Marcus Brigstocke, comedian and propagandist

According to the comic‘s official website:

[BBC] Radio 4 has become a second home for Marcus.

Here‘s how he treats his audience (his emphasis, not mine), on the subject of climate change:

I could have written a two-hour stand-up show about climate change quite easily by now but there is absolutely no point because the only people who would come and see it already agree with me. So the approach I’ve taken is to drip feed it into everything that I do, whenever I’m on the radio or doing a stand-up show on any subject, to try and keep it in there just a little bit. People are on to me, it’s no sleight of hand — they know what to expect when I appear. In terms of creating comedy one of the easiest routes has been to mock the people who think that it’s not happening, because I find them easily mock-able. They will say a great deal but when questioned they haven’t read anything.

So, mouthy Marcus, drama degree dropout, reckons he‘s read and understood more relevant material than thousands of professional engineers who have had to understand the atmosphere in order to, you know, make things work (like me) and who happen to hold a contrary opinion (like me). Yeah, right! Still, our competing claims to expertise, and those of all others, are completely immaterial on any question of science: which is why the motto of the Royal Society is nullius in verba—roughly translated as “take nobody's word for it”.

The data is all that counts, and here's some, showing the global mean surface temperature (in so far as it can be calculated from a sparse set of thermometers), since 1995—during which time not a whole hell of a lot has happened. They won't tell you that on the British Biased Corporation. It’s more fun to let a smarmy smart-arse make fun of people who have a clue.

British Biased Corporation

Today I want to draw your attention to an article on the BBC website, by its environment correspondent, Richard Black. I could have chosen any of hundreds of similar articles by Black and his colleagues over the last few years: characterised by lazy repetition of press releases from interest groups, in the promotion of solar and wind power; against a backdrop (in this case, implicit) of unquestioning acceptance of the anthropogenic global warming meme.

This time, Black has been fed by the Church of England (wouldn't you know) and the National Trust. They're whinging about the proposed cut in the renewables feed-in tariff (currently struck down on a technicality by the courts) from 43p to 21p per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, operators of coal, gas and nuclear power stations sell their electricity for 2-3 p/kWh (see Figure 1, here), while a domestic user can buy electricity at around 13p/kWh and an industrial user at around 8p/kWh (see Tables 5.4.2 and 5.4.3 here). So, if the government gets its way, if you stick a solar panel on your roof, you'll still be paid 7-10 times the rates of the commercial generators (on whom we actually depend), rather than the 15-20 times currently. A prime example of why the presumption should always be against subsidising anything. Give someone a free gift and they'll bellyache if the next one is a little less generous.

Who pays? Every domestic consumer to the tune of 10% of their bill by 2020 and businesses to the tune of 0.47p/kWh right now. So everything anyone (rich and poor alike) needs to buy costs more and everyone (rich and poor alike) will pay more for their electricity bills; all to the benefit of people who can afford the capital investment required to install solar cells and especially to the manufacturers thereof. This at a time when one in five households are said to live in a state of "fuel poverty" and in 2009/10 there was an excess winter death rate of nine pensioners per hour. And this at a time, of course, when the country is flat broke.

Does Black question who pays—with their money or their life? Does he put the subsidies in any kind of economic context? Does he question why we bother, when the mean global temperature has essentially flatlined for a decade or more? Of course not. His ex-colleague Alex Kirby gave the game away in one of the Climategate 2.0 leaked emails, to Professor Jones of the University of East Anglia (my bold):

Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats

Which makes me think of another subsidy, of £3.4 billion raised by a poll tax, that the British public might be told what to think.

More from the bishop

Regular readers will recall my letter to Christopher Hill, the Bishop of Guildford.

The Rt. Revd. Hill did me the courtesy of a reply, and we exchanged subsequent letters. He requested that I not publish the subsequent correspondence, so, of course, I won't.

In general though, the bishop is not averse to publicising his views. Of course, one would assume that was mandatory for a cleric of a proselytising religion; but my attention was drawn to a piece in the Church Times which is almost wholly political (God and Christ are mentioned once each in a final paragraph that it is not related to the thrust of the article, and appears almost as an afterthought).

