Le Pen Demands Respect from Beeb & Quite Right Too

I am deeply suspicious of poujadists of any nationality: it's all too easy, and often unsavoury.  Politics is about power, not protest.  What vocal-minority party ever manoeuvred its way into a sustainable national-policy-dictating position ?

Marine le Pen, however, is still an elected politician which is more than can be said for Laura Kuenssberg, Le Pen's interrogator on Newsnight yesterday.   Kuenssberg duly essayed the ill-mannered, interruptive, dumb-down style of Snow and Wark, under which legions of courteous American interviewees have suffered with restrained dignity.  Le Pen was having none of it and replied calmly but firmly:  Madame, you seem more interested in your own questions than in my replies.

Good for her: would that more politicos could find ways to put these self-important gits in their place.  It is said that Ian Katz, the recently-installed editor of Newnight, bust the budget to get Kuenssberg as a replacement for Michael Crick.  It's not a bargain.

Crick may be quirky but he actually breaks exclusive stories by actually doing *gasp* actual research.  When Crick is rude, it's because he has caught someone with their pants around their ankles.  No-one's heart will ever sink at the words "Laura Kuenssberg is in reception for you ..."

ND

The Secret Diary of Owen Jones, Aged 13¾

The Secret Diary of Owen Jones Aged 13¾

14th March 2014

Terrible news! The greatest parliamentarian of the age is dead! Wedgie Benn is gone! WoW!  His statesman like bearing and ability to get to the heart of the issue by demanding greater union representation made him a hero to everyone who ever lived a proper life. I saw him on the TV once. I think it was the Ali G show. His socialist principles really shone through. I want to emulate him in every way! Actually I want to be better than that coz he never achieved anything and did rather sell out to the Lipton's brigade..So I will be a better Benn. More radical. More uncompromising. More left wing.

And I read in the Daily Mirror that he kept a daily diary, just like ME! 
So really I am already his spiritual heir, if not his actual heir. Which is just as well as I don't want all those estates and mansions the great proletariat hero owned. He was going to give them to the people, I'm certain of that. He just didn't have time, dying so young at just 88.
I shall wear red socks for 48 hours. As a mark of respect and protest.

But there is something rather sinister about two great heroes of the left passing so recently. Bob Crow and now Tony Benn. And that's soon after Hugo Chavez who was the greatest leader who ever lived. Greater than Lenin or Mao or even Neil Kinnock. 

I bet these deaths are linked. The evil forces of the Thatcherite, NeoCon-CIA-Mossad-MI5-FBI-DVLA- E.ON - AOL special forces probably murdered them all to prevent the coming uprising of the downtrodden peoples of the world. 

 I skyped my secret best-g-friend, @PennyRed.
She has moved to America with her parents for her dad's financial work. I asked her if she must hate being in the very belly of the capitalist parasite, New York.
She said "uhh..Umm..well..I guess..Its so .. Unreactionary and immune to the plight of the working class people..But they do have good bagels."

That's weird. I heard that New Yorker's loved eating big apples. Maybe that's New Mexico. I'll have to look it up in my atlas of amazing socialist facts by Dr Eion Clarke. I got that for Christmas, which I don't celebrate as its a bourgeois, religious-oppression invention to confuse the proletariat and promote corrupting capitalism. 

But mum says its very rude to turn down a gift.

 Anyway the book is brilliant! Loads and loads of facts about everything. 
Did you know more people have died from the bedroom tax than died from the black death?

 @PennyRed was sure I was right and that there is a plot to eliminate all the left leaning leaders of the world. She even mentioned Shirley Temple's death was 'big news on the cable' whatever that means. I think she confused Shirley Williams, with Temple, but i didn't want to correct her. She can get very stroppy if you do that. Calls it 'male domination of misrembering' and that is a HATE CRIME! 
She is so hardcore! She won't be tempted by all that glitz and fake glamour. She won't sell out. 

She is one of the three founder and only, bloodbrothers, slash, sisters of the Stockport urban guerrillas popular front of
Gramsci, Internationale, Trotsky Socialists. 

PennyRed and me and the Dalai Lama. Although he never replied to my text to join our freedom fighters, I'm pretty sure that was just because the authorities took his phone charger, so he is in.

