North Norfolk Blogger

Just what we need, another stupid unenforcable law

2009-03-08T13:53:00.003Z

I read in today's papers, and hear on the news, that the Government has decided to reduce the speed limit on country roads to 50mph from 60mph.

Now, as you'll see from the name of this blog, I live in North Norfolk, a place crisscrossed by roads that are not just rural, but in many places only wide enough for a single car with passing places, so fools doing 60mph along these roads would be considered not just fool, but a maniac who could easily cause a fatal crash.

Alongside these B and C class roads, we have the local A roads, these are exclusively single carriageway, In my area, I have the A140 and the A149, in the last 5 to 8 years many sections of these roads have had their speed limit cut as they go through villages, in some places to 50mph, in others to 40mph and in a couple of places, all the way down to 20mph,

What effect does this have on the drivers traversing these areas? They get utterly frustrated. Not so much by the changes in the limit itself, but by the behavior of some of the drivers. The first result of a drop in the speed limit as you are travelling along is the "Bunching up" of traffic. generally, at 60mph almost all drivers keep to a sensible distance from the vehicle in front, go down to 50 and that gap between cars decreases dramatically, 40mph is even worse, at this point, the gap is generally too small to avoid accidents, once you pass through these areas, people speed up to 60 and the traffic spreads out to safe distances.

So, we have the comparison between single track roads and single carriageway roads, in the time I've lived in North Norfolk, over 30 years, how many accidents have I seen on the single track roads? Two, both of which I was involved in, both caused by someone underestimating the width of their car (not me I hasten to add). On the single carriageway roads, I have seen many more accidents on the A roads, most of which seem to have been caused by cars joining the main road, obviously not doing 60, but pulling out in front of traffic that may be. That isn't a misjudgement on part of the driver on the main road, but of the driver joining it.

So now we'll have all drivers bunching up and getting frustrated as this pathetic government tries to make every one of us a criminal. What will that lead to? More accidents, more Road Rage, more frustration.

This government does not understand the country, does not understand anyone who would live outside their cities, and, if you are potentially a voter for any party other than Nu Labour (and EVERYONE who lives in the country is likely to vote against them) then you will suffer. You will suffer if only by the passing of laws that cannot be enforced, even if they tried to enforce a 50mph limit, on the country roads, you'ld get cars being chased by Police cars that are incapable of goes at any sort of speed. Crackers, absolutely crackers

Snow and the UK

2009-02-03T18:00:00.000Z

So, that was it, the worse weather "event" since 1991. Not only are we
the laughing stock of Europe, we are the laughing stock of everywhere
North of Derby. Snow happens at least a couple of times a year in these
areas, how often does it make national news? As with the 1987
"Hurricane" it affected the south, especially London and, as a result
was splashed everywhere.

Now I will admit that I expect some bias towards the south east of the
country and Londn in particular, as, if you look at Greater London, it
almost certainly contains between 10 and 12% of the entire population of
the country, but I suspect that as much of the Media output derives from
London, this bias is much greater than it would be otherwise. Note to
all media outlets, keep it balanced and PLEASE stop over hyping events.
It SNOWED, admittedly hasn't done that too often recently, but it is
just snow, it will be gone in a few days, or at worse a couple of
weeks. Some of us are just happy to see some of the white stuff, I
would however like to see less of the "Snow event proves Global warming"
as that can be described in just one word, -- Bullshit.

Bad News Days

2009-01-27T09:42:00.002Z

So what is is about newspapers, rolling TV news and other media that
make them want to outdo each other in the bad news stakes? We get
erroneous headlines "80,000 jobs lost in one day". Where has this
disaster happened?

Worldwide!!

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but the comments I hear coming out
of China seem to be telling me that they may be losing 80,000 jobs a day
in China alone, without any help from our crippled companies. Besides I
would assume that the 80,000 are the publicly announced job cuts from
large corporations, ignoring the little guys who may be laying off 1 or
2 people.

But the thing that really annoys me is that the 80,000 is presented as a
hard fact, if you are person 80,001, you will be safe, but God help you
if you are number 79,999.

Note to all media outlets, Present "facts" not hearsay presented as
facts. If a figure is approximate, say it's approximate, you can even
say a figure is expected to be higher or, heaven forbid if it's good
news, lower. People are not stupid, they can see when a "fact" is is
not a fact. All it does is encourage a counter culture where people do
not believe the Main Stream Media, because all they peddle are lies

The year the Glaciers Grew??

