Thursday, July 25, 2013
Bee deaths linked to pesticides - new study
"Pesticide exposure and pathogens may interact to have strong negative effects on managed honey bee colonies... We collected pollen from bee hives in seven major crops to determine 1) what types of pesticides bees are exposed to when rented for pollination of various crops and 2) how field-relevant pesticide blends affect bees’ susceptibility to the gut parasite Nosema ceranae."
Read all about it here.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Strictly Confidential
After inedible rubber chicken skewers at the Brasshouse, we went to the matinee of Craig Revel-Horwood's "Strictly Confidential" at Birmingham's Symphony Hall. Led by the ebullient Lisa Riley, it gave us all permission to enjoy ourselves, a very underrated mission.
The over-bright wood panelling that usually reminds patrons of its existence throughout performances was black-curtained round the stage to set it for a properly theatrical experience. Lisa and the cast gave it plenty of welly, fighting the architecture and the natural reserve of us Midlanders. When played to a full house at night and in a traditional theatre it'll be a storm; as it was we loved it anyway.
Outrageous attack on soldiers' pensions
A soldier will miss out on almost £175,000 after his job was axed by defence bosses just 72 hours before he qualified for a full service pension.
Sergeant Michael Anderson, 35, was within three days of claiming a lifetime pension deal worth £261,278 for 18 years’ service.
He will now have to wait until he is 60 before receiving a package worth less than £90,000.
The case has fuelled suspicions that the Army, which is shedding 20,000 personnel in a cost-cutting exercise, is targeting those within touching distance of generous lifetime payments.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2377260/Army-axes-hero-days-short-pension-Sergeant-wait-hes-60-collecting-package-worth-90-000.html#ixzz2a2XTxzfH
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
By contrast...
There are separate arrangements for the pensions for the three great offices of state - the Prime Minister, Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Chancellor. Under current legislation, they are entitled to a pension of half their final office-holder’s salary on leaving office, regardless of length of service.
House of Commons Standard Note SN 04586: "Pensions of Ministers and senior office holders" - last updated 27 March 2013
www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN04586.pdf
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Sergeant Michael Anderson, 35, was within three days of claiming a lifetime pension deal worth £261,278 for 18 years’ service.
He will now have to wait until he is 60 before receiving a package worth less than £90,000.
The case has fuelled suspicions that the Army, which is shedding 20,000 personnel in a cost-cutting exercise, is targeting those within touching distance of generous lifetime payments.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2377260/Army-axes-hero-days-short-pension-Sergeant-wait-hes-60-collecting-package-worth-90-000.html#ixzz2a2XTxzfH
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
By contrast...
There are separate arrangements for the pensions for the three great offices of state - the Prime Minister, Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Chancellor. Under current legislation, they are entitled to a pension of half their final office-holder’s salary on leaving office, regardless of length of service.
House of Commons Standard Note SN 04586: "Pensions of Ministers and senior office holders" - last updated 27 March 2013
www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN04586.pdf
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Quote of the... day?
".. allow me to remind you of Sibley's Law. Giving capital to a bank (said that worldly banker, Nicholas Sibley) is like giving a gallon of beer to a drunk. You know what will become of it, but you can't know which wall he will choose."
- Christopher Fildes, Spectator magazine, 15 December 2007
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
- Christopher Fildes, Spectator magazine, 15 December 2007
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
The s-word
Click Green has a piece on the increased use of sustainable energy in the US. An increased use of natural gas is also mentioned, but the word shale is nowhere to be seen.
The s-word appears to be unwelcome in certain circles.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Microalgae prove ideal for green facades | Arup | A global firm of consulting engineers, designers, planners and project managers
Microalgae prove ideal for green facades | Arup | A global firm of consulting engineers, designers, planners and project managers
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
This new humanistic religion
If there be a saving
way, at all, it is obviously this: Substitute health and happiness for wealth
as a world-ideal; and translate that new ideal into action by education from
babyhood up.
To do this, states
must reorganise the spirit of education — in other words, must introduce
religion; not the old formal creeds, but the humanistic religion of service for
the common weal, the religion of a social honour which puts the health and
happiness of all first and the wealth of self second. The only comfort in the
situation is the curious fact that, underneath all else, the sociability
inculcated in modern nations by quick communications and incessant intercourse
is already tending toward the formation of this new humanistic religion.
The real and supreme
importance of the League of Nations consists in its power of giving such a mood
the first chance it has ever had in international affairs. For it must freely
be confessed that, without this chance in international affairs, there is no
hope that the mood will be adopted and fostered nationally.
John
Galsworthy – Castles in Spain (1927)
In Galsworthy’s day many intelligent middle class people thought
like this in spite and because of the Great War. They were not afraid to express
their faith in a kind of universal secular bonhomie overseen by the benign gaze
of the League of Nations.
How times have changed. The optimism of secular idealism has
faded, its language tangled in caveats. Politically, secular optimism has
become furtive, technical and rather weird.
Yet one Galsworthy phrase seems prescient to me, especially
in the light of mass air travel and the internet: the sociability inculcated in modern nations by quick communications
and incessant intercourse. Global sociability – maybe that’s our route to a
more pragmatic optimism.
If so, then the stumbling block becomes obvious. Our
political class has no wish to be sociable with the electorate because they don’t
yet see us as their moral and intellectual equals, let alone their superiors.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Market timing
Conventionally, we are told that market timing is impossible and that you'll miss short,sharp gains by staying out, etc.
But the market is no longer conventional. The swings have become much greater, there's all sorts of jiggery pokery behind the scenes (how is co-location legal?) and debt is a sword of Damocles over the whole system.
Rob Arnott at PIMCO (htp: Wall Street Ranter) recently contrasted US equities with emerging markets stocks, thus:
Reversion to the long-term US mean would involve a 29% drop in value - and usually there's a significant overshoot. Let's not forget that the market has halved twice since the year 2000, and the recoveries seem to be down to monetary life support rather than healthy fundamental economic growth.
There's a San Andreas Fault running under this financial edifice. And the US market and economy are so large that a fall there would surely shake the foundations in other parts of the world.
Doubtless there are some traders who will make, are making, fortunes on short-term speculation, but the odds against outsiders managing to do it make the game one not to join.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
But the market is no longer conventional. The swings have become much greater, there's all sorts of jiggery pokery behind the scenes (how is co-location legal?) and debt is a sword of Damocles over the whole system.
Rob Arnott at PIMCO (htp: Wall Street Ranter) recently contrasted US equities with emerging markets stocks, thus:
Reversion to the long-term US mean would involve a 29% drop in value - and usually there's a significant overshoot. Let's not forget that the market has halved twice since the year 2000, and the recoveries seem to be down to monetary life support rather than healthy fundamental economic growth.