 As the upcoming leader of the Gramsci, Internationale, Trotsky Socialists, or GITS, I must take care that I am not on the hitlist of the Bildeberger assassins. 

I shall push my rubber plant across to the door and keep my Pol Pot nightlight on at all times.
And the squeaky floorboard at the top of the stairs will give me plenty of time to escape through the window should I hear the agents of  injustice creeping past the airing cupboard.

Sleepy now. I shall dream of myself, bravely alone and on the run from the forces of imperialism. Clad only in my Michael Foot donkey jacket, red protest socks and Manchester United Pj's.

 {I didn't choose them! But as I said earlier, Its very rude to refuse a Christmas gift. .. Especially one from your mum.} 


With apologies to the late Sue Townsend

The 'rich' are jumping the queue.

The 'rich'  are jumping the queue, said Petrie Hoskin on the radio earlier. 
She was referring to the NHS and this ongoing idea of charging everyone in the UK £10 a month to use it. Rich people can go private so, jumping the queue.

Two issues here. Firstly, as we discussed the other day, the £10 extra idea isn't very popular. It will be even less popular when its discovered that it doesn't raise the 60,000,000 x £10 x12,  that its promoters wish. That it won't apply to children, obviously. Or pensioners. Or people with long term health issues. Or people in prison. Or recent immigrants. Or unemployed, disabled, on benefits and every other thing under the sun that excludes someone, usually for a good reason, from paying. As P'J O'Rourke once almost wrote, "When the government says everyone will pay the new tax, they mean its just going to be you and me. And I'm going to weasel out of it on some pretext.. so its just you."

The second issue is that 'the rich' using private healthcare are not, unless you are a Miliband acolyte,  jumping the queue. They are not even in the queue. They are in a different queue. They paid for a ticket to be in the NHS queue but they decided against using it, and so bought another, more expensive ticket, to join the private healthcare queue. They weren't able to get a refund on the NHS ticket.
In fact, instead of jumping the queue , they actual left the queue and so accelerated the queue for everyone behind them. And they paid for a portion of those people's treatment, even though those people now won't be paying a penny for the 'rich person's' treatment.

But we hate the rich, which seems to be anyone earning about £40k, so when they don't take a free to use service that they are entitled to, and instead pay money that has been taxed to access a private service,  they are making the poor suffer. 

Somehow.

Re-purpose That Landmark: The Results

Compo judging time - and not an overwhelming postbag so it seems everyone had their weekend priorities right, enjoying the fine spring weather (running the marathon ..?)   And we managed to avoid the anticipated LVT punch-up without troubling the moderators.

But what a London-centric readership we are - excepting Anon@9:31, whose proposal for the Angel of the North is certainly iconoclastic but probably in contravention of someone's human rights.  Timmy's suggestion may technically be some kind of outrage, too.  So - just three awards:

• The Salvado Dali Award for Fevered Imagination:  CU, for his Hadrian's Wall of Ice.  I look forward to this featuring in the forthcoming independence debates: a true contribution to creative politics
• The He Read The Rules and Gave His Name award:  EK, for reading the rules and giving his name, which put his drag-racing idea a nose ahead of Anon's@6:30
• The coveted Lèse-Majesté award: a more tightly contested affair with Buck House featuring prominently, but it goes to ... Pogo, who has fallen neatly back on the eternal truth that real life offers more satire than David Frost ever managed.

And the prizes:  a one-year subscription to the writings of the New Economics Foundation !  That'll keep your spam-filter busy.

And so, back to the day job ...

ND

London City Airport: Creative Thinking Required

I really like this provocation perpetrated by the 'New Economics Foundation' ("economics as if people and the planet mattered" ... yeah, OK, we get the drift):  scrap London City Airport!  There is a bit of reasoning behind it, too: if the similarly-sized ExCel next door contributes five times as much to GDP, their challenge merits an answer.

Mr Wadsworth will doubtless tell us that a proper land tax would decide all such issues, but pending that, how about C@W readers settling this one ?  So:

• what use should the Airport site be put to ?
• what other landmark UK site(s) should be put to better use ?  (site + use, please)

Awards after the weekend.  Extra marks for creative iconoclasm.

ND

BBC Question Time: Miller Miller, on the haul. Where's the Au-pairs, for them all?

