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A brief observation on over-regulating banks

Thursday, February 25, 2010
Spotted this in a recent issue of the FT (17/2, long, boring story as to why I chanced upon it):

"Research by JPMorgan published today says that, if all the changes proposed by politicians and regulators were implemented, big banks would have to increase prices on products such as mortgages and corporate loans by 33 per cent to offset a fall in projected return on equity from 13.3 per cent to 5.4 per cent".

Imagine the howling from those who currently love bashing the banks if that came to pass...

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posted by Croydonian

Random thought o' the day

Thursday, February 18, 2010
(Thought about tweeting this, but closed alpha testing suggested I'd run out of characters).

A standard line from our dear, dear friends on the left is that if only the wickedly selfish people with money and (presumably) blue inclinations were to send their progeny to the nearest sink state school, standards, behaviour, exam results yadda yadda would soar ever upwards.  I do need to name and shame the countless  members of the limo left who forget all about that idea when it comes to educating little Jocasta and little Toby.

Anyway, my modest proposal is that if our left leaners were serious about this business of raising the water level, they could hardly make a better start than leaving the sunny uplands of Notting Hill, Hampstead and so forth and decamping to North Peckham, Harlesden (1) etc en masse.  As surely the neighbourhood effect of having all of those 'human rights' lawyers, Guardian hacks and so forth would be to raise the water level - reducing crime, improving the living environment, cutting anti-social behaviour etc through the sheer weight of their moral courage.  Furthermore, doubtless the corner shops and no-name supermarkets would hasten to ditch economy sausages and baked beans and stock up on polenta, quail eggs and the like.

To those that rebut 'what about gentrification?', one might note that this is usually done by the less well off, and compelled by necessity more than ideology


(1) Apologies for being so London-centric, but doubtless folk can substitute with fashionable - or otherwise - quarters wherever they know best.      

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posted by Croydonian

Classy politician o' the day - the Mayor of Kiev

Wednesday, September 23, 2009
From Ha'aretz:

"No monument stands over Babi Yar" - may once again be an accurate reflection of reality if Kiev's municipality carries out its plan to build a hotel on the memorial site of one of the most notorious massacres of Jews during the Holocaust. On September 29 and 30, 1941, German SS troops, supported by other German units and local collaborators, gathered 33,771 Jewish civilians at the ravine outside Kiev and murdered them with machine guns....Last week, however, the Kiev municipality approved a plan to build 28 hotels to accommodate the tens of thousands of visitors expected for soccer's 2012 European Championships. One of these hotels is planned to be set up on the Babi Yar site, now in a residential area of Kiev. Kiev Mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi has reportedly been interested in turning his city's remaining green space into real estate and is taking advantage of Euro 2012 to implement his plan, city sources said". 
Babi Yar is probably best known from its reference in D.M.Thomas's 'The White Hotel', a well-received novel from 1981, which - shall we say - was quite free in its use of material from Kuznetzov's memoir 'Babi Yar'. Both merit reading.

I would hope that people would not wish to work above an ossuary or to stay in a hotel built on a foundation of human bones.

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posted by Croydonian

A brief observation on identity politics

Friday, July 03, 2009
From the BBC:

"Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has said "a deep strain of homophobia still exists on the Conservative benches...Chris Bryant, another gay minister, said: "If gays vote Tory they will rue the day very soon...Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant said he was concerned that a lot of gay and lesbian voters would "bank" the reforms brought in by Labour, such as civil partnerships and a lower age of consent, and vote Conservative".

Or, in other words, do not vote Labour on the basis of what they might do for gay people in a fourth term, or what they might do for the population in general, including gay people (who, after all, participate in the economy, use the NHS, worry about crime etc etc) in a fourth term, but rather vote out of gratitude for what has been done.

