Sunday, 13 September 2009

Ashes from the Phoenix

The Prime Minister Gordon Brown today praised the Phoenix Four for the orderly way in which they ran MG Rover into the ground. He is said to be impressed by the restraint and forbearance that they showed, leaving the car maker less than a billion pounds in debt and siphoning off into their own bank accounts a paltry fifty or so million pounds between them.

This week inspectors published an 830 page report costing £16m into the collapse of the car firm in 2005. It stops short of accusing the Phoenix directors of wrong doing, but it does suggest that whilst the car firm ran up huge losses, they paid themselves huge bonuses which they stashed in off-shore bank accounts. They ran roughshod over corporate governance guidelines and switched key assets out of the company into their own name. When the car firm went under 6,000 employees were thrown out of work.

However Mr Brown is said to be impressed by the small scale of the losses and the moderation that is evident from the minimal bonuses that the Phoenix directors paid themselves. In particular he is said to be ecstatic that in the light of the catastrophic losses of the automobile industry in the US, which ran to tens of billions in the case of Ford and General Motors in recent years, the losses at MG Rover are in fact to be welcomed.

"Compared to the losses in the US," said Mr Brown, "These really are small beer. It is also clear from the recent inspectors' report that there is absolutely no evidence of government incompetence, and even if there was, it would be of little consequence." Mr Brown concluded: "Let us be clear, the collapse of MG Rover is history. And on such occasions as these I like to quote the words of that late, great car maker, Henry Ford: History is bunk."

Saturday, 12 September 2009

Four intellectuals in pursuit of a theorist

Last night Newsnight Review broke new ground when it managed for the first time in television history to interview four leading academics / writers who all took exactly the same line on Charles Darwin. The BBC has often in the past been accused of trying to generate debate for the sake of it, of engineering conflict, even of sowing seeds of discord. Some critics have suggested that a public service broadcaster has a duty to take a more singularly educational line.

In the past the Beeb has sadly resisted banging that drum in the name of objectivity. But last night its flagship Newsnight Review came out unequivocally on the side of Charles Darwin and invited four like minded liberals to engage in a classic 'set-piece love-in'.

It is hard to say who loved whom more. Did Margaret Atwood love Dawkins more than Darwin because he had effectively spread the word, was a more influential writer (nowadays at least) than Darwin? Did Ruth Padel love herself more than her great-great grandfather (Charles Darwin) because she felt a sense of occasion that simply did not exist in the Victorian 'dark ages' when his efforts were largely unappreciated... even derided? Or did the token fellow in the dog collar who clearly loved Darwin also love Richard Dawkins deeply, madly, passionately simply because... well, hey, a Christian can learn to love evolution, can't he?

At one point the discussion descended into animal impersonations when Margaret Atwood offered the insight that we don't know if animals sense impending death and we never will do, but insisted that it was a point still worth harping on about - it was the kind of consideration that she bungs in her novels, needless to say. Dawkins, ever the selfish genius then rolled over and tried to make love to himself, intermittently mentioning the words 'the prime directive', and suggesting that masturbation is simply an extension of the selfish gene.

But surely the night will forever belong to interviewer Martha Kearney for her unceasing and devoted sycophancy in the face of four trenchant Darwinists and her courageous attempts to agree with everything that these very public intellectuals said, skillfully avoiding tricky questions like, "If you are that confident about your beliefs, why do you tend to belittle those who don't sign up to them?"

It was a love-in alright... a night from television history that we'll be talking about for quite some time to come, testimony to the power of faith and language and intellectualism, and of course to the real 'prime directive,' the power of the BBC.

Thursday, 10 September 2009

Yes, more clusterfucks

The financial markets are reeling today after the statement made by Alan Greenspan that a financial crisis will "happen again". Traders, taxpayers and Radio Four listeners had been hoping that after last year's near meltdown everyone had learnt their lesson. But Greenspan stated quite unequivocally, "This is not the first, and it will surely not be the last clusterfuck that the Western economies experience."

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have worked tirelessly over the past year to ensure that last year's crisis is never ever repeated. Gordon Brown, in his brand new initiative to put an end to 'boom and bust' has even considered restricting the bankers' bonuses many have blamed for the excessive risk taking activities that sparked the crisis in the first place... Although he has of late disgarded this idea in view of the fact that it would of course put an undue and some might say unnecessary burden on relations with his 'paymasters' in the city.

Whatever the case might be, the people have agreed one thing: Noone ever wants to see a repeat of the near collapse of Western financial markets that was witnessed in 2008. So it is with great sorrow and unhappiness that people have digested the statement made by Greenspan yesterday. Whoever would have thought that greed and recklessness and the desire to feather ones own nest at the expense of others could occur ever, ever again? And who would ever imagine that politicians, in all their wisdom and their kindness and in all their ability to absorb and understand history could allow such dreadful events to be repeated?