It appears that Rt. Revd. Hill chairs something called the House of Bishops' Europe Panel. The article follows David Cameron's refusal to cede parliamentary control of the British budget to European institutions, to allow a European tax on an industry that is predominantly situated in the UK, and to pay tens of billions of extra pounds to bail out eurozone banks and some eurozone countries (remembering, perhaps, that the eurozone taken as a whole is in a slightly better financial position than the sterling zone). The bishop opines "In the long term, it will be disastrous if we were actually isolated from the rest of Europe, economically and in terms of international relations", along with screeds of similar guff that I shan't repeat.

In other words, we should go along with whatever the leaders of France and Germany want, whether or not their own people want it, whether or not our people want it, whether or not we could ever recover our democracy, whether or not we are unfairly targeted for exactions, whether or not any of it will work on its own terms. And, as the argument goes, all to retain some "influence"—which the likes of Rt. Revd. Hill will always find reasons not to deploy.

The bishop makes no effort to suggest that his recommendations are those of which God would approve. His intervention seems wholly political. I am forced to the conclusion that monies placed on the collection plate subsidise prelates to push a political agenda that is not my own. And I'm afraid that thought trumps the blandishments in the bishop's private letters.

Johnny Euro plays catch up

At last: the European Central Bank has learned from the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England!

As I understand events of the last 48 hours, Euroland banks about to go bust have been allowed to borrow hundreds of billions from the European Central Bank at next-to-no interest. Of that, they'll use hundreds of millions for their top directors to buy mansions, ski lodges, private jets, champagne, hookers, etc. The rest they'll lend to Club Med governments, with no particular expectation of getting it back. The risk of non-repayment will be borne by the ECB (also known as: the German taxpayer).

Nice work if you can get it!

The wrong ring fence

The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, announced today that he intends to implement the main recommendations of the Vickers report; in particular, that banks should 'ring fence' retail banking operations from investment banking, which is perceived to be riskier. This is justified in the Vickers report by the claim that:

it would insulate vital banking services on which households and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) depend from problems elsewhere in the (global) financial system.

Of course, that would be laudable. We wouldn't want nefarious casino bankers frittering away the savings of thrifty British workers by placing losing bets on complex derivative functions of various obscure foreign assets; thus unable to provide mortgages to “hard-working families” (I apologise for reminding readers of one of Osborne's illustrious predecessors) or working capital to hard-pressed small businesses. There is only one flaw in this argument: the banks that went belly-up in the UK in 2008—Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, Alliance & Leicester, HBOS, Lloyds, RBS—were exclusively or primarily retail banks; who were brought down by betting that they'd make a return on 125% self-certified mortgages (and the like) to Joe and Jane Public. So this particular ring fence would protect the bonuses of City wide-boys and fat cats from the delusions of overly-optimistic twenty-something house-buyers and whoever runs the computers that lend to them.

The terrifying thing about the 2008 crisis was the imminent threat that banks would conserve cash by halting payments to other banks representing normal commercial transactions, such as salary and trade payments; at which point everyone would be unemployed in short order. It is around the safe custody of money, and the transmission of money between safe-custody accounts, that a ring fence must be built. This is a low-risk, well-understood business with predictable costs.

On the other hand (or the other side of the fence), buying and holding financial assets, whether Joe Public's mortgage or Greek bonds or some derivative thereof, is inherently risky, especially under the fractional reserve system where my bank deposit might be used several times over to back such purchases. I'm very uneasy that money intended to pay housekeeping or wages or otherwise lubricate the wheels of commerce is used in these ways, without any explicit choice by the depositor. If I have spare money, which I want to bet on a risky venture, well and good, but it should be explicit, with my eyes open.

Of course, to erect such a fence, a very British sacred cow, standing in the way, will need to be slaughtered: the idea that banking should be free. If you want your money genuinely looked after (in a secure computer, in a vault), and not used as a poker chip by an anonymous gambler, I'm afraid it costs. So does moving it securely between vaults. And converting it to paper spewed out of a wall. I should know, because it's my business.

One other thing about Osborne's proposals: he wants them implemented by 2019. As Margaret Thatcher used to say to civil servants, World War Two was nearly lost and then won in less time. The nuclear bomb of Club Med default is almost certain to go off a lot sooner.

Today's public sector strike

A copy of a post I made on a forum, on today's strikes. It got a lot of endorsement there.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––

xxxx wrote:

yyyy, to be honest its not about whats sustainable is it.  We are paying back the cash the bankers spunked and wasted and we bailed them out.