There's a San Andreas Fault running under this financial edifice. And the US market and economy are so large that a fall there would surely shake the foundations in other parts of the world.
Doubtless there are some traders who will make, are making, fortunes on short-term speculation, but the odds against outsiders managing to do it make the game one not to join.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Does Monsanto engage in cyber warfare against its critics?
An article by Marianne Falck, Hans Leyendecker and Sylvia Miebrich published in Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung on 13th July 2013 asks the question. Translation here:
http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/07/13/the-sinister-monsanto-group-agent-orange-to-genetically-modified-corn/#.UeMjl9LVB8F
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/07/13/the-sinister-monsanto-group-agent-orange-to-genetically-modified-corn/#.UeMjl9LVB8F
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Arguing The Toss On Climate Change
Following hard on his purposeful assault on Michael Fallon two weeks ago, the redoubtable Andrew Neil had a go at Ed Davey this time around, and only peripherally on energy policy per se. His main thrust was an outright challenge to a simplified version of what one might call the warmist-scientific consensus. Of course, Neil is the better debater in every dimension than Davey - a Jesuitical novice could have mounted a better defence without raising his voice above a conversational level - but it's just a low-grade spectator sport with carefully-briefed sophistry on both sides. Taken at face value, there are rarely any knock-down points scored in such encounters, and I can't imagine many viewers changing their minds.
But points of interest still arise.
(The only thing that might represent insurance is adaptation and, as we know, UK expenditure on flood defences is pitiful.)
As for 'no regrets' policies, Minister, You Are Having a Laugh. Only self-financing, unsubsidised energy conservation measures and small-scale biomass / waste incineration could conceivably fall in this category: everything else is a massive gamble on rising gas prices - a huge speculative long. With our money.
At best, the other steps being taken might contribute to a bit of security of supply, and to Keynsian job-creation. But there would be cheaper and more effective ways of doing both. Nope, it isn't remotely difficult to paint the 'regret' scenarios.
This post first appeared on the Capitalists@Work blog
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
But points of interest still arise.
- The days when the Beeb's policy was for active suppression of climate-change skepticism are, it seems, over. (Davey was more than just called upon to defend his position: Neil made it clear that in his view, Davey had failed to do so.) That's not a trivial development.
- Davey's principal fall-back arguments were (1) a Pascal's wager: even given uncertainty, it's still appropriate to insure against the downside of possible climate change (2) "a lot of our policies are 'no-regrets' policies" - we should be doing them anyway.
(The only thing that might represent insurance is adaptation and, as we know, UK expenditure on flood defences is pitiful.)
As for 'no regrets' policies, Minister, You Are Having a Laugh. Only self-financing, unsubsidised energy conservation measures and small-scale biomass / waste incineration could conceivably fall in this category: everything else is a massive gamble on rising gas prices - a huge speculative long. With our money.
At best, the other steps being taken might contribute to a bit of security of supply, and to Keynsian job-creation. But there would be cheaper and more effective ways of doing both. Nope, it isn't remotely difficult to paint the 'regret' scenarios.
This post first appeared on the Capitalists@Work blog
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
PRISM follow-up: I was right
Last month I said about PRISM, "the FS is denying that GCHQ is breaking the law without denying that we have all our telecommunications spied on, thus confirming that the law here already permits what the Americans are doing."
Now it's official:
It has been alleged that GCHQ circumvented UK law by using the NSA’s PRISM programme to access the content of private communications. From the evidence we have seen, we have concluded that this is unfounded.
We have reviewed the reports that GCHQ produced on the basis of intelligence sought from the US, and we are satisfied that they conformed with GCHQ’s statutory duties. The legal authority for this is contained in the Intelligence Services Act 1994.
Further, in each case where GCHQ sought information from the US, a warrant for interception, signed by a Minister, was already in place, in accordance with the legal safeguards contained in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Now it's official:
It has been alleged that GCHQ circumvented UK law by using the NSA’s PRISM programme to access the content of private communications. From the evidence we have seen, we have concluded that this is unfounded.
We have reviewed the reports that GCHQ produced on the basis of intelligence sought from the US, and we are satisfied that they conformed with GCHQ’s statutory duties. The legal authority for this is contained in the Intelligence Services Act 1994.
Further, in each case where GCHQ sought information from the US, a warrant for interception, signed by a Minister, was already in place, in accordance with the legal safeguards contained in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Game of Drones
Hooray for Americans!
The farming and ranching town of Deer Trail, Colorado, is considering paying bounties to anyone who shoots down a drone.
Next month, trustees of the town of 600 that lies on the high plains, 55 miles east of Denver, will debate an ordinance that would allow residents to buy a $25 hunting licence to shoot down "unmanned aerial vehicles".
The measure was crafted by resident Phillip Steel, a 48-year-old army veteran with a master's degree in business administration, who acknowledges the whimsical nature of his proposal. But the expansion of drones for commercial and government use was alarming, he said.
"We don't want to become a surveillance society," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/18/colorado-town-ponders-drone-bounty
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Diligent
When we want something done in daily life, from a haircut to
a new house to a holiday, we prefer to deal with diligent people. Not so much
diligent institutions, but diligent people.
The person who cuts our hair, the people who build our new
house or those whose personal diligence makes a memorable success of our
holiday – these are the people we want to deal with aren't they?
Diligent institutions? Possibly, but institutions are not
what we prefer to deal with when things go wrong. We prefer people, yet so often
institutions usurp the diligence of their people and substitute processes. We
want diligent people – they want processes. Processes which are supposed iron
out the vagaries of personal diligence, because people sometimes screw up.
So do institutions of course, but when they screw up their
people can’t always draw on their own diligence to put things right. Most would
like to I suspect, but can’t. It’s the rules, the tick boxes. Sometimes diligence
seems to have been extracted from them by the corporate machine and thrown
away.
I’m reminded here of an issue I once had with my father’s
gas bill. He paid by direct debit but suddenly received a bill for over £5000
and naturally I was keen to sort it out for him. On day one I got nowhere with
corporate robots at the gas supplier, but overnight it snowed heavily and many
people couldn’t get into work.
So I phoned the gas supplier again the following morning and
spoke to a very pleasant lady who knew immediately that there had been a
problem when my father changed supplier. She sorted it all out in no time. In
fact it turned out that the supplier owed my father a refund because his direct
debit was set too high.
I’d realised that anyone diligent enough to make
it into work through the snow would be a better bet for sorting out my father's absurd bill and so it proved. I made a
particular point of thanking her and she was pleased to have helped. Of course
she was – being diligent.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.
Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Fighting the Government for savers and against inflation (4)
We have new, again not wholly satisfactory, replies from the Treasury:
"NS&I Index-linked Savings Certificates are also known as Inflation-Beating Savings and are designed to give savers a guaranteed tax-free rate of return, higher than the rate of inflation measured by the Retail Prices Index (RPI), if held for the full certificate term.
"The certificates were launched in 1975 and were initially available exclusively to pensioners as a way of protecting their savings against high inflation. In 1981 the exclusivity of the certificates was dropped and they were made available to all savers."
And from Part 1 of this series on my blog, an extract from my email to my MP (03.03.2013):
May I also draw your attention to two passages in Hansard from 1975 that make it perfectly clear that Government recognises the moral obligation to protect the value of savers' money?
Version as put to Minister:
"To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether savings covered by the terms and limits of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme are protected against (a) ad hoc restrictions of access, (b) bank bail-ins and (c) other forms of expropriation or forced conversion."
Treasury written answer, from Mr Greg Clark MP (09 July 2013):
"The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) provides protection for deposits up to £85,000 per depositor, per authorised institution."
My comments:
I have tweeted Mr Clark:
We have seen that savers in Cypriot banks originally faced partial loss of even their insured deposits. Now the proposal is to convert some of account amounts above 100k Euro into bank shares, and some of the rest is to be lost or frozen or ineligible to receive interest.
But it doesn't stop at Cyprus. A Russian journalist, Valentin Katasonov, sees this as a global trend towards "Open Bank Reconciliation", and there is now Europe-wide agreement on making not only bondholders but depositors pay the cost, as Bruno Waterfield reported in the Telegraph.
Here in the UK, the Bank of England has set up a "Special Resolution Unit" for failing banks; the SRU Director Andrew Gracie gave a speech to the British Bankers' Association (pdf) in September 2012, outlining what might happen and how it would be carried out and the media coverage appropriately managed. Among the public announcements he envisages (pp. 4-5) are:
"any insured depositors would be fully protected - as is always the case; and [...] the final extent of creditor write-downs, and rates of conversion to equity."
Now, an ideas speech to bankers is not a binding commitment or a statement of official policy. If push comes to shove, can we be absolutely sure that some of our "insured" money won't be frozen, or compulsorily swapped for shares in a bank of established dubious quality? This is why we need very specific assurances - or to get our money out.
If that last sounds alarmist, note the rumour on John Ward's blog, that JP Morgan is now sending people into Portugal to help big investors get their cash out of the country ahead of a bank bail-in there. And Barclays is among several banks recently downgraded by S&P.
The issues may soon turn out to be far more than merely theoretical.
UPDATE
The following email exchange with the MP today may be of interest.
Me: Thank you for your letter and enclosures of 10 July. I assume that your concluding remark about the answers being "of interest" is tinged with irony. I have Tweeted the Treasury ministers concerned to get more relevant, more specific replies.
He: What they are basically saying is that they don't want to issue any more index linked debt at the moment. They are also saying the 85K is safe.
Me: I understand that. Please don't think that you're the only grammar-school-educated boy in South Birmingham. I also have a degree in English from Oxford.
My point - and it would have been clearer if you hadn't edited out one of the most important parts - is that it is not only my view that they are morally obliged to offer index-linked securities, but the view of the Government that introduced them in 1975, and also that of the Opposition at that time.
As to "safety", this too needs clarification. Argentinian depositors' money was safe during the 2001 corralito, but it wasn't accessible.
I am on Day 398 of this enquiry via yourself and think it might be better if we pursued the case in parallel from now on.
FURTHER UPDATE
Let's see if the Press can help. Andrew Oxlade at the Telegraph called for a return of "Thatcher bonds" back in April, now I've Tweeted him:
___________________________________
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
MP's covering letter (dated 10 July 2013):
"Please see enclosed the response from the treasury regards the two Parliamentary Questions which you requested be put to the Treasury.
"I trust that the answers are of interest."
My comments:
1. One of my questions has been materially altered and this has destroyed a vital point, namely, the moral case for protecting the value of savers' deposits - an argument that was clearly accepted when Index-Linked Savings Certificates were introduced in 1975.
2. The answers are certainly "of interest" (I have to hope that the MP is being ironic) as both fail to resolve one or more substantive issues in the questions as originally proposed.
FIRST QUESTION
My version:
"Is the [Minister/PM] aware that National Savings Index-Linked Savings Certificates were introduced in 1975 as a form of social justice to savers affected by inflation, as is made clear by exchanges in this House on 10 July 1975, and will he now instruct NS&I to make them permanently available again without further delay?"
Version as put to Minister:
"To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will instruct National Savings and Investments to make National Savings index-linked savings certificates permanently available to savers with immediate effect."
Treasury written answer, from Mr Sajid Javid MP (08 July 2013):
"National Savings and Investments (NS&I) purpose is to provide cost-effective debt financing to the Government by issuing and selling retail savings and investment products to the public.
"In meeting this objective NS&I follow a policy balancing the interests of their customers, the taxpayer and the stability of the wider financial services market. In line with this remit NS&I do not anticipate new sales of Index-Linked Savings Certificates this year."
My comments:
It is particularly disappointing that the reference to proceedings in Parliament was excised, because they show that the Government and the Opposition accepted the MORAL case for protecting the value of savers' money. I had thought the editing was done by the MP, but he seems to be suggesting that it was done by the officials who handle the questions submitted.
I have Tweeted Mr Javid:
From the Daily Telegraph, 15 March 2010:
"The certificates were launched in 1975 and were initially available exclusively to pensioners as a way of protecting their savings against high inflation. In 1981 the exclusivity of the certificates was dropped and they were made available to all savers."
And from Part 1 of this series on my blog, an extract from my email to my MP (03.03.2013):
May I also draw your attention to two passages in Hansard from 1975 that make it perfectly clear that Government recognises the moral obligation to protect the value of savers' money?
Does the Minister accept that the opportunity to invest in inflation-proof schemes is an act of belated social justice to millions of people who have seen their savings irreversibly damaged during the recent rapid rise in the rate of inflation? Will he make recompense to many of them by easing up on his vindictive attacks on the principle of savings embodied in the capital transfer tax and the wealth tax?
The hon. Gentleman has put his supplementary question at the wrong time, because National Savings are rising very well at present. I am sure he will be delighted to hear that. As to what he called "belated social justice", I am sure he will pay due attention to the fact that the scheme was introduced by a Labour Government and not by a Conservative Government.
Is the Chief Secretary confident that a further extension of index-linked schemes—which are welcome to savers—will not cause a diversion of funds away from deposits with building societies, leading to a rise in the mortgage interest rate?
We are, indeed, aware of those problems. That is precisely why we introduced the scheme in this limited way.
