At the End of the Year

There is little more depressing than being in a ski resort when deep snow has been followed by heavy rain. Everyone walks round with a long face, the pavements are ankle-deep in slush, and French drivers – as ever – show no consideration for des pietons as they spray everyone with cold mucky stuff.

It is at such times – even on New Year’s Eve – that kids are a treat. “I’ve been on an aeryplane before,” said little Daniel this morning, “but I’ve never drived one.” His sister Ella – who calls him “snail-brain”, a description I’d have been proud to invent – said this afternoon, “Computers are not for writing, they are for watching telly”. But to Daniel, snail-brain is more of a term of endearment than “sausage”, which is what I called him the other day. “I am not a sausage,” he protested, ” but you are a smelly sausage” – before collapsing in laughter at this sub-young version of smut.

Two days ago, Ella (who is just three) drew a lobster. It was amazingly like a lobster even if she had forgotten the claws, but before I could offer praise, she said “It may look like a wiggly worm but it isn’t“. I assured her that it bore no resemblance at all to a worm, wiggly or otherwise. I’ve now taken to calling her Schnitzel, which she pronounces shitzel.

Yesterday I had a not unfamiliar battle with the local pharmacy. One of my mantras is, “After too much Dom Perignon, take Domperidone”. This is the generic name for Motillium, an intestine unbender of unaparelleled efficacy. But the assistant (with no intention at all of assisting) couldn’t sell it to me OTC, I would need a prescription, she said. I don’t need one in Lot et Garonne, I countered. This is not Lot et Garonne, said she. But it is France, I answered, trying to smile.

Chemists in France are, without exception, patronising jobsworths who dispense all medication with a large dollop of bollocks. The lady sold me some lemon-flavoured stuff that had me farting citrus groves for hours afterwards, and some Gallic mumbo-jumbo alternative nonsense. I offered to go to a doctor for an ordinance, but this only convinced her that I was a troublemaker.

“You do not need a doctor, ” she snapped, “Eat plain food and take the tablets”. I left muttering that she needed a psychiatrist. The bill was over 27 euros, and both of her suggestions have proved to be useless.

‘New Year celebrations begin’ headlined the Telegraph website this afternoon. Philippa Space is alive and well. David Cameron has said that the New Year’s Honours List is geared towards his Big Society idea. I wouldn’t have thought Ronnie Corbett had much to do with anything big, although Professor Andre Konstantin Geim, Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, is definitely about a Very Big Universe. Perhaps Professor Mark Brian Pepys got a gong for services to Biomedicine, probably on the basis of making society even bigger than it is already. I don’t know to be honest: it just looked like the usual list of time-servers and national treasures to me.

I didn’t get many predictions wrong in 2011, but the Sterling/Euro exchange rate was one of them. It is 0.02 cents away from being back to 1.20 euros to the Pound tonight, but I thought it would be 1.30 at least by now. Still, at least it’s going in the right direction at last – and obeying a real market…as opposed to one responding to the ECB secretly slinging billions at it every week. I have an uneasy feeling that there will be a 3-6 month window for we Brits to exchange such Pounds we need to; for after that, I fear we too will begin going down….followed by the Dollar later in the year. One can only pray that, at some point, the Chinese float the Yuan, because I for one will be buying it, recession or not.

2011 was far from all bad: the progressives seemed to be in general disorganised retreat, some entertaining young, free-thinking columnists made an appearance, Murdoch was stopped in his slimy tracks, the EU began to fall apart, Gadaffi was slaughtered, and some early signs that the bankers won’t get away with it entirely were evident. But Hackgate has started to be divisive along political lines, the Americans left yet another country in disarray after becoming bored with cops and robbers, and both Camerlot and the Ed Miller Band remained utterly bereft of common sense, creativity or wit. The only truly enjoyable part of politics this year has been watching Ed Balls, Nick Clegg and Nicolas Sarkozy suffering a degree of discomfiture. The worst bit was realising that, very probably, Dave will stay in position, largely because there simply isn’t anyone else. The same sad truth applies to Obama, Netanyahu, and the unspeakably ghastly Julia Gillard.

