Anyone for a spot of spring cleaning?

I read
John Naughton's reporting the on the big clean up in Estonia in May 2008.
Inspiring video in his blog here.
and thought

Wouldn't it be nice to do that here?

and also thought

Wouldn't it be nicer to do a similar job on politics here?

Anyone interested?

Then, I don't know why, I began looking in the mainstream interweb news services for a reference to the Estonian Spring Clean. Hmm... Uneasiness, paranoia, easily seduced by pretty videos with high social value (HSV!) Did it happen? Did it happen in the way that was suggested?

This morning I was bimbling around t'interweb when I discovered this link from the Chronicle of Higher Education about the difficulties and perils of (historical) research in the Enlightened Economist's blog. I learned at an early age, pre-interweb even, possibly 40 years ago to go back to original sources.

Must check with our man in Estonia. Possibly make a personal visit, staying in one of Buddhist Pizza's extensive network of overseas, tax efficient, properties. I'm sure the entirely independent trustees at the fees office of Buddhist Pizza Charitable Holdings (No 666999) would advance me a few doubloons for an all expenses paid research trip.

Excuse me, I'll be off now!

How to shoot friends and torture people!

The title it's not mine but it is funny and a first class description of the forthcomming memoirs of the 46th VP of the US of A.
I feel the panic thickening the e-waves and clotting the arteries of the interweb.
Didn't we withdraw the oxygen of democracy and stuff him in the black hole where all failed former politicians go?
Didn't we pour the fast setting concrete of the 24 hour news cycle on his head and forget all about him?

Oh no! What's that creature rising from the swamp, bloody but unbowed?

Ok just lighten up. I prefer to think of him as a bad tempered, smelly, old dog with an anal adenoma and cataracts. Slowly dying but determined to bite anything in his later years that he did not bite in his youth. Yes, he bit you and your dad before you and he still tries to get the postperson.
Wouldn't it be more humane to slip him the needle?
Possibly, but one can indulge in the profession of the right to life of even the lowest of His creatures while watching the beast die, painfully!

Mr Chairperson.

Eric Pickles the 'unashamedly common' Yorkshireperson has a bit of a puff (sorry about that) in th'Observer.
Having run across him before, sadly not in a green hummer, I am not convinced he would be a particular benefit to Dave's new model army. That's their problem.

I see him as a minor figure in a flawed but unmissable Britcom, played by Richard Griffiths, who has generously allowed his curly locks to be shaved and a false pointy pate stuck on his bonce. Richard would be able to supply the character with the right level of, shifty, edginess leaving all sorts of questions unanswered.

What happened to the boodle?
Why are there so many, dead, bodies?
How did they die?
How can such an evil character have such an enigmatic smile?

Those were the days of British Film!
Eric you missed your vocation!

The bottom line

An idea for the development of the feeble gag on which this blog is based provided by one of the poor souls who occasionally reads it.

His Holiness the Dali Lama (HHDL) goes into a pizzeria and asks for a Buddhist Pizza.
The pizza guy wants to know of HH if that is vegan or vegie.
HH responds that it is one with everything.......
The Buddhist Pizza is produced, HH profers a £50 note and this goes straight into the till.....

KERCHING!

HH enquires about change.
The pizza guy states, unequivocally, that

Change comes from within!

I'll stop now.
Lagyalo.

Drugs, Sex and Zimmer Frames

So, this is not influenced by my current obsession with the Wire. Yo!

Down at the local dealers (Pharmacy) I was filling my scrip for a variety of chemicals that keep me bobbin' along.
There was a power out. So, it had the Mad Max feel.
The babe in front of me was dealin' for old dudes, allegedly. She kept lookin' round.
OK. So I should fess up not me. The old queen with the zimmer frame was sitin' and moanin' and showin' all the signs of disturbance! The babe collects the scrips and takes the ladee and the zimmer into the parkin lot. I hear the elder take root and raise up to say:-

I don't want to live in a home.

