Keeping you up to date

From The Times (here behind paywall):

Nicola Sturgeon was on the Andrew Marr sofa yesterday, again. She hates Westminster so much that she rarely leaves it these days. But she is very much the television guest du jour. There she was, chirpy in red with the highest (red) heels I have ever seen on a politician, on a charm offensive.

“The SNP in the House of Commons after the election will not be any kind of destructive force,” she said. “We want to be constructive.”

Somewhere in the studio, David Cameron was watching, getting angrier by the sentence: this woman was soooo infuriating. She was implacable. She was chirpy. And she was Scottish! They lost the referendum. She should get over it.

Andrew was now asking, nicely, if Ed Miliband was a puppet and she the puppeteer.“It’s about grown-up, constructive politics,” said Nicola, almost sweetly (well, I do see her as a boiled sweet).

Andrew was asking her if she liked to “shake things up”.

“That is not my approach,” said the woman who has thrown the entire election into a tiswas.

   

Belling the cat

The possibilities are opening up.  The Sunday Times resorts to fanciful conjecture:

David Cameron, if he has 272 seats or thereabouts, could say on the morning after the election that the Scottish people have spoken, that he has heard what they say, and that the Queen’s speech will accordingly contain a proposal to bring forward a bill for Scottish independence, subject once again to a referendum.

Assuming the currency issue can be resolved beforehand — perhaps by Scottish representation within the Bank of England — and Scotland is allowed to keep sterling, who is to say that the next referendum might not yield a yes?

Labour could never countenance this. The Conservatives could. And the SNP, not short on low cunning, must surely know it. Perhaps this is what lay behind Nicola Sturgeon’s alleged remark to the French ambassador that she would prefer to deal with a Cameron government rather than a Miliband one.

Fantasy politics?  Perhaps.  But surely not outwith the bounds of possibility ...

   

Where we are

The Guardian seeks to make sense of the current opinion polls:

Based on current projections, the most important numbers to follow are on the one hand the combined Labour-SNP bloc, and on the other the Tory-Lib Dem bloc. These calculations matter as they will most probably determine which of David Cameron or Ed Miliband forms the next government.

Labour is currently projected to win 271 seats and the SNP 54. This adds up to 325, enough to win a confidence vote in the Commons, and there could be an “anti-Tory” outright majority once the votes of Plaid Cymru (three), the SDLP (three) and the Greens (one) are also included.

The Conservatives are projected to win 270 seats and the Lib Dems 29. Even once possible support from Ukip (four seats) and the DUP (nine) is co-opted into the mix, the current government coalition would fall well short of a majority.

But these are based on poll snapshots.  Things might change over the next three weeks ...

What a wonderful world!

Just to take your mind off politics, you could read about dolphins on the Scottish West Coast:

The west coast of Scotland has scored a wildlife tourism coup with the news that it is fast becoming a hotspot for common dolphins.

Marine researchers at the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust have reported a rise in numbers, with their encounter rate more than doubling over the past 12 years.

or about a plague of voles in Germany:

Battle lines are being drawn across Germany to combat a horde of invaders — small but hungry voles that threaten to wreak economic chaos.

Farmers in central and northern Germany are appealing for financial help from the government to fight the furry multitude, which, after a mild winter, is already eating its way through newly planted sugar beet crop.

“Vole years”, as they are known, appear to be growing ever more common, with epidemics in 2004, 2007 and 2012. The 2007 invasion is thought to have cost the country €140 million.

or about American doggy potheads:

The cannabis industry, driven by the easing of drug laws across the US, is turning its sights on a new group of potential users — ill and elderly dogs.

The “pet-pot” market is new but shows promise, its pioneers say. Products already available include “Treat-ibles” — canine snacks infused with CBD, or cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive compound derived from the cannabis family.

Auntie Dolores Kitchen, the company behind Treat-ibles, suggests that CBD could be used on dogs to suppress nausea, induce appetite and to manage pain and mood disorders.

Music of the week

Panic attacks?