Perhaps... it is time to think the unthinkable... Perhaps it is time to ask whether our great, our wondrous leaders really are the brilliant, the benevolent, the masterful beings that we have always, always held them to be.

Wednesday, 9 September 2009

The Doors of Perception

Hard though it is to believe, the UK's two main parties are on the verge of civil war. Conservative right is attacking Conservative left and Labour left is attacking Labour right. And it is all over which idiot, or bunch of idiots, in either party, left the doors of perception too wide open because they wanted a bit of 'wiggle room'. So what is at stake?

- On the Labour front: Recovery - When is a recovery not a recovery? When is the word recovery premature? Is 'recovery' going to become the word most associated with Labour in the run up to the next election?
- On the Conservative front: Spending - How much should a future Conservative government cut public services? Is Mr Osborne faint hearted in his approach? Does he need to slash and burn more? Will spending cuts be associated with the Conservatives in the run up to the next election?

For both parties, perception is more than ever really the problem (rather than the solution). Everyone wants to stand in the middle of the road nowadays, despite the old Nye Bevan aphorism that such people tend to get run over. But ever since New Labour moved everyone closer to the centre ground in the late 90s, the political parties have been too terrified to move away, just in case the sidewalk holds even greater horrors. At least in the middle of the road, you can keep your enemies close and never suffer such accusations as: "Look, he/she is on the wrong side of the road." At least no-one need appear to be like the proverbial 'chicken', always thinking about crossing to the other side... And if everyone is doing political cross dressing nowadays then no-one can point at the other guy and laugh.

Problem is that the natives, and the party activists are getting restless. They are starting to realise that even though the next election should be one of the 'big ones', with a hell of a lot at stake, no-one is really sure what actually is at stake. Gordon will claim 'recovery' is here and carry on as before, and Conservatives will insist on spending cuts, but not on the scale that some in the party, and the city and even the civil service would expect.

Politics is about nothing else if it is not about massaging public perception. We know that, "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time." At some point the truth... the natives... the party activists will catch up and say that something is not quite right? Surely?

Although who knows? Gordon Brown might well play a blinder and call a general election at the beginning of the Conservative Party Conference this autumn. It would certainly wrong foot the opposition. Maybe that is the best the Gordon can hope to do right now.

As George Dubya Bush put it: "You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."

Tuesday, 8 September 2009

More Allsopp, Channel 4.

Despite calls from some quarters to ban Kirstie Allsopp, the government is currently considering plans to encourage More 4 to roll her show out 24/7, in the hope that this might help rekindle the property market before the next election. The presenter of Location Location Location, although the daughter of Charles Allsopp, 6th Baron Hindlip, could be considered a little suburban due to her obsession with buying and 'doing up' property. But this is what makes her popular with the prospective homebuyers, television executives have decided .

On a day when it was reported that young homeowners face legal action and bankruptcy after their 'off-plan' flats plunged in value, commentators are wondering whether television presenters who have 'pushed' the dream of untold wealth through property ownership, should be allowed the oxygen of publicity. Clearly Channel 4 thinks that they should and Gordon Brown, looking fondly back to the glory days of rampant property speculation, would like to take this one stage further.

Brown would like to create a 'rolling' property channel where suburban TV personalities would help home buyers up and down the land find their dream homes. Brown hopes that the perception that everyone is 'doing property nowadays' would swiftly return the market to the febrile state that existed pre-2008. "Who said that I did not put an end to boom and bust?" said Brown. "What happened to the property market last year was just a side show. Clearly the quickest way for everyone to get rich again is to believe that everyone can get rich again. So my advise to you, the British people is: tune in, turn on, shell out."

Monday, 7 September 2009

They, like, hurt my feelings, man.

A controversial tribunal decision that company practices discriminate against employees with strongly held views on drug taking will be challenged in the courts. Executive Tim RoadChief who is a member of the Native American Church of Navajoland claimed that he was unfairly dismissed by the airline British Virginways because of his insistence on flying planes whilst high on the hallucinogenic Mexican cactus peyote.

Tim Roadchief believes that his philosophical belief in 'North American Peyotism' should allow him the same protection against discrimination as other religious beliefs. Roadchief was dismissed after an incident where in the midst of one of his 'vision quests' involving fasting, solitude, and quiet but steady contemplation, he attempted to fly a Jumbo Jet from New York to London.

Virginways bosses dismissed him on the spot, but Roadchief's lawyer has filed an action claiming that the law needs to be clarified for the increasing numbers of people who take a philosophical stance on the drug taking environment and 'altered states'. "People should be able to express views and act accordingly without fear of retribution or discrimination."