Tonight here in the wet and cloudy Alps, we have fireworks. In Sydney eight hours ago, they spent £4m on fireworks. There is only so much staring at the sky and going ‘oooo’ that I can bear: I lost most of my interest in fireworks after the age of twelve, and then had my remaining passion for them extinguished once the HSE started to put 40 foot barbed wire round every display, and hiring 8000 stewards for every sparkler.

And talking of putting things out, our fire extinguishers in the chalet here labour under the brand name ‘Spit’. Quite appropriate that, really: on the whole, 2011 was the sort of year you could spit on and douse almost entirely. 2012, I fancy, is going to be considerably more inflammable.

Whatever happens, Happy New Year – and many thanks as ever for your lively debates and loyalty this year.

SCANDAL AT BARCLAYS: WHY AVENDIS LOSERS WILL SUE THE BANK

It has been disclosed this week by Teri Buhl, contributing editor for DealFlow Media, that at least one wealthy investor intends to sue Barclays, alleging that the bank used a less-than-straight Geneva company to sell products it knew to be toxic, in an effort to get the liabilities off its balance sheet. Current CEO Bob Diamond was in charge of the investent division, Barcap, at the time. New internal email evidence has emerged since the last suit was thrown out on a technicality….and the Swiss authorities are keen to prosecute.

Just how good (and honest) a corporate manager is Bob Diamond? This seems to me a reasonable question to ask, given that he’s given evidence to Parliamentary committees, and in quite a few courtrooms, since 2008. And of course, having been for some time the CEO of Barcap, Bob’s ‘success’ catapulted him into the same role in charge of the entire Barclays Group that he holds today.

Following the Barcap takeover of Lehman in 2008, Diamond faced charges from Lehman liquidators that he had been a tad lax on the verite about this and that. The case was dismissed, but later a group of shareholders came back with a similar charge – and that civil case is, I’m told, still outstanding.

During his evidence to Parliament in late 2010, Mr Diamond said he had “never called upon taxpayers’ money” during the credit crunch. This was an incorrect answer, as his Barcap outfit took a bridging loan from the US Fed to complete the Lehman deal. According to one Lehman insider later re-employed by Barcap, “The Barcap guys pitched up to be briefed after the deal, and it was clear they didn’t know the first thing about our desk. Diamond didn’t exactly do what you’d call due diligence”.

It also looks like, at some time during 2005/6, Bob the *anker was a little light on character judgement when it came to forming a partnership between Barcap and Geneva-based investment outfit Avendis.

Avendis Capital was founded  in February 2001 by four partners – Eric de Sangues, Yannis Bilquez, David Benichou and Marco Rigo. In 2002 the company diversified into investment management and launched Avendis Enhanced Fixed Income, described by de Sangues at the time as one of the world’s first ‘correlation hedge funds’. The use of a meaningless four-syllable jargon word there is par for the course with Eric: in 2005 he gave out with this complete bollocks to Hedge Weekly:

“The fund develops relative value strategies in the capital structure of synthetic static CDOs through 2 different approaches both quantitatively driven. Bespoke static Synthetic CDO Tranches are used to build exposure to investment grade credit idiosyncratic risk [and we] trade Standard index tranches of iTraxxIG and DJ CDX IG. The strategy takes advantage of structural dislocations in the correlation market, and increased liquidity of the Index Tranche market, to generate alpha through momentum and mean reverting relative value trades in the capital structure.”

There are a great many former Barcap/Avendis investors who would give a lot for just one chance to exert some structural dislocations closely correlated with Eric’s neck, but anyway Barcap’s Diamond Geezer liked the cut of his jib, and in 2006 together they launched a fund called Golden Key.

Golden Key was a type of structured investment vehicle (SIV-lite) pioneered by Barclays Capital. So Diamond can’t wriggle put of this by citing ‘bad advice’: Avendis was merely the vehicle for something Barcap had already invented. It was based on toxic mortgage crap: and as this was already a known risk, one could debate for hours as to Barclays’ motives for wanting a vehicle not called Barclays to market it. Certainly, shifting several billion in radioactive isotopes off the books is never a bad idea.

The whole thing turned to poo-poo quite quickly.