That's not really the whole truth, is it?

The previous government went on an accelerating spending spree from about 1999 to 2008, hiring like crazy (and of course, for each and every new hire, making promises it had no idea could be kept by future governments concerning pension "rights"). They stoked up an artificial boom by allowing the banks to create stupid amounts of credit, and raked in their share of the new money via taxes on the banks' profits (not profits in any normal sense of the word, just the proportion of their newly created money they kept for themselves). But that still wouldn't fund all the previous government's schemes, so they borrowed directly, piling debt upon debt. When the party came to its inevitable conclusion, the spending programmes were still in place but taxes on bankers' profits dried up. That effect was far greater than the direct bailouts of banks carried out by the previous government. zzzz and I (and a couple of others) actually bottomed out the figures and amazingly came to a measure of agreement, because the figures spoke for themselves.

This leaves us in a position where the government is spending more on debt interest that on defence. And they're not even planning to reduce the debt: only to lessen the rate at which extra debt is accumulated. If our government had to pay the same rate of interest as Spain or Italy (which is surely a possibility), then interest payments would be more than spending on education, and in all probability the debt could never be controlled without inflation destroying everybody's savings (eroding steadily already via 5% inflation).

So it IS about sustainability and NOT about bailing out the banks.

Now, workers in big companies have seen their final salary schemes vanish, or at the very least closed to new entrants. Workers in small companies never had such schemes. They've seen contributions they've already committed, under a set of assumptions about tax, being subject to ongoing tax raids. They've seen the stock market stagnate at best, so their pension pots are not growing at the rate they might have anticipated. They've accepted contribution holidays when their companies go through bad times (and sometimes when they're not). They've seen their companies and their pension schemes go bust. This has been the warp and weft of private sector existence for decades. And even if the government backs down now, the worst of this could happen to you: a future government, not very far down the line, might run out of money to pay your pension.

So while I don't regard everyone in the public sector as a waste of space, it's your turn for pruning and you need to realise that previous governments have made promises that cannot be kept, and suck it up like (nearly) everyone else. Meanwhile, you might google the sacrifices that have been made in the public sector in Ireland: without much complaint, because there's a sense of grim realism there.

It's just not cricket!

Can this be true?

We [the England and Wales Cricket Board] also have to comply in 2012 with the IOC’s requirement that no other international sport can be staged during the Olympics and Paralympics.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/8912828/Test-cricket-will-only-thrive-if-matches-remain-enthralling.html

Who says? Can the British Olympic Association, or any of the myriad quangos that seem to have been set up to run the London games, bind the ECB (and all other sporting bodies)? I don't see how. Or has Cast Iron Dave or Broon or Bliar before him passed a law while no-one was looking?

I call upon and any of my American, Australian or French friends or relatives to help me flout the decree of Count Jacques Rogge, by challenging me to a game of Real Tennis at Hampton Court Palace next August. I feel sure the ghost of King Henry VIII will protect me: he knew how to treat foreign potentates who would make laws in our sceptred isle; especially when it came to restricting his right to engage in fun and games with whomsoever he pleased.

The Leveson Inquiry…

…is explained here.

It consists of four "modules":

• Module 1: The relationship between the press and the public and looks at phone-hacking and other potentially illegal behaviour
• Module 2: The relationships between the press and police and the extent to which that has operated in the public interest
• Module 3: The relationship between press and politicians
• Module 4: Recommendations for a more effective policy and regulation that supports the integrity and freedom of the press while encouraging the highest ethical standards.

Confusingly, the terms of reference are in two parts; with no obvious mapping between the parts and the modules. Apparently, 'Cast Iron' Dave expects Part 1 of the inquiry to be completed within one year. It seems it's 'too soon' to provide an estimate for the inquiry's cost. Personally, I can't remember starting a project without an estimate for the cost. But then I'm either using my own money or persuading someone who takes a close interest to part with theirs. I don't suppose Lord Justice Leveson comes cheap; nor his six assessors nor his five counsels for the inquiry. It's a pretty nice website too.

