I have been lost in nostalgia for 1962. Sixty years ago when I was newly escaped from school and into the grown up world of work and a whole world of new experiences. The past really is/was a different country when 45rpm vinyl records cost six shillings and eight pence, three for one pound. Imagine that!
Among the new joys were being introduced to 'modern' jazz as opposed to the radio/TV favourites of Kenny Ball and Aker Bilk who played a sanitised version of 'trad' jazz.
And so one of the first jazz records I bought was Jazz Samba by Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz. I suppose jazz plus samba could be described as a 'fusion' record but that name came much later. Byrd had already made a record with samba influences so this was a further experimentation on his part. Getz was a well established tenor sax player who had been one of the 'four brothers' in Woody Herman's band. Listening again to this record is still a pleasure and a blessed relief in a world gone mad.
4. undo (3) so we can have a rerun of the calamity
He may not have drafted the new Act, but he signed it into law. Please don’t tell me he was too stupid to understand what he was doing.
I’ll come back to the Great Financial Crisis in a moment.
Now, in the UK, we have Liz Truss as PM. For how long, we don’t know, but she has already scored an entitlement to an annual pension worth half her salary. This applies to all PMs and ‘senior office holders’ no matter how short their service - including Kwasi Kwarteng, Chancellor for only 38 days. George Galloway calls Truss ‘thick as mince in a bottle’; well, we should all be so stupid.
Being a dim bulb is almost the least of our worries, as we will find out when the bright and slick ex-Goldman Sachs globalist Rishi Sunak takes the reins. He’s been pumping ads on Facebook for months like an Alan Sugar apprentice tasked with demonstrating PR skills. He wants the job so badly that it should disqualify him.
No, it’s her motives that concern me. I was curious when Truss’ first Chancellor cut the basic rate of income tax by one per cent: how much was that going to help poor people pay their hugely inflated energy bills? The five per cent cut to the top rate was bad optics at this time of growing hardship, of course; but the real puzzle was the complete removal of the ceiling on bankers’ bonuses - with which Jeremy Hunt will proceed. ‘What was all that about?’ as the saying goes.
I understood when I saw this information and analysis from Peter Oborne:
Truss isn’t working for the British people. She acts for the super-rich, the hedge fund managers and property developer types who party at 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair, London. This is where she held a ‘Fizz with Liz’ event last October (2021), paid for by Mark Birley, son of Lady Annabel Goldsmith’s first husband and attended by around a dozen Tory MPs.
The Mayfair millionaires do not require critical intelligence and moral probity in their servants, far from it. Oborne says they funnel money, not directly to the Conservative Party (which would have to be made public) but to ‘think tanks’ that then come up with policy proposals to suit their sponsors. They boasted, says Oborne, that they had ‘made Kwasi Kawarteng’s Budget for him’ - and, he says, KK went to one of their events straight after delivering his speech to the Commons.
This is the class that caused the incalculable damage of the GFC - estimates vary widely but run into the trillions. Beneath the financial cost is the human cost in the health and very lives of ordinary people.
But they can’t help themselves. C P Snow wrote of the ‘corridors of power’; these are the labradors of power, with no off-switch for their appetite. Someone has to discipline them.
In 1933 FDR allowed some banks to fail, regulated others and introduced legislation to separate deposit-takers from the casino-gambling of investment bankers. This time, when the GFC hit, there was no strong President to cleanse the stables.
Instead, the people responsible for the chaos were bailed out with unlimited cash. The clever-clogs guys at Goldman Sachs even counted the bail money as additional turnover and paid big bonuses on the strength of it.
Came the hour, came Barack Obama, and it is a tragedy that with the great popular support he initially enjoyed he could not or would not deal with the offenders. Their sense of entitlement has now grown into a kind of megalomania.
A fantasy moment: these rich are assembled at the Guildhall, London for the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Full of good food and wines, they watch the PM rise to make a speech. He or she smiles and tells them that mobile communications have been jammed, the doors locked and they are all under arrest for financial terrorism. They are to be held in Belmarsh under the same conditions as Julian Assange, awaiting trial at which they will appear in cages like the Mafia whom the Italians so bravely prosecuted. They will receive swift, no-nonsense judgment from someone like Judge Judy Sheindlin, with no possibility of appeal. The innocent will be released and handsomely compensated for their inconvenience; the others will be heavily fined and incarcerated for a very long time.
Of course, in real life there will be no deus ex machina to resolve our difficulties.