Tim Roadchief himself commented: "All I tried to do was bring onto the plane my friends Cedar Man, Fire Man, Drum Man, and Earth Mother. These guys were carrying nothing more than an eagle bone whistle, various feather fans, water drum, and prayer staff. I kinda believe in this peyotism shit man, so like it follows that it must be religious discrimination if the boss man then dismisses me for acting on those beliefs. Don't it?"

News in Brief: Monday Morning City Round Up.

- The Two Handed Economist: The economist famous for predicting the credit crunch has offered his view on prospects for economic recovery. He has quite unequivocally stated that, on the one hand there could be a U shaped recovery, but on the other hand there could be a 'double dip' (sometimes referred to as a 'W'). When asked whether this was really a prediction, he replied: "Yes indeed, it is a prediction... a prediction of all possible scenarios." Would a U-shaped recovery be a thin-U, he was then asked... Or fat-U? The angry economist replied: "Fat-U too."

- An equality watchdog has suggested that women have much smaller boners than men. A survey commissioned by the equalities and human rights commission has shown that women in the Square Mile are not getting it on as much as men, leading some to suggest that 'Sex and the City' is a myth.

- The European Network and Information Agency has warned of an alarming increase in bank account 'skimming' across Europe. Despite a high profile campaign over the past few years, banks are still whacking customers with exorbitant charges for minor overdraft transgressions. In addition, despite interest rates being at an all time low, banks are still squeezing customers with high levels of interest on mortgages, loans and credit card debt.

Sunday, 6 September 2009

Hardwired to get really wired

Research revealed in the Sunday Times today suggests that human beings might be hardwired to believe in Richard Dawkins. The idea has emerged from studies of the way the human mind behaves during heated debates about religion and evolution. Scientists think that humans are born with a tendency in such situations to display self-righteous indignation, especially when confronted with views of the natural world that conflict with their own.

Bryce Hoodwink, Professor of developmental randomness at the University of Bristols apparently believes that children display a "natural intuitive way of reasoning that leads them to all kinds of supernatural beliefs. Never mind that fact that their parents tell them that there are such things as Father Christmas and Tooth Fairies. If their parents didn't them these things they'd make them up anyway."

Professor Hoodwink believes that the same goes for God and Richard Dawkins. "School children don't believe in one guy or the other because their parents or teachers have told them to believe in them. Oh no. If God and Dawkins weren't mentioned even once throughout their lives, kids would simply have to make them up. The fact of the matter is that we all need something to believe in."

However a spokeperson for the Department of Disbelief today stated: "Struth! You couldn't make it up, could you? If we are all hardwired to believe in Richard Dawkins or even in God for that matter, then who exactly was it who put the wiring there in the first place? That's what I would like to know. Was it God or Richard Dawkins? These people make me laugh... For crying out loud, some people nowadays wonder whether Richard Dawkins is bigger than Jesus... But then that is what they once wondered about the Beatles, didn't they?"

Saturday, 5 September 2009

History is Bank

One year on... and some are foolish enough to believe that the 'goose that laid the golden egg' was in actual fact 'the goose that took a dump' on the economies of the West. How wrong they are. Bank shares are soaring, income from trading is on the up again - and so much so that banks are once again wealthy enough to pay multi million bonuses to their intrepid 'big swinging dicks'. Little wonder then that Gordon Brown is now blowing hot and cold over the issue of bonus restraint.

Brown was the champion of the city from the early nineties onwards. In the financial markets he saw what all politicians adore: Pixie dust. He saw that the world around us no longer had to be defined by truth, but could be defined by perception. In the case of the financial markets, this perception meant one thing: confidence.

New Labour was the first party openly to believe that politics was just a form of marketing, simply a way of getting people to believe, a means of encouraging faith. The confidence of the financial markets chimed very well with that approach, because the financial markets were marketing writ large. Brown saw how over the seventies and eighties, corporate America and corporate Britain had lost power to the financiers such as Goldsmith and Milken who could move markets, intimidate companies and influence government.

Then in 1992, Soros showed that he could go one better and actually intimidate government. Brown at this point realised that huge cash flows could alter government policy and even beguile an electorate that increasingly wanted a way of getting rich quick. That is why Brown cosied up to the bankers and why he never urged restraint on the credit derivatives markets. Confidence was high and had to remain high for New Labour to prosper. And when confidence was no longer high, Labour's prospects sank.

But Gordon Brown dealt with all of that. He saved the world. After his hyperdermic injections of capital the economies of West - once close to collapse - are now soaring. And that is once again because reality is defined by perception, by confidence, not by what is really happening. The goose is laying its golden eggs again. So why restrain it?

Oh, fair enough, there is the question of some debt that needs to be repaid one day, but Gordon can probably find some way of shoving it 'off balance sheet' - Out of sight out of mind... Maybe some kind banker will help Brown flog this debt by creating a new type of funky 'Government Derivative', or a 'Collateralised Brown Obligation'. And then everyone in the City of London can carry on doing what they always did best: Jettisoning history and living like there was no tomorrow.