2009-01-25T21:07:00.002Z

So here we are at the start of 2009, OK already almost 12% through the year, but, Temperatures are down, worldwide. Forget the idea that ice is melting, this year, look at facts, not hearsay. So why do I think the "Global Warmers" have got it wrong?

Some facts

1) we are at the end of a solar cycle, the "Little Ice Age" happened at the Maunder Minimum where there were very few sunspots for a period of over 60 years.
2) The other known time of temperature decreases was the Dalton Minimum, which although nowhere near as long or as strong as the Maunder minimum did produce an overall decrease in world temperature.
3) The sun appears too have "switched off", see this graph from the excellent wattsupwiththat notice the drop in activity in 2005, given it seems that a 3 year gap translates to a cooling, we are well on our way.
4) An unprecedented, at least in the last 35 years, Stratospheric warming is indicative of further cooling to come for the Northern hemisphere during this winter
5) The PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) looks as though it will be negative for 2009, again leading to an overall decrease in temperature.
6) El Nino is the past, La Nina seems to be the dominant process for 2009 as it was for 2008.
7) Despite all the Global Warmers comments, the Antarctic, as a continent is gettingt colder, NOT warmer and ice is accumulating in greater quantities rather than not forming during the Antarctic winter

Add these facts together and what do you have? Global cooling to a point that will arrest, overall, the retreat of glaciers worldwide. Ther may still be some areas on the planet that get warmer, but overall, cooler is the trend and a miniscule change in global temepreature will be enough to stop the retreat

Norfolk County Council Cuts

2009-01-20T22:19:00.003Z

I hear that again the County Council is cutting jobs. I also hear that they are re-organising Social services, arranging for the Social Workers to be able to link into the County IT system and update records remotely. I have no idea how they will do this, but I hear that the cost of it will be "up to" 60 jobs. These are Front line Jobs, people that actually go out and help the needy of ths County, whether they are young or old, infant or elderly. Do we hear of any job cuts at County Hall?

The beaurocrats get more numerous and better paid, many in "Cover your arse" jobs rather than the people who actually have to go out and do the work to look after us when we are needy, are the beaurocrats at risk? Probably not.

With all the figures that NCC put out each year, I would like to add one more. Can the council provide us with a % of Frontline staff costs compared to administatration costs for each department the Council controls?

Bank bailout Mark 2

2009-01-20T22:04:00.003Z

So here we are again, another bank bailout, RBS failing, the new "super sized" Lloyds banking Group falling, RBS Share price at a miserly 10.3 PENCE, down 11% on the day (i.e. down Just over a penny) while Lloyds is now down to just under 45p having lost 20 pence today or one third of it's value.

What are we doing allowing this to happen? What is the true VALUE of Lloyds? Lloyds, before taking on the toxic HBOS was always seen as being rock solid and BORING. Well, it isn't boring any more, however if this carries on much longer it will be another government bank to add to Northern Rock and RBS (RBS will be in governemnt hands within 4 weeks IMHO)

In the meantime, the country goes down the pan and all our debt increases.

Try reading all of this,

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/petrov/2004/0902.html

but the important part is this

There are also important parallels regarding currency and export policy. During the 1920s, the British Pound was overvalued and was used by smaller countries as a reserve currency. While Britain ran its inflationary policies during the 1920’s, it was losing gold to other countries, mainly the United States. Therefore, “if the United States government were to inflate American money, Great Britain would no longer lose gold to the United States” (p. 143). Exacerbating the problem further, the Americans artificially stimulated foreign lending, which further strengthened American farm exports, aggravated the net-export problem, and accelerated the gold flow imbalances. “It [foreign lending] also established American trade, not on a solid foundation of reciprocal and productive exchange, but on a feverish promotion of loans later revealed to be unsound” (p. 139). “[President] Hoover was so enthusiastic about subsidizing foreign loans that he commented later that even bad loans helped American exports and thus provided a cheap form of relief and employment—a cheap form that later brought expensive defaults and financial distress” (p.141) Thus, the preceding discussion makes it clear, that the fundamental reasons behind the American inflationary policy were (1) to check Great Britain’s drains of gold to the United States, (2) to stimulate foreign lending, and (3) to stimulate agricultural exports.