Part of me dies!
The babe says:-

I don't think pharmacists have the power to do that!

Amen sister! I say:-

It's only a matter of time!

We go our ways and I hear that horn.
Down in the hole!

We are all bankers now!

Essex County Council has discovered the, potential, delights of municipalism if not municipal socialism. The Grauniad has a related story about those caring, sharing tories.

All well and good. Wouldn't be above noodling a few bob ourselves from willing partners. You should see what we do in the way of creating jobs and influencing people.

Herself was greatly impressed by the tarjeta de Gijon. I must say I thought it was pretty nifty too. I suppose if you have a relatively small city (population 227,000 in 2006) with at least 13 socialist councillors out of 27 you can get things done. See link in Spanish and video (download the mpg from the link) which gives you a flavour of joined up municipalism.

The Alcaldesa, Mayor, of Gijon is Paz Fernández Felgueroso and has a blond mop of hair.
However, unlike our own dear Boris, she seems to do a bit more than sack coppers!

Hasta Luego!

No Expense Spared

You thought we were going to get down and dirty with the folks in the gutter, didn't you?
Revelations of mucky videos, dancing girls, free cocoa, the bouncing bonus and renovations to Buddhist Pizza Towers, all paid for by the cash donated to Buddhist Pizza Inc for the relief of poverty and the doing of good works.

Well, you are wrong. I cannot be deflected by the sordid claims and counter claims of those whose words remain below.

I prefer to raise mine eyes to the heavens.

(Photo NASA, ESA)

Full scale photo and details at the Hubble Picture Gallery Link.
You really could get lost in that stuff.
My favourite is in this link.

Oh, and St Vincent de Cable, didn't he do well?

Chatham House Rule(s) OK!

Thoughtful review by John Naughton of a conference on the 'economic crisis' held at Jesus College Cambridge. Scary stuff for us little fury animals grubbing around the under productive fields of microfinance.

I don't like the sound of political unrest in Europe. When was the last time? Oh yes I remember now; swivel eyed blokes marching up and down in strange uniforms and a lot more besides. Let's hope the much despised Europarliament is a restraining and moderating influence. Hmm...

How do you engineer an adequate system of financial regulation for the future. Naughton reports that:-

There was a lot of expert talk about regulatory regimes. But the thing that strikes me — speaking as an engineer — is that capitalism is an inherently unstable system. Over the last few decades — since the war — we have found ways of keeping it under some kind of control. But it continues to escape as its natural oscillatory mode breaks through. And as it get more complex, inter-related and information-rich it becomes harder and harder to control it. I kept thinking about Ross Ashby and the theory of requisite variety, which essentially says that if you want to be able to control something, then your regulatory apparatus has to be able to match the variety of the system. Our regulatory systems seem very inadequate and feeble and post-hoc.

There seems little possibility of our current generation of regulators keeping up with the out of work rocket scientists and theoretical physicists that have produced much of the problem. Perhaps, rather than engineering solutions we should constrain systems with basic rules and allow them to develop organically. We would need to apply the rules ruthlessly and relentlessly root out any coupling which had the capacity to destablise the system. I can hear myself saying it.

"It is not quite as simple as that."

One thing that has occurred to me over my working life as a 'money lender and property speculator in the nicest possible sense' is that real variety and competition are very important. I hope that one of the 'improvements' brought about by the current financial market failure is that we recognise and strenghten the alternatives, mutual, local and co-operative. Fat chance!

Let a thousand banks boom!

We are the village green preservation society...

Interesting series of pickies from one of my favourite bloggers.
I may not always agree with her but she does have a lovely take on her life.

Shop local; what a good idea and even better if some of those shops are owned by the community especially if they are in the hands of a mutual society.

Manitas de plato.

What's in your radio communications spectrum?

A New Scientist Blog references Google's campaign to force the US government to release full details of the US radio communications spectrum. There is a pdf format of the spectrum here.
Very interesting to see how that goes politically and in terms of the effect on technology.