So, I will make a submission to the inquiry, giving the following answers free, gratis, and for nothing:

• Module 1: The press writes anything that might interest readers and the public buys the papers. Or the canny ones read them on the web. Or the cannier still find out what's really happening from blogs. The press has hacked phones and has potentially engaged in sundry other potential crimes (allegedly).
• Module 2: The police treat phone hacking in much the same way as other crimes, such as burglary. That is, they might go through the motions. They'll tip the wink to the press if they come across anything juicy, in return for a spot of corporate entertainment, or a good word in an editorial. The public is not particularly interested.
• Module 3: Politicians will do anything to get a favourable mention from the press. The press will do anything to expose the hypocrisy of politicians (not a lot of effort is required there), which is its most useful function.
• Module 4: The press has very little integrity to support. 'Effective policy and regulation' and 'highest ethical standards' is code for stopping the press from snooping on politicians. Don't fall for it. We don't need any more laws or regulations; we've too many to enforce anyway and the police will always excuse laxity by saying they're too busy enforcing the laws on the curvature of suggestive fruit and vegetables, or something.

Finally, Leveson has granted himself the right to hold parts of the inquiry in private, at his discretion. Please, your honour, do so for the never-ending stream of people famous for being famous whining about being caught screwing someone they shouldn't. The papers made you rich and famous, but it's you who make yourself embarrassed. I don't care what the European Convention says, there's no natural right to privacy. In a state of nature, if someone turns up at your cave and tries to steal the deer you've just killed, you have the right to assail him with your cudgel. If you're spied behind the bushes with your neighbour's wife, that's just too bad.

 

A short-term memory lapse

According to reliable sources, the government has decided that I am to underwrite mortgages for people who can't afford to buy a home. Apparently, this will "give many more people the satisfaction and security that comes with stepping over their own threshold". Satisfaction? Has the government forgotten that borrowing in the cause of instant gratification has brought us to this pass? Security? Has it forgotten that it already has one trillion pounds of debt, growing at about £150 billion per year? That it has unfunded liabilities for public sector pensions of another trillion pounds? Of another quarter of a trillion in PFI liabilities? That countries whose underlying finances are in no worse shape than the UK's are paying 7% interest to fund their borrowings—which would blow the economy to kingdom come? That in a country called the United States of America, this ruse has already been tried, ending exceptionally badly for a couple called Fannie and Freddie?

But at least this won't bother some hard-pressed taxpayers—because the government has decided to outright gift £400 million from the rest to property developers (who prospered so well during the Blair/Brown years); a sort of inverse Robin Hood tax.

I have a simpler plan to help first-time buyers: why not allow house prices to fall to a new market level, from the preposterously inflated level caused by a decade of lax monetary policy? Then, in the unlikely event of taxpayers having any spare cash, they might invest it themselves to fund the growth of productive enterprises, which is the only hope for digging ourselves out of this mess.

Dear Bishop

An open letter to the Bishop of Guildford

Dear Bishop,

I write concerning the letter that you and sixteen fellow bishops had published in the Observer today.

It condemns, rather high-handedly in my opinion, the coalition government's Welfare Reform Bill, which would limit the amount any household might claim in state benefits to £500 per week (a figure that you omit from your letter). According to Wikipedia, this is some 65% above median UK household income.

This seems to be the latest in a series of pronouncements from senior Church of England clergy condemning the government's policy of bringing public spending under control after a decade in which it has grown sharply.

You invoke the church directly, and speak of a moral compulsion. Since I profoundly disagree with you, I wonder if my economic and political views are nowadays compatible with church membership. Perhaps you could let me know whether, in your opinion, the following views conflict with Christianity:

1. that welfare benefits should not be on a ratchet drive, only ever increasing, whatever the country's circumstances;
2. that above a certain level, spending on welfare will reduce incentives to work harder, or at all, diminishing the nation's total wealth, with the poor inevitably hardest hit;
3. that paying people who do not work more than the majority of people that do, is morally wrong;
4. That any family can live reasonably on £26,000 a year.

In the event that these views are not wholly incompatible with Christianity, I would ask you to consider that the barrage of political interventions by the bishops might alienate a large number of natural Anglicans. If you are comfortable with that, perhaps you might recommend a denomination in which people like me would feel more welcome.

I have published this letter on my blog; with your permission, I will also publish any reply.