Similarly, today the dollar is overvalued and used as the reserve currency of the world. The U.S. runs its inflationary policy and is losing dollars to the rest of the world, mainly China (and Japan). Today, the currency and export policy of China is anchored around its peg to the dollar. The main reason for this is that by artificially undervaluing its own currency, and therefore overvaluing the dollar, China artificially stimulates its manufacturing exports. The second reason is that by buying the excess U.S. dollars and reinvesting them in U.S. government bonds, it acts as a foreign lender to the United States. The third reason is that this foreign lending stimulates American demand for Chinese manufacturing exports and allows the Chinese government to relieve its current unemployment problems. In other words, the motives behind the Chinese currency and export policy today are identical to the American ones during the 1920s: (1) to support the overvalued U.S. dollar, (2) to stimulate foreign lending, and (3) to stimulate its manufacturing exports. Just like America in the 1920s, China establishes its trade today not on the solid foundation of reciprocal and productive exchange, but on the basis of foreign loans. No doubt, most of these loans will turn out to be very expensive because they will be repaid with greatly depreciated dollars, which in turn will exacerbate down the road the growing financial distress of the banking sector in China.

Therefore, it is clear that China travels today the road to Depression. How severe this depression will be, will critically depend on two developments. First, how much longer the Chinese government will pursue the inflationary policy, and second how doggedly it will fight the bust. The longer it expands and the more its fights the bust, the more likely it is that the Chinese Depression will turn into a Great Depression. Also, it is important to realize that just like America’s Great Depression in the 1930s triggered a worldwide Depression, similarly a Chinese Depression will trigger a bust in the U.S., and therefore a recession in the rest of the world.

Unless there is an unforeseen banking, currency, or a derivative crisis spreading throughout the world, it is my belief that the Chinese bust will occur sometime in 2008-2009, since the Chinese government will surely pursue expansionary policies until the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China. By then, inflation will be most likely out of control, probably already in runaway mode, and the government will have no choice but to slam the brakes and induce contraction. In 1929 the expansion stopped in July, the stock market broke in October, and the economy collapsed in early 1930. Thus, providing for a latency period of approximately half a year between credit contraction and economic collapse, based on my Olympic Games timing, I would pinpoint the bust for 2009. Admittedly, this is a pure speculation on my part; naturally, the bust could occur sooner or later.

While I base my timing of bust on the 2008 Olympic Games, Marc Faber, the foremost Austrian authority in the world on Chinese economic development, believes that the bust will occur sooner. According to him, the U.S. is due for a meaningful recession relatively soon, which in turn will exacerbate already existing manufacturing overcapacities in China. This, coupled with growing credit problems, makes him believe that China will tip into recession sooner than the Olympic Games. In other words, Dr. Faber believes that a U.S. recession will trigger the Depression in China. Indeed, that very well may be the trigger, but if so, it still remains to be seen whether the Chinese government will let the bust run its course or choose the route of a “crack-up” boom, come hell or high water.

We should also consider another possible trigger for a bust, namely trade surpluses turning into trade deficits due to the accelerated rise of prices for resources, such as commodities, which China must import. Faced with trade deficits, China may decide to dishoard surpluses by selling U.S. government bonds, or it may decide to abandon its peg to the dollar. In either case, this will exacerbate the problems of the ailing U.S. economy, which in turn will boomerang back to China.

Finally, the bust may be triggered by a worldwide crisis in crude oil supplies. Peak oil supply is around the corner, if not already behind us, and Middle East or Caspian instability could sharply cut oil supplies. Historically, oil shortages and their concomitant rise of oil prices have always induced a recession. China’s growing dependence on oil ensures that should an oil crisis occur, it will slip into recession.

To summarize, the likely candidates for a trigger to the Chinese depression are (1) a worldwide currency, banking, or derivatives crisis, (2) a U.S. recession, (3) the containment of runaway inflation, (4) the disappearance of Chinese trade surpluses, and (5) an oil supply crisis.

Whatever the trigger of the bust in China, there is little doubt that this will provide the onset of a worldwide depression. Just like the U.S. emerged from the Great Depression as the unrivalled superpower of the world, so it is likely that China will emerge as the next.

written in 2004, eerily accurate

Thursford Christmas Spectacular

2008-12-22T09:17:00.003Z

Bit of a strange thing to write about, as, if you don't have a ticket, you will not see it this year. Last Thursday evening went to this years Chris mas spectacular at the Thursford Steam museum. A Variety show in the true sense, lots of singing, a foundation of Religion with the Christmas Story, and a really good night.

The Thursford Steam Museum started life a place where old steam engines, mainly traction engines made in Norfolk, were restored and displayed. From it's start in 1977, the Christmas Show has grown to deserve the term Spectacular. Over 100 performers on the (huge ) stage, singing of the highest quality, dancing that is incredibly precise, a wonderfully happy atmosphere, all combine to create a superb nights entertainment.

