Capitalists@Work

Normal Service nearly resumed

2013-05-21T10:39:00.000+01:00

Thanks for everyone's patience, after several hours with the hammer hitting the internet morale seems to have improved amongst the digital slaves within the machine and the blog has a whole new look.

Albeit rather simplified and blogger has kindly deleted all the rather expensive links and style that we paid for 4 years ago, but I am told to consider myself lucky that it lasted that long.

Anyhow, normal posting will resume shortly!

Repairs

2013-05-20T10:04:00.000+01:00

Apologies to all readers, the header title seems to have vanished along with the site at which it was hosted.

Just trying to fix this now, normal service will be resumed shortly.

Ocado/Morrisons

2013-05-17T11:02:00.000+01:00

And it's not even April Fool's day. Yes, Ocado, a company I love and use because I know they can't make any money out of me and yet provide a good service, are going to sell spare capacity to Morrisons, a shopping experience that you just won't run back to who think people need their amazing product at des res in the Home Counties. Hmm...

In the middle, Waitrose. A store whose brand is such that house prices rise when one opens in the neighbourhood. How Waitrose react will be critical. Ocado seem to have come up with a good plan whereby they have in effect sold their distribution centre that they had no ability to use.

This probably screws Waitrose who have a no compete clause, but by selling the business Ocado will think they have managed around this. The devil will be in whether Waitrose can find a way to get at Ocadao through their delivery management agreement with Morrisons.

Clearly the market thinks Ocado have pulled it off as the share price is up 30% this morning. Indeed, it is a company saver as they had invested in a white elephant that they have managed to sell. However, long term their relationship with Waitrose will end and they still never make any money and lose on every delivery. it's a real dotcom business model, sometimes like Amazon they work in the end of course...

Question Time - EU Again! edition

2013-05-16T14:08:00.000+01:00

David Dimbleby presents Question Time from Ipswich.{recent gains to 11 seats up from just 1 for UKIP}

On the panel: defence secretary, Philip "reservists" Hammond MP;

shadow immigration minister, Chris "underpants" Bryant MP;

former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles " I may have had a wee problem but don't you wish I was leader now?"Kennedy MP;

Financial Times journalist Gillian "global crisis" Tett;

and the chair of Arts Council England, Peter "Baguette" Bazalgette.

This tournament is sponsored by

Timbo 614

Week 16

DtP 115 -

Measured 102

BQ(MP) 98

Timbo614 98

ND 94

Hopper 91

Budgie 83
Malcolm Tucker 82
GSD 82

Botogol 65

kynon 66

Blue Eyes 64

Idle 48
Taff -45

CU 41

Sackerson - 11
Andrew -13

James Higham - 7
anon - 3
Phil5 - 2

BQ thinks

1} Is Cameron the new Major?

2} Were the Pakistani trafficers targeting white girls, or are there just less Asian girls in care homes?

3} NHS 111 & A&E crisis - Should GP's be made to open back up on weekends?

4} Afghan withdrawal . Longer tours and "Why are we there?"

5}Oil companies fixing the price at the pump.

DImbletie - A bit orangey.

Woe is us!

2013-05-15T09:30:00.001+01:00

Having had one of those days yesterday (triple whammy of duff events) there is nothing else to cheer oneself up than looking around to see everyone else is suffering too. This I fear places me firmly in the realm of a socialist, so this will be a one off post and normal service will be resumed shortly.

The fact that everyone else is suffering is being well reported by the OECD with Britain making marked falls in the overall well being tables. The excuses given out are what we all know, unemployment, higher taxes leading to lower disposable income.

Overall the effect is to say that we are as poor as we were in 2005. Now this bit I can agree with, I definitely remember a time of going on holidays and being able to buy new cars, TV's etc, this does now though seem like a dim and distant memory - but 2005...golly!

Fracktious

2013-05-14T10:31:00.001+01:00

In comments the other day, the subject of Gasland flickered briefly and BQ suggested it deserved a post.

It's hardly new: but perhaps it is getting a second wind as drilling for shale gas is set to re-commence around Britain. We heralded the potential significance of shale to the economy when the first UK discovery was announced (and discussed it many times since), and it is fast becoming a political dividing-line. From a basic C@W standpoint there is the obvious 'what's not to like?' angle, countered by the inevitable CiF chorus of 'gas = hydrocarbon = wicked'.