Yours sincerely,

Neil McEvoy

Pyrford, Surrey

 

Basil d'Oliveira

Rest in peace.

d'Oliveira was a superb all-round cricketer for Worcestershire and England in the sixties and early seventies. In particular he was a brilliant player of fast bowling: like all great players of ball games, he seemed to have so much more time to play the ball than the merely good. I had forgotten that he had not been picked for England until past his athletic prime, at 35. Yet still he played 44 test matches with a batting average of 40.06. For those who are not in the know, a test career average of 40 or above marks out an outstanding international batsman from a very capable one. It would surely have been much higher if he'd been picked at 25 rather than 35. He batted with minimal back lift, but was able to punch the ball through the gaps with powerful, well-timed strokes. Although Dolly was a batsman who could bowl, rather than a genuine strike bowler, he was often called upon to winkle out batsmen who were set. He could swing the ball either way (at modest pace) and was extremely accurate and therefore economical.

I remember him too for being a sportsman in the fullest sense of the word, a fierce competitor but true gentleman, demonstrating grace under pressure on and off the field. Certainly, an example that modern professional sportsmen would do well to follow.

Of course, the reason he was not picked earlier was that, as a Cape Coloured, he was in essence an economic refugee from apartheid South Africa, where opportunities were denied to non-white sportsmen. The South African government's outrageous refusal to allow him to tour with the English team in 1968 led to more than twenty years of cricketing isolation for them—at a time when South Africa, with greats such as Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards and Mike Procter, would have been world beaters. So many careers wrecked in the name of politics. Conceivably, that shortened the life of the apartheid regime and led to a relatively bloodless transition.

I am slightly aggrieved that the BBC News bulletins today have only dealt with the impingement of politics on d'Oliveira's career. That is to dwell on the man's circumstances rather than his character and achievements, which were exemplary.

The most influential book in English

The Queen attended a service at Westminster Abbey today to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Despite being written by a committee (of six subcommittees, two each at Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster) it is, of course, wonderfully poetic—certainly compared to the leaden prose, that might have been written by management consultants, in versions of the last 50 years. I think many of the more memorable turns of phrase were lifted from William Tyndale's earlier version (for which he paid with his life). What a monumental effort, for one man to translate all that Hebrew and Greek into accessible and beautiful English.

I seem to have followed around one of the King James authors—Archbishop of Canterbury George Abbot. He was Guildford born, raised, educated (at the still going strong Royal Grammar School) and buried; most days I walk by the statue of him at the top of the High Street. He was master of my college (University College) at Oxford. He was also chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin—where I've stayed right next door to, maybe two dozen times in the last five years. Finally, the conference convened by James I which initiated the production of his Bible was at Hampton Court Palace, where I play real tennis.

It has been argued, most recently by Melvyn Bragg (with whom I tend to agree), that the King James Bible inspired the liberal-democratic development of the English-speaking world, through the great internal struggles of the English Civil War, the American War of Independence and the American Civil War. Further, that it inspired free thought and free enquiry, unleashing the scientific revolution that has shaped today's world.

Whereas those points might be debated, the influence of the King James Bible on our every day discourse cannot be denied. I give you:

• the powers that be
• the apple of his eye
• signs of the times
• law unto themselves
• turned the world upside down
• God forbid
• take root
• filthy lucre
• no peace for the wicked
• a fly in the ointment
• wheels within wheels
• the blind leading the blind
• feet of clay
• put words in his mouth
• the writing on the wall
• salt of the earth
• go from strength to strength
• a thorn in the flesh
• broken-hearted
• sick unto death
• clear-eyed

The coups d'états in Southern Europe

Greek PM George Papandreou floats the idea of seeking his compatriots' permission for a so-called rescue deal (that would keep the country in hock forever, as far as I can tell) and is imperiously summoned for an audience with Merkel and Sarkozy; after which he drops the plan and announces his resignation. He is replaced by Lucas Papademos (does that mean 'father of the people' or am I imagining that?), a non-elected so-called technocrat. His qualifications are that he was Governor of the Greek Central Bank at the time it lied about Greece's finances, to qualify it for the nightmare of euro membership, and was subsequently Vice President of the ECB, complicit in running a monetary policy that made Greece hopelessly uncompetitive, forcing it into a downward spiral of debt and depression. I've not seen that he has admitted to any mistakes, so one must for fear for the Greeks' future.