Norfolk seems to be one of the last places in the UK where "Old Fashioned" Variety shows still has enough of a draw to pull people out of their homes. The "Seaside Special" and the "Christmas Special" in Cromer Pier Theatre along with the Thursford Show really do make Norfolk, and North Norfolk particularly is now the only part of the country if you are looking for good old fashioned Variety Shows.

So, what was the Thursford Show like? It's termed a "Spectacular" and that is almost an understatement, from the very start the pace of the show is managed with huge skill, some dance routines are close to frenetic, while the quality of the singing is of the highest order. An undercurrent of the Christmas story helps to hold the show together, without becoming overly pious and still allowing some wonderfully choreographed dance routines, especially one in the second half where the speed of movement was so quick as to almost be impossible to follow but no one made a mistake, I dread to think how long the rehearsals take. The other highlight is the music, not just an orchestra of the highest calibre, but an organ player who plays the Wurlitzer Organ with such Panache that he leaves you breathless. To have so much control over your body that each of your four limbs are acting in a co-ordinated but seperate way to produce a beautiful cacophony that can be viewed on big screens that are scrolled down so cameras can pick up what the maesto is doing. At one point he even shows the time on his watch so you can see that the projection is not a recording.

The final point is that the comedy that takes place is funny, but not offensive. So this is a real night for those from nine to ninety

Wonderful night, now I must book next years tickets

(Un) Employment Numbers

2008-12-09T15:29:00.004Z

I'm spending my working time in London, in a building just off Baker
Street. Everyday I walk from my hotel to work, as part of that work I
walk past a "Reed Recruitment" office, during the time I have been
taking this small amount of exercise the numbers displayed in a rolling
neon display make for sobering reading.

The numbers in question are the number of Jobs available online at
Reed.co.uk, the number appears to change every four weeks, so cannot at
any time be deemed as being up to date, but they are interesting for the
decline in numbers seen since late September. I cannot remember the
number to the nearest digit, but for each month I can remember the
number of thousands displayed and they break down as this

Sept 08 -- 168,000
Oct 08 --159,000
Nov 08 -- 139,000
Dec 08 -- 131,000

From that we see that the number of vacancies has dropped by over 25%
in just 4 months, and remember these are jobs that are online, so this
is s nationwide snapshot, and Reeds cover a large portfolio of job
types. If that is repeated over all the agencies out there, it
represents a huge reduction in available jobs and a worrying trend for
the future.

One point that I cannot compare against is any seasonality in the
figures, i.e. would they be expected to drop anyway? I suspect that for
October and November things would not normally be anywhere near as bad
as these figures suggest.

Add to any picture the numbers concealed by use of "Incapacity Benefit"
and other tricks to reduce the size of the Dole queue and I would think
that the number of people chasing jobs, or at least not in a job is
probably already higher than the number of jobs available.

UPDATE: 16th December 2008

This week, they have updated the numbers again, and it's not good, jobs available online now down to just over 127,539, that's 4,000 jobs in a week, or about 3.5% reduction, not good at all

Inflation, Deflation and where we go from here

2008-12-16T21:41:00.003Z

So, as of now we have the USA Federal reserve having setting Interest Rates at 0.25%. Lower than they have ever been before. We have Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England saying that next year inflation may undershoot the 2% target by more than 1%, prompting another letter of apology to Politicians who profess to know where the economy is headed.

So, since July 2007, the patient's, the world economy, prognosis has become increasingly bad.

First we had the Credit Crunch, supposedly a "local problem", confined to the USA, caused by lending of money by banks in an irresponsible manner. That is, they loaned money to people who could not afford to pay, we called it "Sub-Prime". In the UK we smiled and said "Only in America"

Until

We got hit by two words "Northern Rock". Here was the UK's answer to Sub Prime, a Bank giving mortgage loans of upto 125% of the value of the property that people were buying. Buying with a loan of that size has a single assumption -- that the value of property will continue to increase until the value is at least 125% of the purchase price. Looking at property values in the last 12 years you see a rising trend, with prices increasing year by year, until quarter 3 of 2007. What happened in Quarter 3? Northern Rock -- and a loss of confidence.

Since then, house prices have headed only one way -- down. Currently we are about 15% down from where we were, yeaterday the Barclays Bank boss said that he expects that to double to a decline of 30% from the peak, so if your house was worth £200,000 in July 2007, by the time we reach the bottom of this that business leader expects it to be worth just £140,000 and if you bought that house in 2006 or 2007, you'll be in negative equity for several years to come.