In fact it has even more dramatic potential than that. The whole UK / EU decarbonisation policy hinges on the prices of hydrocarbon fuels rising indefinitely: it is, as someone said recently, a gigantic speculative long position. But hey, prices go down as well as up, and (as we they used to say at Enron) - if in doubt, go short. A lot of greenies know this and are likely to get very agitated - and if drilling does indeed re-commence on a serious scale, there will be no end of sites at which NoDashForGas can make a serious nuisance of themselves.

Anyhow: you may be seeing Gasland again on a screen near you, and here's what I said in the comments.

Gasland is a rather well-made piece of pure polemic, quite easy on the eye and very beguiling for people who are in the market for an anti-energy diatribe. It is very cavalier (and sometimes outright dishonest) in its use of facts, and full of crafty non-sequiturs which any logician would spot, even if they knew nothing of the detail.

Also, it has bugger-all to do with fracking (which is one of its main non-seqs) - it starts on fracking right enough, but about one-third of the way in then seamlessly segues into just an attack on the practices of the US natural gas industry in general. Somehow, people come away thinking they've seen a devastating case against fracking, but they haven't.

For completeness, let it be said that in some states of the USA there are virtually no environmental regulations at all (or if any, they are not enforced) and so there is a solid body of entirely legitimate attack that can be made on some genuine ongoing life-threatening health-hazards that would not be tolerated anywhere else this side of China. (If anyone disputes this I invite them to move with their families and live in the environs of the refinery belt at the Houston Ship Channel. No? Thought not)

Gasland's valid hits are scored on this ground - but again, this has very little to do with fracking.

It's a funny old QE world

2013-05-13T12:21:00.001+01:00

Look at the FTSE > Flying this year.

And yet the UK economy is flatlining, still, after 4 years. Maybe some signs of growth but from the 2008 nadir you would perhaps expect the FTSE still to be around 5500 or so given the weak growth. Maybe topping 6000 due to high inflation and divis.

But in the recent past it has been trotted out that the FTSE is a very global index. That the index is more closely linked moreover to the commodities market. Well the commodities market is way off its multi-year highs and the commodity companies in the FTSE are having a very tough year.

Instead the index is up mainly led by defensive stocks; this I find very topsy-turvy. Surely the riskier stocks which have been smashed up would rise the most as risk appetite returned. But no, AIM shares remain in the doldrums, if not worse and are to be found at basement prices.

So there is no return to risk, just a buying of defensives by those who have QE money to spend but have no desire to take any risks at all.

So is the QE'd world of 2013 - a very strange place indeed don't you think?

how to find your correct name for your social class

2013-05-10T11:37:00.004+01:00

With the recent local elections thrusting many new people into local government, it might be time to consider finding the appropriate name to give yourself if you are tempted to climb the slippery pole.
To be a successful backbench MP requires a recognisable name.
Yasmin Qureshi, MP{lab} is not being invited onto Question Time anytime soon.

The best way to find the most appropriate name for your party is, as so often in Britain, to go back to your school roots.

Take the name of your prep school or your House and public school House/school name -uni/college name, and there you are. {For those without the benefit of private education that's the school name and the assigned year group name. Otherwise you will all be truly socialised by having Year 4 as a first name.}
Tory backbench MP, Bill Quango. {William Quango until the late 90's, then it was all in hands in pockets and open neck shirts..Look at those boys above - you can almost hear the Housemaster - "Take your hands of your pockets! And see the barber! You like a footballer from Paraguay!- 10 demerits Johnson!"}

Bill Quango MP, could have been Bristow Sandringham.
And a check with the interns and the office staff, and their political allegiance, reveals

Ms Victoria Buckholm - {Con}
Mrs Melba Hollows - {Lib Dem}
Ms Amelia Alachua -{Green}
Ms Tudor Hurstwood - {Lib Dem}

Mr Newlands Stanchester - {Con}

Ms Ashbury Baguley-Hall {UKIP}

And just to prove it works for all classes

Mrs Agnes Pike {Lab}
Mr Rodney Compton {Lab}
Mr Primary School Academy {Ind} [who may have misunderstood the process]

No wonder the left are so anti posh, non bog-standard, education. Under the Quango system down to earth former schools minister Ed Balls would be Harvard Bawburgh-Keeble.
And John Major - Rutlish Common.

