And the band played "Believe it if you like"

Big Dave is taking a tough line.  The Independent reports:

David Cameron has ruled out any  further concessions to his hardline Eurosceptic MPs as they prepared to defy him by staging a Commons revolt today.

The Prime Minister tried to end the damaging impression that he is being pushed around by rebel Conservative backbenchers yesterday, as his party rushed out a Draft European Union (Referendum) Bill.

Nobody believes him, of course, least of all his rebellious backbenchers.  The man has all the spine of a jellyfish, as has been amply demonstrated by the list of u-turns he has performed since taking office.  And stamping his feet in a fit of childish temper is unlikely to convince anyone ...

Quote of the day

From a Telegraph blogger (here), anent Cameron's euro-tribulations (should that be euro-contortions?):

I literally have no idea what David Cameron thinks he’s doing. And I’m pretty sure David Cameron has no idea either. 

   

Metaphysicality

Management jargon reaches football.  Here is a gnomic utterance from Manchester City:

"Despite everyone's best efforts, the club has failed to achieve any of its stated targets this year, with the exception of qualification for next season's Uefa Champions League. This, combined with an identified need to develop a holistic approach to all aspects of football at the club, has meant that the decision has been taken to find a new manager for the 2013-14 season and beyond."

Ah yes, the lack of a holistic approach.  What does that mean, exactly?  The Guardian tries to explain:

The reference to a "holistic approach" suggests a sea change in philosophy from top to bottom of the club, driven by the chief executive, Ferran Soriano, and Txiki Begiristain, the director of football. This may include playing 4-3-3 throughout the academy and in the first team. Following the removal of Mancini, who could be a divisive figure, there may also be a hope that the club will be more cohesive.

How banal.  A holistic approach means nothing more than adopting a consistent 4-3-3 formation, together with an absence of arguments.  The Guardian's football commentators need to raise their game;  what does Nietzsche have to say about the over-lapping wingback? 

  

Closing stable doors

Hmm, yet another banking crisis.  Perhaps the ratings agency has over-reacted?

The Co-operative Bank is trying to reassure its customers that it would not need a multimillion-pound taxpayer bailout after its debt was downgraded to junk status and its chief executive suddenly quit.

The move by the ratings agency Moody's to take the axe to the Manchester-based bank's credit rating followed weeks of speculation about its financial position after it posted £600m losses in March and then pulled out of a deal to buy 632 branches from Lloyds Banking Group.

Moody's warned that the bank might need "external support" – perhaps from its parent group which owns grocers, pharmacies and funeral homes – if it could not bolster its financial position. The agency cited concerns about the Co-operative incurring more losses from loans to property companies and the slow integration of the Britannia Building Society, which the Co-operative took over three years ago.

The City was stunned by the scale of the downgrade – six notches – which will raise the price at which the bank borrows on the financial markets and illustrates the speed at which the agency believes the bank's finances have deteriorated.

I am nevertheless bound to wonder why the Bank of England and its clutch of regulatory agencies failed to head off this situation at the pass.  Or were they sleeping again?

Worth a read

Marina gets it:

The smaller British politics gets, the more it feels that you might as well judge a politician by that key question: could you honestly bear to have a pint with them? I could bear to have a pint with Nigel Farage. Not anyone else in his party, you understand. But a pint and a fag with Farage, and probably a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, which I'd tear down the seam and spread out on the table while Nigel told some story against himself.

I think after five or six pints Nigel might start airing a few views I couldn't warm to, so I wouldn't stick around. But I could stand one pint with him, quite possibly even a pint and a half. With Messrs Nicholas Clegg, Edward Miliband and David Cameron, however, I would cross continents to avoid taking even a fluid ounce. The other leaders – and I do think we must refer to them in the same breath as Farage, just because it annoys them so hilariously much – look about as convivial as haemorrhoids. They have spent the week of the local elections looking like pompous arses, while the affable semi-berk Farage has led Ukip to the biggest surge by a fourth party in England since the second world war.

Shame that the usual crew of commentators in the Westminster bubble are lost up their own fundaments.

A flash in the pan ...

... or a game-changer?  So UKIP appears to have done rather a lot better than expected in the English local elections, with 42 gains after 7 of the 34 councils have declared, while taking a 26% share of the vote.  It is now entirely possible that they will end up with over 200 seats gained.  We can now revise upwards UKIP's prospects at next year's European elections where, in England at least, they may end up as the largest party, in terms of both seats and votes.

So where would that leave Scotland as it approaches the independence referendum in the autumn of next year?  If England under UKIP or, more likely, under a UKIP-influenced Tory Party bent on tacking to the right, is revealing its poujadiste, xenophobic, little Englander, anti-European tendencies, would Scotland want to remain in a United Kingdom?

Hubris oder Nemesis

Compare and contrast

Yesterday:

Iain Duncan Smith encouraged better-off elderly people to pay back taxpayer-funded financial support that they do not need, such as the winter fuel allowance and free bus passes and television licences.

He urged those who can afford it to pay back the benefit, saying it was an "anomaly" that all pensioners receive universal benefits, no matter how wealthy they are.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph Duncan Smith said there is "no indication of change" to the current system, despite calls for an amendment to the payment system.

He told the newspaper: "It is up to them if they don't want it to hand it back. I would encourage everybody who reads the Telegraph and doesn't need it to hand it back."

Today:

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, insisted he was neither encouraging nor discouraging wealthy pensioners to hand back their universal benefits such as the free bus pass, free TV licence or the winter fuel allowance.