Playing for honour this week as DICK THE PRICK won the championship last week.

He really is the special one.

 

Hall of The Winners

2014

DTP - 4

Taff - 2 

Mark Wadsworth - 2 

Measured - 2 

Nick Drew - 2

Bill Quango MP -1 

Malcolm Tucker - 1 

CityUnslicker - 1 

David Dimbleby presents Question Time from West London, with Conservative culture secretary Sajid Javid MP, deputy leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman MP, leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats Kirsty Williams AM, singer-songwriter Billy Bragg and chief executive of the global advertising company WPP Sir Martin Sorrell.

 

Looks like a right dismal outing. Fiddles, Wimmin's quotas, & unsolved murders all with a badly sung backing track.

BQ thinks

Dimbletie - red wedge

1. Are politicians 'out of touch?' They mean you Dave.

2. Ed Miliband's women's quota is ridiculous even for him. Unless he embarks on a Blair Babes initiative. Miliband's MILFs?

3. Broadwater Farm in Tottenham hasn't been hit by the London property boom. Anyone know why?

4. Actual London property boom question. probably the one about prices rising for 5 years.

5. IMF economic forecast. Will C@W have to print a clarification that when, unanimously and independently, we wrote Osborne was, at best,  ineffective; we actually meant he was a financial genius.

Maria did not make it... but is graft endemic?

Inevitable - will be interesting to see though whether it has any wider effects on MP's and their expenses claims. If only they cold be more honest in their needs...yet somehow we have a bunch of politicians who are mired in their own greed.

One question for readers. My take is that since the financial crisis the level of graft in the UK has increased exponentially. There are bribes and gifts and all sorts that goes on - more so than was the case in the 1990's and early 2000's. There are some obvious reasons for this, in that with less money around people are using what power and positions they have to personally enrich themselves where possible.

But am I being too conservative and harking back to an era which never existed. Instead is it just that now I am older and more connected I see the graft that before we invisible when working at lowlier levels in organisations?

Three Causes for (Modest) Optimism

There's enough in the news to make for grinding of the teeth (not to mention things that give rise to CU's regular threats to emigrate) that I am inclined to register a little cluster of recent items which redress the balance a bit.

(1) The tenor of the latest IPCC report: as several commentators have noted, adaptation to climate change has started to feature as a mainstream topic instead of being viewed as tantamount to abject surrender of the greenie-lefty desideratum of abatement-only policies by diktat, in not-so-subtle pursuit of their goal of World Government.  Adaptation is the correct direction of travel, and it is to be hoped that after another 5 years of slow progress, public policy will be substantially redirected to this potentially quite urgent end.  The only vague excuse for windfarms has been as a programme of Keynsian public works, and intelligent flood defences etc are infinitely better on that score - saints preserve us, they could even show a genuine return on investment !

(2) The interview with Caroline Lucas in the Grauniad 

For Lucas, the big problem with fracking has nothing to do with the risk that it will cause earthquakes, contaminate the water table or pollute the soil. In fact, she thinks it possible that stringent regulations could minimise those risks. "It's not that fracking itself is necessarily worse than ordinary gas extraction ... Lucas accepts that we do need gas ...

These words (my emphasis) are a cut-out-and-keep collectors item.

(3) The re-opening of the Dawlish stretch of railway.   When it was first washed away, everyone shook their heads sadly and proclaimed it would take 6 months and more to fix.  And who could disagree, given the shocking length of time that British civil engineering projects generally take ?  Makes the blood boil: FFS, World War 2 only took 6 years!  Anyhow, for once the finger was pulled out and the job was done in good time.  The same attitude needs adopting rather more widely: hey, maybe even for implementation of, errr, adaptation policies ...

So - credit where it's due, and a modest round of applause to these three disparate entities for their belated but worthwhile conversions to the ways of righteousness.  There is more rejoicing in Heaven, etc etc: and no-one is beyond salvation !

ND

Maria Miller...still hanging on

The press really don't like her do they? I mean Guido I can understand as he has always made a good point about holding politicians to account for their expenses inadequacies. On this one point he is neutral in the neutron bomb sense of the word that it does not matter who you are, punishment for wrongdoing will be exposed.