Your own new MP/allegiance or Social Class names into the comments please.

Question Time - Bored after 50 years of reading out aspiration lists, Queen demands shorter speech edition.

2013-05-09T15:16:00.000+01:00

David Dimbleby presents Question Time from Coventry.
On the panel: Business minister, Jo 'gender blender' Swinson MP.
Former Shadow Home Secretary, David ' standing against myself' Davis MP.
Shadow Education Minister, Tristram 'parachute' Hunt MP
Germaine 'I was the future once' Greer, feminist writer and academic,
and Jerry 'SDP' Hayes, criminal barrister and former Conservative MP.

Dimbletie - Mauve and white splodge.

Questions guess.
1. Have the coalition run out of ideas, time, money or all three.
2. Childcare. Should we put our children's lives at risk like they do in those third world countries of Germany,France,Holland,Switzerland and Norway?
3. UKIP. The rise of the purple. Lawson says get out of EU. Portillo says get out of EU. The polls say get out of EU..{cheeky dimby turns to DD and says 'What's your view on the EU? Same as Cameron?'
4. SIRALEX. End of an era. Can anyone follow the most successful British soccer manager of all time?
5. Age of consent should be 13 to protect TV entertainers from the 1970's and 80's.

This tournament is still sponsored by

Timbo 614

Week 15

DtP 108 -wow!

BQ(MP) 94

Measured 92

Timbo614 91

ND 90

Hopper 87
GSD 81

Budgie 77
Malcolm Tucker 73

Botogol 65

kynon 64

Blue Eyes 64

Idle 48
Taff -45

CU 41

Sackerson - 11
Andrew - 9

James Higham - 7
Phil5 - 2

Solar fun for the EU

2013-05-09T10:55:00.000+01:00

I can't help but love the story about China dumping solar panels. It is so full of contradictions that it is hard to know where to start.

- Firstly, China has hugely over-produced the solar panels and has little internal demand. the panels are produced by State Owned Enterprises and this is a good example, as mentioned by Ryan in the comments of Monday's China post, of the mis-allocation of resources in China that will lead them to a bust.

- Secondly, many European industry companies welcome the dumping! Why you ask? Well they have had their precious subsidies turned off in Germany and elsewhere so now their business model is broken. One element saving that was that the cheapness of Chinese supply means that even without subsidies the reduced cost of panels just might enable them to have a profitable business model.

- Thirdly, European producers of panels clearly hate the dumping as they cannot compete with Chinese suppliers. However, they can't compete without subsidies anyway. Much like the windfarm industry there was due to be big consolidation in any event. So creating a protectionist environment may help to save the industry, but to what end - I have heard this story before and know how it ends..

How the EU can justify starting a trade war over this is hilarious when the underlying industry is in such a mess due to the distortions in such a regulated and subsidised market. One for the Greenies and Lefties to shout about for a while...

Utilities, Energy and the New Dirigisme

2013-05-08T12:15:00.000+01:00

One upon a time, oil was the only energy-source that enjoyed anything approximating a free market. Gas and electricity meant monopolies or, if investor-owned, a regulated rate of return, steady but low.

Then came liberalisation, and gas and power took off as traded commodities in competitive market structures. The sector divided into merchant (unregulated) activities and 'true utility' (wires and pipes, where so-called natural monopolies prevailed). The trade-off for residual monopoly remained a more-or-less regulated, low-ish rate of return. Some companies had characteristics of both merchant and utility in their portfolio; others had cleaner business models and were one or the other, with the utilities being conventionally viewed as annuity streams or 'defensive' stocks.

Endless debate ensues as to whether this can all work out as well as the open-market theorists claim: FWIIW, I am squarely in that camp, and the development of a global gas industry is its best evidence. However, just as things were working out nicely in electricity too, along came the baleful decarbonisation agenda, and with it an avalanche of regulatory meddling. The EU's Emissions Trading Scheme was an attempt to execute some of the new policy goals via market mechanisms, but as a result of various entirely avoidable errors it hasn't really worked. So meddling it is.

There is a school of thought that goes: bring back the CEGB ! Advocates of this include those with no memory, who have forgotten just how bloated and wasteful it was; and also those with long and fond memories, who recall exactly how bloated and wasteful it was, and they loved every minute of it.