On a parallel track, Silvio Berlusconi muses aloud that the euro may have made Italy and the Italians poorer. A week or so after that utterance, having survived umpteen scandals up to and including the accusation of paying for sex with underage girls, and he's history. He's to be replaced by Mario Monti, two-term European Commissioner and noted EU federalist—and again, never elected to anything.

In both cases, EU officials have made clear that their austerity plans must be enacted before elections are held and that the budgetary process must be supervised by teams of foreign officials. In the words of (non-elected) European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, delivered in Florence, "this country needs reforms, not elections".

Do Greece and Italy have legitimate governments? Is it the right, or perhaps the duty, of Greeks and Italians to undertake armed insurrections, against government by placemen of foreign powers?

Update: Has Daniel Hannan visited here?

What the papers say…

…or, at any rate, the Daily Telegraph.

As noted below, I read the DT from cover to cover today, something I seldom do with any newspaper these days. Consequently, I read a number of things I would usually miss which piqued my interest.

Firstly, the obituary of Major John Timothy, who I'd never heard of, and who died aged 97. He won the Military Cross…three times! First, in Tunisia, he captured an enemy machine gun post single-handed. Second, in Italy, he operated behind enemy lines to conduct escaped PoWs to safety. Third, at Arnhem, he led a platoon of six in a bayonet charge that captured entrenched positions within 1000 yards of the bridge. And there are plenty of other exploits in there that read just as heroically. It's hard to convey the admiration and gratitude with which everyone must feel for him; though the commenters on the online version have done their best.

Strangely, I found the last sentence most arresting. He never married. An educated, practical, leader of men and war hero, tall and handsome it would seem from the picture, and in an age when the ranks of young men were sadly depleted. It seems to me that it is at least a possibility that he was homosexual. Which would raise a question for those who oppose gays in the military. Who would you rather share a trench with: a man such as Major John Timothy or aged new father and noted lothario Hugh Grant?

Secondly, a story from Ledbury in Herefordshire. Ledbury is a small town with wonderful Tudor buildings that nestles under the Malvern Hills. A sublime place in a sublime setting. I lived for a couple of years on the Malvern Hills (when I was building systems for the Ministry of Defence), just on the Herefordshire side of the ridge line. That got me a vote in the referendum that ended the ludicrous fake county of Hereford and Worcester imposed on the people by Whitehall fiat (the same reorganisation that decided I hadn't been born in hard-as-nails Lancashire but effete Cheshire). Anyone standing atop the Malverns can see far below the flat, intensively farmed Worcestershire on one side, dotted with largish towns leading to the suburbs of Birmingham and, on the other side, the sparsely populated rolling hills of Herefordshire before the Black Mountains over the border in Wales. A magical vista—I'm humming Elgar even as I type.

Back to Ledbury. I used to play squash and sink pints with the local farmers at the Feathers. As the article notes, it's like all towns used to be, with plenty of local traders selling everything from game to cartridges to shoot your own. And, of course, Hereford beef! Now, Tescos and Sainsburys are angling to build superstores on the edge of town. I don't know what I think about that. On the one hand, it cannot fail to ruin the landscape and will likely destroy many local businesses. On the other hand, should the locals actually want to buy cheap produce 24/7 brought from all corners of the globe to their slice of heaven on earth, who am I to complain?

Plenty of other stuff of interest in the paper. The guilty verdicts on the Pakistani cricketers for instance (I would have read about that anyway, of course). They had what was coming. Already earning the kind of money 99.99% of their countrymen can only dream of, but wanting a little more. Imagine too being Stuart Broad: there will now always be a question mark over his brilliant 169 when the opposition were paid on certain prearranged outcomes. There are plenty of ways to get yourself out in cricket whatever the bowlers are doing, so for a non-recognised batsman to do so on 169 rather than 16 is still a tremendous feat in my opinion. I hope Amir is able to resume cricket at some stage. He was only 18, and one imagines easily bullied. He's also a wonderfully talented bowler who could have been way up there in the test cricketing pantheon. Finally, cricket is just about the only thing that keeps Pakistan connected to the rest of the Commonwealth. Already no teams will tour there, and England play them next in the UAE. It could have geopolitical implications if that link were severed.

The Greek stuff is changing too fast to keep up. I'll probably blog about that at the weekend.