Then

It got worse. Banks, those bastions of a Capitalist Society started losing their market value, sometimes in dramatic fashion. Lehman was the second big bank to go, the first was Bear Stearns, and suddenly Investment Banks are rare beasts, driven out of business by exposure to CDO's, SIV's and other ways of taking debt off their Balance Sheets

Cars, Gas Guzzlers and Eco Warriors

2008-11-19T17:14:00.003Z

So General Motors, Ford and Chrysler want to follow the banks lead and beg for money from the American Government.

First they were sent packing, now they come back needing smaller sums of money, but I have a feeling that the real reason is that they will wait until the new President is installed and then say they need more.

Meanwhile here in the UK we have people camping near the runway at Stansted because we must all stop flying. Hmmm maybe, maybe not

Abuse of Power

2008-12-02T13:31:00.002Z

There is something about the Damien Green affair that worries the hell out of me. Now my understanding is that if the Police want to search your property or possibly confiscate your belongings BUT they do not have evidence of an illegal act, they can get a "Search Warrant" which will allow them to search and confiscate items that may have been used in an illegal act. To get the warrant, they have to convince a Judge that it will help them substantively in their investigations.

However, if they arrest you, things are different, the section below is taken, verbatim, from http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_rights/legal_system/police_powers.htm#Powersofentry. All bold sections are my emphasis

If the police do arrest you, they can also enter and search any premises where you were during or immediately before the arrest. They can search only for evidence relating to the offence for which you have been arrested, and they must have reasonable grounds for believing there is evidence there. They can also search any premises occupied by someone who is under arrest for certain serious offences. Again, the police officer who carries out the search must have reasonable grounds for suspecting that there is evidence on the premises relating to the offence or a similar offence.

In other circumstances, the police must have a search warrant before they can enter the premises. They should enter property at a reasonable hour unless this would frustrate their search. When the occupier is present, the police must ask for permission to search the property – again, unless it would frustrate the search to do this.

When they are carrying out a search police officers must:

identify themselves and - if they are not in uniform - show their warrant card, and

explain why they want to search, the rights of the occupier and whether the search is made with a search warrant or not.

Now Damien Green was arrested at his home, yet his offices in Parliament were also searched. So according to the text above, this immediately gives the Police the authority to search his home, but what about:

They can also search any premises occupied by someone who is under arrest for certain serious offences.

What is the Serious Offence which has been committed, for which No-one has been charged? Was a Warrant obtained to search his offices? If not, does the Speakers remit cover allowing the authorities access to an MP's private correspondence?

Police ALWAYS want more powers, sometimes it is understandable, sometimes not, but when we end up with the situation we've had over the last few days I think there should be much greater, transparent oversight

Laptops vs Desktops

2008-12-08T13:19:00.003Z

Why would anyone buy a desktop PC? Laptops today, even the smaller ones
have high resolution screens, usually 1280*800 have built in DVD writers
and can do anything that a desktop machine can do. Add to that the lack
of wired clutter between keyboard, mouse, monitor, network etc. Almost
all laptops can connect via a wireless network and, finally the power
consumption of a laptop is typically between 10 and 20 watts whereas a
performance desktop needs a power supply that can cope with 500 watts
and will generally draw between 75 and 125 watts, even without the
screen which itself will draw another 15-25 watts.

Price also comes into it
5 years ago the differential between laptops and desktops was pretty big
with the laptops having a premium of over 100%. This no longer applies,
laptops are as cheap, if not cheaper than desktops, which then begs the
question.

Why buy a desktop??

Clarkson and the "End of Days"

2008-12-08T22:20:00.002Z

Interesting comments from a very ill Jeremy Clarkson on the Mayo show on Radio 5 last week. Jeremy Clarkson has been desribed as a contraversialist (if there is such a word). Here you'll find Jeremy's personal opinion, and he stresses it's a personal opinion that we're about to hit a massive financial meltdown.

Iain Dale's Diary: Sky Report Damian Green Arrested

2008-11-27T21:40:00.000Z

Iain Dale's Diary: Sky Report Damian Green Arrested

Politics going bad?

2008-11-27T21:25:00.002Z

Damian Green, the Conservative immigration spokesman was arrested earlier today.

I find it very worrying that the reason for the arrest was given by Sky as "conspiracy to cause misconduct in public office". Have we come, in just 11 years to a situation where, if you are passed information from inside a Government Department, you are arrested and your house searched?