However, governments no longer have the money for this malarkey and anyway, outright renationalisation is (currently) not allowed in the EU. So we get dirigisme on an ever more detailed basis, as governments seek to determine exactly what new power plants (and other infrastructure) get built, and where, and by whom.

Which finally brings us round to the challenges for the likely builders of said new kit, and for those who might be considering investing in them.

The energy companies have, over a relatively few years, learned to play the game quite differently to the way they conducted themselves from the 1990s onwards. Instead of taking a professional view on, for example, forward energy prices and spreads, and making their investment decisions accordingly, they have decided it's easier to demand subsidies, 'capacity payments' and various other featherbedding guarantees before they will invest in, well, pretty much anything these days.

Like governments, many of these companies are short of dosh, and so they demand high rates of guaranteed return. Like monopolies, governments know exactly who is going to pay for all this in the end: it's us electricity-junkies that have nowhere else to go (until we surrender to death by hypothermia). So they make the necessary arrangements, via a plethora of subsidies and schemes, for guaranteed high rates of return.

Guaranteed high rates of return - what's not to like ? Shouldn't investors be flocking to join the game ? There are several schools of thought, all wrestling with the following polar considerations:

People will always need electricity, the energy companies have governments over a barrel, and this isn't going to change any time soon; so back up the truck and enjoy it
This new 'system' is clearly dysfunctional, with regulatory risk abounding, not least because government is taking powers to make the 'utilities' their agents, not only of investment but also every facet of social policy which has an energy angle

It's even possible to synthesize these points and argue, (as does Liberum Capital) that in the medium term these guaranteed returns look so good for the energy companies ("at a perfectly feasible power price, SSE would be seeing 33% annual increases in EPS towards the end of this decade"), they are bound to get slammed mercilessly when the whole game comes unstuck.

I always reckon that those who live by the subsidy, die by the subsidy. But maybe there is good money to be made in the meantime ... what do we all think ?

ND

China - Politics and Slowdown

2013-05-07T09:42:00.000+01:00

Much is being made of the refusal of China to accept David Cameron on a trip to China due to his meeting with the Dalai Lama. Also there is talk of CIC not being allowed to invest in UK Infrastructure projects.

Diddums, sometimes you have to stand up for yourself and China does not cover itself in Glory with its aggressive occupancy of Tibet. China has after all as much right to Tibet as Saddam Hussein did to Kuwait.

As for the Infrastructure projects, with so much quantitatively eased money slushing around the system at the moment I can't for a minute believe that other funds won't step in where China fears to tread, unless the underpinning economics are too bad; in which case CIC was not the answer anyway.

More interestingly for the global markets are the graphs above. China's industrial growth has deteriorated since the huge stimulus pushed into the economy post the financial crash. This stimulus was 100% of GDP. Retails sales are falling and imports growing, good for the West but less good signs for China as a whole as the trade balance which provides its economic strength begins to falter.

There are big changes ahead to the global economy as china begins to start its descent from insane growth levels back down to more believable levels. Demographics also are pushing China into a more moderate phase as the workforce begins to shrink. China's growth and power has a still a long way to rise, but the curve is catching up with it. Sooner or later there will be a huge asset bust in China which will prove a big hiccough - but the impact that will have on its politics will be interesting to see.

Shame on Blair; Eyes on Heirs-to-Blair

2013-05-04T08:48:00.000+01:00

History Corner about to repeat itself ? This, from the days when I was just a stand-in guest-writer on C@W (May '07):

I must crave the indulgence of Slicker and his finance-oriented readership, for straying so far from the business theme whilst temporarily at the wheel of this vehicle. However, I was mightily stung by a report on Channel 4 News tonight.

To summarise: the British Army, having employed the services of many Iraqi translators (and, let's face it, 'little helpers' of several kinds) since the invasion, is now preparing to let them twist in the wind. And they'll be the lucky ones. The threats and reprisals have started already.

Now this is by no means unprecedented: previous withdrawals in unseemly haste from Palestine, Aden and Cyprus resulted in horrible fates for those locals who had helped us there. But the British Army had learned its lesson and when, in the days of the much maligned John Major we prepared to withdraw from Hong Kong, we carefully looked out for the interests of our sometime helpers to ensure that the worst didn't befall them at the hands of the incoming regime.