Thoughts from 35,000 ft

Flying back from Dubai to London today. Seven hours all in daylight, which must be quite unusual in the northern hemisphere at this time of year. Great for someone like me who needs to look out of the window every so often -- today at the Burj Khalifa, Mesopotamia, the Anatolian highlands dusted with snow, the distant Alps (spectacularly close on the way out) and the Rhine.

A lady captain today; that's a first on a long haul flight for me. Like all BA flight crew, she sounded cool and authoritative (are you listening, Dad? Mine's a treble). Along with glancing outside at the Rolls Royce logo on the engine, that's very comforting - but perhaps I'm being irrationally patriotic.

I wonder if anyone else notices the same (apparent) effects as me when flying. I think that I think particularly clearly, attested to by finishing the Times and Telegraph crosswords, which I've fallen out of the habit of attempting, very quickly. I suppose it could be that there are fewer distractions. I'm also very productive working. That's usually on the way out, so that could be all to do with needing a report or presentation ready by the time I get there. The third thing is that I always think wine tastes better. Maybe one gets pleasantly intoxicated quicker which creates a better impression (like beer-goggles on the ground!) or maybe BA just choose good wines.

Listened to music courtesy of my iPhone and Bose headset after the meal. Picked geographically: Mozart (Prague Symphony) overhead Salzburg, Wagner (various) over Bavaria and Schumann (Rhenish Symphony) over the Rhine, of course. Incidentally, the latter is absolutely one of my favourite works by a lesser-played composer.

I also read the paper cover-to-cover, which is something else I hardly do with the internet being my primary source of news. I actually read a lot of interesting articles that I wouldn't normally; which may form the subject of another post in due course.

Plane arrived 25 minutes early - and the captain had absolutely no trouble parking!

[…runs and hides]

Another day, another debt

Hurrah! The world, or at least the eurozone, is saved! For a whole two weeks at least!

It turns out that the solution to its chronic debt problem is stunningly simple—more debt!

The piteously old-fashioned and curmudgeonly Germans have decided that they don't want to break their own constitution (and that of the EU) by shovelling any more of their hard-earned in the direction of the Mediterranean. I guess they previously figured that €440 billion was too trifling for small-minded people to raise legal quibbles. It's only two months' German production after all. One would surely hope the man in the Strasse would be only too happy to donate two months' wages to keep a 50-year-old retired Greek civil servant in the manner to which he's become accustomed.

Anyway, they've rediscovered quaint concepts such as the law, and democracy, so they're not contributing a pfennig more—or so they're led to believe. A cool trillion is reckoned to solve all problems, including those of bankers who backed the wrong horses. (There's no point studying the form book when your friends beg, borrow and steal money to replenish your coffers.) So who's going to stump up the extra €560 billion, if not the German taxpayer? It turns out no-one knows. Find a bigger fool, quick!

Of course, there's only one entity on the planet for which €560 billion is loose change, and which doesn't haven't to go through the tiresome business of asking anyone's permission to spend it. I wonder what concessions the Chinese government will require before handing it over. Expect criticism of human rights abuses emanating from European chancelleries to become somewhat, shall we say, muted.

I can't have been paying proper attention to these developments. Amidst the usual cacophony of self-congratulation, I haven't heard any word of who is going to pay back this €560 billion, if it's ever raised, and when. But somehow, I think the diligent German worker has won only a temporary reprieve.

Of course, the British and American public will soon enough face their own variations on a common theme. Schadenfreude isn't what it used to be.

I've just invented the bank

I would like you to consider three scenarios in which I might lend money to someone.

Scenario 1. A young relative or friend, perhaps a friend of a friend, feels stuck in a rut in his current employment and would like to strike out on his own. Let’s say he’s a carpenter, but it doesn’t really matter. He reckons he can provide a premium service building custom furniture to fit in awkwardly shaped rooms. Anyone who’s been to my house knows what I mean. But to do that, he needs to invest in the tools of the trade, he needs to find a deposit for a rented workshop, he needs to pay for advertising and other promotional activities and he needs to modestly feed, clothe and house himself while he attracts a sufficient amount of business to sustain a reasonable cashflow. All in all, let’s say he needs to find £30,000 and promises to repay me £40,000 in five years’ time.