He had been reported in the Sunday Telegraph as supporting the charitable voluntary move as a way of reducing the deficit, but on Monday he said: "I am not encouraging people to hand it back or keep it."

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This is a bit of a silly story, which people have tried to elaborate, when I didn't say very much at all.

"All I said in answer to a question, [is that] there's always been the position that if somebody wants to hand the money back if they don't use it that's up to them."But I'm not making that a policy position; it's just there, it's always been available for them to do – that's it."

Oh what a tangled web we weave ...

Offending the monstrous regiment

Does the coalition government have a death wish?  The Observer notes:

Parents are joining forces with Britain's top nursery chains in a revolt against plans to reduce the number of carers required to look after babies and toddlers – amid stark warnings the safety of children would be compromised.

The two leading internet forums for mothers – Mumsnet and Netmums – unite this weekend with top private and voluntary sector nurseries to demand the reforms be abandoned.

Sir Humphrey would have suggested that a failure to consult adequately such powerful organisations as Mumsnet amounted to a very brave decision by Miniosters ...

Quote of the day

Sir Mervyn King on putting Churchill on the fiver:

"It seems entirely appropriate to put Sir Winston on what is probably our most popular note," he said.

"Our banknotes acknowledge the life and work of great Britons. Sir Winston Churchill was a truly great British leader, orator and writer. Above that, he remains a hero of the entire free world. His energy, courage, eloquence, wit and public service are an inspiration to us all."

Well, sorry to be a wet blanket but does being a great war-time leader counterbalance his actions in sending troops against striking miners, in promoting the disastous Dardanelles campaign and in returning Britain to the gold standard with all its dreadful consequences?

Tragedy in the making

Cautiously and reluctantly, but inexorably, President Obama is teetering towards US military intervention in Syria.  He knows that nothing good will come of such intervention; yet, even with the examples of Iraq and Afghanistan, he appears unable to stop the maxhine.  He also knows that getting in will be considerably easier than getting out.  And he must be conscious of the difficulties of finding a form of intervention which will avoid making matters worse for the ordinary Syrian.

That is not to say that the Assad regime is remotely acceptable, even if there are other regimes in the world that are equally despicable.  Nor can I deny that the Syrian rebels deserve assistance, even if they have some dubious allies in the fight.

It may be a counsel of despair, but some issues are just intractable.  And perhaps there may come a time when the US has to recognise its limitations and stop playing the global policeman.


   

Word of the week

To demise:  verb trans; meaning - to downsize, to lay off, to sack; as in "your job is being demised so that you can spend more time on the golf course"; source - HSBC

From here

   

Did she have a headache?

Seems a bit rushed, somehow.  Where was the champagne and flowers?  Will scientists ever understand the course of true love?

Tian Tian, the UK's only female giant panda, has been artificially inseminated at Edinburgh Zoo after scientists scrutinising her behaviour decided she was exhibiting signs that were not "conducive to mating".

A team of experts monitoring Tian Tian and her prospective mate, Yang Guang, for the past week, opted to perform the procedure on Sunday as the female panda neared what is unromantically known as her "36-hour breeding window".

     

See scientists ...

From the university department of the bleedin' obvious:

Crying babies really do calm down when they are picked up and cradled according to a study that has discovered a deeper scientific basis to a phenomenon that every new mother soon realises to be true.

Scientists in Japan have found that the heart rate of crying babies slows down when they are in put in the arms of their mothers and carried about 

(Did it occur to them to ask any mother?)

   

At last

The bible tells us that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.  So I suppose that we should welcome the IMF's change of heart:

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said on Thursday that the poor performance of the British economy had left her with no alternative but to call on George Osborne to rethink his austerity strategy.Increasing the pressure on the chancellor to change course, Lagarde – who has previously given consistent and public support to the UK's deficit reduction strategy – said the fund had changed its stance as a result of weak economic figures. 

But, Lord, it has taken them a long time to see the light; and the damage done in the meantime is incalculable.

Out of the woodwork

Here they come ...  Thatcher's funeral attracts the bad, the mad and the just plain wacky.  There is the former Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Iraq war architect who inadvertently shot one of his chums during a quail hunt.  Who is that warmonger over there?  Why it's Henry Kissinger, who caused the death of satire by being awarded the Nobel peace prize.  And the lady with the big hair is rightwingnut, Michele Bachman, who allegedly believes that President Obama is a socialist with anti-American views.

What did Thatcher do to deserve these mourners?

 

Pathetic

So, they are looking for a middle way.  Well it won't work; the BBC should either play the song or not, then live with the accusations of a lack of respect or alternatively of craven toadying to the Tories.  Thia way, nobody will be happy.  The Guardian reports:

The new BBC director general, Tony Hall, appears to have caved in to pressure during the first major test of his tenure, deciding not to play the song Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead in full on Radio 1 after a furious reaction from Tory MPs and rightwing newspapers.

In a fudge likely to satisfy Lady Thatcher's supporters but criticised by anti-censorship campaigners, the BBC will play a five-second clip of the track – which is being pushed up the charts by anti-Thatcher protesters – in a news item during the Radio 1 Chart Show on Sunday.

The BBC has taken the unprecedented step of deciding to insert a news story into the show to explain to younger viewers [?] why a track from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz has suddenly leapt into the top 10. Radio  1 has a target audience of 16- to 24-year-olds, none of whom will recall Thatcher's premiership first hand.