Friday, 4 September 2009

His Phoniest Hour

Prime Minister Gordon Brown dismissed claims today that he had forgotten the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two. Some are asking why Britain is not following the lead of Russia and Poland in commemorating a key moment in European history. There is speculation that Brown fears that he might be compared to Winston Churchill who was one of the greatest Prime Ministers and war leaders in British history. Brown's record is less impressive.

It is 70 years since Britain declared war on Germany, heralding the start of World War II. At 11am on September 3, 1939 the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcast the announcement on radio. Chamberlain of course was the man responsible for appeasing Hitler and is often characterised as a ditherer, something close to Mr Brown's heart. So perhaps unfavourable comparisons with both leaders were ultimately what encouraged him to overlook any commemoration.

That said, Mr Brown later set the record straight. "I was indeed afraid that I might be compared to Churchill, but not for the reasons that people suspect." A Brown aide proceeded to clarify this statement: No10, it seems, had learnt that yet another third rate revisionist had been "trying to flog his new book" by stating that Churchill was a deeply flawed monster, who was utterly wrong to push for war and should have continued down the path of the appeaser Chamberlain. Said the aide: "Mr Brown could never tolerate comparison with someone like that... A warmonger, that is."

Thursday, 3 September 2009

Johnson defends skimming

Doctor Boris Johnson, staunch champion of the city of London has vigorously defended skimming, the multi million pound operation that he views as a key employer in the capital and that enables a trickle down of wealth from rich to poor. He was responding to Lord Turner's report last week that suggested a Tobin Tax should be levied on all bonuses. Commenting that the financial sector - which he described as an intermediate rather than an end product activity - had become too large, Turner condemned some financial innovation as "socially useless", questioning for example whether "the world would have been better off without any credit default swaps".

However Dr Johnson has hit back at Lord Turner, asking: "What is a flaming pinko doing running the FSA? People certainly have very short memories don't they? I should say so. Don't people remember the Bolsheviks? One day they were trying to curb the excesses of the bankers, the next they were pumping lead into members of the royal family."

Mr Johnson was not slow to point out that many people in the economy benefited from skimming. He suggested that were regulation on skimming actually to be decreased - either for credit card skimming or casino skimmming - the activity would then flourish, bringing much needed taxes into treasury coffers. "You ask the taxi driver, the celebrity chef, the diamond dealer, the super-car or yacht trader whether that wealth placed in the hands of a few people does not benefit the economy... And it's not just that. There is also a 'trickle down effect' via taxation. Many of the taxes that pay for your schools and hospitals, your roads and your police could well be funded in the future by an expanded 'skimming' industry. You might call skimming an intermediate activity, since it does not offer an end product, but that does not stop it allowing money to flow. And the flow of money is just what the economy needs right now!"

Doctor Johnson concluded by adding: "It is clear that when a man is tired of the City of London, he is tired of lies."

Wednesday, 2 September 2009

Perfidious Mr Bean

Prime Minister Gordon Brown today hit back at critics who accused him of 'double-dealing' over the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, insisting that there had been "no cover up, no double-dealing, no deal for oil." The statement comes after an attack from the Former U.S. Justice Department official David Rivkin who had said: 'This is the kind of duplicitous behaviour that most people here do not expect from Britain.'

In a surprise move, Gordon Brown has fallen back on a time honoured and trusty 'off balance-sheet' defence. This is a defence that is more commonly used in economic or financial affairs. The term OBS has traditionally been seen as a way of allowing the Government to claim that it is not heavily in debt, because any debt that there is or might be is being stored off the country's economic balance sheet.

In the case of the Megrahi release, Brown has claimed that he was 'off balance sheet' with the truth. Lawyers and academics are currently evaluating this defence to see whether it holds up to serious scrutiny, but there are some on Gordon Brown's side who are giving it serious credence.

What Brown would claim in this instance is that ever since Scotland became semi independent - or devolved - it has effectively sat off Britain's political (and diplomatic) balance sheet. It would therefore be possible for England and Scotland to come to the same conclusions over issues such as the release of the Lockerbie Bomber, lucrative oil deals etc etc. without any recourse to, or evidence of collusion.

Mr Brown said: "New Labour is about nothing if it is not about contracting out responsibility, about asset stripping truth and about privatising the 'actualité'. Let the people of Britain and indeed the rest of the world understand that New Labour is the party of double-entry honesty."

Elsewhere, the former Home Secretary J.Smith has helpfully added that the Megrahi release, "Did not feel right." This earth-shattering and insightful statement has prompted commentators to ponder whether in fact she should soon return to Government - not simply as Home Secretary but perhaps as Prime Minister, so that she can instruct the British people - and anyone else who might be interested - as to what kind of double dealing and duplicity does actually 'feel right'.