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that while the index-linked schemes are extremely good value for money, it would be a good idea—as inflation has been rather rampant—to increase the maximum amount that can be invested in them?
My Lords, the Government have two conflicting obligations. One is an obligation to the taxpayer to buy goods and services as economically as possible, and secondly there are certain social obligations. The Government believe that by the action they have taken they have got the right balance.
SECOND QUESTION
My version:
"Will the [Minister/PM] give a guarantee on behalf of the British Government that savings covered by the terms and limits of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme will be fully protected against ad hoc restrictions of access, bank bail-ins and other forms of expropriation or forced conversion?"
Version as put to Minister:
"To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether savings covered by the terms and limits of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme are protected against (a) ad hoc restrictions of access, (b) bank bail-ins and (c) other forms of expropriation or forced conversion."
Treasury written answer, from Mr Greg Clark MP (09 July 2013):
"The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) provides protection for deposits up to £85,000 per depositor, per authorised institution."
My comments:
I have tweeted Mr Clark:
We have seen that savers in Cypriot banks originally faced partial loss of even their insured deposits. Now the proposal is to convert some of account amounts above 100k Euro into bank shares, and some of the rest is to be lost or frozen or ineligible to receive interest.
But it doesn't stop at Cyprus. A Russian journalist, Valentin Katasonov, sees this as a global trend towards "Open Bank Reconciliation", and there is now Europe-wide agreement on making not only bondholders but depositors pay the cost, as Bruno Waterfield reported in the Telegraph.
Here in the UK, the Bank of England has set up a "Special Resolution Unit" for failing banks; the SRU Director Andrew Gracie gave a speech to the British Bankers' Association (pdf) in September 2012, outlining what might happen and how it would be carried out and the media coverage appropriately managed. Among the public announcements he envisages (pp. 4-5) are:
"any insured depositors would be fully protected - as is always the case; and [...] the final extent of creditor write-downs, and rates of conversion to equity."
Now, an ideas speech to bankers is not a binding commitment or a statement of official policy. If push comes to shove, can we be absolutely sure that some of our "insured" money won't be frozen, or compulsorily swapped for shares in a bank of established dubious quality? This is why we need very specific assurances - or to get our money out.
If that last sounds alarmist, note the rumour on John Ward's blog, that JP Morgan is now sending people into Portugal to help big investors get their cash out of the country ahead of a bank bail-in there. And Barclays is among several banks recently downgraded by S&P.
The issues may soon turn out to be far more than merely theoretical.
UPDATE
The following email exchange with the MP today may be of interest.
Me: Thank you for your letter and enclosures of 10 July. I assume that your concluding remark about the answers being "of interest" is tinged with irony. I have Tweeted the Treasury ministers concerned to get more relevant, more specific replies.
He: What they are basically saying is that they don't want to issue any more index linked debt at the moment. They are also saying the 85K is safe.
Me: I understand that. Please don't think that you're the only grammar-school-educated boy in South Birmingham. I also have a degree in English from Oxford.
My point - and it would have been clearer if you hadn't edited out one of the most important parts - is that it is not only my view that they are morally obliged to offer index-linked securities, but the view of the Government that introduced them in 1975, and also that of the Opposition at that time.
As to "safety", this too needs clarification. Argentinian depositors' money was safe during the 2001 corralito, but it wasn't accessible.
I am on Day 398 of this enquiry via yourself and think it might be better if we pursued the case in parallel from now on.
FURTHER UPDATE
Let's see if the Press can help. Andrew Oxlade at the Telegraph called for a return of "Thatcher bonds" back in April, now I've Tweeted him:
___________________________________
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Tuesday, July 09, 2013
Sceptical journey
When apocalyptic climate science appeared on the public stage, I initially took a fairly neutral view of it. As a professional environmental scientist I assumed that the science would at least be fairly rigorous even if the apocalyptic predictions might be exaggerated by journalists.
Hints that all was not well appeared on my radar via two letters in Chemistry In Britain which in 2004 became Chemistry World, the member's magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Letter 1 was from a professor of physical chemistry. He accused climate scientists of misusing the Stefan-Boltzmannconstant. He went on to claim that there was also no credible physical theory of how CO2 might control the thermal properties of the whole atmosphere. I won’t go into the details, but what surprised me about the professor’s letter was how easy it was to check that he appeared to have a good point – at least as far as I could see.
However, more extensive reading allayed my suspicions somewhat. Climate scientists had built mathematical models of how CO2 might indeed exert control over the thermal characteristics of the atmosphere. However...
Letter 2 was from a qualified scientist who asserted that criticisms of mainstream climate science should not be published as the science was 95% likely to be correct and of apocalyptic importance. This, so the letter asserted, was sufficient reason to suppress sceptical voices.
I’m relying on memory here because at that time I didn’t know I’d begun an interesting scientific journey. However, I well remember being quite shocked by letter 2. Not good whatever one might think of climate science, especially in a magazine for professional scientists.
These two letters were published quite a few years ago and it took most of the intervening years for me to conclude that there is indeed a serious problem with mainstream climate science. I’m not advocating one-sided scepticism here by the way – this is merely an outline of my personal journey of discovery.
Eventually I resigned from the Royal Society of Chemistry. In my resignation letter I mentioned obvious but ignored hints of malpractice in climate science, but didn’t make a big deal of it.
Why not? Well by then I’d retired and become thoroughly bored with the pusillanimous way institutions are led by the nose when it comes to matters of official policy. I’d done more than enough background reading to know there was certainly a major scandal behind apocalyptic climate predictions.
Once I had learned to be sceptical about the apocalyptic message, where did I place the blame? It’s a complex issue, but some climate scientists journalists, politicians, activists and self-serving businesses must all take the credit for jumping on a bandwagon and downplaying major uncertainties in our knowledge of how and why the climate changes.
Do your own research, be guided by behaviour, find people you trust and be guided by their manner and their scepticism. As always, the important clues are to be found in human behaviour - that was my climate lesson.
As scientists or non-scientists we have to build our own web of trusted opinion and reliable information. During the peace and quiet of a snowy winter evening perhaps? Before the lights go out?
Political party funding: "A plague o' both your houses!"
I reprint this Peter Hitchens piece from the latest MoS because it stands as a monument to why we shouldn't give our allegiance to either of the two largest political parties. He reproduces it on his blog here and expands on it here.
I think it is time for the Tories to stop being so hoity-toity about the trade union grip on Labour. The Tory Party has a whopping great skeleton its cupboard which I am now going to pull out and wave about.
I promised to keep quiet about it nearly 30 years ago, and I’m still not naming my source. But Mr Cameron’s self-righteous attack on Labour has persuaded me that it’s time to come clean.