Perhaps surprisingly, The Times (behind paywall) is wondering if the Tories are on the wrong track:

... the Conservatives seem to have gone out of their way to reinforce their two most serious image problems. First, they found themselves forced into defending the super-rich by Labour’s promise to scrap non-dom status. Then, to divert attention from that, they went into “nasty party” mode, with Michael Fallon’s personal attack on Ed Miliband. It was a perfect example of what Mr Crosby calls the “dead cat” strategy — changing the subject by throwing something so shocking on to the table that people can talk of nothing else — but for many Tories the decomposing corpse just stank. “It reinforced everything people hate about us,” says one ministerial aide. “The message is ‘we sorted out the economy but we’re still bastards’. That really matters when so many people on the doorstep continue to question our motives.”

...

More traditional Conservatives worry that the chancellor is also undermining his party’s greatest strength — the perception that the Tories can be trusted to run the economy — with unfunded spending pledges. In recent days, he has announced an additional £8 billion for the NHS, as well as rail fare freezes costing £1.8 billion and a volunteering scheme that could cost £1 billion to the public sector — on top of the tax cuts already announced by Mr Cameron.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people ...

Wot? No Nicola?

Cooking and drinking

Nice to see Floyd on France, back once again on BBC2.  You can catch the other episodes on the BBC i-player (or on you-tube):

A pedant writes ...

The Guardian reports:

Hillary Clinton announced on Sunday that she was running for president of the United States, promising to be a champion of middle-class Americans if she made it to the White House as the country’s first female commander in chief.

“Everyday Americans need a champion, and I’m going to be that champion,” the former secretary of state and first lady said in a video posted to her website, as she warned “the deck is still stacked in favour of those at the top” despite an economic recovery.

Speaking to camera at the end of a three-minute clip featuring personal stories from Americans of different ages, ethnicities and sexualities, Clinton pledged to ensure people could “get ahead and stay ahead” rather than “just get by”.

"Get ahead and stay ahead" of what?  "Those at the top"?  Seems unlikely.  And is it logically possible for everyone to get ahead?  As Mr Spock might point out, if everyone gets ahead, then no-one gets ahead, in that ceteris paribus they all remain in the same relative place.

Just a thought ...

For GoT fans

Quote of the day

Armando Ianucci in The Independent (here):

Scots are cock of the electoral walk at the moment. Is Nicola Sturgeon’s popularity this election’s version of the Cleggmania that turned us all into fainting hysterics for a day in 2010? Whatever the phenomenon, Britain has become a land of Sturgeonettes, pining for the ability to be able to vote for her.

No one seems to have explained that even Scottish voters can’t vote for her: she’s not standing for a Westminster seat. But it’s a nice dream and one that encapsulates the topsy-turvy world British politics has entered. The leader of a party whose prime purpose is to break up the Union seems the one politician who most offers a conciliatory message of how partnership can work in politics. She’s become a strangely unifying force.

Remarkable ...

Perhaps a slight exaggeration?

 

Last night's debate

The Times, perhaps surprisingly, has the beloved Nicola as a winner.

Alex Massie:

Ms Sturgeon was one of the biggest winners. She made her points clearly and effectively, drawing a contrast between the SNP’s vision and those of the Conservatives and Labour. Voters encountering her for the first time were, I suspect, impressed.

...

Where David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Mr Clegg were forced to acknowledge fiscal reality, Ms Sturgeon backed “modest spending increases” while claiming that the SNP’s approach would reduce the national debt as a share of GDP. But as she will not be tasked with making these numbers add up, this wishful thinking mattered little by the end of an evening in which she had achieved all she wanted.

Magnus Linklater:

Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile, was relishing the opportunity to take on the big players. She has developed a way of suggesting, with a little smile and a shake of the head, that “boys will be boys”, but she herself knew better. She actually used the phrase “old boys’ network” to imply that this was a Westminster carve-up and only the leavening of an SNP presence would keep them in order. “Labour and the Tories are hand in glove in imposing austerity,” she pronounced.