So - the British Army knows better than this. We can only assume its current shameful stance is dictated by the Shameless ones who begat the sorry mess. Let them hang their heads

The arguments haven't changed. Which way will the Coalition jump ? We shall see.

ND

UKIP Friday

2013-05-03T10:42:00.002+01:00

May as well join in the fun, given UKIP are going to be the story of the day.

Rather than drone on about what are fantastically boring local elections, except to comment that the Labour By-election winner in South Shields appears to have had a lobotomy which I fear is an increasing trend in the criteria for selecting prospective MP's, let's look at one of UKIP's ideas on tax...they have not got a settled policy as yet but this is what informs them:

1. Low rates of tax will generally raise more money than higher rates
2. The earnings of employed people are not a legitimate target for taxation
3. Every attempt to tax wages sets in motion a “shifting” process whereby the tax finishes up as a corporate impost anyway
4. You cannot “tax” the earnings of those who are paid out of taxes
5. Regeneration starts at the “margin”
6. Tax on corporate added value (by which they mean added value equates to turnover minus those costs which form part of their suppliers’ turnover).

UKIP are attacked for being all about common sense but having unviable policies and knowingly told they will struggle to implement anything.

However a tax system based on the above principles would be far and away better than what we have now. Just the simple idea of not putting employment taxes on state workers should save the Country a fortune in revenue collection costs.

UKIP has the added bonus of looking at things from a zero base, all the other parties have to look at the disaster that they have enacted and defend them, this prevents real radical reform by either Labour or Conservatives. Perhaps UKIP will produce eventually the thought leadership needed, even if they never achieve power.

Question Time: Wipeout edition.

2013-05-02T15:35:00.000+01:00

David Dimbleby chairs Question Time from Dartford {wurkin' clahrs - anti -immies area} on the night of the local elections.

On the panel are;

The deputy leader of the Labour Party, Harriet 'Horrible' Harperson MP;

Lib Dem peer, Shirley "for God's sake retire!"Williams;

historian David " Henry VIII didn't do welfare.."Starkey;

and broadcaster and columnist,

Victoria 'poker' Coren

A better panel than last week, so hopefully not another borehole. On twitter people kept saying "The Greens actually voted in this person to be leader. Imagine how dreadful the other candidates must have been."..I can never remember whether the whole show becomes a local votefest or they spread the stories around. Will go for mostly locals.

BQ says -
1. Is the strength of feeling for UKIP a game changer?
2. Is Ed Moribund ready to be Prime Minister ?
3. Should we all stop buying clothes from Primark?
4. South African aid gets the chop. Good idea or abandoning the most unfortunate?

4 q limit I think.

This tournament is still sponsored by

Timbo 614

Week 14

DtP 100 -wow!

BQ(MP) 88

ND 87

Timbo614 85
Measured 85
Hopper 81

GSD 74
Budgie 71

Malcolm Tucker 69

Botogol 65

kynon 64

Blue Eyes 60

Idle 48
Taff -40

CU 38

Sackerson - 11
Andrew - 9

James Higham - 7
Phil5 - 2

Don't Mention The War ... Slovenia & Germany

2013-05-02T07:25:00.000+01:00

It would be a bit tactless for a visitor to mention the War, but the locals in Slovenia still fixate on which side their families lined up with - red or white. Here's a red memorial, commemorating the liberation of Capodistria - the town of Koper, Slovenia's only port - from the 'Nazifascista locale', as late as April '45.

Koper is just around the coast from Trieste, and the people of the area are bilingual: you probably won't need a translation engine for this.

Fast-forward to 2013, and Koper once again has a German connection, and an equivocal one at that. The Slovenian economy is on the brink and German banks have been to the fore in lending to keep them afloat.

Only now they want collateral, and guess what ? They've taken the port at Koper as security.

Port of Koper

What goes around, comes around. Good luck to them at bail-out time.

ND

Aid, dependency and illusory goodwill

2013-05-01T10:00:00.000+01:00

The above map shows the GDP distribution in Africa in 2012. The darker the colour, the richer the country relatively. Africa is still the poorest continent by some distance so even the darker shaded countries are not exactly doing well on a global scale.