On 30th November 2007, Yannis Biquez was arrested by the Geneva police and charged with offences involving ‘betraying the confidence and embezzling the money of investors’. He was eventually found guilty of embezzzling $20m in 2008, but just three weeks after his arrest, Barclays Capital lent Avendis $1.5 billion. The reason given to the shareholders was ‘severe liquidity troubles in the financial markets’, something of an understatement as the loan was equal to the value of the entire assets under management by Avendis.

Barclays shareholders may well ask themselves whether this was an entirely wise move in the circumstances. While regulators might wonder if other agendas were in play.

On November 2008, there was more bad news: the authorities issued fines totalling
€100,000 against Avendis Capital SA, for ignoring short-selling rules  issued by the EU. This was also the year that the company’s investors got together to sue Avendis…. because they believed BarCap had used the SIV-lites, via borrowings, to take the toxic securities off Barclays’ accounts. The case alleged that Avendis directors and senior Barcap investors all conspired to carry out this dumping of cancerous junk, but I’ve no idea what gave them that idea. Heard in New York, Barclays hired a smart lawyer to find a hole in it the case was thrown out on a technicality.

Now, however, wealthy Geneva investor Philippe Rebourg of Coficap seems to have hard evidence…in the form of emails from Avendis and Barclays’ executive, Kelsey Burr, detailing their cozy relationship – and an alleged plan to screw investors in the name of saving Barclays’ balance sheet.

Rebourg has told  Teri Buhl that he expects it will take two to three weeks for the judge to rule; and as it happens, there is also a changing of the guards in the Geneva A.G. office: incoming Attorney General Michael Lauber has told local media he is up for the idea of filing claims against bankers for financial crimes.

The key name in a lot of these emails is senior Barclay’s executive Kelsey Burr. Spookily, as soon as Rebourg began  negotiating with Barcap this summer just gone, Kelsey suddenly left the company. Insiders tell me 38 year-old Burr was in fact disappeared, but if there just possibly might be any guilty secrets relating to his severance, then he’d be unlikely to have done so without taking some hush-money.

As Mr Burr was Director of Equities and Funds Structured Markets at Barcap, we can assume that CEO Bob Diamond was more than a passing acquaintance. And his departure from Europe to nearby Chicago happened very soon after this this whole mess blew up, I suppose it’s possible that a degree of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ was involved – I couldn’t possibly comment.

As for the $1.5bn loan, it’s all gone. The latest listing for Avendis Capital simply says ‘out of business’. But of course, along with that lost loan went a lot of extremely smelly balance sheet doo-doo…and banking is all swings and roundabouts in the end, isn’t it?

But where are they now, these fine inventive men of Avendis, in which Barclays CEO Bob Diamond had such great faith?

Eric de Sangues works at No 60 Wall Street, where he is employed by Deutsche Bank.

David Benichou now works as a Senior Portfolio Manager at HSBC in Geneva.

 

 Marco Rigo is Quantitative Analyst at Pictet Asset Management

 

 Yannis Bilquez is in prison near Geneva

Were I a Barclays shareholder, I’d be keeping a close eye on this one.

Related: What was Bob Diamond’s involvement in the 2008 Libor scandal?

Bob Diamond and the Lehman acquisition

EU CRISIS: Spain falling into gory nightmare as Merkel dreams of glory.

Wolfman Schauble has the future in his grasp

Spain’s centre-right government has fessed up (belatedly) to this year’s budget deficit being likely to reach 8% of gdp. The overshoot is €20bn above the target agreed with Brussels, but Deputy PM Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría declared that the government would “face the problem head-on” by raising 9bn euros in taxes, and a further 6bn euros in savings. She didn’t explain how Madrid would fund the 5bn euros gap that would still be left.

Meanwhile, as the year ends and financial sites try to put 2011 into perspective, the euro’s architects remain steadfast in their desire to blame everyone and everything but the fundamental idea itself.

Former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing said in an interview this week that a key factor in the EU debt crisis was the enlargement in 2004, when 10 countries – mostly former East Bloc nations – joined the European Union. “By the time the euro was introduced, the group was no longer homogeneous,” he opined. Hmm. Never knew that Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Greece used to be in the USSR, but then it’s all a long time ago and Val D’Oonican is getting on a bit.