Amazingly, towards the end, she seemed to be holding the ring between prime minister and leader of the opposition. Here was the SNP as the voice of moderation — moderate on immigration, Europe, the economy. She ticked off Nigel Farage like a hospital matron who has found something nasty in the ward, and threw a grin of disbelief which the cameras caught perfectly when he talked of scrapping the Barnett formula. Whether it meant “No, actually, that’s our job” was not clear, she just wanted him to know she had got his number.

This was not the demeanour of a woman representing a minority party.

   

Quote of the day

What's the score with Rangers?  Douglas Fraser tells us:

Thirty days ago, the nominated adviser for the holding company, Rangers International Football Club (RIFC), resigned. Trading on the stock exchange was suspended. The company was given 30 days to find a new one.

To recap further, a nominated adviser, or nomad, is required by the London Stock Exchange to carry out first-line regulation of a company that's listed on the Alternative Investments Market (AIM) - the junior trading platform for shares in smaller, younger companies and higher risk investors.

The nomad has to make sure that the company's governance is in line with stock market rules. The nomad's reputation depends on it.

So if the regulated company's governance is a burach, there's blood all over the boardroom walls, complaints are piling in, the auditor quits, accountants warn that there's significant risk that the company may not be able to continue as a going concern, and it's doubtful that the football team can win promotion to a higher-earning league... and so it goes on... then any sane nomad would be wise to take his camel and stay well clear.

And that's precisely what's happened.

Music of the week

May she get well soon.

Over-egging the pudding

 
Panic?  What panic?  Sterling went from $1.483 at 1201 am yesterday down to about $1.475 at about 10 am, but subsequently recovered to $1.483 by midnight.  At the time of writing, it is at $1.479.

Meanwhile the FTSE 100 ended the day up by 0.5%.  It is up a further 7 points this morning.

Is the prospect of a Labour-SNP alliance so terrifying for The Times?

   

Round the twist

Nigel is losing it:

Big cuts in immigration will allow the nation to return to a time when children played football in the streets, Nigel Farage said yesterday as he unveiled the party’s first billboard of the election campaign.

Nothing to do with the presence of motor vehicles, then?

 

Now there's a surprise

Shock!  Horror!  The boss class are Tories:

More than 100 company leaders have declared support for a Conservative-led government in a letter published in the Daily Telegraph.

I suppose they will next tell us that the working classes are likely to support Labour.

 

A conspiracy theorist writes ...

So it was the fault of the co-pilot?  The BBC website reports:

The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps, named as Andreas Lubitz, appeared to want to "destroy the plane", officials said.

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, citing information from the "black box" voice recorder, said the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.

He intentionally started a descent while the pilot was locked out.

There is something disturbing about the way the authorities rush to blame human beings for aeroplane crashes, conveniently letting the airlines and the aeroplane manufacturers off the hook.  In this case, I have no grounds to dispute the initial findings but I am minded to suspend judgment until the investigations are concluded.

Stating the bleeding obvious

Thus spake the bold Alex:

The SNP would block a minority Conservative government by voting down its Queen's Speech if it holds the post-election balance of power, its former leader Alex Salmond has said.

Mr Salmond said the move could bring down the government if Labour joined in, with David Cameron "locked out".

The Conservatives accused him of "trying to sabotage the democratic will of the British people".

In what sense would the exercise of an anti-Conservative majority in the Commons constitute “sabotage [of] the democratic will of the British people”?  If the people fail to elect a Tory government which can command a majority of the Commons, then it is entirely legitimate - and amply well-precedented - within the bounds of the UK’s first-past-the-post system for whoever can command such a majority to take power.

Music of the week

Quote of the day

From The Guardian  on Mr Tony (here):

Somewhere along the line, your personal manifesto quietly slips from “Education, Education, Education” into “Grease the wheels of dictatorships, grease the wheels of dictatorships, grease the wheels of dictatorships”. I understand it, I do. It could happen to any of us! So I wasn’t all that surprised when Blair said in a speech last weekend that, though democracy in the Middle East was important, it wasn’t any more important than efficacy, or “effective government taking effective decisions”. Indeed, if you’re trying to run a country unencumbered by the views and beliefs of the entire population of that country, as many of Tony’s new business partners are, democracy really could be a bit of a spanner in the works. Blair’s speech was given in Egypt, where he praised the highly effective work of his new pal President al-Sisi, with whom he’s been having some kind of unspecified relationship. Meanwhile, Amnesty International has reported a surge in harrowing incidents of torture and deaths in police custody since President al-Sisi came to power. 

