New Year Solutions

A letter to the FT from a colleague engages in the debate which I have mentioned before.

Faisel and the team at Fair Finance have done some great work. Have a look at the maps which claim what they have delivered. A nice bit of transparency that the big fellows could emulate, but of course they won’t.

It would be interesting to extend the argument about affordable lending to the realm of home finance. How much of the current ‘turbulence’ is due to greed in institutions and irresponsible lending to the subprime housing market in the US and elsewhere? Those with 20/20 hindsight consider it substantial.

There are some good ideas, in embryo, out there, see Subprime Solutions by Robert Shiller and Will Hutton’s development of this based on the Crosby Report.

We need to positively build a system of housing provision and housing finance that underpins and supports the general economy.

I can remember being inspired by the construction of an espigon at the mouth of the river in San Sebastian. Its purpose was to protect the beach from being washed away. The initial stages consisted of very large vehicles bringing rocks the size of a small house to the beach where a gigantic crane would lift them and swing them out to sea and just drop them. The corps of observadores, myself included, would let out a huge cheer at this, great fun to watch. The idea, of course, was to build a substantial, immovable, barrier to the floods of the river and the overwhelming power of the Atlantic in the Bay of Biscay.

We need to do the same with our financial systems and we could start with the systems of housing finance.

So, answers on a postcard please to G. Broon Esq. PM

Let’s have some New Year solutions.
Leave the resolutions to the Amalgamated Society of Witterers, Fritterers and Merchant Bankers!

The egregious idiot

I suppose it was that word egregious.
Andrew Brown has an article about Ratzo Ratzinger on the Cement is Free website. Old Ratzo has been bothering himself about a number of things including trees and homosexuality. Thank god he has not been hugging them or talking to them. The trees, that is, well to the best of my knowledge.

Let me say at the outset that I have nothing against popes. Some of my best friends believe they are god's representatives on earth. Other male acquaintances that I have a great deal of affection for accoutre themselves in ankle length dresses and burqas. However, I have to say that I would not let my son marry one! A man in a burqa can have no style at all!

One of the minor sadnesses in my life, though I admit in some religions and countries it can be vicious and deadly, is that some deluded gobshite, usually in the name of his god, wants to stick his nose into sex and pronounce. There is little enough love, comfort and union between consenting adults in this world. We don't need yet another deluded man, who converses regularly with an invisible being, telling us what we may feel and do.

There. I feel a bit better now. Not egregious in the least.

It's never quite as simple as that!

Nice bit of provocative dressing from Ben Goldacre.

.....much awaited, we have possibly the finest all-purpose political t-shirt slogan ever conceived. Better still, they only reveal their true powers when you are standing next to someone who is also wearing a slogan t-shirt.

I look forward to suitably outrageous pickies of adjacent t-shirts.

I've thought a similar slogan associated with the phrase

I'm a string theorist. I can explain anything

is just biscuit as they say.

Trenchant in foot and mouth!

Tim Harford’s article in the FT Weekend Magazine (December 6 2008) about the battle for the soul of microfinance caught my eye.

It also produced this letter which was drawn to my attention.

The burden of the first part of this was that microfinance results in poverty

....in nearly 25 years of academic and consulting work in local economic development, my experience is that microfinance programmes most often spell the death of the local economy. Put simply, to the extent that local savings are intermediated through microfinance institutions, the more that country or region or locality will be left behind in a state of poverty and under-development. This is an “iron law of microfinance”.

Having some small knowledge of the business I was stirred into the repost:-

The trouble with iron laws, be they of the command economy or the market, is that they tend to crush the people who lack economic or political power.

I'm involved in microfinance because the market in this country and elsewhere refuses to service the sector fully and transparently. If the banks would lend responsibly to our customers I would be more than happy to put my feet up and read more books.

Sadly the law allows subprime lenders to charge outrageous interest. There is evidence, as the FT letter suggests, that the big boys are moving into this area and using the lack of regulation, control and transparency to generate even more profit.

Bangladesh, Mexico etc are poor countries for a complex of reasons and, truly, a dynamic economy is the fastest way to lift a substantial part of the population out of poverty, but it is naive in the extreme to suggest that it can all be simply resolved…

...through channelling much, if not most, of their savings into serious
growth-oriented sustainable business projects.

My (usual) response is that it is never quite as simple as that.

My views were described as trenchant
I made a note to myself to be less trenchant in future!

In the meantime, a happy time to all our readers.
I'm off, through the wonders of steam radio, to listen to some music from some place called Kings.

Midwinter Day

OK
Want to see some nice pickies here they are.
Want to hear some nice sounds, go buy the disk.
You can probably download it for free, whatever!

We are now mainly, apart from a bit of global warming, heading for the summer.
Yippee!

Could even be an xmas xword on the way.

Goodbye to the Shrub.

So farewell then Mr Brush. Keith's mum said that it wasn't very nice of them to throw shoes at you after all you have done for Iraqistan.

I suppose it is inevitable that we are disappointed in our politicians. Personally, I think one of the greatest put downs in Parliament was delivered by Jimmy Maxton to Ramsey Mac on the occasion of his " last meandering, incoherent speech" allegedly:-

"Sit down, man, you're a bloody tragedy."

Now, who is going to say that to Gordie as he maunders his way through the last days. Please god not the Beast of Balls Over.

A final thought. Dubya must be thanking his lucky stars that the Brits never instructed their Iraqistan partners how to play cricket and throw a wicket down at 30 paces!