The wider Press are clearly going for her becuase she is the Culture Secretarty and they think removing her will make their life easier for post Leveson media regulation. That she has not exactly behaved humbly in the whole episode must be a strong contributory factor.

It is interesting to see whether she will manage to hang-on even with Camerson's backing. His record on this is not good (see Andrew Mitchell) and this story is too personal to the Press for them to let it go.

On a slightly wider note, I am a fan of MP's being paid more and given less. More money but less expenses for offices and houses which they abuse absurdly - as anyone would, which we can see from the fact all MP's in all Parties do so continuously - to their own benefit. If the true cost of an MP and expenses is around £100,000 or £120,000 then we should pay them that and stop this crazy funding of second homes and offices.

Even I find it distastfeul that second homes can be claimed at taxpayers expense and then profits booked as personal, tax free, gifts. When these sums are into the over one million of pound bracket as they have been for many MP's, it beggars belief. In no private company would employees have such a perk.

Clearly though the expenses scandals will not recede whilst real and balanced reform is avoided - so we will be stuck with it forever.

CU

NHS: patient fines.

A former Labour health minister has suggested people in England pay a £10 monthly membership charge to use NHS services.

This question came up at Question time. Almost no one on panel or in audience agreed with it. rightly too. An Extra £120 from every adult in the UK is some tax! But many did agree that something should be done.

Charging for appointments was immediately out. Free at the point of use and all that. {Why don't we care that we pay to see a dentist? We hand them cash and don't even think about it.}
But the idea of fining people seemed quite popular.  Not the A&E drunks and druggies or 50 fags a day heart failures and the fat to walk types.  More the inconsiderate. The  people who don't attend an appointment. The people who don't finish their course of prescriptions. calling an ambulance for a splinter and such. 

On appointments 3 times missed to be a fine was suggested. 3 times seems absurdly generous considering 99% of the nation, including children, have a mobile. Its only a call to say can't attend. Maybe a text/email line would help? 
The reality is it often takes two weeks to get an appointment by which time a % of people feel better and have forgotten all about it. 

But it is an easy one to implement. Appointments are recorded already. A second data file to record who hasn't attended wouldn't be hard to add. And a £10 fine or exclusion not too onerous for anyone.
Remember, its not for cancelling an appointment but for not turning up and telling anyone. And schools fine parents £80 for taking a term time holiday. The council will slap £120 if you accidentally put glass in the tin recycling box.  Its £60 for 3mph over the speed limit.That is to encourage responsibility, so government says.

£10 a sinner won't raise any money. maybe make it two tenners? And all the £10's can go into a staff Xmas bonus fund to make sure that the receptionists collect them. It would set a precedent. For the courts. For social worker visits. Local authority repair works.. .

 And the NHS is the most expensive thing we have in this country. Shouldn't we at least try and make people respect it a little more?

BBC Question Time - The Sell Out, Sells Off Cheap

David Dimbleby presents the topical debate from Bristol. The panel includes Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable MP,[mega klaxon sounds arroooghhhgahh!]  Labour's former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain MP, Conservative MP Kwasi Kwarteng, associate editor of The Times Camilla Cavendish and Guardian columnist Julie Bindel.

Season is almost over. Can DTP hold on ?

BQ say:
Dimbleby will wear a UKIP tie and start the program with "I, for one, welcome our new insect eyed overlords."

1. Was Royal Mail sold at a bargain price and what sort of cretin trusts the word of a banker ? 
2. Climate Change report. The 'dossier' said we could all be flooded within 45 minutes.
3. Maria Miller shows us all how to escape with a very dodgy expense claim.
4. Farage is 2 for 2. Should he now be allowed into the real election debates?
5. Wales. What's wrong with that place? {sorry Taff,} Giving up smoking materials banned.

Hall of The Winners

2014

DTP - 4

Taff - 2 

Mark Wadsworth - 2 

Measured - 2 

Nick Drew - 2

Bill Quango MP -1 

Malcolm Tucker - 1 

CityUnslicker - 1

Nige for PM

I am trying to recall a time when a senior Government member went in for a political debate with a minor party and was bested to totally. I went to the Farage/Clegg debate and with all Clegg's whirring of arms and attempts at humour he came across as an arrogant, hypocritical snob. Quite an achievement against Nigel who really is a posh City buy, but has the common touch in a way Clegg absolutely despises - we all know he the opposite of this.

