City of New Orleans - Willie Nelson

I just need to think of something different or something else. Here's one of my all time favourites. Great guitar!

Money grows on trees - or out of thin air! OFFICIAL!!

Anyone wanting to find out the scams and schemes that bankers get up to should watch this video which gives a very good description of the fractional reserve banking system. Essentially this is a grand money printing exercise or, in the current computer world, a digital dollar production. Shocking or what?

Bankers thought the Chancellor was really rather lenient on them in the Budget. He may have been, but should we? Sooner or later this balloon is going to pop big time. I see the Rev. Stephen Green, Anglican priest and chief of the HSBC Banking Group is off to Canada for a B20 meeting. This group has been set up to shadow the shenanigans of the G20. I'm still figuring out how the reverend gentleman squares up dominical teaching with modern day money changing. It's currently too warm for my brain to cogitate properly, but I'll be giving it some further thought. However, it does appear that HSBC has been steered in a way that may reflect Christian stewardship as a component part, so a fractional part of the stewardship may have been implemented!

Budget taxes but no flights of fancy

I knew we would be given the stick first and carrot second. It doesn't appear too bad all round. The Coalition should not worry about upsetting people. Most sensible people are resigned to the fact that the deficit needs to be removed as quickly and efficiently as possible. If anything is going to upset the taxation applecart it will be the media. They can't help trying to drive a wedge between the Tories and LibDems. It's OK for Harriet Harman to snipe away. That's her job as she sees it. But I think it's a bit rich for the BBC to harp on about who is sitting beside whom on the front bench etc, etc.

Given the media frenzy before the budget was even delivered I half thought Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary was going to be chancellor for the day. £1 off this and that but VAT on breathing! As Michael Winner might say, "Calm down, my dears. Calm down".

The Coalition has its fans. I'm one of them. Better a coalition than a washed out Labour administration. If the prime minister is to get any trouble, though, it won't be from the opposition. It will be from some on his own side and from some in the media. I've noticed that Tories who favour the coalition call their LibDem colleagues "honourable friends" and those that don't call them "honourable gentlemen" (or ladies, of course!). It works equally well from the LibDem perspective. An easy way to spot possible troublemakers.

The media seem to be uncertain about coalition politics. It's taking their mindsets some time to adjust. They also have a difficulty with the opposition. Harriet Harman is sometimes described as the Leader of the Opposition and sometimes as the Acting Leader of the Labour Party. It all depends on what point is trying to be made.

Anyway, austerity times apart, I think it may well work out rather well.

England kicks a ball about a bit!

I didn't watch the match last night, so I'm in no position to comment. Football has gripped many in such a way they've got a mental vice on their brains. A chap said to me last night, "What, not watching the football!?!" as he saw me out and about with the kids. "I got off early from work!" he explained, engaging me momentarily in the culture. And with a few more seconds of pleasantries he was gone, making his way to a big screen somewhere. A complete stranger, but he was a charming advocate for the game.

England will never really shine at this World Cup lark. They've spent a whole season supposedly flogging their guts out in the Premiership, where failure really does mean something. Loss of cash! No sponsorship deals and the rest. By the time this kind of contest comes around, they are all looking a bit jaded. The fans did have a point. I heard this morning that most thought the players "lacked passion". Probably that's due in some good part to the fact that this is no longer a game to win but an industry to win in!

David Beckham got the rough edge of a fan's tongue apparently. The fan was as ruffled as those congressmen trying to penetrate Tony Hayward's mind. All steamed up but with no proper attention to the real problem. Beckham has his fans, though. The new show in town is the Becks and Tutu Show. Or maybe the Bish and Becks Show. Anyway, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has a high regard for Beckham. Tutu said "I could hug you." Pity he didn't. Perhaps he feared Er Indoors!

Will England get through? Who knows? It's anyone's guess and certainly a bookmaker's conundrum!

My free swim goes up and down the swanee!

