Scr*w the savers - even harder!

By email yesterday, from National Savings and Investments to financial advisers:

NS&I confirm Index-linked Savings Certificates to move from RPI to CPI From 1 May 2019, existing holders of Index-linked Savings Certificates who renew into a new term will receive index-linking based on the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation, rather than the Retail Prices Index (RPI). This change recognises the reduced use of RPI by successive governments and is in line with NS&I’s need to balance the interests of its savers, the cost to the taxpayer, and the stability of the broader financial services sector. By indexing new investments to the Consumer Prices Index, savers who hold this product will still have protection from inflation, while at the same time the cost to the taxpayer is forecast to reduce by £610 million over the next five years.

I have a better idea: why not give us some of those insider investment tips that MPs are sometimes anecdotally reported to get from their colleagues and contacts?

Weekend Wonders: Dust

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-best-electron-microscope-photos

Sir Philip Green: Wrong Fuss

So Sir Philip is alleged to have been a naughty boy in the hanky-panky department, outed by the ever-lovely Peter Hain who used Parliamentary privilege in the only way it really should be used, delving into the squalid sex lives of alpha males - whose behaviour is no different from the rest of their ilk throughout history.

It's not as though MPs themselves sometimes misbehave, like for example Tom Driberg, who as I recall reading, once importuned a fellow MP in a House of Commons lift, at a time when homosexuality was still a crime in English law. And in Driberg's case, that is the least of his peccadilloes, if rumours of his having been a KGB agent are true.

Yes, perspective is needed. If our news media had any sense of perspective they wouldn't waste time bigging-up this outing as a blow for Press freedom.

No, they would be revisiting the recent news about Debenhams store closures, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs (with ample knock-on economic effects); they would discuss the fortunes and business strategy of its parent, the Arcadia Group, and the beneficial owners (largely, Tina Green, Sir Philip's wife); and musing on how things might have gone for the retail conglomerate if Sir Philip hadn't loaded a billion-pound-plus debt round its neck in order to pay out (offshore) a monster bonus not justified by the profit made that year (2005, when a billion was a lot of money).*

Consequences can take time to mature. Maybe things might have turned out differently; maybe, in the clickbuy environment of today, not; who knows? But maybe that cash could have been reinvested to help Arcadia adapt to changing business conditions.

Ah well, underpants are so much more interesting!

__________________________________________
*
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2009/04/who-ruins-britain.html
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2009/09/and-another-thing.html
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2011/11/sir-philip-green-and-homing-chickens.html

FRIDAY MUSIC: Carla Bley, by JD

You may not know Carla Bley but she is well known to jazz aficionados and at the age of 82 she is still playing and touring and will be appearing at London's Jazz Cafe at the end of this month.

As you can see from the Wiki entry she has had a rather interesting life and has always been a keen 'musical explorer' having collaborated and recorded with musicians from other musical genres. She has recorded with Jack Bruce (on her jazz opera called "Escalator over the hill" - too long to include here) as well as Pink Floyd's drummer Nick Mason on "Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports" which is a Carla Bley album in all but name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Bley

The first video here would have been better if Steve Swallow had used his acoustic bass instead of the bass guitar but that is just my own personal preference.

I have also included a live version of "Boo to you too", an oddity from the aforementioned Nick Mason album.

Setting a quote among the pigeons

"Both Capitalism and Communism rest on the same idea: a centralisation of wealth which destroys private property."

G.K. Chesterton, in "The Judaism of Hitler" (1933)

Reference: Collected Works, Vol. 5

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth

SCENE: THE DINOSAURS' BANQUETING HALL

TYRANNOSAURUS REX (for it is he): Bring me a freshly-killed velociraptor, bien bleu et avec beaucoup de frites!

KITCHEN STAFF: Dilly dilly!

T. REX: And we'll have that animalskin-brassiere-clad woman for afters. (ASIDE TO T. REGINA) How she got here I don't know, they're not due for 100 million years yet. Where's our little princess?

T. REGINA: Still in the meteor shower, darling.

...Und so weiter, und so weiter.



I do wonder whether the welter of fiction these days is making it almost impossible for us to appreciate how things really are and really were. Even film and TV drama about the 1960s and 1970s often has little to do with anything I recall from those times. The demand for narrative to wrap itself around the expectations of the modern audience is too strong.

The Sweet, Sad Music Of Brexit, by JD

On Friday I was listening to Roxy Music's "A song for Europe" and I have been thinking about it since then.

When I did the music post on Bryan Ferry I deliberately left out "A song for Europe" because I thought it would be misunderstood; those who voted to remain in the EU would have seized on it saying "look what we are losing."

But the song is not about that. It is a work of 'romance' probably inspired by Marcel Proust's "À la recherche du temps perdu"
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/À_la_recherche_du_temps_perdu

The song dates from 1973 and now, 45 years later, that youthful romantic nostalgia sounds more like regret. We have a Proustian lyric delivered with the world weary cynicism of Jacques Brel. That is what it sounds like to me now. The French lyric in the song is a more or less direct translation of Ferry's English lyrics at the beginning. For some reason that French lyric has a greater emotional impact on me than the English. I don't know why, perhaps it is because the politicians have done what they always do, turned a dream into a nightmare - "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos"

"Pas d'aujourd'hui pour nous
Pour nous il n'y a rien
A partager
Sauf le passé"



I don't know what Ferry's position is on the EU but he probably thinks it wiser to remain silent but on his web site he has this to say about his greatest artistic influence -

“I was fortunate to be taught by Richard Hamilton in 1964, my first year at the Fine Art Department of Newcastle University, and from then on Richard was a great inspiration, both as an artist, and as a personality. Frighteningly intellectual, he seemed to validate my romantic leanings towards American culture, and he revealed how poetic and mysterious the modern world could be.

"As a teacher he taught by example, and his restless enquiring spirit I have tried to emulate in my own work as a musician."

.....the pop art legend Richard Hamilton... calls Bryan Ferry ‘his greatest creation’.
http://bryanferry.com/richard-hamilton/