The word that concerns me most is "Conspiracy", it always implys more than one person, is this how Gordon Brown aims to stay in power? Arrest the opposition? I know, we'll set prison camps up in remote areas of the country. No that's been done before -- by Stalin!!

Wonderful Winter Weather

2008-11-22T11:46:00.002Z

Snow and hail showers today, with a cutting wind. Took the car to the garage and had to walk home in one of those showers. The snow and hail, no problem, the wind, lethal. Absolutely frozen by the time I got home, but what a joy to see winter come when winter should. Not even out of November and we have some snow. What I want to know now is where else on the planet is it colder than normal?

Peverse??

2008-11-21T11:22:00.004Z

These are strange times. In fifteen months we have gone from a world where we were "living in a new paradigm" where "Boom and Bust have been abolished" to a world where the wheels are falling off.

This, supposedly, is all down to confidence. Commentators who warned that there would be a price to pay when people realised what was happening were called "naysayers" and derided as being old fashioned and out of touch. All of these people, especially Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph and Jeff Randall, also of the Telegraph.

I don't think these commentators are laughing, they realise that times are much too serious for that, but they would be right to say "I told you so".

From my perspective, we live in an age where the amount of information and the amount of knowledge available to the average person is huge compared with previous generations. How many of the people that became so poor that they ended up in Hooverville knew of what was happening around the world. There was radio, television is was in it's infancy, and many were too poor to even own a radio.

That Depression was, perhaps, the first indication that there were too many people to easily support on the planet. However, since that we have increased the global population from just over two billion to over six billion, with the forecasters taking the population over nine billion by 2050. IF the population gets that high, we will either have to live life in a totally different way, as if we don't, we will end up living in a world where all the natural resources will either have been used or are difficult to obtain.

In the meantime we have scientists telling us a pandemic of influenza or some other disease is about 20 years overdue, a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 Spanish flu would kill, if the spread and lethality was similar, in excess of ninety million. Of course, if H5N1 mutated, at current lethality rates, that would be more like one to two billion and finally, if the rumoured smallpox samples escaped, then with the lack of immunity now, it could hit fify percent of the worlds population, so a round three billion.

That would wreck the capitalist paradigm that the world currently operates on. Growth would be unheard of for decades, if not centuries. But perhaps it would move us back to being more responsible with our environment.

So here I am, sitting in my centrally heated house, typing on a computer, connected by ADSL broadband to the wonderful invention the "Web", where I can read information on UK Politics from Guido or Ian Dale, get alternative views on the news from Drudge or Al-Jeezera, or look at what Kondretieff waves are in economics and their consequences

Enjoy it while you can afford it, it may get much more expensive as we move forward

Winter Arrives

2008-11-21T10:36:00.002Z

British weather, it's just magic. Today the weather can best be
described as awful, switching within minutes between sunshine and heavy
showers, predicted to turn wintry as the day goes on. Add to this the
wind, a cold northerly that gusts hugely during these showers, and you
have a day where it is best to stay indoors and watch.

Update: It's cold and blowing a hooley, but so far at least no snow. Currently have some blue sky, but the excellent Netweather suggests on it's radar that we may get something later.

Travelling

2008-11-18T23:30:00.002Z

I travelled today from Stansted to Hannover and have something to say of the Airport, the journey and the Dutch.

Travelling at 20:40 means that Stansted is usually quite quiet, tonight it was very quiet, reminded me of what it was like 10 years ago. A joy to travel through, no real delays, the staff themselves under less pressure were polite and helpful. But, why, when I was quizzed by a policeman as to where I was going did I feel slightly disconcerted when, on being asked what the reason for my travel was, my reply of “Business” was not enough. The next question was “What’s the nature of your business?” I felt like saying “None of your business”, but instead told the truth “Helping to implement a computer system”. Why do they need to know? Makes no difference to them at all, and I have never been asked, when in any country in Europe, “Why are you here?”

I, and my co worker, needed a bite to eat, and it was during that time that the comment on the Dutch came up. Sitting on a table next to us was a Dutch guy who, having eaten, asked for his bill, so far so good. He decided to pay for it by card, again, normally not a problem. He put the card in, the waitress started to ask him to put in his PIN when his mobile rang. He then kept the waitress waiting while he dealt with the phone call, by the time he’d finished the machine had timed out and the whole transaction had to be repeated. Why couldn’t he just have asked the person on the phone to wait 10 seconds instead on making the waitress wait for minutes? The Dutch are some of the most rude people I have met. The Germans, on the other hand are some of the most gracious, they can be full of righteous wrath if you cross them, but if you behave in a normal fashion, the Germans put us Brits to shame for courteousness.