Just as I turn 60 and my wife tells me I could take advantage of a free swim to get a bit fitter, I see I won't be getting it after all. Well, OK, I could, but I can't see the point of filling out the forms only to be told "You've only got a couple of weeks, mate!" as if I'm the moron that hasn't quite grasped the point. I have grasped it, I think. And I'm not complaining. Free swimming is a luxury considering the times we're in, so the government has my support here. I'll pay as I go, or swim with the tide!

A sign of The Times

The Times is no longer available online for free. Murdoch's minions have decided to use the pay-as-you-read method. There is a free period but you still have to "register". Do I want Murdoch knowing my business? I think I'll give him a miss for now, but as they say, never say never. But the thought of helping this anti-British mogul is never appealing. "You British can be such...." and so on!

FIFA go red at sight of orange!

FIFA is the international money-making organisation that promotes association football (allegedly!) and promotes its own business vigorously with a ruthless eye for commercial miscreants and cheeky wannabe competitors. This nonsense about the Dutch beer, which I now see is Bavaria, is a bit OTT. But FIFA has always been OTT. Bavaria Brouwerij traditionally gives away orange clothing to fans. Orange is the colour of the Netherlands. This happened in the last World Cup. Budweiser got in a terrible lager lather then.

Then FIFA tried to get Dutch fans to strip off their clothing to their undergarments all because the Bavaria logo was on their shorts. It's all a bit fascistic. Perhaps the FIFA bosses picked up a few tips from the old Stasi or other such delightful outfits.

Many companies see the World Cup as an opportunity to sell more merchandise. In a free market economy fans as well as non-fans should have choice. FIFA has this notion of "official partners". Well, OK as it stands. But that's no reason to take on the MAFIA's code of business practice and try to throttle the competition.

Dutch delights - relatively speaking!

If anyone had any doubts that the World Cup was not about big business then these young Dutch women will tell you otherwise. They were kicked out of the stadium for allegedly promoting a Dutch beer that was not being officially sponsored at the matches. ITV, who know a thing or two about proper sponsorship, have sacked Robbie Earle for allegedly giving them the tickets to get in.

The BBC know a thing or two about vuvezelas. Apparently they can turn down the sound on TV broadcasts. I'm not opposed to these things but anyone tooting them for 90 minutes must be devoid of any sense of brain sensitivity. It has all the hallmarks of a bad made-for-TV movie. Killer Bees meets Smokey and the Bandit.

And speaking of Dutch girls, Dutch beer and all things Orange, here's our deputy prime minister speaking Dutch. Yes, Nick Clegg is multi-lingual and speaks Dutch like a native. Posh Dutch too, my wife tells me!



and here too, but he's thinking a bit more, as he's been caught off guard (speaking Dutch, that is) -

Vulnerable minorities

I'm glad the Home Secretary has decided to abandon the more ridiculous elements of New Labour's vetting scheme. The quango set up to see if we are deviants of the first order will still be in place though. We live in a weird world. We have to be so careful not to offend but also be wary of being accused of neglect, abuse or just plain ingorance of the new ways.

I'm just getting my head around the concept of vulnerable lone workers. The idea now is that no female, juvenile or elderly person can be left on their own in charge of a workplace. Any visitor is deemed to be a potential threat. Woe betide any cold caller visiting when a single woman is left alone over lunchtime. He may be selling widgets but it's his own widget the authorities are minded about. So are we all seen as potential abusers? "You can't be too careful!" goes the mantra. But each time a real pervert is caught a police spokesman blithely comments that "this one fell under our radar!".

If we all think about it we are all in a minority of something. And I suppose we could all be vulnerable at one time or another. This is not about "being careful" but about the authorities wanting to be seen to be carefully covering their backs. Until they get to grips with the aberration of paedophila (the driver behind all this) nothing will change except the number of boxes we have to tick. If Big Brother (or Sister) is going to assist in any meaningful way it will be to identify peadophilia as a notifiable mental disease with the necessary curbs on the person's liberties. Just locking them up is useless. So is creating a wave of hysteria as the likes of the Express and Sun delight in.