The UK's decision to end aid to South Africa looks sensible on this view. South Africa is clearly a wealthy country by African Standards and despite many claims to the contrary, the economy has not collapsed since the end of apartheid and instead has shown modest growth; the major downside is unemployment at 23% which is both high and hard to bring down. South Africa is hardly alone in the world though at struggling to provide jobs when the population growth is 1% a year.

South Africa has reacted saying that it wants aid, this is a bad sign of a kleptocracy however that sees all foreign money as adding to the purse into which hands can be dipped. Compare and contrast the South African response today:

This is such a major decision with far reaching implications on the projects that are currently running and it is tantamount to redefining our relationship.

Ordinarily, the UK government should have informed the government of South Africa through official diplomatic channels of their intentions and allowed for proper consultations to take place, and the modalities of the announcement agreed on.

with responses printed in the Guardian to the withdrawal of aid from India:

Indian experts from across the political spectrum welcomed the aid move. Surjit S Bhalla, a Delhi-based consultant and former World Bank economist, said the British decision was "enlightened". "I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference. The whole concept of aid is very old and not necessarily relevant for modern times. These programmes were constructed when India and emerging nations were very poor," he said.
Instead, Bhalla said, investment should be largely focused on technical assistance in key areas such as sanitation or solar power in villages currently without electricity. The Indian government already ran a range of vast and often very wasteful welfare programmes. Compared with government expenditure on subsidised gas, for example, the British contribution of £280m annually was minimal, Bhalla said.
Dunu Roy, of the respected Hazards Centre, which supplies research to Indian NGOs, said his reaction to the news was "good riddance". "All aid was tied up with conditionalities so hopefully now Indians will have a better chance of doing what they want," he told the Guardian.
Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru university, New Delhi, said she did not think too many people would notice the end of British aid. "It is not that there are no minor successes, but in general the nature of the spending has not been such that it will really be missed. It had a tendency to follow the latest development fashion. So it was privatisation, then microcredit and now conditional cash transfers. It made little positive difference."

Grown up countries do not even want aid. This is before even mentioning a great article on the BBC this morning which discusses the rise of orphanages in Cambodia to meet the demands of 'volunteer' tourists.

It is such a difficult moral subject Aid, that I do wonder why it is such a lodestar of the current government. There is much to be said for a more realpolitik approach to aid, at least we can see some of that now with the big recipients being Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Lloyds turning the banking tanker

2013-04-30T09:23:00.001+01:00

As many regular readers will know I have a fairly bi-polar view of the economy. On the one hand doomsayers predicting the end is nigh are ALWAYS wrong in the same way that those who keep buying gold even right past the high point are going to get burned. However, the idea that some kind of strong recovery from the Financial Crisis is not any more plausible either.

It takes 10 years to recover from such Financial Crashes and we are only 5/6 years in, so plenty of 0% growth success stories will run.

Having said that it is quite encouraging to see Lloyds Bank return to profit today, even better is the underlying reasons; primarily they are managing to wind down their bad debt book at a good pace which means they can find buyers at above pure firesale prices. Secondly their core commercial and retail business remains strong and finally their costs cutting is reducing costs much faster than any losses can be piled up.

On the downside of the cost cutting is lots and lots of lost jobs, tens of thousands; generally though you could hear a pin drop in sympathy with the loss of lots of Banking jobs. Lloyds was never a big casino bank though and was pretty spread out across the Country to these losses are a shame, if necessary. I note too far less outsourcing by this bank (and RBS) to India and the Far East now that they are state owned.

Given Barclays and now Lloyds are in much better shape it only really leaves RBS holding us up.

Recover in the banking sector is a key step, of course the recovery has come due to the fact they won't lend any more on anything like reasonable terms, but you can't build Rome in a day

Cyprus: Not So Much A Haircut ...

2013-04-29T08:09:00.000+01:00

How much would you like off?

Under a headline 'Bank of Cyprus Executes Depositor Bail-In', the DTel gives us the ghastly numbers.

37.5% of deposits over €100k converted to equity
a further 22.5% held in reserve
yet a further 30% frozen

(The core phrase there seems highly apposite, doesn't it ? '...Cyprus Executes Depositor ...')

Now then, you Scotties, how about independence and joining the Euro ?