Eloi Eloi Lama Sabacthani

It has been a long hard day!
The time before xmas and the new year is fraught, but when the fundies start in on the software!

Read this and weep ye daughters of Zion.

In the meantime I hope this gives you hope!

Black and white together, bitchin.

Low flying pig subsidy.

If you go to a nice little site called farmsubsidy.org and put Lufthansa into the sweet little search bar, specifying England as the location you wish to search, you get a web page that tells you, allegedly, how much farm subsidy in the form of payments to LSG LUFTHANSA SERVICE/SKYCHEFS/GCC LIMITED were made in the years 2003-04 and 2004-05.

It is set out as GBP £127 914 (€187 763).

Good gracious, I hear you say, have the Germans learned how to sow, and reap the fields of East Anglia from the sky? Do pigs fly now and are they housed in Heinkels and Messerschmidts that endlessly circle the fens? Does a Lufthansa airbus sneak into Stanstead and let a few herds of Holstein cattle out to graze the runway before extraordinary bovine rendition spirits them to a backstreet abattoir in Dusseldorf? Up to a point Lord Copper.

It is further alleged in my egovbulletin@headstar.com of the 09 December 2008 11:27 (see... for the story) that the airline is in receipt of substantial subsidies on the basis that each time a Lufthansa aircraft carrying in-flight meals travels beyond the borders of the EU, they technically become food exporters.

Doh!

Don't know why I picked on the poor old Germans. For you Fritz the subsidy is available as long as you get your towel on the cash machine first!

Other starvelings able to claim subsidy doubloons have included:-

Prince Albert of Monaco, Ted Turner, Congressman Marion Berry (D-AK), the Danish State Prison Service, Nestlé, the Duke of Westminster and Dutch Agriculture Minister Cees Veerman

See......., and we can rest assured that in this time of great financial hardship money will be spent wisely to pursue industry and economic benefit for us all!

The rich are always with us. Amen!

A bridge over untroubled waters.

From a recent amble.



It's the first one we have been on for a few months.

We are so lucky to have such visions of beauty in our back yards.

There have been birthdays and tea.

The mother in law and herself have birthdays very close together. This results in an irrational exuberance of birthday cakes, chocolate, and the odd bottle of Cava..1,3,5,7,9... etc. Oh, the old jokes are the best.
Herself is very partial to the New Internationalist One World Calendar, not being a quantum mechanic, string theorist or having any interest in the many universes theory! She usually gets one from me for xmas or birthday.
The pictures are always a joy and an affirmation of beauty and humanity. I would not be offering a product placement link if they weren't. However, especially in these straightened times, it seems a great shame that the images have only a month to inspire us. So in the spirit of recycling I added a purpose made frame with easy access to enable the best of the past years pictures to be displayed when I sent in my birthday order. (I heard you at the back, cheapskate indeed! I'll have you know I am a man that fears not to put his hand into his trouser pocket!)
The frame was used for the first time last night. A fine picture of a camel being given a drink from a blue tea pot. A real cracker!

I don't know if camels drink tea? Why not. More people should drink tea, lashings of tea. There would be less trouble in the world if we all sat down a bit more and shared a pot of tea with each other! Mind you, world peace and justice would help of course and the eradication of poverty and most diseases! Still in the meantime, share a pot of tea with some one, possibly even a camel.

A Trailer Park Near You

Many of our readers may not be interested in this link.
Nicholas Carr can be a bit techie but he is thoughtful. I found myself the subject of envy, the blog that can get white trash computing, wife beaters, 30-packs of Busch Lite and a sweet little video from Monstersoft certainly has one with everything.

Anyway, read what you want and get to the video. Now tell me, are you fascinated by this, scared by this or just in awe of the little trucks going about the world 'doin well by doin good'?

Seems to me there are whole bits of the planet that they don't get the little trucks to go to.
Maybe that's a good thing.

Vital statistics.

Well, the lads and lassies at CERN have their work cut out with the puncture repair outfits still.
They may even require a few new patches and the rubber solution has been kicking around for some time. If you have completed the puzzle at 42 and are looking for a bit of intellectual excitement I can recommend a rethink of the way of looking at the properties of particles.

Read it here.

If you can't be arsed here is my take on it.

There a two different classes of particles that you can identify by whether they have integer spin (bosons) or half integer spins (fermions). They also have certain vital statistics which derive from the wonderful wacky world of quantum physics.

The bosons were invented by a Mr Bose who then went on to make some doubloons knocking out overpriced, well dodgy, audio gear on a stall in Ridley Rd. market on a Saturday. The key property of these bosons is that they love to party, they are all over one another. The more of them you can squeeze into a space the happier they are, supercool you might say.

Now, your fermions are a different kettle of herring altogether; very sniffy about their personal space. They were invented by a certain Enrico Fermi, who started out as an opera singer, a tenor, at La Scala, Milan. However, after a good start he had to give up the day job and fell into the physics business. His particles were very particular. They would not use or occupy the same space as any other fermion, they had to have their own. Electrons would go off into orbital at the mere wave from another. Things got so bad Enrico had to call in the Principal Pauli to knock a few heads together, all to no avail. Well, what do you expect from a man with a first name like Wolfgang who is tone deaf. The nearest they could get to a compromise was to establish an exclusion zone to give us all a bit of peace and quiet.

Very interesting; but what has that got to do with the price of fish you say?

Well these fermions give solidity to the world. So the next time you stub your toe as you go out to the bathroom in the middle of the night you can blame those toffee-nosed, very exclusive fermions. Snobs!