The Tory manifesto in 1983 pledged to do something about one of the worst scandals in British politics, the ‘political levy’ by which the unions take money from their members to put into their political funds. These funds are then used to buy influence in the Labour Party.
If you belong to most British unions, you pay into this unless you opt out. Many don’t even know they’re contributing. Others are afraid of drawing attention to themselves by opting out. As a result, millions of people give money to Labour without wanting to, via union political funds. And so they maintain the union stranglehold on British politics.
It needn’t be so. Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 manifesto promised to end this disgrace. If the unions wouldn’t sort it out, it said, ‘The Government will be prepared to introduce measures to guarantee the free and effective right of choice.’
She won with a huge majority. It was a mandate. So what happened? The then general secretary of the Labour Party, the late Jim Mortimer, approached the Tories through a special back-channel. Word was sent to the late Margaret Thatcher that she would be unwise to act on this pledge.
If she did, Mortimer warned, she might well destroy Labour and so – unintentionally - ensure that the Tories were beaten at the next election by the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
He added that if by any chance Labour survived, and came back to power, it would take a terrible revenge. It would pass laws to stop the Tories raising funds from business.
The ‘Iron Lady’ buckled and collapsed. For the sake of party advantage and short-term gain, the plan was dropped. A few feeble ballots were held instead, which hardly anyone noticed.
So Margaret Thatcher and her Tories actually saved the Labour Party from richly deserved oblivion. The disastrous 1997-2010 Blair-Brown government is their direct fault.
They also made sure that the unions would keep their thumb on the national windpipe for another 25 years and maybe much longer.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
I think it is time for the Tories to stop being so hoity-toity about the trade union grip on Labour. The Tory Party has a whopping great skeleton its cupboard which I am now going to pull out and wave about.
I promised to keep quiet about it nearly 30 years ago, and I’m still not naming my source. But Mr Cameron’s self-righteous attack on Labour has persuaded me that it’s time to come clean.
The Tory manifesto in 1983 pledged to do something about one of the worst scandals in British politics, the ‘political levy’ by which the unions take money from their members to put into their political funds. These funds are then used to buy influence in the Labour Party.
If you belong to most British unions, you pay into this unless you opt out. Many don’t even know they’re contributing. Others are afraid of drawing attention to themselves by opting out. As a result, millions of people give money to Labour without wanting to, via union political funds. And so they maintain the union stranglehold on British politics.
It needn’t be so. Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 manifesto promised to end this disgrace. If the unions wouldn’t sort it out, it said, ‘The Government will be prepared to introduce measures to guarantee the free and effective right of choice.’
She won with a huge majority. It was a mandate. So what happened? The then general secretary of the Labour Party, the late Jim Mortimer, approached the Tories through a special back-channel. Word was sent to the late Margaret Thatcher that she would be unwise to act on this pledge.
If she did, Mortimer warned, she might well destroy Labour and so – unintentionally - ensure that the Tories were beaten at the next election by the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
He added that if by any chance Labour survived, and came back to power, it would take a terrible revenge. It would pass laws to stop the Tories raising funds from business.
The ‘Iron Lady’ buckled and collapsed. For the sake of party advantage and short-term gain, the plan was dropped. A few feeble ballots were held instead, which hardly anyone noticed.
So Margaret Thatcher and her Tories actually saved the Labour Party from richly deserved oblivion. The disastrous 1997-2010 Blair-Brown government is their direct fault.
They also made sure that the unions would keep their thumb on the national windpipe for another 25 years and maybe much longer.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Monday, July 08, 2013
Special Ed
This week one of my wife's relations asked me questions for an assignment for her Teaching Assistant course. Perhaps some of my answers may lift the lid a bit on the world of special education. All observations and opinions are, of course, my own and not official.
1-Do you have any experience working with special needs children?
But it also becomes clear that in some cases, even the parent/carer isn’t as committed to the child’s needs as they should be. Ultimately this can lead to a social services referral for neglect or abuse – but at least that is also a kind of progress in solving the child’s problems.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
1-Do you have any experience working with special needs children?
Yes. [Looked After Children two years... For a
year or so I also taught at a project to reintegrate 15-year-olds youngsters
who had been out of education for some time... some supply teaching at special
schools for physically disabled children...autistic children at an ASD special
school for a couple of months... From 2006 on at primary age Pupil Referral
Units... now I am the Targeted Intervention Lead Teacher and assist staff with
assessments of various kinds.]
2-Do you
feel that children with disabilities should be integrated into mainstream
schools or segregated into special schools? Why?
Some yes,
some no. Integration can be good for the pupil, because it helps prevent
institutionalisation and low expectations; it can also be good for the
mainstream children to learn to mix with, cope with and help children who are
different from them. But there are some children with emotional or behavioural
difficulties (EBD), or who are on the Autistic Spectrum (ASD), who don’t mix
well with mainstream children or cope well with a large group. Perhaps physical
disability is easier for “ordinary” children to see and understand.
3- What
effect do the SEN children have on the mainstream pupils?
I don’t get
to see this much in our context. Mostly, we cater for children who have been
excluded from mainstream. And it depends on what kind of SEN it is –
emotionally upset and attention-demanding children can seriously subvert the
work of a class, which is why they tend to get excluded. Autistic children can get very stressed by
noise, changes of location etc. In a mainstream school it takes a very skilful
and energetic teacher to manage children of different kinds in one class and
still make adequate academic progress overall, and the workload and stress on
the teacher can be considerable.
There is
also the question of how different SEN types react to each other. EBD and ASD children
don’t understand each other; EBDs wonder why ASDs “don’t stick up for
themselves” and also why they butt in, pass annoying comments or tell teacher
about misbehaviour, whereas ASDs wonder why EBDs aren’t following rules, and
don’t understand why they get hit for telling the truth. EBDs enjoy being a bit
out of control; ASDs try to control everything (e.g. I know a little girl who
made a coloured time chart for when each of her friends was supposed to spend
time with her).
3-In your
experience of education (personal +professional) how have attitudes +policies
changed towards special education?
Many
primary schools are now much more aware of the need to use strategies to manage
behaviour, and are on the lookout for special needs. But the skill level is
patchy – there are still schools that let a child’s problems continue for years
and then throw them out as SATS looms up. Secondary schools are, I understand, generally well behind primary schools in
adapting to the behavioural variety of their intake.
Screening
and funding arrangements for special needs are currently changing, and some
suspect that there is a save-money agenda behind some of the changes. Our PRUs
feel that there are not enough special school places and the system is
creaking; it doesn’t help that we now have so many broken and abusive or
inadequate families that yield children with enduring emotional problems.
4- Do you
have a teaching assistant to support you in your daily routines? What do you
feel are the benefits and disadvantages of this?