My glass is half empty

There you go:

The FTSE 100 has soared through the 7,000 barrier for the first time in its history, with investors buoyed by the prospect of continuing low interest rates and growing hopes that a solution may finally be found to Greece’s financial crisis.

From here, the only way is down.

Unravelling?

It usually takes more than a day or two for the pundits to discover the feet of clay underlying a budget.  But this week’s Osbornian effort seems to be falling apart rather more quickly.

As the OBR and the IFS have pointed out, there is a huge black hole in the form of £12 billion worth of welfare cuts.  Mr Osborne can’t or won’t explain which bits of welfare spending are to be targeted, even though the options appear to be extremely limited:

According to the Department for Work and Pensions’ latest annual accounts, the UK’s total welfare bill this year will come out at around £167.5bn. However, well over half of this of this – £93bn – is pensions and pension credit, and the chancellor has pledged that his additional £12bn of cuts won’t come from pensioners.This leaves Osborne with the task of shaving £12bn off the remaining benefit bill of £74bn, the equivalent of cutting one pound in every six in just a two-year period.

Then there is the crazy Help to Buy ISA whereby the government will subsidise housing demand, pushing house prices upwards and ultimately benefiting no-one.  Meanwhile the desperate need to increase housing supply is utterly neglected.

More amusingly, in a development reminiscent of the pasty tax, the Chancellor’s proposed tax break for orchestras has had to be swiftly amended to include brass bands.

How soon before we start using the term omni-shambles?

Bring on the girls

Ann Treneman of The Times gets her teeth into the blessed Nicola (behind paywall):

I have always seen Nicola Sturgeon as a boiled sweet, so hard that bits of her chip off if she runs into something. But these days she is on a mission to soften. Industrial amounts of Downy fabric softener have been used and the result is rather impressive. Gone is the helmet hairdo, so effective that the army has asked for permission to deploy it in war zones. In TV make-up, there is a spray-on foundation that they call “airbrush”. Nicola Sturgeon yesterday had that airbrushed glow.

Is that the worst Ms Treneman can do?


   

Quote of the day

From a Guardian editorial on the chairman of the Conservative Party (here):

Mr Shapps is an operator. It’s what he is good at. He knew his double life was under the spotlight. He knew what was at stake when he was asked about it. Time and again he signally failed to tell the truth until he was forced to do so by the evidence. To protest against his conduct and character is not in any way, as he shamelessly alleged on Monday, to be anti-business. It is simply to be pro-truth. The truth is that Mr Shapps is a chancer in a job where credibility ought to matter, and once did. The truth is also that David Cameron has made two mistakes with Mr Shapps. The first was to appoint him chairman. The second is not to fire him. 

   

Budget mysteries

The Treasury Permanent Secretary is getting his knickers in a twist.  The BBC website reports:

The top civil servant at the Treasury has warned staff he will not "hesitate to call in the police" if anyone leaks details from the Budget.

Sir Nicholas Macpherson has sent an email to officials reminding them he takes rules banning any pre-briefing of next week's Budget "very seriously".

As senior politicians and their political advisers have been leaking pre-briefing budget details for years (as will be apparent in tomorrow’s newspapers), it would seem rather pointless to crack the whip over their civil service underlings.

 

Music of the week

Warriors for the dispossessed?

The Guardian reports:

The Conservatives will only win the general election if they can show the electorate that they are the “warriors for the dispossessed”, Michael Gove has said.

In a sign that Downing Street is concerned by poll findings, which consistently show the party is still a tainted brand, Gove said Tories need to show voters what is in their hearts before they can hope to engage their heads.