Of course I guess a match up between say Salmond and Cameron would be interesting, but Cameron is far to frit to go in for that kind of escapade. Clegg must have thought he had little to lose in taking on Farage but he hopefully has firmly shifted the Lib Dems into a deserved fourth place in the General Election as well as the European elections.

What amazed me, perhaps even slightly appalled, was that there was nothing for me to disagree with Farage on and at the same time, nothing that I could agree with Clegg on. I am a balanced person and spend my days playing devil's advocate for fun and taking opposing sides - but Clegg's pro-Euro (i.e. pro chez Clegg, literally) and anti-English is shocking.

Whereas Farage's refreshing populism is what the Country needs to shake it out of a morose plod towards penury and social collapse under the contradictions weight of 'social democracy.'

Mandelson: What A Piece Of ... Work

Peter Mandeleson must be the very living definition of 'shameless'.  Have a read of this.

Britain could reduce energy prices if it united with Europe to force an end to Russia's "divide and rule" policies of selling gas, said Lord Mandelson. The Labour peer, who has business links with Russia, said Britain and Europe should use its combined "vast market power" to fight for a "single purchasing agreement" for Russian energy sources. "We pay more because Russia and Gazprom play divide and rule," Lord Mandelson told the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference. "We need a single purchasing agreement, to assert ourselves as consumers and customers, so we can get our energy prices down." 

Oh, and who is to be the Euro-counterparty to this ghastly statist mega-contract?  And with what secrecy would its negotiation and terms be cloaked (see the UK's CfD negotiations with EDF)?  And which 'advisers' would be engaged, and what fee would they be asking for?  % of the gross, we may be sure, on what would without doubt be the biggest commercial agreement in the history of mankind: we are talking trillions here, and on one trillion the traditional 0.25% finder's fee would come in at EUR 2.5 billion ... well, gotta think big, eh?  (Just so you know, all manner of 'commissions' have been paid - to parties on both sides of the deals - when certain state-owned gas companies have negotiated with Gazprom over the years, and I don't just mean in the Ukraine.)

"... who has business links with Russia ..." - delicately put by the DTel.  Incidentally, they go on to say: 

He was backed by Kenneth Clarke, the Cabinet minister, who argued that if Britain united with Europe to create a "single market in energy [it] would strengthen our position against [Vladimir] Putin."

That's not 'backing' Mandelson, yer feckin' eejit (madam), it's stating the correct strategic approach to making a commodity market work for consumers.  There is about as much clear blue water between a single market, and a single mega-agreement, as between the opposing coasts of the Pacific at its widest point.

ND

Which is the April Fool

Bizarrely only one of these is (mostly) not made up.

1. George Osborne, perhaps in a fit of Tony Benn nostalgia announced that in future a Tory government would commit itself to full employment regardless of the cost to the nation's purse or globalisation having rendered such ideas impossible.

2. Nigel Farage has stated he admires Vladamir Putin the most of any world leader and keeps a life size cardboard cutout of the half naked president in his office.

3. Julie Gayet, the ex-ish girlfriend of Francois Hollande is suing the magazine that first published the story of her affair with the crisis hit premier on the grounds that it was true and she didn't like it.

4 Nick Drew of Capitalists@Work has added his name to the growing list of UKIP hopefuls as he has decided to stand for a seat in the coming euro elections. Mr Drew stated that "he'd had it up to here with the Heathites." And made a flat hand above head gesture.

5. Having had his red lines crossed by Russia over Syria and recently in the Ukraine, President Obama's secretary of state, John  Kerry, has announced yet more red lines, only drawn with a thicker, more impressive, nib.

6. Having spent the day panicking the public after a global warming report predicted drought, flood, fire, pestilence and famine within 45 minutes, the BBC asked on its main news pages "is the climate report overly alarmist?"

7. The coalition government plans to introduce a law to protect children from emotional cruelty. The law it is hoped, will prevent parents from failing to do their children's homework equally as impressively as the competitive mother down the road does. Pretending there is only one Harry Potter book and from saying "because I say so, that's why!"

Could the House Price bubble burst before the election?