To compound the error, they patronise listeners by assuming that they need to have the song explained.

 

Not in Kansas now

Well, if you must, as it has reached No 10 in what used to be known as the hit parade:

If you can't say something nice about someone, best say nothing at all

So, nothing.

     

What a star!

What is the world coming to?

Is that it, then?

I am not usually a vindictive person but these incompetents appear to be getting off lightly.  The Guardian reports:

The three executives who ran HBOS bank in the runup to its near-catastrophic collapse have been slated for their "colossal failure" of management in a scathing report which calls for them to be held to account by the City regulator.

The highly critical account of the events that led to HBOS being rescued by Lloyds in September 2008 said the responsibility for the management failings rested with the former chairman Lord Stevenson, and the former chief executives Sir James Crosby and Andy Hornby, and says the bank would have gone bust even if the global financial meltdown of that year had not happened. The bank, formed out of Bank of Scotland and Halifax in 2001, racked up £47bn of losses on bad loans.

In a report entitled An Accident Waiting to Happen, the parliamentary commission on banking standards calls on the trio to apologise for their "toxic" mistakes which caused the downfall of the bank and prompted a £20bn taxpayer bailout.

So they might be barred from future work in the finance sector?  I'm not impressed (and who would have them anyway?).  Meanwhile they enjoy their fat pensions and their ill-gotten gains.

Fitba

I watched the Real Madrid - Galatasary match last night, as it happens, on an Al-Jazeera station.  There was, however, no escaping the ubiquitous Gary Lineker who introduced the programme, with his confreres, the super-intellectual Alan Shearer (as bland as ever), the slightly creepy Ray Wilkins (with his constant references to "these young men") and Michael Owen (actually quite good).  Does the BBC not pay them enough?

Good football match, though.

I felt slightly guilty about not watching Malaga and Dortmund, but they were not exactly the glamour teams on display.

Naughty boys

Do you suppose that SSE gives a hoot about being fined £10.5 million by Ofgem for prolonged and extensive mis-selling?  This is a company with a turnover last year of over £30 billion.  A fine of £100 million might have hurt them a little; a fine of £1 billion might have made them think more carefully before misbehaving in future.  A fine of £10.5 million - that's petty cash.

It's not a MAD world?

I am not entirely clear as to why North Korea might wish to lob an inter-continental ballistic missile (assuming that it actually had the capacity) in the direction of the UK, but Mr Cameron obviously takes the matter seriously:

David Cameron has warned against abandoning Britain's Trident nuclear submarine programme, claiming it would be foolish to do so due to the threats posed by North Korea.

The prime minister said the country should not be left defenceless when the "highly unpredictable and aggressive" regime in North Korea was developing ballistic missiles that he claimed could threaten Europe.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph,, Cameron said the UK needed to maintain the ultimate deterrent as much today as during the cold war.

"The Soviet Union no longer exists. But the nuclear threat has not gone away. In terms of uncertainty and potential risk it has, if anything, increased."

Cameron said Iran was continuing to defy the will of the international community over its nuclear programme while North Korea may already be building a nuclear arsenal.

"Last year, North Korea unveiled a long-range ballistic missile which it claims can reach the whole of the United States. If this became a reality, it would also affect the whole of Europe, including the UK."

I had been under the impression that Trident was supposed to be a deterrent; they would not obliterate us if  we did not obliterate them.  Given the threats to nuke our cousins across the Atlantic, North Korea clearly does not subscribe to that theory.  In these circumstances, what is the point of Trident?  Would it not be better to invest in one or two of these anti-missile systems that the yanks have sent to Guam?  Bound to be cheaper than Trident.

Fiddling while Rome burns

Just occasionally, government ministers actually resolve problems.  (I can't for the moment think of any concrete examples but it must be true.)  Mostly, however, they simply try to avoid making them worse, in effect by kicking the can down the road.  But, once in a blue moon, they come across a problem that is so damaging and so intractable that they have no alternative but to resort to the ultimate sanction - they are forced to re-orghanise.  So it is with Mrs May and the UK Border Agency:

The troubled UK Border Agency is to be abolished and brought back within the Home Office, the home secretary, Theresa May has announced.

She told MPs that she will also split the "closed and secretive" agency into an immigration and visa service and a separate law enforcement command while bringing it back under the direct control of ministers.

May first split off the UK border force from UKBA 12 months ago in the wake of the Brodie Clark affair.

The home secretary said in an unscheduled Commons statement that UKBA was "a troubled organisation … its performance was not good enough". She identified four main problems: its size, its lack of transparency, its IT systems and its policy and legal framework.

She said that the immigration agency has been such a "troubled organisation" for so many years that it will take many more years to clear the backlogs, which now top more than 310,000 cases, and fix the system.

It reminds me of the spurious quotation attributed to Petronius:

We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation.

Will Mrs May's reorganisation make it better? Need you ask?

What did he think he was doing?

It may not exactly qualify as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but it comes pretty close.  The Guardian reports:

The good news for the eurozone was that the markets reacted well to the bailout deal for Cyprus. The bad news was that the rally lasted barely until lunchtime. By then investors were running scared at the prospect that the terms imposed on one of the single currency's smaller members would be the template for rescue packages for bigger countries.

Credit for the change of mood goes to Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chairs meetings of eurozone finance ministers and who decided it would be a good idea to go public with the idea that Cyprus was not such a special case after all.