Speaking at the launch of the Good Right group, the Tory chief whip said: “Only if we remind people of our commitment to social justice, demonstrate our belief in equality of opportunity and affirm that we are warriors for the dispossessed will we be able to win arguments, and elections, and then be in a position genuinely to help the vulnerable and the voiceless. People need to know what’s in our hearts before they are prepared to consider our arguments in their heads.”

Sure, and Jeremy Clarkson is a caring sensitive soul who abhors publicity ...

   

Small change

Laughable:

Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley has been fined £7,500 for breaching Scottish Football Association rules on dual ownership because of his influence on the affairs of Rangers.

According to Wikipedia, Mr Ashley is down to his last £1.5 billion.

   

Nice work if you can get it

The Times reports (paywall):

Rona Fairhead, the chairwoman of the BBC Trust, was urged to give up working for HSBC yesterday after it emerged that she was paid more than £10,000 a day by the beleaguered bank.

MPs claimed that Ms Fairhead’s earnings from HSBC, whose Geneva branch has been accused of facilitating tax evasion, raised questions about her priorities because it dwarfs the £110,000 she receives for working three days a week overseeing the BBC.

Ms Fairhead was paid £513,000 last year by HSBC for about 50 days work, including £334,000 as the non-executive chairman of HSBC North America, £160,000 as the non-executive director of HSBC Holdings and £19,000 in expenses and other benefits.

The businesswoman, 53, who also earns £130,000 for working up to 25 days a year from PepsiCo, has insisted that her BBC work is her “first priority”.

Why?  Because she's worth it - probably ...

   

Quote of the day

The Guardian reports on the Green leader's brain fade:

Now ask yourself: how many LBC listeners who were tempted by the Greens at the start of the week will have trusted Bennett any less, in terms of the character thing, after her rambling radio performance? The answer, I’d suggest, is precious few. While Westminster insiders were listening to a social housing policy coming apart at the seams, many voters elsewhere may have heard an honest woman decline to pretend to an irritatingly insistent man that she could remember a load of statistics that only a freak would commit to memory anyway.

      

Believe it if you like

Ah, the HSBC chief with the complicated banking arrangements.  The BBC reports:

Mr Gulliver, who has worked for HSBC for 35 years and became chief executive in 2011, told the committee that his personal holding of a Swiss bank account through a Panamanian company had "no tax purpose".

He said the arrangement only reflected a desire for privacy from his colleagues at HSBC in Hong Kong.

He said: "It was purely about privacy from colleagues in Hong Kong and Switzerland. We had a computer system back in the day that allowed everybody to inquire into staff accounts ... I was amongst the highest paid people and I wished to preserve my privacy from colleagues. Nothing more than that."

Perfectly understandable.  He went to the trouble of setting up a Panamanian holding company to control a secret Swiss bank account, purely for reasons of privacy.  Doesn't everyone?  Nothing to do with income tax, certainly.


 

No big deal

Should we be celebrating?  CityAM reports:

The UK’s blue chip index finally pushes past a peak that it last reached during the dot com bubble in 1999.

IT’S TAKEN more than 15 years, but the FTSE 100 rose to a record high yesterday, finally beating the level that it reached during the dot com bubble.

The blue chip index ended at a new peak of 6,949.63, beating the previous record of 6,930.2 set on 30 December 1999. Earlier, the index also set a new intra-day high of 6,958.89, surpassing the previous figure of 6,950.6, also set on 30 December 1999. The index rose slowly during the day, but there was a surge in the last 90 minutes of trading, after Eurozone finance ministers approved reform proposals submitted by Greece.

Am I bovvered?  Naw, it just makes bargain buys harder to find ...

How to look ridiculous

Stupid, stupid, stupid

Do we get the politicians we deserve?
    


How much of a stupid politician do you have to be to be taken in by journos posing as those seeking to hire MPs for access to influence? Leaving aside the venality, were they ignorant of all the previous attempts to trap MPs into cash for access? An unknown agency comes along offering them money and they can’t resist shooting themselves in the foot? Idiots.

Music of the week

49½ shades of grey:

So who won?