The core problem must be tackled otherwise we will become a vulnerable majority.

Should Moody's be downgraded?

I saw Raymond NcDaniel, the Chairman & CEO of Moody's, being quizzed by the venerable interrogators of this financial committee, the FCIC, looking into the banking crisis and all things connected with it. When asked if any due dilligence was done over the subprime fiasco, McDaniel looked somewhat perplexed. After a bit of waffle, I think the answer was a basic no. It was likened to just going through the accounts of the Dairy Queen rather than sipping the blizzards on offer. Warren Buffet was sitting next to him, and Buffet owns the Dairy Queen.

Moody's have made a mint making rating the creditworthiness of other peoples' businesses their own business. They even take a considered opinion of the state of countries. They don't rate Greece too highly at the moment. They've just notched them down another peg. But what is the real purpose of Moody's and others like them? How come they were so undue in their own dilligence when it came to the subprime racketeers? Is it because McDaniel hadn't heard the word "derivative" before? This fancy word conjured up by bankers in order to turn bad money into good.

I like the way the questioning went, but I doubt it will do much. Both McDaniel and Buffet came across as completely devoid of any real sense that this financial disaster was much to do with them. And that's the problem. They don't really live in the real world. Far better for the committee to go down to the local Dairy Queen and ask the blizzard sippers what they would do to straighten things out. Now that's direct democracy for you!

BP in crude political dilemma

The American people seem to want their president to be some kind of cross between a genie in a bottle and a jack in the box. He is, of course, neither. But disasters always lead to a belief that the president is the chief fixer as well as the Chief. So President Obama is now involved in some form of crude politics in order to rid the Gulf of Mexico of crude oil. Calling BP "British Petroleum" just ratchets up the blame game but it hardly serves to find a real solution. The truth is that there were three other American companies giving willing support to BP in their quest for deep sea oil wealth. And it's not as if BP is exclusively British. American investors have a sizeable share in the global conglomerate. Perhaps we should call it Anglo-American-Sino-Hispanic-Franco-Teutonic Petroleum.

BP is being asked for billions of dollars to help with the clean-up. Where is all this money going to go? First off, I hope it will have a properly audited paper trail and not just be doled out to porkbarrel merchants and get-rich-quick consultants. Will some be given in compensation? Who will decide how much each deserving case should get? A lot more questions will be forthcoming. I hope the answers will be honest and straightforward. What we don't want is filthy lucre literally contaminated by the globular oil it is expected to remove.

In the course of events some will lose their livelihoods, others will gain massively by obtaining cleaning contracts they never dreamed of. This could well be the biggest redistribution of wealth in a single episode of history. We just need to keep a check on who gets what in President Obama's counting house handouts.

Nostalgic for the Rockies!

I'm just looking out of the window whilst blogging. The rain has stopped. Thought I'd check out Darcy Farrow and here is a copy of it on Youtube complete with pics of Scotland! I first heard this on the BBC on Johnny Walker's show in about 1974. It was one of the last he played before being given the boot for not keeping to the playlist. Soon after I too found myself rafting down the Truckee. Great stuff. Johhny's back now on the BBC and I heard him recently talking about how he got into trouble for not playing along with the chosen records. Glad he didn't. I got to hear about Darcy Farrow -

George Osborne's Counting House

I am still wondering how Britain will get out of the financial mess. The government seems fairly certain it will mean tough times. But for whom? Are we to rely on the bankers to get us out of the mess? If so, it's more funny money and a greater catastrophe down the line.

Britain is no longer a manufacturing country of note. OK, some things are made in the UK, but mostly we import things we want "others" to make. These being mainly dragooned Chinese workers. Globalisation is a kind of empire strikes back. It is also significantly unpatriotic. Even bordering on high treason. Export the jobs, import the cheap merchandise. Everybody is happy. We now live in some kind of wonderland fueled by collective denial and financial amnesia. I do no exclude myself from joining in the scrum. Very soon the Chinese workers will demand better conditions and then what do we do? Connive with the politburo or cave in to their demands?