If that is to be funded by me, it will be from a surplus I’ve accumulated from my own labour and the bet I placed on my own ability to build a business a quarter of a century ago. I could use that money to buy a very nice new car, a modest second hand sailboat or a first-class, no expense spared, round-the-world trip—all of which are appealing (but don’t tell Helen about the boat). If I accept this deal, I will have to forego the fruits of my labour for a period (and permanently, should it all go horribly wrong).

On the other hand, I might like to retire in five years, at which point I will need all the resources I can muster to live comfortably, perhaps to a ripe old age. So maybe a temporary sacrifice will be worth it in the long run. Now, before any of you beat a path to my email address, you can be sure that before I put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, I will research carefully conditions in the joinery market and form my own view of your character and skills (if I haven’t already). After all, I stand to lose permanently the use of£30,000 for which I’ve sweated.

But let’s be optimistic. If all goes well this investment will help fund my retirement, establish  a skilled craftsman in business—and provide the world with more and better furniture. Indeed, only if the last be true, at least to the tune of £10,000 worth of more and better furniture, can I make up for my five-year sacrifice. Win-win-win—me, him, you. Perfect sense.

Scenario 2. Another young acquaintance is bored with his second-hand Ford Fiesta and fancies a shiny, zippy new Lotus. That way, some shallow girl might fancy him. But he hasn’t £30,000, or indeed anything, to spare at the moment, and he figures I might. Let me think a minute. I’m certainly well beyond attracting girls but, nonetheless, I quite like driving fast cars myself. And I’ve earned the right, or at any rate the wherewithal, to do so.

Let’s not dismiss this proposition out of hand though. Perhaps the young gun will also offer to pay me back £40,000 in five years. But where could that money come from? I seriously doubt a mere Lotus Elise would attract the daughter of a Russian oligarch. This £30,000 isn’t really an investment at all. There will be no additional goods produced, nor services rendered, in five years’ time to have generated the £10,000 premium that has been carelessly offered. And the £30,000 value of the car will dwindle to no more than £10,000 by then, and that’s assuming it hasn’t lost an argument with a tree in the meantime. To sum up, never would the quaint English phrase “on yer bike” be more apposite.

Scenario 3. I ask you to indulge me in a flight of fancy. We’ll start off grounded by imagining the same prodigal acquaintance as in Scenario 2—everyone will agree they’re not so rare. Now, however, let’s suppose I have friends in high places. Let’s say Westminster, or perhaps Brussels. These friends have granted me the right (in return for favours of course, but we needn’t go there now) to operate a computer (it could be the laptop I’m using now, nothing special) but with some special—but not science-fiction—software. This software allows me to type in large numbers—30,000, for instance. It adds a £ sign to those, along with a digital portrait of the queen (or something), a unique serial number on each occasion, and all wrapped in a clever cryptographic envelope  to prevent counterfeiting (I won’t bore you further with my specialist subject). So far, so easy: the real service my pals have done for me is to allow me to send that electronic bundle to anyone (say, our prodigal friend) and—this is the clever bit—compel Lotus dealers to accept it as payment for their cars!

I’m feeling good about this, because I can get the kid off my back, and he can get his car without me having to forego any of my own pleasures. I can even get a matching Lotus if I like with money that I’ve previously earned. I’d like this deal to pan out even better though, and have him pay me back the £40,000 he promises. It’s still the case though that my capital “investment” (it’s obviously not an investment, but the meaning of words is elastic these days) will depreciate, while not causing any goods or services to be produced that might fund the £10,000 premium. But, at least the original £30,000 that my computer magicked for me is still in circulation, and there’s a chance an equivalent will stick in the mitts of our friend.

I’d still really like the extra £10,000 though. I hope to be retired for a long time, and wish to live in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed and, of course, to be honoured for my munificence. Fortunately, I haven’t got where I am today without a fertile imagination. I’ll just type 10,000 into the computer. The only condition my pals have made is that I then give it to someone else for it to circulate for a while before getting back to me. And fortunately, there’s no end of people who want—or need—money. It’s not my concern what they do with it. If they don’t create anything with it, and can’t pay it back with interest, I’ll just tap yet more figures into my computer.

This would be a very bad thing, you say. With money on tap, nobody would defer gratification while building a better mousetrap. And the bounty of the world would gravitate to the guy operating the computer. It can’t possibly last. Well, I haven’t thought that through. You’re probably right, but by that time I could be sipping cocktails on my gleaming yacht—if somebody hasn’t beaten me to it.