Finally the journey with the ever reliable Air Berlin. Ryanair could learn lessons in how to run an airline from this lot. The plane was on time, the cabin staff were very good, we arrived slightly early and the baggage appeared within 10 minutes. Totally brilliant.

Money Money Money

2008-11-18T08:24:00.001Z

Niall Ferguson's series, "The Ascent of Money" looks like it could be good. Did you know that the root of credit is "Credo" Latin for I believe? What do you believe to loan money? That someone will repay the money that they have borrowed.

Why has it all gone wrong now? Because the heirs of the Moneylenders mantle became too greedy, not content with being able to make money by making the borrower pay back what was borrowed plus a bit more. The "bit more" is the important bit, how much that bit is, depends on many things, how long it's to be borrowed for, how "Credit Worthy" the person is and whether the money is "underwritten" or guaranteed. Credit worthy? Then you will be offered a low interest rate. Questionable Credit Rating? You pay more!!

Loan sharks are the direct decendents of Shylock from The Merchant of Venice. In fact, there may be many of our bankers that will, if Dante is correct, end up in their own circle of hell.where usurers are interned to suffer eternal damnation, so there may be some justice after all.

GM Crops. Why??

2008-11-16T08:50:00.002Z

A multi generational study of mice conducted in Austria appears to have reignited the debate as to whether GM crops cause long term changes in fertility and the health of offspring. The report (which can be read in full Here) was commissioned to discover whether there were any statistically significant changes over several generations of mice when the control group were fed non GM crops and the test group had a diet that included 33% GM modified maize. From the report it appears that this was much less a "Force Feed" regime, it was much more a "we'll let the mice live a normal life" if life can be normal in a lab.

The important part is that there were differences in litter size and offspring size, with smaller litters and lower birth weights.

Now the important question. Why do we need GM crops? I've heard people say that if we don't have them we will not be able to feed the number of people on the planet. Perhaps having LESS people on the planet wouldn't be a bad idea. The other point I've heard made is that we would "return" to much more labour intensive methods of weed control. So what if we do? Even in my area, rural North Norfolk, I've seen crops for the last 20 years grown without any GM manipulation increase yields thanks to better husbandry.

The driving force for GM is money, certain companies see it as a way that they can make large amounts of money, and when there was, at some point an idea of introducing a "Sterility Gene", producing a crop that cannot be used as seed is totally unethical. We have farmers everywhere having, for countless generations, using their harvest as their seed for the following year. These companies, if they have their way, would stop that dead in it's tracks -- literally. After the harvest, you want to grow something, you BUY new seed. Who provides that? They do!! And as a result they make more money. What happens if you don't buy seed, whether GM or not, you cannot grow anything.

I only have one question, where are the ethics in this?

Mugabe, Economics and Whitehall

2008-11-14T11:03:00.006Z

Just what is happening in the world today? We have a Prime Minister who seems to be oblivious to the fact the problems the country faces were actively encouraged by his government (not that I believe any of the others would have done anything differently). Then in the Guardian we have a "respected" economist, if that isn't a contradiction in terms, telling us here that the only way to prevent deflation is for the Bank of England to give the Government an overdraft.

There are a couple of very worrying comments in the piece, none less than his comment that implies that the British Government may default on it's commitments. to paraphrase the sentence, he says that future taxpayers MAY have to repay the Bondholders, but "It may never happen". So is this an implicit acceptance that the Bondholders may not get paid? It would appear to me that it is. So first the banks screw us, then they screw the country

Brilliant, in the last 20 years, we've changed our Inflation measure out of all recognition, ignoring the Council Tax, the Mortgage Costs and the Utility Costs, Water, Electricity and Gas which between them for a dominant proportion of the spending within a household. The result of that was "low" inflation, until it couldn't be disguised any longer because of huge commodity price increases. I remember, as a lad, the Daily Express having a cartoonist called Cummings, who, in the 1960's featured a "Mr Rising Price", accusing the governments of the time of hiding the true level of inflation. Perhaps the wholesale printing of money will allow the ghost of "Mr Rising Price" to rise (sic) agian, only this time as a super hero, because that's where we are headed, hyperinflation.