That, just for starters, is staggeringly patronising and looked at from parallel angles is also profoundly foolish. Would a Labour activist be able to keep a straight face if giving an asthmatic the smoking ban as the reason to vote for them, or someone with connections to the sub-continent the abolition of the primary purpose rule etc etc. Or, indeed, going further back, the Lib Dems citing David Steel's piloting of the legalisation of abortion, or the Tories that Churchill's Conservatives had stewarded the nation during the greatest existential threat the nation had faced in a millennium? Perhaps Bryant thinks that voters who had bought council houses, profited from privatisations and so forth were 'banking' those gains when they voted Labour in 1997, not that I have heard him calling them miserable ingrates.

When political parties treat functional and other groups within the nation as a client vote, they inevitably end up taking them for granted, and if thus they irk enough of them, they end with a Gotterdammerung on polling day.

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posted by Croydonian

A brief observation. And an even briefer snidey aside

Sunday, June 28, 2009
I am re-reading Victor Davis Hanson's peerless 'Why the West has Won - Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam' for the umpteenth time, and fancied that this quote merited a narrower audience:

"Later the Greeks even had their triremes named Demokratia, Eleutheria and Parrhesia".

Which one might render as 'Democracy', 'Freedom' and 'Freedom of Speech'. Which I think are rather better names than HMS Ark Royal, USS Nimitz or, come to that, the Charles de Gaulle.

"Arnold Toynbee (guess whose grandfather he is)..in one of his more foolish asides suggested that a Greek loss to Xerxes might have been good for Hellenic civilization".

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posted by Croydonian

A very brief observation on Neda

Monday, June 22, 2009
She being the Iranian woman gunned down by the Iranian authorities the other day.

A day or so back I was wondering whether the Iranian events would furnish the world with a Tianamen Square 'tank man' or a Jan Palach (qv), and sadly for her family and friends it is her.

It is a grim way to achieve immortality, and it is perhaps just as well that is so hard to think of many more individuals who in their sacrifice symbolise an event.

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posted by Croydonian

A brief observation on Patricia Hewitt

Tuesday, June 02, 2009
First things first:

"As expected for our Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, 57, apparently leads a life of exemplary healthiness...a spokesman insisted that she eats "infinitely more" than the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. She has never smoked and allows herself only the occasional glass of wine but given her busy schedule, struggles to "exercise properly with her busy schedule". "And she does have very, very regular bowel movements".

Meanwhile, back at the plot, La Hewitt is standing down at the next election in order to 'spend more time with her family'. Pretty original, huh? Why do they never say that they want to focus on a lifetime ambition to excel at croquet or to perfect their command of crochet?

Anyway, when she jumped prior to being pushed in 2007, she also cited the old 'family' line, before then going off to acquire positions at Alliance Boots, Cinven and BT. None of which are based very near the ancestral pile in Leicestershire. Since then, she has been a below average Parliamentarian, based on the raw numbers - has attended 2/3 votes, asked 10 questions and spoken in 11 debates, all well below the average.

Moving swiftly on, she is married so she does indeed have a family with which to spend more time. However, the phrase generally puts one in mind of progeny rather than spouses and she would appear to have a son of 21 and a daughter of 23. And here comes the wild stab in the dark - the Hewitt-lets are probably working or in education and far from Hewitt Towers, rather than banging cutlery on the Hewitt kitchen table of an evening and howling for mummy to rustle up some more fish fingers and alphabetti spaghetti. Although I could be wrong.

Doubtless she will be jacking in the consultancies etc soon too.

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posted by Croydonian

Ten individuals, 25 degrees between them, and *how* much sense?

Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Doubtless we have all been having rage blackouts over the proposals made by 'the Consultative Group on the Past', and I do not think I can add much to the, under the circumstances, extremely measured thoughts of Mr Eugenides, so I will not.

However, I have done a little digging, and this Confederacy of Dunces, this Narrenschiff, this thicket of idiots, has between them at least 25 degrees.

I think I need to lie down in a darkened room for a bit.

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posted by Croydonian

A brief observation on 'anti-Zionist' attacks

Thursday, January 08, 2009
Suppose you are one of those people so outraged by what is happening in Gaza that you just feel compelled to shout abuse at the denizens of Golders Green, set fire to a Jewish community centre in Helsingborg, ram a shul in Toulouse with a burning car etc etc.