“One thing was evident to me from the beginning,” says Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian prime minister from 1999 to 2008, and one of Europe’s most federalist politicians. “A state can exist without a currency, but a currency cannot exist without a state.” Nice sound-bite, but Guy maintains that the national politicians undermined the unelected Commission. Ah, so that’s where it all went wrong. Er, but if you thought that ‘from the beginning’ Guy, then why did you go ahead old fruit?

Still, these old woodentops need not fear, for the new crop of eurozealots are continuing in the same vein. Berlin clearly means to go into 2012 force-feeding the EU with more of the Brussels bollocks that landed everyone with the euro.

Wolfie Schauble yesterday predicted confidently that that crisis will be over by the end of the year, which served only to attract a storm of ridicule during the day. If the markets were going to believe Schaublespeak, they’d have started to do so by now. But at least the old fox is being notably silent these days on the inevitability of Britain joining the euro; perhaps even he recognise a soundbite too far. On the whole, however, the German finance minister seems to me to be a student of sub-atomic physics, and thus beleefs he can change ze kvantum future by ze triumph of ze vill.

Brunhilde Merkel will tell the German people (in a New Year’s address tomorrow) that more cooperation will one day make the whole of Europe just like Germany, at which point all will be well.

“A common currency can only really be successful if we in Europe cooperate more than we have done,” Geli will say, “Europe is growing together in the crisis. The path to overcoming this remains long and won’t be free from setbacks, but at the end of it, Europe will emerge stronger from the crisis than it went into it.”

Yes, well – jolly good show. Keep right on to the end of the road….and over the cliff. I loff to go a wanderung, alonk ze mountain track, und ass I go I loff to sink mit Italians on my back….val der ree, val der raaaaaarg.

NHS READMISSIONS ‘SCANDAL’: WHY THE ONLY SCANDAL IS HOW THIS ARTICLE APPEARED.

Whichever way you cut it, this piece from the Telegraph does not mark its finest hour

The lead piece in today’s Telegraph is an interrogation by Robert Winnett (above) of the statistics relating to emergency readmissions to hospital following NHS treatment. It’s a disturbing article, suggestive as so often of the braindead nature of New Labour’s target culture being applied to NHS outcomes…the interpretation being that patients have been rushed home too early (a) to make beds free and (b) to make the timeline statistics look better in the Blairite culture.

Having clashed with NHS bureuacracy and discovered its innate dishonesty, nothing in the piece surprises me. But from the outset, there was something  about this article that had The Slog’s bollocks-detectors twitching. Let me try and explain why I’m now certain those instincts were right.

First of all, the interpretation made is somewhat cavalier. Winnett refers to the figures ‘sparking allegations that patients are being “hurried through the system” so the NHS can meet waiting-list targets’. This may well be true in some cases, but the only person sparking allegations right now is Winnett himself; and there are other even more disturbing possibilities – for instance, the treatment had been incompetent, and thus required a readmission. Only ten days ago, a study showed that 3,000 NHS doctors are believed to be incompetent. But the Torygraph didn’t seem interested in that part.

Second, the statistics focus on raw numbers. That makes them sound big, but doesn’t put them into any kind of context. Thus, while the investigation Telegraph analysis is fair in sticking strictly to emergency readmissions, it does simplify the picture, and thereby mislead the reader.

In 2009/10, there were 16.8 million hospital admissions in the UK. The new survey suggests that circa 660,000 people were brought back to hospital last year within 28 days of leaving. That makes the running rate 3% – hardly an epidemic. Most private hospitals would, I suggest, be happy with a 97% in and out rate.

There is (you won’t be surprised) a specialist quango called the HES (Hospital Episode Statistics) to record all this sort of stuff. While some of this can be written off as pinstripes and bighair protecting themselves, the HES site notes that ‘ the entire patient pathway should be taken into consideration. Take a readmission to hospital with an infection following a hip replacement, for example. Was the infection as a direct consequence of the original procedure/interventions, or was it to do with the level of aftercare, or the patient’s own actions?’

All perfectly sensible, I would’ve thought. More to the point, the HES doesn’t even consider ‘rushed treatment’ as a significant factor. But the Torygraph does. Why?