If you have anything that has intrinsic value, look after it and don't trust the paper that money is printed on

That Was The Week That Was

2008-10-10T20:47:00.002+01:00

So, it's Friday evening, about 15 minutes before the Dow truely settles. In the last 90 minutes it's been on a strong upward swing and, just possibly, it may end the day positive. In a week that has seen over one fifth of the value of the FTSE 100 wiped out and people declaring death, doom and disater everywhere, I'm just pleased that it's got as far as it has without riots. Now we are seeing commodities coming well off the stupidly high prices they were commanding, The only problem looks as though it. currently at least resides with th esuper rich who run or have invested in Hedge Funds. Many of these used borrowed money to buy on the basis that the price increase, effectively asset inflation, would be greater than the cost of borrowing the money.

Now they are caught in a two way pinch, firstly they have to keep borrowing the money if they haven't sold on, most of the money was borrowed in the short term market, the one that is currently frozen, secondly, the commodities they have bought, either physically or on the futures market may be worth less now that they were when they were purchased.

I find it very strange that these so called experts can have got so much a our money wrong

Changing times

2008-10-06T10:51:00.002+01:00

An interesting night in the life of the credit crunch, 2 things leap out and hit me.

First for Merkel to effectively say that no one will lose money in German banks is a big statement. What about the "Hot Money" that flows around, the Euro will go higher today, if it already hasn't and this will increase the pain in the entire Eurozone, where Spain, Italy and Greece are already having problems, partly due to the high level of the Euro.

Secondly, now that the $700Bn in is the bank, people will be looking and realising that the Brits have already "spent" approx £150Bn which equates to $380Bn. But the problem in the US is bigger than here AND the American economy is also 5 times larger than ours if you look at GDP. On that basis, if the problems in the US were as bad as the problems here, the bailout should have been just under $2,000Bn (yes, $2 Trillion). so there is still not enough to take the toxic crap off the banks and let them rebuild.

Another point about how much the bailout is and how much the US Government will pay for it. My understanding is that the US Treasury originally said that they wanted to pay the "Life of Holding" value of the bonds, meaning that although they may have been priced and sold at $100 in the Market today they are probably worth just $5, but the Treasury would buy them, adding all the Bond payments that would be made before the bond was redeemed, so the Banks would get MORE for the highly toxic crap (CDO's etc) than they would for better quality bonds, and the money the banks would get would certainly exceed Book Value. My problem is, the more they pay for these bonds, the smaller the number of bonds they can buy and $700Bn is NOT going to cover it. If I have that wrong, will someone correct me please?

It will be interesting (now there's an understatement) to see what emerges after this, I think the Financial system may be totally different, I don't know how, just that it may.

Credit Crutch

2008-10-05T14:53:00.004+01:00

In the time sine I last posted anything, the "Credit Crunch" has gone from bad through worse to somewhere near disastrous. Banks in the UK and the US have been rescued, Lehman has failed, Morgan Stanley's motto went from "The Thundering Herd" to "The Blundering Nerd" before, themselves, running to be protected by a bigger bank.

Here have a problem, does bigger mean better? And what about Fractional Reserve Banking? Would we be in this mess if we still had local banks and a banking system that held full reserves? I suppose that is in effect the million dollar question. Perhaps we are living in a time that just HAD to happen, because all we have done since 1996 bis postponed the inevitable. I have a feeling that the unproven thesis in economics called the Kondratiev Wave may just have been proved both true. It may also be that the last 10-12 years have been the gold rush they have for the banks for the simple reason that we now have politicians that are beholden to, or perhaps just in awe of big business and rich people.

To understand what the Kondratiev Wave or other long timescale economic cycles are, have a look at this. There are some good links there that will help you understnd what people believe may be happening now. However if one takes a Kondratiev cycle to nominally be 53 years, and recognizing that a wave commenced after the senond world war, say 1946, this means the last cycle should have finished in 1999. It's interesting to note that 1999 was the beginning of the "Dot Com" bust, but while this did have a major effect on the Worlds Stock Markets, but little effect on the man in the street. Perhaps the Intenet did change the paradigm, or at least perhaps distorted it, extending it by seven years to 2007.

It was there that the stupidity of trying to sell houses to people that cannot afford them was finally realised. Since then a new vocabulary has appeared "Sub Prime", "Tier A Capital" and "NINJA" are good examples.

Where do we go from here? I believe the saying "God only knows" may be the closest to reality, but I worry that we are nowhere near that bottom. Stock markets are leading indicators, usually 12 to 18 months, so it would seem we can look forward to a pretty tough 2009, even with where we are now, although some commentators have called the bottom of the bear market I don't believe we are there yet, but only time will tell