Yes, we all
have at least one full-time TA in every class in our PRUs. It’s essential for
managing the children’s behaviour, and for professional protection against
false accusations (we sometimes have to handle children physically, for their
own and others’ safety). And there is so much paperwork.
A number of
TAs are agency staff and need to be shown how to do things our way; this means
more time in training and supervision. It’s a hard job and not everyone stays
with us.
5 – Within
your setting how do you ensure that the planning and day-to-day routines are
flexible to accommodate individual children needs?
Activities
are planned to meet the range of abilities, so there is differentiation in task
and outcome. We also look at learning styles (visual/audio/kinaesthetic), do
regular assessments of behavioural risk, have individual Behaviour Management
Plans, Individual Education Plans (IEPs), CRISP analysis (Criteria for Special
Provision) and do social developmental and attitude testing using the Boxall Profile
or PASS (Pupil Attitudes to Self and School). Staff have to be flexible because
individuals can still “kick off” and the work of the class may have to be
suspended while issues are resolved.
6- Do your
children have a voice in your setting? Please give examples.
Yes. For
example, many are involved in the Common Assessment Framework and some are
Looked After; both processes allow the child to express opinions. And we have a
School Council that meets several times a term – they enjoy the sense of responsibility.
When they have seriously misbehaved they do a Put It Right sheet that asks them
to reflect on what they did, why, what the result was and what they should do
next time. In their exercise books they can indicate how well they think they
understood their lesson.
7- In your
opinion does statementing lead to a more inclusive practice? Please explain.
Most of the
primary schools that buy into our additional services work hard to spot and
help children with difficulties. The SENCo in such schools will usually be
pretty good at doing CRISPs, IEPs, IBPs (for behaviour), Pupil Provision Plans
etc. Young teachers also seem to be fairly well briefed on managing behaviour
and special educational needs – far (far) better than the teacher training I
received in the 70s.
A Statement
of Special Needs has legal teeth and is reviewed at least annually. It defines
the child’s needs and how they are to be addressed. You can end up with a
formidable list as SENAR (Special Education Needs and Review) takes in reports
from all and sundry and in effect turns all of it into action points. You then
have a recommendation as to placement – which is decided by SENAR in
association with the parents/carers: mainstream with funded support, special
school, or a “resource base” (a school with some mainstream classes but also a
special unit where the child may spend much of the time).
We do see
placements fail in secondary, especially in Year 7, as many children can’t cope
with the transition, so our [PRUs are] now doing more to hold onto and support
children across the KS2/KS3 divide, and in KS4 the youngsters are being steered
into projects like the XXXX Project, rather than into secondary schools that
can’t or won’t effectively cater for their needs. Not everyone is made for
mainstream school.
8- You said
you work with inter-agency and CAF. Can you tell me a bit more on how this
supports the inclusion of the child?
Think of
the child’s difficulties as symptoms and their family and its circumstances as
the causes. The CAF process can reveal what’s really going on at home, and help
to get agencies to work more urgently to solve problems (e.g. re inadequate
housing). Education and social work have a significant interface, and if you
don’t deal with the whole child you’ll only get partial success.
But it also becomes clear that in some cases, even the parent/carer isn’t as committed to the child’s needs as they should be. Ultimately this can lead to a social services referral for neglect or abuse – but at least that is also a kind of progress in solving the child’s problems.
We are now
generally doing fCAFs (Family CAFs) rather than individual child CAFs, because
more often than not there are other children in the same family with problems,
or the adults have their own difficulties, or the family as a whole has a
problem (e.g. housing).
The
government has latched onto CAF as a tool for tackling “problem families”,
which means that in some cases the agenda can be at least partly driven from
above rather than by the clients. CAF was set up as a voluntary system and the
official “mission creep” could undermine the consensual nature of the process.
9- How does
funding affect inclusion for your setting?
We get
additional funds, but I’m not an expert in this. However, we are not a special
school and so don’t get the level of resources they do.
10 – Do you
find there is any policies or provision that restricts you doing your job?
Our
children have significant social and emotional difficulties. The demands of the
National Curriculum can be a burdensome distraction in these circumstances,
because until the emotional needs are met the learning can’t proceed. It’s
quite a juggling act. I’m wondering whether provision like ours shouldn’t have
its own specialised curriculum.
We also
tend to be used as a prolonged, cheaper alternative to special school
provision. The original concept for our PRU was that children would only be
with us for a few weeks, while we did assessments and organised reintegration;
instead, we have had a number of children who have been with us for 1 – 3
years. Partly that’s down to a shortage of special school places and partly to
difficulties in getting readmittance to mainstream. There is also the question
of how long it takes to conduct a Special Needs Assessment – typically at least
6 months; and unless it starts early in the Autumn Term you’re unlikely to
complete in time to secure a place in special school for the following
September.
11- I know
from experience that some families are hard to reach, how does your setting
encourage parent partnerships?
CAF is
helpful. We also had Family Support Workers that liaised between us and the
home, but this ended in April when we reorganised. We used to have a nominated
Integrated Family Support Team member, but again this has faded back and now we
are just referred to the local IFST for such support as they may be able to
provide. Our plan is to develop some of our TAs to offer some support for
parents and carers; and they are currently being trained by me to take over
CAFs, which until recently I’ve run myself.
12 –If you
were developing a 5 year plan, what would you like to change or develop in your
setting?
a.
Radically shake up Special Needs Assessment, to be more like a Formula 1
pit-stop – get the professionals to see the children and write their reports
within a few weeks at most. Ideally a Statement should be finished in 4 – 6
weeks, in my opinion. Also, these assessments should be made at the child’s
home or mainstream school – not wait till a permanent exclusion.
b.
Following from (a), as soon as a Statement is finished, the child is entitled
and should begin receiving it in full immediately and with full funding, not
languish in a PRU like someone whose plane has been cancelled.
c. Work
with primary schools to create Transfer Panels as in secondary schools, who
have taken on pupil-swapping and made it a success.
d. More
training and support for staff in mainstream schools, to help identify and
support children with additional needs.
e. Rethink
the curriculum and provide more standardised resources and courses of work.
Teachers are spending too much time on the paper side of things and in dread of
OFSTED, when their energies should be going into the children.
If we did
all the above we would hardly see any children arrive in our PRU. This would be
a good thing, as putting children with behavioural difficulties together in one
place is like the cross-infection of a doctor’s waiting room.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
The e-University
An extract from a letter sent today to Lord Krebs:
[...]
It would now seem theoretically technically
feasible to offer some courses to students in other parts of the country and
the world, by electronic means. Potentially, the work of the College could
reach larger numbers and also those who might not, for one reason or another
(perhaps financial), be able to come to Oxford in person.