Nevertheless, something has to happen. Perhaps it will be debt forgiveness or default, but we cannot let our governments be the playthings (or over-indulgent uncles) of global money-shufflers.
Oborne raises another worry: like demented Joe Biden, Truss has a finger on the nuclear button. We cannot afford the process outlined at the start of this post; Stage Three may not be a possibility.
There has to be action instead of disaster, not following it.
But the background was how the US threw money into Europe (having abandoned the Morgenthau proposals to break the Germans down into rural earth-scratchers) after abruptly shutting off vital financial support to us in September 1945. That's why Macmillan wanted to catch up the Frogs and Krauts; the effects on Britain's industry and economy of joining the EU's card game are here for us to see.
Now, the Tories are split between patriots, wet-finger-in-the-air types like BoJo, and globalists (= supporters of the American Empire.)
He laid his finger on the tension in the socialist movement between international brotherhood and promoting the interests of working people at home; a tension that has never been adequately resolved and which has been clouded over with dreamy rhetoric from bloviators on both sides of the Commons debating chamber.
As for our influence in the EU - please Noel Coward, I have only so many ribs. Now if we chose to become the 51st US State, *then* we might have some influence.
We've been a damn sight poorer than we are today. I remember no fridge and an outside lavvy, but we managed. It's not about money; even now we live like kings and queens compared to past ages. If you want to see what life was like in the East End of London before the ‘damn socialists’ interfered, read Jack London’s 1903 book The People of the Abyss (free online here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1688 ) - this, in the heart of the world’s then richest and mightiest Empire. Every home should have a copy.
There's a hill to climb but it can be climbed, and I don't think re-entering the undemocratic EU would do us any favours. Surely we're not the only ones to feel that way: people in Italy, Greece and Hungary would be glad to exit, Macron has just pledged not to get involved in a nuclear fracas in Ukraine just to please NATO, even the Germans are tempted to look east and may feel more like it as they freeze this winter thanks to the bombing of NS1+2 by No One At All (because the Swedes won't say who.)
Does anybody else still believe in this country and its people? Or is that too Blimpish? I’m proud to be a Little Englander, i.e. an anti-imperialist. Our greatness is not in wealth but in freedom and sovereign self-government.
Tavener was an English composer of sacred music who came to the attention of the wider public for his 'Song For Athene' which was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Before then he had been well known among 'avant garde' musicians. He had come to the attention of the Beatles via Ringo and was signed to Apple Records in 1970.
I have included his biggest selling piece, The Protecting Veil which is 45 minutes long; much needed tranquility in this insane world. It was commissioned by the BBC for the 1989 Proms.
President Biden’s lunatic scriptwriters gave him the line about facing Armageddon and then apparently his handlers ‘walked back’ the tough talk because of the reaction.
The Daily Mail uses this moment to publish another virulent piece by Ian Birrell about Putin’s appointment of General Sergei Surovikin, tasked with handling the escalating war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile the ultra-rich are having luxury bunkers built for them so they can - as they think - safely sit out the suffering of the rest of us. Russell Brand satirises this notion of invulnerability:
Is there still a place for Melinda in Bill’s underground castle?
I guess there are really good bunkers below the CIA’s headquarters, and the Pentagon, and various sites in Washington. Will they be recruiting nubile totty to help re-breed the human race? How diverse will the neo-Lebensborn program be?
And what are we supposed to do? How many victims of assault think ’this can’t be happening’?
Why, if I weren’t so rational and modern, I might believe that Satan existed.
Last week YouTube had a recommendation in its sidebar, a Teufelsrad or Devil's Wheel at this year's Oktoberfest -
I had never seen anything like this before. Why had I never heard of it?
Looking at it more closely it seemed to be a cleverly designed and executed piece of German engineering. It could also be an example of the famous German sense of humour!
A search revealed a brief story in Wiki and these 'wheels' have been used at Oktoberfest since 1913.
One of the links in the Wiki article led me to this Human Roulette Wheel at Steeplechase Park, Coney Island, early 1900s:
Now if I were fifty years younger and if I had consumed a stein or three, I might............ do as I'm doing now and enjoy the entertainment from behind the barriers which is also the safest way to enjoy San Fermin!
The news that interest rates are going up has spooked the housing market. In truth it never
takes much to do that as much of the property wealth accumulated is built on not-so-firm
foundations, but has become over the years the base of much that the ordinary working man
has accumulated in capital assets, in effect replacing ever poorer pension returns.