A week is a long time in politics. A week can also be a long time in the financial markets - as can a day. Just looked at the smashed share prices of the insurance companies now being investigated by the FCA - a load down 20% or more in the blink of an eye.

When sentiment turns, it can go very bad. My own investment in GKP is down to 90p today from heady heights of 450p just a couple of years ago. it's a big change and the facts have changed so along with that so have the prices.

Currently in London we have a massive house price bubble. Huge population growth, limited housing development and competition from the World's wealthy for a piece of 'London Gold' is driving prices up at an incredible rate. Great times to be a property developer or agent, less good for those wanting to buy a house or even rent at a decent price.

As well as the human factors, the Government has weighed in by restricting permitting for new developments and pushing Help to Buy. In addition there is the Funding for Lending Scheme and record low interest rates for a 6th year running. Liquidity is everywhere. Anyone can borrow and borrow a fortune - encouraged by the Government and the Banks that they own.

It is a witches' brew, the higher prices go, the bigger the crash will be. Last time many eminent commentators were warning about a crash in 2003/4 that did not happen until 2007. Then the global nature of the crash saved London as it became a safe haven for capital flight.

From a UK politics view at the moment this is benefiting the Government. The Government has engineered a nice boom which is helping, construction, banks and moving the liquidity created by QE into the real economy. After such a terrible financial crisis, this is in many ways a good thing.

Except that we are moving liquidity into a sector which is already far beyond its natural level. If it were a share, the London market is ASOS. ASOS is a frankly brilliant company which is hugely successful, but its share price went far beyond its value or that of its management to keep pace with. As such it has suffered big drops recently. At some point too another paradigm comes into play. There is an old market saying that when every market 'Bear' has become a 'Bull' then the market changes because there is no one left to sell - shares cannot go higher.

We are already seeing this with super top end London property, where prices and volumes are way down for over a year now. Most of the World's super rich who want a London pad already have one. I would not want to be one of these investors in Mayfair super-developments where they think average sale prices are going to be north of £20 million at £6,000 per square foot.

This effect will slowly trickle down the market in due course. The huge demand pressure is from the bottom of the market in the main so prices will always be cushioned and London property is unlikely to crash like a busted share. However, down it will come and the feel-good factor will wane and the effect on the economy will be real.

The top of the market is also here, maybe it will last for another 2 years, maybe 3. There is a chance though that sentiment turns more quickly and with it will go the Government's re-election strategy. So even though it is a terrible policy, don't expect to see the end of Help to Buy anytime soon.

Reforming pensions and demographics - No work until your 25?

I managed to get 3 ticks for a stupid post for the first time ever earlier in the week, having suggested that due to the ageing demographic crisis we need to be more radical than just axing annuities and increasing the retirement age.

There was much fair comment that losing people in the prime of their lives and losing their skills sets would be a challenge. I doubt this applies to all professions equally but clearly some, like technology, could not survive such a break. Hairdressers and gardeners, perhaps less so.

Another way of moving the goalposts is to extend childhood into the mid-20's. Anyone who has grown-up kids will know that in many ways this has effectively happened already. But for the UK we still maintain a Dickensian approach to schooling, which if reformed, might help to both improve our children's overall education and add in the time needed to help with extending working lives into people's mid-70's.

In many Countries, such as Sweden, Switzerland, even China, kids do not start primary school until they are 7. In the UK they start at age 5. As an adult and having worked with people extensively from all of these Countries I would never know the difference. Perhaps though there is some as they learn creativity and play for another 2 years? The studies into this suggest this maybe the case but are inconclusive.

Moreover, in the US, where I went to University, all Uni courses are a minimum of 4 years and some are even 5 years. Scotland too has 4 year courses.

Just changing our system of education to this model would add 3 years onto the time until full work was started. Children could do primary school to 13, secondary school to 19/20 and then University or apprenticeship training until 24. Thus only entering the full world of adult work at 25ish.

Some of issues around children staying at home have been defeated in recent years by the sheer cost of housing forcing them to stay with parents in any event when having small salaries. In London  by way the average age of house buying is 35!

Finally, none of this should impact on the State negatively. Children staying at home until 7 means no overall increase in school time and extending university or apprenticeship training again has minimal impact on the National Budget.

BBC Question Time; Freeze my bills off !