Sorry to reduce the Brussels financial nnegotiations to the lowest common denominator but it's what matters to peasants like me.

Peston provides half an answer:

Certainly the Germans have won on the issue of form - in that Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has in the end agreed to a four-month extension of the current bailout, which is something his government swore it would never do.

Also, the monitors and enforcers of the agreement will remain Brussels, the IMF and the European Central Bank - the so-called troika so hated by Syriza (although the statement carefully avoids using the loathed term for the three-legged stool).

And the language of the statement is all about the Greeks promising to "honour their financial obligations to all their creditors fully and timely" and adopting measures to "guarantee debt sustainability in line with the November 2012 Eurogroup statement".

But along with the language of Teutonic fiscal rectitude, Mr Varoufakis has clearly secured some important wriggle room.

The fact that the Syriza government can submit its own list of economic and financial reforms to supplant those pledged by its predecessor is a breakthrough - although of course the Germans could still veto what Syriza ends up proposing.

That said, Mr Varoufakis was very clear that his government is not required to implement pension cuts and VAT rises which it has been resisting.

From his point of view what matters most is that he believes he has been given the green light to ease up on austerity, to cut spending or raise taxes less than the last administration committed to do.

In short and, as ever, they kicked the can down the road a bit.

 

Hot air

It's not such a big deal.  The Guardian suggests the end of the world is nigh:

Centrica has slashed the dividend for its 650,000 small shareholders and plans to cut costs and investment after warm weather and falling oil prices reduced annual profits at the owner of British Gas by more than a third. 

It is the first time Centrica has cut its dividend since the company was created in 1997, and leaves many individual investors with less income than they had come to expect.

Operating profit at British Gas fell 20% to £823m because of a sharp drop in demand during the warmest year on record. The average customer bill fell by about £100, and the average profit per customer fell by almost £10 to £42.

As a customer, I welcome the reduction in my gas bill.  As a shareholder, I regret the cut in the dividend but I console myself with the realisation that the 30% cut takes the dividend from over 6% annually to slightly over 4% - which is still a lot more than I would get from putting the money in a bank account.

   

Syriza delenda est

From The Guardian (here):

There is a phrase for what Germany is seeking to do to Greece: a Carthaginian peace. It dates back to the Punic wars when Rome emerged victorious in its long struggle with Carthage but refused to allow its opponent the chance of an honourable surrender. Instead, it enforced a brutal settlement, burning Carthage to the ground and enslaving those inhabitants it did not massacre.

A Carthaginian peace is what is being offered to Alexis Tsipras. On Thursday, the Greek prime minister made it clear that he was willing to see the white flag of surrender flutter over Athens. He accepted that he would have to swallow most of the conditions demanded of him by Greece’s eurozone partners but asked for a few concessions to sugar the pill.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s finance minister, immediately slapped Tsipras down. What Greece was proposing was unacceptable, Schaeuble said. Unless the Germans are bluffing, and there’s nothing to suggest that they are, it leaves Greece with a binary choice: abject surrender or going nuclear.

   

Keeping busy?

The Times reports (behind paywall):

A senior nationalist has warned that Holyrood’s vital committees cannot do their job properly because of the volume of legislation that the government is trying to push through.

Christine Grahame, convener of the powerful justice committee, has called on ministers to cut the number of bills they bring forward so that each can be scrutinised properly.

Speaking at the conveners’ committee, Ms Grahame said: “The level of legislation leaves no time — none whatsoever — for post-legislative scrutiny and hardly any time for a brief inquiry. When you’ve so many balls in the air, it makes scrutinising very difficult to do effectively.”

Perhaps they might do better if the parliament met on more than three days a week?

   

Does he really need the money?

Tawdry.   The Guardian reports:

Tony Blair has added Serbia to the list of countries he is paid to advise, despite his role as the chief proponent of the bombing of Belgrade in 1999.

Blair will counsel the Serbian prime minister, Aleksandar Vucic, who was information minister during the war and was once such an outspoken critic of the British politician that he was listed as an editor of a book titled English Gay Fart Tony Blair.