It suits the powers that be and the building industry to keep kicking the can down the road as
long as possible as a collapse will end whatever government is in power and in the case of the
Conservatives take away their biggest donors all in one hit.
So almost since I can remember there have been endless boosters and financial support
mechanisms invented to keep the train on the rails, and to a degree very successful it has been,
but at a cost.
The days of thrift have been replaced by ever increasing borrowing. How did we arrive at this? If
we go back to the time when we purchased our first house, the procedure was quite simple: you
approached a building society, told them what you earned, they told you on that basis what you
could borrow, and you would open an account with them and prove you could repay the agreed
amount by saving with them for two years. You knew where you stood financially as interest
rates were pretty static and even if your wife had a decent job that would only give you a better
chance of securing a mortgage, it would not increase the amount you could borrow.
The borrowing at that time 1967 was two and a half times earnings; we saved for the two year
period and purchased our first house.
How times have changed; and they started to change in the Seventies with larger multiples of
earnings partly to boost the mid seventies housing stagnation, but as with all fixes they became
the permanent model. This multiple earnings rate continued to increase with every hiccup that
the housing market encountered, up to the disaster of ‘89 when we had the only real slump in
house prices along with borrowing rates that meant negative equity became a reality.
One would have thought that period would have had a return-to-reality effect on the market, but
no, by now we were well into the BMW on the drive period when young couples were not
satisfied with just getting a house, they wanted the instant nice car and all the rooms fitted out
and no real halt to their lifestyle outside of this. Who can blame them, when schemes such as low
deposits and fixed low interest rates for a number of years made it all possible?
Meanwhile the multiple years earnings ratio continued to rise, one’s partners earnings added to
the total and today six or seven times annual earnings to borrowing ratio is not unusual. Add to
that the low interest rates that have become the norm since 2008 and many would think this is
housebuying Nirvana with no end.
The reality is somewhat different. With the rise in rates now happening the warning signs are out
for a correction in prices. What is guaranteed is that the Conservative party in particular, who rely for
a large portion of their votes on the house owner sector, will do all they can to stop the collapse
happening; what is left that they can salvage from the magic money tree has yet to be
announced or provided.
The overlying problem with the housing market is that years of gifting first time buyers schemes
to get them to buy houses has simply pushed up prices, in effect creating a Ponzi scheme. Every
time easier money is provided prices go up as sellers know more money is available; the same
with the lower deposits that free up more buyer' money and other similar schemes. It has
happened every time these schemes or fixed rates or as now ‘lifetime mortgages’ have been
introduced. Surely we have run out of incentives that only push up prices, yet while whoever is in
power facilitates all these measures prices will continue to rise.
No one wants a housing crash. We saw the damage in the late eighties / early nineties when as an
aside few could sell their houses because so many were tied down to mortgages they could not
or barely afford for properties that had lost a fair chunk of their value.
Having said that there was no help at that time yet already we hear cries of ‘the government
must do something’; not really the government but the taxpayer of course.
With many mortgage offers being withdrawn and interest rates reaching around 6% one could
say the market is returning to something like normal, the sort of level that prevailed for years
before 2008. Surely that, with a corresponding drop in house prices, can only be a good
thing.
Many will say this is the free market in action, but that would be being economical with the truth
as governments have a vested interest in keeping the housing market going along nicely even
at the ridiculous current prices. They take a lot of money from transactions for doing absolutely
nothing, display faux concern about getting everyone on the
housing ladder and at the same time placate the building industry who donate so much to the Party.
You will also note the government's efforts to get houses built and sold does not include raising
the build quality to a standard enjoyed elsewhere in Europe, or the size of the properties built, or
the dire architecture. That I have covered in previous articles, yet it is part of the overall poor
picture of where the housing market has ended. Perhaps at the very least price stagnation for a
prolonged period would be the easiest way to bring back some common sense to the whole sector.
The last couple of years have been a fantasy land with the housing market seemingly in another
world to everything else. The pent up demand created by Covid ran its course long ago or it
should have, but the signs are there. Looking locally, houses are no longer selling as fast as they
were put up for sale, in fact many are sticking and 'reduced' signs have reappeared. Maybe, just
maybe, this is a sign that some sanity is coming back to the market along with the withdrawal of
those fixed low rate mortgages.
Those who say the housing market has only ever gone up have obviously not lived long enough
to remember ‘75 and ‘89 ‘90. Yes it did all recover but many got their fingers burnt big-time then. Governments need to stay out of the game and lenders need to stop being so greedy - but will they?