For the past week the message has gone out that there are no comparisons between a country that allowed itself to become the tax haven of choice for high-rolling Russians and other, better-managed, members of the eurozone.

Then, in a couple of interviews, Dijsselbloem said Cyprus would be used as the model for future bailouts.

The comments were an open invitation to any investor with more than €100,000 in a eurozone bank to remove it without delay, which some then did.

By the end of the day shares in Europe were tumbling, the euro was dropping against the dollar and the cost of insuring European banks against default was rising, forcing Dijsselbloem to issue a clarification of his earlier remarks. Confirming that European politicians could not organise a booze-up in a brewery, Cyprus was back to being a special case once again.

     

Sorted?

So, crisis resolved?  The Guardian reports:

European leaders reached an agreement with Cyprus early on Monday morning that closes down the island's second-biggest bank and inflicts huge losses on wealthy savers.

Russians would lose billions of euros under draconian terms that are aimed at preventing the Mediterranean tax haven becoming the first country forced out of the single currency.

"Herman Van Rompuy has brokered an agreement between the troika and Cyprus," said an EU source, referring to the president of the European council and Cyprus's trio of creditors: the European commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Well, not quite.  The deal has yet to be finalised.  It remains unclear how many billions of euros will be confiscated from the Russians.  And does the Cypriot parliament have a say?  And when will the banks open?  And under what conditions?

Furthermore, in the medium term, capital controls may stop (or, more accurately, delay) the flight of funds from Cypriot banks, but can do nothing to encourage any further investment.  Who, now, would be so foolish as to put any money in a Cypriot bank?

Should have gone to Specsavers!

Car crash

In case you hadn't noticed ...

The Telegraph blog records:

But rising numbers of people on above average earnings are paying income tax at 40pc. The starting point for higher rate tax has already fallen from £37,400 under Labour to £34,371 now. HMRC’s figures show that has increased the number of people paying 40pc or higher rates of income tax by 670,000 from 3.19m in in 2009 to 3.86m today.

As a result of Mr Osborne’s proposal to lower the starting point for 40pc tax to £31,865 with effect from April, 2014, nearly 5m people will be caught in the top rate tax net – even if their pay remains unchanged. By the time of the next election in 2015, Grant Thornton forecasts that more than 5.2m people will pay higher rate tax.

And it's not just those who suddenly find themselves in the higher tax bracket.  The reduced threshold means that everyone in the higher tax bracket will pay more tax than would otherwise have been the case.



 

Aspiration nation

So the chancellor mentioned aspiration 16 times in his speech yesterday.

When I studied phonetics some 40+ years ago, I was taught that aspiration was the puff of air that accompanied the articulation of a voiceless plosive,  Basically, it was just hot air.  Seems appropriate somehow.

In those days, a pint of beer could be bought for between 2/- and a half a crown.  A penny off your pint would have meant something.  Nowadays, with the price of beer exceeding £3 a pint, a penny off is neither here or there.  It's just a gimmick.


 

Cyprus - what happens next?

Good question.  The answer is that nobody knows.

It remains possible that, as the Cypriot parliament has rejected the deal, the troika withdraws its (conditional) offer of a bail-out.  Cyprus renegues on its debts and its banks go bust.  The EU throws it out of the euro and Cyprus starts again with a new currency and capital controls.

But this will not suit anyone.  The obvious next step is for the troika and the Cypriot authorities to get together and thrash out a new deal.  But it is difficult to see how the gap between the two sides can be bridged.  Nor does it seem possible that the Cypriot banks can re-open until the issues are resolved (as everyone would immediately empty their accounts).  How long can a country survive without a functioning banking system?  We may be about to find out.

Could the Russians come to the rescue?  In return for what?  And where would that leave the EU?  And what about contagion spreading to Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal?

We live in interesting times ...

The drama continues

I would respectfully suggest that the ba' is on the slates,  The Guardian reports:

It appears certain that the Cyprus parliament will reject the bailout package as it stands.

A spokesperson for the governing Democratic Rally (Disy) party of President Nicos Anastasiades revealed before the debate started that its MPs have decided to abstain, rather than support the package.

With the rest of the parliament expected to vote against it, this is a major display of defiance from Nicosia against the eurozone.

And so armageddon draws a little bit closer.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence is getting over-excited:

Britain has just sent a aeroplane carrying one million euros to Cyprus as a"contingency measure" to help troops and their families.

The move (which sounds like the start of a Hollywood heist), is an attempt to make sure military personal [personnel?] won't run out of cash if ATM machines and bank cards stop workinh

Further plans [planes?] could be sent too. PA says the Ministry of Defence is determined to minimise the impact of the Cyprus banking crisis on "our people" and it will consider further shipments if required.

Not looking good

Imagine that you are one of the Russians who have a collective €30 billion plus on deposit in Cypriot banks.  You are about to lose 9.9% (perhaps more) of those funds in expropriations.  What are you going to do when the Cypriot banks re-open?  Are you going to sit around waiting for the same thing to happen again (as euro crises have a habit of recurring)?  Or are you going to move what remains of your money to somewhere safer, outside the EU (Switzerland perhaps, or the Caymans, or the Middle East)?  I know what I'd do.

Then imagine that you are one of the 18,000 plus British pensioners resident on the island.  You are also about to be expropriated. perhaps by a smaller amount than the Russians.  Worse, the UK Government has stopped your pension until the current banking confusion is cleared up.  And, as the banks are closed, at least until Thursday,  you cannot access any of your money anyway.  Are you ever going to trust a Cypriot bank again?