Lectures could be transmitted live or
recorded for re-broadcast, as the National Theatre now does for dramatic
performances (see http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/).
The communication could be two-way, with questions and comments submitted by
Internet, email and Twitter (like the BBC’s Question Time, for example).
Similarly, presentations by teachers at other universities could be made
available to Oxford colleagues and students.
Students could be authorized to remotely
access the University’s subscriptions to online publications (Times archive,
JSTOR etc). (Certain subjects might lend themselves more easily to this
approach in the first instance – mathematics, perhaps – as in some other fields
access to texts may be more difficult, until such time as everything has been
scanned online.)
Reading lists, assignments and much reading
and source material could be stored in the Cloud; coursework submitted by Web; teachers
and graduate students could offer teaching, comment and support by email, Skype
etc.
The potential inherent in the technology
could be a Gutenberg revolution in higher education – an “Invisible College”
for millions of advanced learners. It would be a far more radical step than the
extramural studies currently available; it would be the virtual, interactive
presence of far larger numbers of students and researchers than could be
physically accommodated in any University, yet learning and being nurtured
intellectually in the way that Oxford has fostered for centuries.
Perhaps a start might be made by raising
funds for a few e-scholarships for poor but talented individuals in developing
countries, such as India and China?
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.
Saturday, July 06, 2013
France: John Ward on DIY, "Deliverance" and dog days
We’ve reached that time down here where the very ground beneath you pulsates with heat. Being alone here this year, I’ve taken now and then to dropping into the local Bar Portuguese for a beer. It’s full of swarthy latins – as always cheerful – discussing what they now see as an unavoidable disaster for their homeland. I can walk in and – with my hair and eyes – easily be mistaken for a German. There is an awkwardness, until they realise I’m British – and then everything changes: I am bought obscure Portuguese liquor, and given the sort of welcome usually reserved for Eusebio forty years ago, or Ronaldo today. I mention my passion for Manchester United, and more rounds are bought.
The main problem this consumption could pose is how I get home again. But luckily, there is a short-cut back to the house: I can use it to weave unsteadily back there legally on foot…unless under French law you can be found drunk in charge of yourself. I’d imagine you can’t be.
When it gets this hot and water is in short supply, more make do and mend comes into play. I collect all my bottled water packs and chop off the top and bottom. The main residue is then wrapped around new tree stems, and thus protects them from the attentions of deer…who are buggers for rubbing up against the bark and nibbling at it. If they nibble all the way round, then the young sapling dies in short order.
The top bit of the plastic bottle can be inverted to create a simple channel by the side of herbs and vegetables, and so massively reduce wastage of the water being applied to keep them going. The chopped-off bottom I fill with any stale beer knocking about. Snails are born beerheads and can’t resist it. They get legless, and then drown. Not that they have legs anyway. It’s a figure of speech.
At the top eastern end of the property is the real (as opposed to metaphorical) Slogger’s Roost. There I recycled a couple of pallets from the roof renovation two years ago, using them to create raised beds of flat-leaf parsley the rabbits can’t reach. I’ve also been gradually planting lavender, a rose, and a few shrubs up there. These represent a hopeful attempt to give some fragrance to an area whose main advantage is that first, it’s a long way from the house and offers me peace in which to write; and second, it is sheltered from the wind that can bite in mid-Spring and late Autumn here.
The main point of my little respite is that I achieved an aim in making it: to do so without spending one centime. Everything that went into its creation was recycled and reformed in a new role. But just before midday today, I noticed my least likeable farming neighbours using a crane-grab and chainsaw to slash back the high hedge behind the Roost. To one side of the site I’ve constructed a permanent windbreak out of old tongue and groove we ripped out when renovating the upper floor. In their enthusiasm, the chain saw artists looked about to massacre one of my better creations.
This farming family is, to say the least of it, a bit odd. None of the locals here like them. They have that beaky-nosed, eyes close together appearance of the sinister hillbillies in Deliverance, and there’s a very good reason for this: they’re the product of incest. Try not to be shocked: it’s more common in remote rural areas than you’d imagine. Their mum killed herself five years ago; I remember being horrified when I asked the Mayor why, and he replied with a shrug meant to be self-explanatory, “She drank”.
It’s amazing how often our species thinks that an observation of a symptom is somehow a diagnosis. It didn’t seem to occur to the Mayor that maybe she drank because of depression, or guilt about the incestual sex, or both. But either way, it was with some trepidation that I legged it up to Slogger’s Roost to see if her sons knew of my tongue and groove genius. Yes, they did was the answer…and then five minutes later they demolished the right-hand end of it.
It didn’t take long to fix, so I shouldn’t make a drama out of it. But deepest darkest France consists of far more than the starry-eyed bollocks you see on A Place in the Sun.
Tonight, the Andy Murray syndrome was at work again. The Wimbledon authorities closed the Centre Court roof – after to a lot of Polish whine. It was a fearsome struggle afterwards, but Murray came through in the end. Here by contrast, it is now cooling a little. The fire of late afternoon has dimmed to a mid-evening kissing the skin rather than burning it. The sun makes love to you here in a hundred different ways throughout the day. I’m always grateful for its variety…as every appreciative lover should be.
I may well have to pay in a future life for the good fortune of having a place like this. But as I have grave doubts about reincarnation, I’m not about to get upset about that. I did work very hard to get the house; but then, I know lots of equally talented folks who worked even harder, and didn’t. Humility in such matters is never a bad thing.
By John Ward. Republished by kind permission of the author.
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.
Friday, July 05, 2013
Pic of the day: V&A
The spiral staircase in the Jewellery Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 04 July 2013. (Photo: author.)
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment.
Human history vs Earth's history
If we wrote the entire history of Earth on A4 paper at 1,000 years per page, the stack would reach up a bit over 1,533 feet - higher than the top of the antenna on the Empire State Building.
Of the 9,200 reams of paper, only the top 5 would have anything about humanoid creatures; the last ream (thinner than the top line of the column in this diagram) would contain the entire history of homo sapiens, and the uppermost 0.8 inches would record modern man (homo sapiens sapiens).
The final 10 leaves tell of what happened since the end of the last Ice Age, and the first writing by Man himself (in Sumerian) appears on the fifth-to-last page.
As you float in the air above, you reach out and pick up the top sheet, which is written in the language of the time. In the British edition, the first half of the page is unintelligible to the ordinary reader, as it's a mixture of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Norse, Norman French and Middle English. Even the early part of the second half, in Modern English, can be confusing, as it may contain words no longer used, and others whose meaning has since changed.
A standard A4 sheet contains 46 lines at 8 - 9 words per line, so the history of the globe since 1900 is covered in the last 5 lines - about 40 words. There are only 8 people in the world still alive who were born before then; all of them are female.