I was also interested to read a couple of weeks ago that Germany's 'Council of Wise Men' have declared that deposits are all too easily spirited away (and depositors are all too often German); so that the next rescue should be based on property levies. They've noticed that when property holdings are taken into account, Germans are by no means the wealthiest folk in Europe.

That's all well and good on paper, O Wise Ones, but (a) you'll need to mark those property values to market quite carefully; and (b) who has the liquid assets to pay property levies on the required scale ? And if they do, pray where do they keep them ?

ND

Compo: Names for the potential Scotts currency

2013-04-27T00:11:00.000+01:00

What would the currency of an independent Scotland be called?

What name sums up the spirit of the new nation? Or stereotypes the nation nicely?

The Hadrian ?

The Bravehart?

The Sectarian ?

fire away...

Margaret Hodge shows she is witless fool, again.

2013-04-26T12:07:00.001+01:00

Ban accountants from helping with complex accounting issues, that is the latest idea from Margaret Hodge who is an inept fool, well out of her depth on the Public Accounts Committee.

She has really got to me recently with her pathetic grandstanding on Google paying tax etc. Hodge is a world-class lefty hand-wringer who blames the problems on the users rather than the software to borrow some tech speak. And makes a nice lot of witless grands

The reason accountants have to advise the Government on Tax law is because it runs to 11,000 pages, that's right eleven thousand. It's a bit complicated. You do indeed need a degree from Oxbridge to understand even a bit of it. It's why even the top accountancy firms have to employ thousands of specialists.

The real issue is of course not that these accountants then abuse their position of insight to try and avoid taxes; that is merely a statement of the bleeding obvious.

No, its that by asking tax accountants to review tax law you are only going to get one answer; more tax law. For this is their bureaucratic living and as we know, bureaucracy is very keen on darwinism and seeks to expand at all times. The issue lies not with the Big 4 but with the Government itself.

So the key is not to ban experts from helping the Government, that is just silly. The key is to reduce the amount of taxation law - the person to lead this certainly needs legal and accounting advice, but they need to start from a base of trying to halve the laws.....oddly I thought this is what we employed politicians for. To be the ones who direct the experts in the right direction?

Question Time: Abu edition. Pt 94.

2013-04-25T14:11:00.000+01:00

David Dimbleby chairs Question Time from Worcester in the last programme before the local elections.
On the panel are 4 people you've never heard of and one you are about to hear a lot about. Economic secretary to the treasury, Sajid Javid MP; shadow energy and climate change minister, Luciana "I can't comment about Suarez as i'm a girlie" Berger MP; deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Simon 'slippery' Hughes MP; Nigel Farage MEP, leader of UKIP; and Natalie Bennett, leader of the fairyland CCCP Party.

This tournament is still sponsored by

Timbo 614

Week 13

DtP 94

ND 85

BQ(MP) 82
Timbo614 81

Hopper 79
Measured 78
GSD 70

Malcolm Tucker 69
Budgie 67
Botogol 65

kynon 63

Blue Eyes 58

Idle 44
Taff -38

CU 31

Andrew - 9
Sackerson - 7
James Higham - 7

I will have an early punt on the three obvious ones

0.3% its better than 0% increase, but only just. Plan B?
Should the UK dump the ECHR and put old tubby beard in a rowboat, point him at France and wish him luck crossing the shipping lanes on his way to Strasbourg?
Papers reject Leveson deal. Should they all be nationalised.
Local elections. UKIP & Labour are standing in wards where i've never seen either before. Are Cameron & Clegg about to see a much,much worse than the expected 300-400 seat loss?

Web snooper's bill. Now Lib Dems are against. Good.

Dimbletie - A flower motif on blue.

Postcard from Portorož (2)

2013-04-24T07:49:00.000+01:00

So what’s with Slovenia & Croatia ? Firstly, Croatia got almost all the coastline – and all the islands – after WW2. Slovenians go to Croatia en masse for the beaches, and many of them have holiday homes there. Almost all of them can understand Croatian & vice-versa; and those over 30 learned Serbo-Croat properly at school, meaning reading’n’writing it (in Cyrillic: Slovene is in Latin script). They share the output of a jointly-financed nuclear power plant situated in Slovenia (a Westinghouse jobber, none of your Soviet junk), and of course a reliable nuke represents a reliable cash-flow: always good for lining pockets ... So they airily talk about building another; but (need I say?) it is completely out of the question.