Finally, imagine that you are the boss of a Cypriot bank.  Although you were only doing what you were told, you and your bank are being treated like lepers.  The foreigners and the locals are closing their accounts like there was no tomorrow.  And for you, there may not be a tomorrow.  After all, for how long can you expect the ECB to keep you afloat with expensive loans?  Banks rely on trust and, even if it was not entirely your fault, you have forfeited that trust.

Where will it all end?


   

Quote of the day

Simon Hoggart in The Guardian (here):

Gosh, they were pleased with themselves. They'd come to a deal over press regulation, and there hasn't been so much self-congratulation over a multilateral pact since Versailles in 1914. David Cameron paid tribute to Nick Clegg andEd Miliband. Clegg had kind words for Miliband and Cameron. Miliband himself was in grateful debt to Cameron and Clegg. It was what the Americans call a "circle jerk".

Don't expect any comments from me on the deal.  The press have written yards and yards of comment, none of which actually explains what the deal involves.  And I am far from sure that Cameron, Clegg and Miliband understand precisely what they have signed up to.


 

Am I a media whore?

Not all bloggers are what they seem - allegedly.  The Independent has the skinny:

So in a media world where the lines between editorial and advertising have never been harder to detect, how many more bloggers out there are working for a hidden paymaster?

It has recently been brought to my attention how easy it is for public relations firms to round up whole battalions of lifestyle bloggers with no apparent experience in professional journalism and feed them video clips, which appear like harmless fun, but have a deeper political significance. The amateur bloggers are encouraged to share the material with other like-minded blogs and offered free "press trips", unaware that their presence may have a political purpose.

Fashion blogs are offered giveaways for readers in return for using agreed copy. Numerous websites encourage bloggers to make money by composing (presumably favourable) product reviews.

I can only assure you that this blogger has never been offered any inducements; the opinions expressed here are unaffected by monetary or other external considerations.  Buy, hey, if anyone out there is offering ...

Daylight robbery?

Oh to be in Cyprus now that spring is here.  The Observer reports:

Cypriots reacted with shock that turned to panic on Saturday after a 10% one-off levy on savings was forced on them as part of an extraordinary 10bn euro (£8.7bn) bailout agreed in Brussels.

People rushed to banks and queued at cash machines that refused to release cash as resentment quickly set in. The savers, half of whom are thought to be non-resident Russians, will raise almost €6bn thanks to a deal reached by European partners and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is the first time a bailout has included such a measure and Cyprus is the fifth country after Greece, the Republic of Ireland, Portugal and Spain to turn to the eurozone for financial help during the region's debt crisis. The move in the eurozone's third smallest economy could have repercussions for financially overstretched bigger economies such as Spain and Italy. 

People with less than 100,000 euros in their accounts will have to pay a one-time tax of 6.75%, Eurozone officials said, while those with greater sums will lose 9.9%.

You think it wouldn't happen in Spain, or in Italy, or in the UK?  Don't count on it ...


 

Military mysteries

So, some 16,000 soldiers are to return from Germany over the next six years.  I wonder what they have been doing in Germany for the past 20 years.

I can understand why British troops were located in Germany in the years following 1945 and during the Cold War.  But it is now many years since the USSR posed an invasion threat to Western Europe.  Did someone in the Ministry of Defence just forget about all those troops stationed in Germany?  What possible purpose could they have been serving?

Meanwhile, through all those years, MoD bigwigs were complaining of a lack of resources.  Funny old world, isn't it?

Quote of the day

From the Home Affairs Select Committee (here):

 "We do not believe that officers should enter into intimate, physical sexual relationships while using their false identities undercover without clear, prior authorisation, which should only be given in the most exceptional circumstances.

"In particular, it is unacceptable that a child should be brought into the world as a result of such a relationship and this must never be allowed to happen again."

I can see their point but I'm not sure how it can work in practice:

"Look boss, I have infiltrated this group of environmental eco-terrorists and I have met this nice lady.  She says she will tell me when they next propose to bomb a certain nuclear facility but will only do so if I agree to sleep with her.  May I have your permission, please.  I promise to use a condom."

It's not going to happen, is it?


   

It's a funny old world

I suppose that it would be naive of me to wonder why a bank which makes an annual loss of more than £5 billion should pay out any bonuses at all, let alone £607 million.  The fact that the bank is 83% owned by the taxpayer merely compounds my irritation.  What special magic is this that insists that top bankers (and their ilk) require massive bonuses in order to do a decent job?

Meanwhile our Prime Minister seeks to resist EU proposals to limit bankers' bonuses to 100% of their salaries, apparently on the grounds that these might encourage foreign banks located in London to decamp to Zurich, Singapore or New York.  My own (naive) opinion would be to let them go; we have more than enough parasites feeding on the system.  It is not as though they do anything useful, after all.

It's more than a bit watery to begin with

The BBC reports:

Beer drinkers in the US have filed a $5m (£3.3m) lawsuit accusing Anheuser-Busch of watering down its beer.

The lawsuits, filed in Pennsylvania, California and other states, claim consumers have been cheated out of the alcohol content stated on beer labels.

The suit involves 10 Anheuser-Busch beers including Budweiser and Michelob.

How could anyone tell?

A pedant writes ...

Our old friend "refute"  (here):

Lord Rennard issued a statement last night after being notified by the party of an internal investigatory panel.