David Dimbleby presents Question Time from Brighton, with international development secretary Justine Greening MP, Labour backbencher Diane Abbott MP, UKIP MEP Roger Helmer, singer-songwriter Mick Hucknall and the chief executive of Next, Lord Wolfson

What will the panel be asked by the good people of Brighton, the only place in Britain that I've seen hookers in the streets. Stag party heaven.- Dick The prick still leads as we come up to the halfway point.

Dimbletie - Rainbow and pink.
Q1. Has Ed Miliband managed to freeze energy prices even without being PM?
Q2. Is Nigel Farage a sweaty, racist, homophobic, Putin supporting bigot?
Q3.Tony Benn {the old commie didn't get a look in last week. Even greater plaudits for him this week}
Q4. ATOS - bedroom tax- poorest in society - disabled being murdered by coalition..etc.
Q5. Teachers strike {and in Brighton there was also a pupils strike.}

Hall of The Winners

2014

DTP - 3

Taff - 2 

Mark Wadsworth - 2 

Measured - 2 

Nick Drew - 2

Bill Quango MP -1 

Malcolm Tucker - 1

Those Wicked Energy Companies - SSE Breaks Ranks

... and offers a 2-year price freeze.  That'll be interesting, both for them and their shareholders.  Because the underlying wholesale energy costs they face are anything but frozen, as a glance at the graph of what happened to prices in 2008-9 will confirm.  So what have they done - hedged a very large chunk forward?  But what if they attract many more customers - or will they just stop taking new accounts?  And what if they lose a heap of customers, and the hedge goes out of the money?  One trusts they have thought this through.

Because at the very same time as taking on this fairly substantial forward spec position, they are also effectively giving a profits warning, suggesting a reduction in their resilience to future shocks.  Breaking ranks, or breaking the bank?  Maybe that lies behind the parallel announcement of a voluntary separation of the business into independent companies: put all the risk in one of them at let it sink if necessary?

The politics of this are amusing.  It's pretty obvious how Ed "he's had a bad week so far" Miliband will spin this - he's started already - but he needs to watch out because (a) SSE has explicitly linked their retail play to big job cuts plus abandonment of a serious tranche of offshore windfarm development - the inevitable consequence of putting the squeeze on the Big 6, as we have said here many times before.  Wonder what his green and Union friends think about that particular trade-off.   And (b) it's easy for the Tories, and indeed Joe Voter to say: well then we don't need Mr Miliband's freeze at all  We might add (c): SSE itself attributes its move partly to the coalition's lifting of various green impositions, exactly as Cameron is crowing.

Yesterday's referral of the Big 6 to the CMA is, on balance, probably a good thing, because it should result in better focus than Ofgem has managed on improving wholesale market liquidity:  That is 99% of what needs to be done on the regulatory front; and breaking up the verticals may have to be the way to do it (another oft-rehearsed C@W topic).

But the Big 6 do need to get their arses into gear.  If one compares the switching service provided by telecomms firms (and even the bank these days) with what you get from the energy co's, it is not a happy comparison.  They just haven't made the step-change needed to provide 21st century customer service, despite laborious incremental improvements on their 1990's-vintage set-ups.  Their systems are crap (believe me, I know about this) and they've just limped along.  How SSE or any of their peers fix their share of this problem at the same time as slashing staff numbers is anyone's guess.

Still, perhaps this is a bit of a watershed.  Just in time for Cameron to claim some credit ?  Probably not :  but hey, he might do so anyway!

ND  

The Chinese and MH370

Having no firsthand knowledge of China whatsoever, but good reasons to understand it better, I find Chinese reactions to the MH370 disaster very interesting indeed.

It scarcely needs rehearsing that MH370 is a tragedy and, who knows, potentially as nefarious as Pan Am 103.  Relatives of the Lockerbie victims have plugged away in resolute and dignified fashion for 25 years to get closer to what actually happened, without definitive success.  Mysteries like this make the underlying calamity the more difficult to bear: and arguably, right now before any wreckage is found, MH370 is in some ways even more unsettling.  Common humanity dictates compassion for all concerned.