The thing about us British is that we may not understand science but we do like the pretty diagrams, especially if they have lots of lettering on them. Do you remember all those centrefolds from the Eagle comic. Didn't we drool for hours over the cut away versions of battle cruisers and nuclear submarines?

I'm being sad now, aren't I?
I'll stop!

Whimsey and money laundering

In case HMRC and the serious crime wallahs read my last blog can I just say that I take money laundering, tax evasion and like very very seriously! It is not only a crime it is the machinery which powers illegal drugs and arms distribution, loan sharking, people trafficking, and prostitution. The sorts of things that do not make for a healthy and convivial society.

In the last century, when we were involved in starting and developing credit unions, we were addressed by a person from the Registrar of Friendly Societies on the subject of money laundering. Oh how we laughed! Then I pulled out an envelope, I had given up smoking by then, and on the back of it did a few, quick, calculations. Even in those days it would have been pretty easy to launder a million a year through the rudimentary credit union network and with the restrictive limits in place at the time.

Being a woolly minded liberal I am all in favour of HMRC going round, kicking down each door in turn and confiscating any boodle whether under the bed or not. The alleged owners would have to provide the usual audited accounts and receipts and a note countersigned by Nelson Mandela, the Dali Lama, and Desmond Tutu to certify that they were of good character, kind to children and small animals, active participators in civil society and gave freely to a variety of campaigning good causes (apply buddhistpizzagoodcauses.org/BancoBuddistPizza/Palermo) before assets could be returned.

However, a tale told against myself, I have been caught with my hands in the washing machine, as it were.

A holiday on Paxos started with our taking our first dander down to the Harbour Bar. Being near the harbour, herself was drawn to the edge to peer over. In an instant she was not there. This was not an assumptive intervention of a benign deity more a result of the edge of the harbour being wet and slippy. Panic, fear and other feelings passed through me as I moved to the edge where herself was just breaking surface. With the help of bystanders she was pulled bodily and safely from an early bath and I was much relieved. The only injury was to her pride. Everyone was kind and concerned and the Harbour Bar provided hot coffee and brandy for free. I was able to make the case that as a concerned spouse and weakling I needed to participate in this measure of revivification.

Thereafter, herself was a village icon. Those who spoke English enquired, daily, if she had been swimming and those who did not smiled sweetly and made swimming motions with their arms.
The link to money laudering came when wet clothes and the contents of pockets were processed after the adventure. I ended up washing Greek currency in the sink and hanging it out to dry on the washing line on the balcony of the apartment. Jesus, I thought, thank god the FSA can't see me now!

Banks! Don't you just love 'em?

John Naughton has a post about being challenged over a cash transaction at a bank. He was asked to produce identity information. A full and frank exchange ensued, allegedly! He goes on to draw conclusions about the treatment of customers (victims?) propounded by one Charles Leadbelly in a linked article for the corner house. All of which is fine and dandy. I, too, hate being treated as dayglow dogpoo by some bureaucratic gobshite; someone more interested in discussing last nights telly/football/holiday plans or the latest prospect/ with his or her fellow employee than offering me the service for which I am undoubtedly paying for through the nose in one way or another. (Glad to get that off the old chest, ahem)

It gets worse, of course, Faisel Rahman sumarises his experience and that of others

In 2003, under pressure from the government, banks created and promised to promote "no frills" basic bank accounts, which wouldn't need a credit check. These offer no interest, are badly promoted, and rarely allow people to step up to better financial products. Consequently, there has been low take-up. Much of this is bad product design and lack of bank enthusiasm for poor clients. For example, at the local high street bank near me, if you have a "basic" account you have to use the telephone service and not the teller; at others, staff don't even know to offer the account.

So lets have a crack at the banks, they are crap at banking, they do not treat all customers fairly,
I have not noticed too many Mr Big's being put away for doing naughty things and their doubloons being confiscated for the benefit of the nation as a result of bank activity, rather the reverse! What can you expect of a financial institution which supported apartheid.