Now Vucic and Blair find themselves on the same side, under a contract sealed by Blair’s private consultancy to set up a “delivery unit” paid for, according to Serbian official sources, by the United Arab Emirates.

Is there anything Blair will not do in order to fill his pockets?

Blair does not publish his earnings, but the Financial Times put his income for 2011 at around £20m. He is paid up to $300,000 (£195,000) a session on the lecture circuit, aides have said.

In the past he has advised countries as diverse as Rwanda, Albania, Mongolia and Kuwait.

The man has no dignity.

Shades of Munich 1938

Apparently, the security establishment thinks we should  avoid provoking the Russian bear.  The Guardian reports:

Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, has warned against stepping up pressure on Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, over Ukraine and said any change in power in the Kremlin “may well be for the worse”.

The west would have to learn to live with Putin, however unpalatable that may seem, Sawers told an audience of war studies students at King’s College, London. Provoking him could deepen the security crisis facing Europe, he suggested.

“The Ukraine crisis is no longer just about Ukraine,” he said. “It’s now a much bigger, more dangerous crisis, between Russia and western countries, about values and order in Europe.”

Britain’s recently retired chief spymaster said Russia had a formidable nuclear arsenal and Putin wanted these ultimate weapons in his armoury to project raw strength. Russia may have rejected European values but, Sawers said, “we deal with the Russia we have, not the Russia we’d like to have”.

The west “could take on Moscow stepping up our response. Provide weapons to Ukraine so it can defend itself. More stringent sanctions. But how would Mr Putin respond?” Sawers asked.

He added: “As long as Mr Putin sees the issue in terms of Russia’s own security he will be prepared to go further than us. So he would respond with further escalation on the ground. Perhaps cyber attacks against us. We have thousands of deaths in Ukraine. We could start to get tens of thousands. Then what?”

Does he really think that being nice to Putin will stop the latter from exerting his malign influence over Eastern Europe?  That a Western caving-in over Ukraine would put an end to Putin's territorial ambitions?  That the massive economic power of the EU compared with Russia should count for nothing?

 

Learning Spanish

How not to do it?

Quote of the day

From a letter to The Guardian:

Observing the politicians’ evasions and avoidances concerning questions over tax and Swiss banks, why do I keep thinking of Captain Renault’s shock at finding gambling was going on in Casablanca?

   

Music of the week

Vice

The Times reports (paywall):

The Duke of York has been promoted to the rank of vice-admiral, according to the latest Royal Navy appointments published in theLondon Gazette. The notice stated: “Her Majesty The Queen has graciously agreed that: Rear Admiral His Royal Highness The Duke of York KG GCVO ADC be promoted Vice Admiral with effect from 19 February 2015.”

Not inappropriate, in the light of recent events ...

 

Photo of the day

Who says financial high heidyins can't be trendy?  Christine is modelling a flash leather blouson, while Yanis combines an artfully casual scarf with his trademark tieless open-neck.

 

You couldn't make it up

From The Times (behind paywall) (here):

Government claims that Lord Green was unaware of possible wrongdoing by HSBC’s Geneva branch were undermined by public filings revealing that the Tory peer had been on the board of HSBC’s Swiss banking unit for a decade.

Hervé Falciani, the HSBC employee who leaked thousands of the bank’s documents in 2007, told Newsweek that Lord Green “came to Geneva to present the world strategy at the time [the allegations took place]” and therefore “knew perfectly well” of “every problem” at the branch. HSBC’s Geneva branch has been accused of helping clients to evade tax by opening “black” accounts in their name and allowing them to withdraw huge “bricks” of cash.

Regulators in several countries, but not Britain, have opened investigations into the bank and some have signalled that criminal charges may follow.

A spokesman for Mr Cameron initially insisted that “no government minister”, including Lord Green, “had any knowledge that HSBC may have been involved in wrongdoing in relation to its Swiss banking arm”.

The statement was modified yesterday afternoon to say only that the government had “no record” that any minister had been made aware of such wrongdoing by Revenue & Customs.