That said, what are we to make of the fairly unrestrained public outpourings of quite a number of Chinese families?  In Japan (which I do know something about) it wouldn't happen like that.  Private grief and bewilderment would doubtless be as great, but powerful cultural forces would ensure that dignity was maintained: the wider families of the heart-broken would embrace and comfort them, and at the same time enforce the stoic decorum which is central to the way of life.  Japanese society as a whole wouldn't, couldn't countenance people losing it in public. (This isn't some sort of 10,000 mile-distant stereotyping:  we know it from their responses to the tsunami.)  We all saw the dignity, nay resolute cheerfulness, with which Filipinos bore their own disasters last year.  And Radio 4 has been interviewing an American relative of an MH370 victim whose composure, dignity and Christian equanimity in his evident distress has been a model the stoics of old would have commended, and that we might all hope to emulate should such a thing befall us.

As for the Chinese, I am left puzzling over the strands.  Doesn't 'face' count for something in China, as we are always led to believe?  Does the Chinese government think it strengthens their global image to have the world watching their distraught citizens behave thus?  Shows them to be a people of heartfelt feeling?  Gives them some kind of upper hand against Malaysia in disputes over the South China Sea?  Deflects Chinese opinion from wondering why China itself has looked so impotent over the whole affair (as everything is once again left to the Anglo-Saxons to clear up)?  I'd be surprised.

Would Chinese people dare to behave thus if a future disaster is entirely of Chinese making?  Do they in fact behave exactly thus (and there are many, many such Chinese disasters all the time) but the authorities make sure we never get to see it?   Would these suppositions have been true in the past, but now the internet makes suppression more difficult and 2014 marks some kind of turning-point?  Or is it a release for pent-up frustration against their own government, which they feel at liberty to express provided they direct it at the nasty foreign Malays?  (Even a shot across the bows of the Chinese government?  This is how we really feel when these man-made disasters happen and no-one tells us anything - watch out the next time one of those home-grown catastrophes occurs.)

The nearest anyone has got to giving me an explanation is that the Chinese are accustomed to a very 'orderly' public world in which nothing goes wrong without it being authoritatively (if mendaciously) explained by the Party in ways that brook no doubt or dissent.  Thus, they are totally lost in a situation of unstructured uncertainty, at which point anything can happen.   That makes sense as a contributory factor.

Maybe more and better explanations will come our way.  I hope these poor people get whatever it takes to comfort them soon.

In the meantime I am left with the clear impression the whole episode shows that the global standing of China is a lot poorer than heir-apparent-imminent to World Leadership. 

ND

Ending annuities is just the start of retirement reform

Great hay has been made this past week about the Government changes to annuities and what an amazing budget this was etc etc. I don't see it that way really, the change to annuities is sensible and brighter recent pensioners will wonder at the deep cynicism of the Government to propose a change only after 6 years of the lowest annuity returns of all time!

What is more interesting is thinking about where the Government is going and indeed society as a whole. Despite our Government's slowness on changing pensions and retirement strategy, it is actually a long way ahead of most OECD countries who instead have ignored this issue as too hard to deal with and left it for the future Government's to sort out.

However, with a huge increase in over-65's and indeed 70's and over-100's there are big challenges ahead. Plus we have the more to automation of many jobs which means the economy will produce fewer jobs in the near future at the same time as the population rises. Clearly, the younger population will not be able to support the older and wealth transfer down the generations will only last one or two before the Country is in penury.

A really radical solution is called for and I would suggest this, compulsory 10-year work breaks at 40, with a mini pension created for this time and state support for parents during this time. 40 is a good age as most people are still full of youthful energy and can live full lives. It's a much better time to enjoy yourself and typically one's young family at that time.

This break will reduce pressure on the need for job creation, particularly in a world where labour is transient in any event and roles can be filled more easily. Once the age of 50 is hit you can look forward to another 25 years of work before 'real' retirement at around 75. The pension needed post-75 is a lot lower than post-65.

The merits of the above are bountiful and help with the technology challenge we are facing too. Of course, if people do not want to stop work then they will not have to - similar to having children and paternity/maternity rights now. The benefits can be arranged to be advantageous to those who take the break, but it would not be compulsory, just financially and lifestyle attractive.

It's a radial suggestion now, but in due course we are going to have to think of very innovative ways of keeping the workforce engaged until a later age as well we to share around employment opportunities in the age of automation.