That's Croatia over there - but should it be?

And in July, Croatia too will be an EU member (though joining Slovenia as a eurozone member is a remote prospect indeed). So – brotherly neighbours ? Not a bit of it, for the border is hotly disputed - enter 'dragonja croatia' in the googlemaps search-bar and see the dotted lines. In particular, a significant 500m of estuary held by the Croats would mean a lot to their Northern neighbour which only enjoys 46 km of coastline and just one port, Koper. The 500m would transform their access to the Adriatic and international shipping lanes. (I’ve met a disputed border once before, in my soldiering days, helping Oman repel the Yemenis in the ‘80s. They can get very nasty indeed.)

Source: Wiki

Also, while Slovenia is rather more equally split as between white and red, in WW2 Crotia was - how shall we put this – rather more uniformly white. So the tensions remain. In fact, Croatia technically shouldn’t be able to join the EU party at all (or NATO) until this spat is settled – but they will (and have), bcause the expansionists decree it.

Meanwhile, the issue has gone to binding arbitration, and who knows what happens then ? But it's all a bit parochial compared to relations with Germany, which will be the subject of the next postcard.

Finally - something that can definately be cut!

2013-04-23T21:02:00.000+01:00

Our language was designed a long time ago, in a different era. It is no longer fit for the 21st century.
Over the years a number of immigrant language words have joined our native English. Latin. Greek. French. German. Hindi.Arabic. They've all come over here and taken over the jobs of hardworking English words.

That has left a number of letters virtually redundant. These letters have the same status as other, more hardworking letters. They consume space on a keyboard. yet some of them do little or no work at all.

Q is an example. Q does virtually nothing. In the picture above Q is for Queen. And Q is always for Queen because we struggle to think of even a single other word that starts with Q.
A hardworking letter, like S or T, goes to work and sees Q, still in bed, and likely to stay there all day. And Q can't even function on its own. In needs U to help. That's two letters in use.

Let us abolish Q.

If we need a word like queue, quick or Quaker, we can use C.
Cueue, Cwick and Cwaeker.
And X. X is worse than Q - X-ray and X-men, which aren't a real words anyway, and Xylophone, that just seems to be a word made up to give X something to do. Z is on the abolition list too, but a Z-X merger could save Z.
Zylophone. Z-ray. Z-men. Job done - goodbye X .

K is another letter on thin ice. Hardworking C is a ready made replacement.
Kitchen - Citchen
Greek - Greec
Smack - Smac.
Knowledge - duh! Nolledge.

Special K is the real loser here. And Potassium. They can rebrand. Scrabble users will have to adjust but within 1 generation those missing letters will be forgotten.

Think of the space saved on keyboards that could be put to much better use such as incorporating a ½ or a € or the common @ on its own key.
Thinner dictionary. Less school time learning wasteful letters. Easier for foreigners.
This is a cut worth making.

And apostrophes. Goes without saying they are out. Waste of time possessives.
The Kings arms
The King's arms.
Oh, how will we know what this means without apostrophes?
Well, Lynne Truss, just look at the context.

"We shall meet at the Kings arms."

Does that mean a reunion at an inn or a public house or by the upper limbs of two or more male monarchs? Not hard to figure out.

So, that's enough cuts for starters. But Capital letters, semi colon and inverted commas, plus the letter J are on notice.
J has a worse record in English use than X or Z. But kind of hard to write just jerk the juice jug without it.

An end to cuts?

2013-04-23T11:52:00.002+01:00

There is some very good journalism in The Times today (paywall, so no point with a link!) discussing the new spending round the Government is about to embark up on and how much ministers are trying to fight off the coming cuts.

As always the Treasury gets the blame and the Ministries decide that the only cuts that can be made are to the Alzheimer's clinic and the Hospital.

The thing is, can the UK really hack this austerity thing? I don't think so, the need is for wholesale privatisations - selling the BBC would be top of my list along with a chunk of the specialist health services and bigger infrastructure. That along with stopping the Government from doing big chunks of what it currently tries to do.

However, there are no votes in this approach from a populace used to the Nanny state; so what to do? I can see the default position being minor cuts, more tax rises and a slow Japan style death with the national debt slowly climbing towards Italian and then Japanese levels whilst politicians hand out the treats to harvest votes.