Some say each man, woman and child owes £22,000. Some put it as high as £35,000. The debt counter on this blog has it just passing £33,000. Who really knows? The thing is most people don't earn £22,000 so they will have to get some form of easy payment plan going. It's commonly called taxation. But if everybody draws in their horns and doesn't buy as much, VAT goes down in revenue take. David Cameron talks about wastage by which he means people as well as things. We've just got 3000-odd HIPS surveyors thrust onto the dole. A prime example of cutting back. But will it save any money. We can sack all and sundry in those jobs we think are useless but where are these people going to earn money?

The stark reality is that all this grandiose talk of scaling back in order to reduce the deficit means diddly squat unless the country PRODUCES something that other countries want to buy. Proper goods and proper services. Anything else is akin to moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic.

Back to the blogging

I've been otherwise engaged lately, what with half term and doing other things other than blogging. I've also been seeing how the coalition is bedding down before making any comment that could be regarded as meaningful. I've also been watching Britain's Got Talent. And it definitely has. Piers Morgan is dead right. We talk ourselves down terribly. If anything is going to get us out of this catastrophic mess, then it's talented people. Some will make us laugh, some will make us cry, but we need a dose of reality on the way.

With regard to Ant and Dec, I think they deserve their BAFTA. They've virtually learnt their trade in full view of the public. There was a time when I didn't know who they were. I thought it was someone called Anton Deck. I muttered something as much to my wife. She responded by saying they were really Antanddec, rather like Williamandmary, aka King Billy and his queen. Speaking to my sister over the weekend she said they always had to stand with Ant on the left so that people knew which was which. "You know some people don't know which is which!" she exclaimed. A straw poll seemed to confirm that. Very strange. I can understand not knowing them both, but surely not when one is aware of them as performers.

So I watched the BAFTAs and, when they came up to receive the award, they had to get into position. It's not as though they look alike. I'd suggest they forgo this and just stand as they want. And those too moronic to decipher who is who, well.......

The Gaza concentration camp

Of all the people in the world one would think that the Jews would know a bit about suffering. That's what might be expected. But the reality of the modern world seems to suggest otherwise. Especially the present Israeli government, which has a hunkered down mentality. I've never accepted the Jewish proposal that the holocaust of World War II was the worst atrocity. Because to accept that allows other atrocities to be measured as being only half-way there in the heinous crimes stakes. Benjamin Netanyahu is quite happy to starve innocent Arab children to death if needs be, because in his eyes the Jews have experienced much worse. So it lends credibility to his policy of sealing off the Gaza strip and turning it into a hell hole. Of course, all that gives the Hamas leadership a political manna they never dreamed of. The Israelis must be barmy at best and just plain wicked at worst to think such a policy will succeed.

It is very distressing to know that the Israelis will lie, cheat, steal, and generally ride roughshod over international law in order to pursue what they consider a moral crusade. They will forge passports, steal identities and murder opponents in hotel hallways. Anybody who gainsays these tactics is deemed anti-Israeli or, heaven forfend, anti-semitic.

The blockade of Gaza has no sensible backing with regard to thoughtfulness. Tinned fruit is banned but tinned meat is allowed in. Everything is arbitrarily decided. But these are minor inconveniences. The really distasteful thing is that it's all deemed perfectly OK by the Jewish people. And now we hear that the flotilla of boats boarded by heavy-handed commandos had no weapons. A bit like the WMD nonsense. It was all an excuse to beat the wotsits out of these well-meaning blockade busters.

I'm pleased that there are many Jews in the world who find the actions of the Israeli government unpleasant. The state of Israel came about by terrorist activity. Many of the present Israeli government appear rooted in the same culture as the King David Hotel bombers. The ends justify the means they think.

One day Israel will live in peace with Arab neighbours. Not today, though.