restrained 40-year resistance of the former premier of Catalonia Josep Tarradellas and the shameful adolescent blunders of his successor over the course of just one week is a sad one for both Catalonia, and for a Spain that is committed to an autonomous and pro-autonomy Catalan region."

https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/11/07/inenglish/1510043525_086434.html

FRIDAY MUSIC: Mighty Northumbria, by JD

Separatism and independence seem to be the current fad. Long Live Freedonia! Long live Sloganism! Well, now is the hour! It is time to restore the ancient Kingdom of Northumbria! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Northumbria

And, unlike Catalonia, Northumbria has the historical legitimacy of having been an actual Kingdom with a long line of real Kings who lived in Bamburgh Castle. Time to display the heritage of music and poetry and dance.













"Dance To Your Daddy" (When the boat comes in) - embed disabled, please click for link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hO1GPGtetw






Update: JD sends a bonus track...

The wand of collusion

Look at the modern Labour Party and ask yourself:

If each Labour MP had a wand that when waved, would magically create for all their voters reasonably-paid jobs, good housing, well-disciplined and talent-stretching education, and good health practices rather than burgeoning sickness services, with the additional result that the politician was no longer needed...

... which of them would wave that wand?

I'd say, people like Frank Field and Jess Phillips, yes - but Blair, Mandelson etc?

Isn't it the case that some "reformers" do enough to justify the need for themselves, and not so much as to make themselves redundant?

From what I read of the Fabians, they started out as posh people discussing "doing good" unto the lower classes without the slightest desire to elevate the latter to their own level - in fact they had quite an enthusiasm for eugenics. So really it was about power - themselves as gardeners, weeding and pruning their social inferiors.

And as for people like "Tony" - didn't he do well out of "doing good"? Not just what in the Seventies was called an "ego trip", but money and status. Then there's the serpentine Peter, and the other managerial types, both smooth and rough, who had a d**n good career out of it all - the nearest I ever came to hearing from Roy Hattersley was when his megaphone car toured the constituency to say so long and thanks for all the fish.

Yet on the other side of the Commons, what do we see? Friends of property developers and money-shufflers, gatherers of directorships and inside tips. With honourable exceptions, I suspect that many would wave their wand to vanish the great unwashed and make piles of money appear; or alternatively, to create millions more poor, MD-enriching people, so long as they were kept well away from where the ruling elite live.

I'm beginning to see some points of cross-party resemblance.

I'm not clever enough to imagine what the LibDems might magick. Though looking at the education and careers of the Cleggs one can see what the wand has done for themselves, if not for others.

The masks slipped in the Palace of Westminster when Cameron led the applause for Blair, and when both sides stamped on electoral reform (proposed by the LibDems, but mostly for their own purposes).

Getting out of the EU is just the start.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Van Morrison, by JD

No introduction necessary for this man........ "take me back to when the world made more sense"

A demographic question

Energy Trading: Why We Need Those Big Swinging Dicks

Our host asked me to pen this piece - and even came up with the title ... [BSD is © Nick Leeson - Ed.]

He'd seen reference to how Nicola Sturgeon was being disingenuous when she announced her new publicly-owned Scottish energy company saying it would have the advantage of not needing to pay "corporate bonuses":  but that her careful choice of words meant she knew full well there would need to be the customary big bonuses on offer to the energy traders involved.  How so? - couldn't energy trading be automated?  Might I be able to explain ..?

Well, many commodity markets are indeed already characterised by a lot of algorithmic trading.   But the gas and electricity markets are different (and also, for idiosyncratic reasons of market design, Brent crude oil at the 'spot' end of the market - though not in the longer dated, more liquid forwards).  It was once considered by some academics that gas, and still more electricity, was a paradigm case of a commodity that couldn't be traded (for "reasons" I won't bore you with, because they were fallacious). 

Turns out though, it's not impossible to trade them: this was proved triumphantly by *ahem* Enron, as a pure act of intellectual conviction and commercial will.  But it is more difficult - and in the case of electricity, much more difficult. The primary reason is that in most electricity markets there is virtually no inventory to act as a buffer in the market, so that relatively slight physical events (which happen all the time, with major events not uncommon) within and around the extensive infrastructure can have a rapid and profound impact on the supply / demand balance. In those few electricity markets where there is an effective buffer - which mostly means those such as Norway that are dominated by hydro-electricity, where the buffer is represented by water stored in dams and 'ponds' at the top of the mountain - trading is concomitantly easier.  Gas suffers from a similar, though less pronounced problem of limited inventory.

A secondary (and related) reason is the 'granularity'.   Copper, for example, trades in units of one month: gas is traded by the day; and electricity by the hour, or even the half-hour.  The gas grid needs to be balanced daily; and the power grid requires balancing in real time.  There are many, many other related contributory factors besides, making gas and electricity highly dependent on more than just the usual financial principles.  In consequence, gas and electricity prices (wholesale / traded markets) are hugely more volatile than has ever been encountered elsewhere - an order of magnitude more volatile in the case of gas, and often two orders more in electricity.  Phenomena like the growing amount of intermittent wind power in the 'fleet' only serve to make this more extreme.

Until, then, the advent of that Holy Grail - an effective and efficient form of electricity storage on a large scale(1)  - successful trading in these markets requires a unique blend of classical 'financial' trading skills, plus deep understanding of the very extensive physical / infrastructure aspects and their complex dynamics.   As a rule, financial traders hate getting their hands dirty with the physical stuff; and physical specialists don't understand the financial stuff (which can be deeply counter-intuitive to the novice, even the highly numerate novice, as most engineers are). 

So the winners - who really clean up - are those who can be arsed to acquire both sets of skills.   The amateurs get destroyed.  Some household-name big companies have really screwed this up over the years.  Many companies actually outsource their trading requirements to specialists - and pay a nice mark-up, but can then say "we don't need those nasty traders(2) & we don't pay those immoral bonuses".  But of course they do, really - like retaining an overseas 'agent' to do the dirty business with the backhanders. 

I wonder which route the pious Sturgeon is going down?   Sadiq Khan had promised to set up a municipal energy company for London, but seems to have thought better of it which, in my view, is wise.  Keep those big swinging dicks out of sight of the innocent Scottish politician ...

ND
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(1) Mr Musk has a very, very long way to go yet.  He's a great BS-merchant, though.

(2) The traders' culture is abhorrent to the engineering culture that quite naturally dominates the energy co.s.   There are many points of conflict.  When an energy co eventually realises it needs a trading floor (and be willing to pay serious bonuses), it can cause truly dreadful frictions.  Traders and the like have been heard to call the old-timers "Dougs" - dumb old utility guys ...  and since this is a family blog (is that right, Sackers?), I won't relate what the engineers call the traders.