His spokesman said: "Lord Rennard refutes these allegations. He will co-operate with any properly constituted inquiry."

No, no, no.  He has not refuted anything; he has merely denied the allegations.  A refutation would require a demonstration that the allegations were false.

The revolt of the vegetables

Discord in the cabinet?  Will no-one spread oil upon these troubled waters?

David Cameron has presided over one of his most fiery cabinet meetings when a group of ministers demanded an end to "ringfenced" spending and two ministers were criticised for failing to promote growth measures.

The so called National Union of Ministers, led by the home secretary, Theresa May, voiced anger that their departments are on course to face further cuts while others are exempt.

The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, is expected in summer to announce a further round of cuts when he outlines a spending review for the 2015-16 financial year.

May, who has been joined in the past by the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, and the business secretary, Vince Cable, is annoyed that her department is facing further cuts while the education, health and international development will be protected. "The National Union of Ministers were in fine voice," one government source said. Another added: "Theresa really got stuck in.

Is anyone in charge?  Will someone tell them where they are going?

Money worries

It's a hard life, trying to keep up with the foreign exchange markets.  Here is The Guardian  bewailing the impact of the loss of the UK's triple A status:

What about spending – will this affect the pound in my pocket?

It looks that way, certainly if you were planning to go on holiday abroad this year, and probably even if you are having a staycation. The pound had already fallen against the euro and dollar, and the downgrade appears to have put it under renewed pressure.

"Last summer Britons were enjoying a sterling-euro rate close to €1.30 [to the pound]. Now the rate is below €1.15, that's a drop of more than 11%," says Tracey Tivnan of foreign exchange firm, Moneycorp. That means £500 will buy just €572 compared with €645 in July 2012. "Holidaying in Europe this spring and summer is likely to hurt them harder in the pocket, unless sterling stages a quick recovery."

Alas!  The pound has re-bounded, due to the Italian elections stalemate, and is now comfortably above 1.16 euros:

Of course it has a long way to go to get back to the rates of last summer, but still ...

Difficult to know where to keep one's pennies.  The euro is sinking, the outlook for the pound is gloomy, the dollar is doing well for the moment but that pesky cliff is approaching again.

Bankers and their bonuses

I have in the past criticised bankers and their bonuses.  But are there no circumstances in which bonuses are appropriate?  Should I be prepared to go with the flow?  The Guardian reports:

For Stephen Hester, the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, taking a bonus has been pretty much unacceptable since the crisis, with the exception of 2010. His counterpart at rival bailed out bank Lloyds Banking Group, António Horta-Osório, did not take a bonus for 2011 – his first year in the job – because he had needed time off to recover from sleep deprivation. But for 2012 it does appear that Horta-Osório will be handed more than £1m, which will only pay out if in the future the share price of the bailed out bank breaks through the average 73.6p at which the taxpayer bought the shares for three months or so.

The shares currently trade at 55p – after roughly doubling during 2012 when they were the biggest gainers in the FTSE 100. But linking Horta-Osório's bonus to a breakeven point for the taxpayer should not make his payout acceptable.

Influenced no doubt by the fact that my Lloyds shares have been languishing - for many months - below the price I paid for them, if the good Antonio can get the price from 55p back up to over 73p, then I would be inclined to say that he deserves a bonus of £1 million.  It's a pretty big ask, however ...

 

Compare and contrast

Our friend, Slasher George, does not have to seek his troubles.  Here, he is desperately defending bankers' bonuses:

Britain and the City look set to be the losers in the battle against the European parliament's plans to bring in the toughest restrictions on bankers' bonuses since the financial crisis began in 2008.

The UK appears to be leading a minority of just three countries that oppose a new rule which would limit bonuses to no more than 100 per cent of salary, or 200 per cent if approved by a super-majority of shareholders.

His argument is not helped by his chums at Barclays (here):

Five top bosses at Barclays will share a jackpot worth up to £17million despite being tainted by a string of scandals. 

Those in line for the ‘wildly misjudged’ bonanza include chief executive Antony Jenkins and Rich Ricci, the controversial investment bank boss.

Meanwhile, Big Dave is getting excited about the virtues of morality:

Speaking in Mumbai on the first day of a three-day trip, Cameron likened "aggressive" forms of tax avoidance by multinational companies to illegal tax evasion, saying that its most extreme examples raise questions of morality.

But it was only yesterday that his government's own morality was brought into question:

Small arms weaponry, ammunition and various other military equipment were among millions of pounds' worth of goods exported last year from Britain to Sri Lanka under licences for arms and other closely regulated exports.

Statistics taken from the British government's own database for strategic export controls show items ranging from assault rifles and shotguns through to weapons sights, pistols and ammunition were sold last year to the South Asian nation's government, which has been accused of extensive human rights violations in relation to its treatment of its Tamil minority and the suppression of armed separatists, who have also been acused of abuses.

And then Dave pushes helicopter sales, despite more than a whiff of alleged corruption.

All very confusing ...

Leave me alone!

I have been back in Scotland for less than 10 days and I have been deluged with phone calls (well, four of them actually) from young ladies with Indian accents offering to compensate me for having been mis-sold payment protection insurance.  Remarkably, they seem to know the amount of the loan involved, the purpose for which it was provided, the fact that the loan was timeously paid off and the amount of compensation to which I would be entitled, as well as my name, address and telephone number.