On planet reality, one that those murderous idiots do not inhabit, it is, to say the least, unlikely that Jewish Britons, Jewish Swedes or Jewish Frenchmen will decide to join those condemning etc Israel.

What *might* happen, and I hope it does not, is that said Jewish Britons etc will decide that they are unsafe in the diaspora, and make aliyah to Israel, thus re-inforcing the Jewish population of Israel and strengthen the Zionism that those other individuals are so upset about.

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posted by Croydonian

A brief observation on a prospective cut in the VAT rate

Sunday, November 23, 2008
Brown and his glove puppet at No 11 cannot cut VAT to below 15% because of EU law, so let us say that they go all the way from 17.5% to 15% on Monday. What is likely to happen?

In the case of products with established price points, let's say DVDs, CDs etc and any number of things that end in .99 pence, is it realistic to think that a grand total of tuppence per pound is going to be knocked off either at the till or on price stickers?

Further, I would suggest that for people with discretionary income, if tuppence or thruppence per pound *is* knocked off, it is only for high value items that a theoretical 2.5% price cut becomes a saving that might serve as a substantial incentive to buy. After all, one would have to be dealing with purchases of more than one hundred pounds in order to save the price of a pint. Up the ante to a thousand pounds, and the saving would cover a fairly cheap indian takeaway for two.

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posted by Croydonian

A thousand years ago....

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
....there used to be an organisation in these parts called the Economic League, which compiled names of leftists etc, the better to have them blacklisted from certain areas of employment. Feel free to google it. If memory serves, Ford was among the big names that made use of its list.

Where this is of more than a little interest is that it was denounced as McCarthyist and the Parliamentary Labour Party was instrumental in killing it off / compelling it to morph into something else.

I wonder if its enemies will feel moved to denounce what is likely to happen to Griffin's lot now. I am not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, a brief word from Henry Maine: "....we may say that the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract".

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posted by Croydonian

A very brief observation on the Lords' vote on 42 days

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
To adapt Gerald Ford:

"Our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great nation is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule".

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posted by Croydonian

"....to forgive divine"

Saturday, September 13, 2008
"Armenia’s Culture Minister, Hasmik Bogosyan, wants to collaborate with its Turkish counterpart...Bogosyan said her biggest dream was to organize a festival celebrating Turkey in Armenia". Source

That there has been a thawing of Turko-Armenian relations of late is undoubtedly a good thing for all concerned, but I don't think there is much of a prospect of a Goethe festival in Jerusalem any time soon, is there?

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posted by Croydonian

Fact o' the day

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Not that I am entirely convinced that I should accept it as a fact:

"Every year more people kill themselves than are killed in all wars, all terrorist attacks and all homicides".

This is care of Brian Mishara, President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention, quoted at a UN press conference.

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posted by Croydonian

A brief observation on the family Darwin

Monday, July 28, 2008
They of the Reggie Perrin-style disappearing father.

The sons have eased their pain by selling their story to the Mail on Sunday, and have been, quote 'through Hell' and want nothing to do with their parents. Their choice....

My father died nine years ago, and if he were to reappear now, I do not really care what he might have done in the preceding nine years, even if he was then to spend the rest of his life in jail. Orphaned or part orphaned friends quizzed on such an eventuality take the same stance.

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posted by Croydonian

A very brief observation on Obamamania

Saturday, July 26, 2008
Given the (often rightful) contempt that some of Middle America has for Europe, is film of Obama transporting Germans, Gauls etc to ecstacy something that is going to play in Peoria? (1)

McCain and co would be well advised to find a few useful idiots on this side of the Atlantic who can be persuaded to make 'helpful' comments on how they want Mr & Mrs Joe Sixpack to vote. Shades of The Guardian's hilariously ill-judged Clark County intervention in 2004?



(1) - OK, maybe not Peoria. He is going to win Illinois without too much difficulty.

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posted by Croydonian