The last dinosaurs - wiped out by the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, 66 million years ago - are to be found 22 feet further down the stack - still nearly 40 feet above the top of the antenna on the Empire State.
Thursday, July 04, 2013
Peasants
I recently ploughed through a collection of Chekhov’s short
stories – 209 of them on my Kindle, although a few were duplicated – possibly
alternative translations. Did he write more than 209 minus the duplicates? I don’t know, but by gum they’re good.
I hadn’t read much
Chekhov up until then, but what a writer! He found time to be a doctor too.
Here he is writing a fictional, but one suspects all too real account of
peasant life in late nineteenth century Russia :-
Only the well-to-do
peasants were afraid of death; the richer they were the less they believed in
God, and in the salvation of souls, and only through fear of the end of the
world put up candles and had services said for them, to be on the safe side.
The peasants who were
rather poorer were not afraid of death. The old father and Granny were told to
their faces that they had lived too long, that it was time they were dead, and
they did not mind.
They did not hinder
Fyokla from saying in Nikolay's presence that when Nikolay died her husband
Denis would get exemption--to return home from the army. And Marya, far from
fearing death, regretted that it was so slow in coming, and was glad when her
children died.
Above all, they were
afraid of catching cold, and so put on thick clothes even in the summer and
warmed themselves at the stove. Granny was fond of being doctored, and often
went to the hospital, where she used to say she was not seventy, but
fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor knew her real age he would not
treat her, but would say it was time she died instead of taking medicine.
Anton Chekhov – Peasants (1897)
Russia has produced so much talent and to this outsider at
least, seemingly wasted under the thumbs of mass murderers and autocratic wastrels. Why I don’t know, but we still need talent like
Chekhov's.
There is one problem with him though. When I finally put aside
my Kindle and looked around at modern entertainers and celebrities...
Energy Policy: Reductio Ad Absurdum
It is hard to know where begin a post on UK energy policy just now, though I feel vaguely obliged to try. Last week there were flurries of straws in the wind, adding up to what ought to be unavoidable recognition of the failure of the programme initiated by Ed Miliband when in power as Energy Secretary. His predecessor, John Hutton, was considerably more realistic but Miliband adopted a fantasy green agenda - arguably, part of Gordon Brown's overall scorched-earth strategy which I wrote about at the time - and with very few modifications the coalition swallowed it whole.
Now we have an updated forecast of reserve capacity which shows we can easily be up the proverbial creek by 2015 - no news to anyone reading C@W, I realise - and Ofgem scurrying for short-term fixes. Cue hysteria in the mainstream media (save for a curious silence in the Guardian).
The government and regulators will, of course, succeed in preventing large-scale black-outs, and probably even rolling brown-outs, although there could well be the odd isolated incident. How will they do this ? By throwing money at the problem, of course, because no politician will ever allow the lights to go out. Switching off large industrial customers, revving up diesel generators, paying the owners of mothballed gas-fired power plants to re-commission them, prolonging the lives of old nukes a bit - it isn't even very difficult. But it is far more expensive than it should be, and we shall all pay for it.
Perhaps - just perhaps - someone will also quietly finish off DECC's mad green + nuke agenda: because that is what all this ad-hoccery amounts to. The real problems are going to happen 2015-2020, when both Cameron and Miliband both hope to be holding the reins.
So we might hope for a bit of belated realistic policy-making from now on. They seem to have got the bit between their teeth on shale gas - (which, by the way, will bring forth the most astonishing amount of green fury). Some reckon that Ed Davey has lost faith in EDF's ability to come up with the nuclear goods, and not before time: EDF have given enough compelling evidence of their uselessness. Michael Fallon, the new safe-pair-of-hands energy minister (actually, minister for just about everything, it seems) seems pretty robust and clear-sighted. But he bullshits like the worst of them, and it's worth a few minutes to watch him in action against Andrew Neil (second item in this programme) - who asked a bunch of the right questions but allowed himself too easily to be fobbed off with Fallon's confident sophistry and bluster
It would be fun to fisk the whole interview but, sorry, I just don't have the time. Or energy. Sorry.
This post first appeared on the Capitalists@Work blog
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Now we have an updated forecast of reserve capacity which shows we can easily be up the proverbial creek by 2015 - no news to anyone reading C@W, I realise - and Ofgem scurrying for short-term fixes. Cue hysteria in the mainstream media (save for a curious silence in the Guardian).
The government and regulators will, of course, succeed in preventing large-scale black-outs, and probably even rolling brown-outs, although there could well be the odd isolated incident. How will they do this ? By throwing money at the problem, of course, because no politician will ever allow the lights to go out. Switching off large industrial customers, revving up diesel generators, paying the owners of mothballed gas-fired power plants to re-commission them, prolonging the lives of old nukes a bit - it isn't even very difficult. But it is far more expensive than it should be, and we shall all pay for it.
Perhaps - just perhaps - someone will also quietly finish off DECC's mad green + nuke agenda: because that is what all this ad-hoccery amounts to. The real problems are going to happen 2015-2020, when both Cameron and Miliband both hope to be holding the reins.
So we might hope for a bit of belated realistic policy-making from now on. They seem to have got the bit between their teeth on shale gas - (which, by the way, will bring forth the most astonishing amount of green fury). Some reckon that Ed Davey has lost faith in EDF's ability to come up with the nuclear goods, and not before time: EDF have given enough compelling evidence of their uselessness. Michael Fallon, the new safe-pair-of-hands energy minister (actually, minister for just about everything, it seems) seems pretty robust and clear-sighted. But he bullshits like the worst of them, and it's worth a few minutes to watch him in action against Andrew Neil (second item in this programme) - who asked a bunch of the right questions but allowed himself too easily to be fobbed off with Fallon's confident sophistry and bluster
It would be fun to fisk the whole interview but, sorry, I just don't have the time. Or energy. Sorry.
This post first appeared on the Capitalists@Work blog
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Wednesday, July 03, 2013
In one picture: what the banks have done to us since the 1980s
Source: Charles Hugh Smith
Another corker from independent thinker Charles Hugh Smith today. The graph above shows how the "boom" of the Eighties was a phoney, as were the "recoveries" from the lows of 2003 and 2009. (The latter Nineties I see as partly "real" because of efficiencies and consumer demand created by dramatically increasing computer power and the international and cross-class spread of electronic communication systems.)
To me, this demonstrates that it's not a Left versus Right thing; it's about the unholy alliance of bankers and politicians who trade wealth and political power among themselves. In the UK, the British Conservative Party is just as much to blame as the supposed socialists (who oversaw a further deterioration in manufacturing and working-class employment).
The question is, can we have preventive reform soon or must we wait for full-scale disaster to force it?
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)