The only problem is that, other than for mortgage purposes (and that was in the dim and distant past from building societies), I have never taken out a bank loan.  Like any well brought up laddie, I was taught to save up for what you wanted.  And, as a (more or less) well paid civil servant, I was lucky enough not to need loans.

So why am I plagued by these PPI vultures?  Is it always like this over here?

 

How to get it so wrong

Beware ideologues!  Like this guy in City AM:

POLITICAL ideas have always been cyclical. When incomes are falling, the economy is flatlining, credit is scarcer, prices are rising and it is hard to find work, the public always turns against capitalism (or the mixed economy corporatism that these days passes for it); in boom times, it tends to be more relaxed about other people making vast sums of money.

But ideological shifts are not a given. They can be stopped and reversed by determined leaders – as Boris Johnson showed during his election campaign, for example – and by the right policies. The key problem is that many markets have become rigged by massive government interventions in every nook and cranny of the economy, creating inefficiencies, damaging growth and financing vested interests at the expense of the general interest.

Yeah, yeah.  Were the problems at the banks, from PPI mis-selling to LIBOR rigging, and above all from the 2008 combustion, caused by excessive government intervention?  Are the current difficulties in the meat industry caused by excessive government intervention?  You do not have to be of a leftwing orientation to believe that we would all benefit if the government and the regulatory authorities took a rather closer interest in what businesses are up to.

It's not just the banks

From here:

BP has awarded chief executive Bob Dudley an annual bonus worth £2.6m in shares and cash as a reward for the oil major’s performance in 2012, despite a slump in its profits.

Company performance deteriorates, but the bosses reward themselves.

   

Nagging away

Do you suppose that Ministers and the Food Standards Agency are sufficiently competent to deal with the horsemeat scandal?  Or are they forever condemned to remain behind the curve?  The Guardian reports:

Speaking earlier this week, environment secretary Owen Paterson said he hoped for "meaningful results" from the tests by Friday, but experts warned the flood in the demand is slowing the process down, and may shed little light on food safety even when they are delivered.

A source at one retailer said: "There are simply not enough labs in the world to get all the tests done that the FSA have asked for. We are trying to help, but it's just unrealistic." Another who attended the emergency meeting called by DEFRA into the horsemeat scandal added: "We told them [the Government] that it would be challenging to meet the deadline on Friday and they changed their position from wanting everything tested to just providing the results of tests we had already done."

The process of determining which species of animals are contained in a given ready meal sample typically takes around a day, but with the sudden surge of products to test, turnaround is up to about three days, according to one laboratory involved in the current tests.Research by the food and drink magazine The Grocer and analytics company BrandView has found more than 600 separate product lines in need of testing across just four of the major retailers – 150 branded lines and 433 own-brand products. As each product may require multiple samples in order to deliver a clean bill of health, this could represent a backlog of thousands of products across the country in need of testing.

However, when results arrive, they may offer less comfort than consumers intend. Each separate species must be tested for separately: if you don't look for a particular animal's DNA, you won't know whether it is present or not.

The FSA has only required the industry to look for traces of horse in beef products – so if the products were to contain lamb, pork, poultry or any other animal, this would not show in the results when they are published.

Consider it and weep.  Were there no officials in DEFRA or the Agency able to advise them on the inadequacy of the testing programme?  Or were Ministers and the Agency so desperate to be seen to be doing something (anything really) that they ignored (or did not ask for) advice?

Fashion

Hadley's advice on scarf-wearing for men:

The European knot: This is when you fold your scarf in two and stick the two ends through the loop and around your neck. A British man who wears his scarf this way engenders great suspicion from his fellow menfolk and no wonder: the knot is European, after all. If you wear your scarf this way everyone will think you're Eurotrash, which you probably are.

The Ascot knot: The over-hand knot, when the scarf is wrapped primly around your neck and then knotted properly up close to your neck and the two ends lie perfectly on top of one another. Hello, old Etonian and/or employees of GQ.

The twisty scarf loop: You twist your scarf and then tie it once close around your neck and then again, loosely knotting the ends together. You are either a foreign correspondent for a newspaper, or trying to look like one.

The drape: When you simply fling the scarf around your shoulders and don't bother tying it around your neck. You are a student who thinks he looks like Christian Slater in Heathers but actually is a bit more Tom Baker-esque in Doctor Who.

The single wrap, over shoulder fling: The scarf is wrapped once around your neck and one end hangs down in front and the other is flung over your shoulder. You like to imagine you are a nouvelle vague hero. You think you look "dashing". We'll leave it at that.

The single wrap, loose knot at the bottom: the scarf is wrapped once around your neck and then the two ends are tied loosely at the bottom. Fussy.

The loop and tuck knot: You take the scarf around your neck and hang both ends down your back equally. Then you wrap them over opposite shoulders, wrapping your neck, so they now hang over the front. Then you bring the two ends under the bit of the scarf that is wrapping your neck at the front, looping them over and then letting them hang down. You are Brian Sewell.

The double wrap: The scarf is wrapped twice around the neck, the ends hang in front of your shoulders. Absolutely acceptable; actively encouraged.

No. I'm not going to discuss my preferences.

 

News from a different planet

You may think that a basic annual salary of £1.1 million is more than decent, even astronomical.  But the high heidyins at the RBS beg to differ.  The Guardian reports:

The chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland on Monday described the pay of the bailed out bank's chief executive Stephen Hester as "modest", amid fresh scrutiny of bonuses in the wake of the £390m Libor fine.