An analysis of public filings reveals that Lord Green sat on the board of HSBC’s Swiss Private Bank for ten years — making him directly responsible for ensuring that the subsidiary complied with all applicable laws.

This will run and run.

Quote of the day

On the subject of Osborne's prolongation of pensioner bonds (here):

Meanwhile, Mark Littlewood, director general at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “This announcement well and truly proves that we are not all in it together. Pensioner bonds have never been anything other than a gimmick that will benefit pensioners at the expense of the taxpayer, and it beggars belief that the government is prolonging such a foolish policy. It’s high time our politicians stopped buying votes with subsidies for the old and rich.”

Too damn right.  Still, I did buy the one year version.

   

I strapped a plastic bag to my leg and strode forth, a new man

You never appreciate a good night's sleep, until you have to get up every hour.

Just been discharged from a brief - but life-changing - hospital stay.  NHS Scotland did me proud.

My thanks to the locum GP who arranged an immediate appointment at Edinburgh’s Western General, to the medical and nursing staff at the reception service who kept me in, and to the urology department who quickly sorted me out.  I cannot praise highly enough Ward 57’s nursing and support staff who dealt with old men’s medical complaints - amid the blood and the piss - with skill and dedication, and particularly with unflagging cheerfulness and with incredible kindness.

This old man is profoundly grateful.

 

Wishful thinking

The BBC reports:

Commenting on the Ashcroft poll, Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy admitted his party was "well behind and has a big gap to close".

However, he added: "But in the end the only people who will benefit from these polls are David Cameron and the Tories. 

"It is a simple fact that the single biggest party gets to form the next government."

No, it's not a simple fact.  The single biggest party may get the opportunity to try and form a government (although even that is not assured) but it needs to command a majority in the Commons.  If Labour and SNP together have enough seats to outvote the Tories (and whatever allies they can scrape together), then Cameron will not be able to form a government. 

     

Bye, Duggie, Danny, Mags et al

If I were a Scottish Labour MP, I think I would be worried.  The Guardian reports:

Labour’s general election campaign chairman, Douglas Alexander, and the Liberal Democrats’ economics spokesman, Danny Alexander, are two of the most high-profile projected casualties in Scotland at the general election, according to polling research by Lord Ashcroft that was prematurely released on Tuesday night.

The long-awaited polling in 16 constituencies in Scotland suggests a 21% swing from Labour to the Scottish National party (SNP). If the results were replicated across Scotland on 7 May, Labour would lose 35 of its 41 seats, making the prospect of an overall Labour majority at Westminster much more unlikely, and close to impossible.The polling is the most detailed seat-by-seat assessment of the state of Scottish politics with just three months before the election.

In the Labour-held constituencies, the overall swing to the SNP was 25.4%. This ranged from 21% in Airdrie & Shotts to 27% in Dundee West and Motherwell & Wishaw.

What is striking is the size of the notional SNP lead over Labour in all but three of the fourteen Labour-held constituencies, previously regarded as utterly safe.  Labour has a vast amoumt to do to recover the situation.


 

Meanies

The Guardian reports:

Sports Direct is facing a claim for millions of pounds from nearly 300 workers excluded from the retailer’s generous bonus scheme because they were on zero-hours contracts.The employees were excluded from a bonus scheme that paid out about £160m worth of shares to 2,000 “permanent” workers in 2013.

Lawyers acting for the part-time staff sent letters to Sports Direct’s legal team on Friday claiming a total of just over £1m in compensation for missed bonuses for a first batch of 30 workers. The individual claims average about £36,000 each but the highest is worth more than £100,000.

All of the first 30 seeking compensation, with help from the legal firm Leigh Day, have a minimum of five and a half years in continuous employment with Sports Direct, including the period covered by the bonus.

The total which might be payable by Sports Direct to the 300 workers would amount to a measly £10 million.  That is unlikely to make a big hole in the company's pockets.  In the year to 27 April 2014, Sports Direct had revenue of over £2.7 billion and an operating profit of over £249 million.

So go on, Sports Direct - do the right thing!