Sir Philip Hampton said Hester – who can get up to £6m a year from bonuses on top of his £1.1m salary – was paid "well below the market rate of people working in banking" because his bonuses had not paid out in full. He was speaking during a lengthy session of the banking standards commission in Westminster, in which a senior RBS colleague admitted the bank had believed Libor rigging was "a mathematical impossibility".

..

Hampton, defending bonuses for Hester, conceded the chief executive had a "highly paid job" but that "his pay has been modest relatively". He had received just one bonus since joining in 2008, of £2m, which has yet to be paid out. Some £780,000 of that will pay out in shares next month.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all aspire to a "modest" salary of £1.1 million (and never mind the bonuses)?  Even if we were totally unaware that our underlings were playing at naughty boys by rigging the Libor rates ...

 

Red Osborne

So the government intends to meet social care costs by freezing the threshold for inheritance tax:

The £1bn cost of the new cap – this sum is bound to rise massively – will be funded by a stealth hike in inheritance tax. Everybody with sufficient assets to qualify will pay far more in tax, regardless of whether they end up benefiting from state-financed care. This will be imposed by freezing the inheritance tax-free threshold of £325,000 until 2019, even though inflation on the retail price index is currently 3.1 per cent. By 2019, the threshold would probably have increased to £420,000 without the freeze; so this is a pretty massive raid and will hit many elderly folk and their children. In many cases, this will be very unfair: a family that cares for its own elderly relatives will be hit by the tax, even if they were able to avoid using institutionalised care.

Is it a stealth hike?  Not if everyone knows about it.

Is it unfair?  Do we really want inherited wealth to cascade down the generations, maintaining those and such as those in the position to which they have become accustomed?  IMHO, £325K plus 60% of the remainder should be more than enough for any set of heirs.

Quote of the day

Roberto Mancini bewails the testicular apparatus of his Manchester City players (here):

"When you are a top player you should take responsibility always," Mancini said. "It is not always the fault of the manager, the players should take the responsibility if they have big balls. If not, they can't play in a top team."

As the ladies would tell him, it's not the size of the equipment that matters ...

The boy done good - maybe

So he's a political paragon.  The Guardian reports:

Fuelled by copious cups of coffee from a brand-new Nespresso machine,David Cameron chalked up a Brussels first as he debuted at an all-night EU summit.

Looking mildly tired after 25 and a half hours on the go – with a two-hour "freshening up" break at 10am on Friday – the prime minister hailed his achievement in negotiating the first ever cut in an EU budget.

"The British public can be proud that we have cut the seven-year credit-card limit for the EU for the first time ever," he said before travelling home for dinner with his wife, Sam.

Not sure about the credit card analogy, but quibbling would be specious.  Nevertheless, it would be no surprise if the deal were to fall apart before next Tuesday,  But then a cynical old sod like me would say something like that ...

Naughty boys

It could have been worse:

Royal Bank of Scotland was handed a £390m fine on Wednesday for "widespread misconduct" in rigging the Libor rate until as recently as November 2010, two years after it was bailed out by the taxpayer and even after regulators had begun to investigate the key benchmark rate.

After all, UBS had to cough up £940 million.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

You need a vivid imagination to be a parliamentary sketch writer:

 Christopher Chope, one of the Tories who voted against gay marriage, wanted him, in the interests of equality, to offer civil partnerships to straight couples too.

Cameron wasn't going to fall for that. "I am," he declared, "a marriage man. I am a great supporter of marriage. I want to protect marriage, to defend marriage, to encourage marriage." Civil partnerships would only weaken marriage. I had a vision of Cameron as Marriage Man, a superhero who leaps into action whenever marriage – straight, gay or transgender – is under threat. He wears grey, striped, figure-hugging underpants, a black cape with tails, and a silk topper. Young folk would call him on his Marriage Mobe.

"Marriage Man, I want to marry my boyfriend, but my parents say he's a no-good waste of space. I need your help!" Faster than a Rolls trimmed with white ribbons, Marriage Man races to the spot, biffing the anti-marriage parents, kapow!

Sorry, got carried away there.

Justice

I have no sympathy for the wretched Mr Huhne but what exactly would be the point of sending him to gaol? The man's career has been destroyed and he faces massive legal costs.  I can/t see any purpose being served by detaining him at a cost to the public purse.

 

Quote of the day

Wee Georgie Osborne (here):

“From September this year, every customer of every bank in Britain will be able to switch their bank account from their existing bank to another one in seven days. All they will have to do is sign up to a new bank – and the rest will follow.

All the direct debits, the standing orders, everything will be switched for you with no hassle. This is a revolution in customer choice.”

Sure, just as soon as you have supplied proof of your identity and a fuel bill and all the other gubbins to avoid falling foul of the money laundering requirements.

   

La cerise sur le gâteau parisien

Apparently, a certain aging footballer has just signed for a Paris football team.  Le Figaro has the news:

En un an, le PSG est nettement monté en gamme. Désormais, Beckham est la cerise sur le gâteau parisien et non plus l'homme providentiel missionné pour faire entrer le club parisien dans une autre dimension. Zlatan s'y colle déjà. Dans ces conditions, la volonté qatarienne d'attirer le footballeur le plus célèbre de la planète pour accroître la valeur de son image internationale n'a plus besoin d'être corrélée à un pari sportif d'avenir. Ce qui a sans doute facilité son transfert à Paris.

I doubt if anyone in England has noticed ...