On the surface, one excellent point being made by Robert Winnett, of course, is that the emergency readmission syndrome is on the increase. His piece records: ‘The figures show that 620,054 patients had to be readmitted in 2009-10 – compared to just 348,996 a decade before, a 78% increase’.

But here, the Telegraph is being unpardonably naughty: between 2000 and 2009, there was a 38% increase in admissions per se – which more than halves the real rate of increase.

Not only naughty, but also dim. One of the biggest rises in patient type over that period was demographic in nature – lots more old people. As the NHS stats clearly show, the number involving 60 to 74-year-olds also rose rapidly – by nearly 50%…and 66% for those over 75.

And this is the clincher: 7.8m of all 16.8m admissions were elderly people. Now you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to work out that complications are far more likely to occur among old than young people. Indeed, NHS Information Centre chief executive Tim Straughan says,“This [analysis] gives an insight into the changing demands placed on England’s hospitals, which are getting busier every year. It is clear that the effects of England’s aging population are being felt in secondary care”.

Not only is the Winnett piece thus shown to be largely tosh, it also misses the point it should have made: that aged care is going to have a bigger and bigger impact on our society. But it seems to me that the article had an aim in mind long before a word was written.

Let us consider the political background to this. The Coalition in general and Andrew Lansley in particular are in a serious pickle over the NHS. The policy is, you might say, in need of a brain transplant - and has been from the off. There are two key things to note about the article over and above those mentioned above:

1. The main subhead says that ‘the Daily telegraph can disclose’ the information we’re given. Then in very small type under the main shot, it says ‘The Department of Health has released’ the information. Neither the Guardian nor the Independent, however, seem to know anything about it. To any old head, this means but one thing: the Daily Telegraph has been given the data by friendly hands.

2. Mr Lansley himself seems to have been remarkably available for comment. And his comments in the Winnett column do rather give the game away.

“Having to be readmitted and treated all over again is hugely distressing. These figures show how Labour’s obsession with waiting time targets meant that patients were treated like parts on a production line to be hurried through the system rather than like people who need to be properly cared for,” asserts the Health Secretary.

But all that statement shows is the degree to which Lansley is either unaware of, or skating over, the real reasons – demography and incompetence – why the NHS readmissions rate is escalating: he is a Minister in a corner, distracting attention away from a potentially disastrous future towards a rewritten past.

This ‘scandal’ (an increasingly worn-out word at the Maily Tabloidgraph) is a scandal only in the sense that, yet again, we are served up something here described as ‘news’ that is merely propaganda. This is increasingly apparent in Britain’s predictably biased news media: it is most risibly obvious in the Guardian, frequently apparent at the BBC, and always blindingly obvious at the Daily Mail. And it is the reason why online readers read sites like The Slog.

Only ten days ago, I produced a withering attack on the Guardian and its Feedmeister Lord Mandelson. This site has never and will never have any bias in favour of any political Party, for the simple reason that it wants shot of all of them, and exists to deconstruct bollocks.

But the worst bollocks of all is disguised, planted bollocks – the ultimate hidden agenda. That’s what Robert Winnett has consented to write in this piece, and that’s why I will view all his work from now on with suspicion.

Readers have a right to the news they paid to read, and news media have a duty to supply that news without fear or favour. Until we get away from a situation where major titles are under the thumb of Left wing Trusts or ultra-Rightist expat egomaniacs, discerning news consumers will need to be constantly on their guard. I do not see any reason why they should have to work that hard purely to see through dissembling journalism.

Related: Give mutuality a chance in the NHS

The inverse correlation between Guardian copy and reality (scroll to relevant piece)

Why the media are a hindrance rather than a help in understanding the debt crisis.

Daftest article opening of the week:

‘U.S. stocks rose, restoring the yearly gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as economic data signaled the U.S. is weathering Europe’s debt crisis.’ (Bloomberg this morning)

This is a bit like saying that so far the US is doing a great job weathering Hurricane Edna, on account of it’s just devastated Cuba. A large proportion of business and markets in America barely understand the eurozone crisis, let alone how to weather it.

Why is most of the ecnomic, financial and fiscal journalism around the globe so dire? I do realise that the near-universal use of the letters ‘MSM’ in the blogosphere is meant to convey contempt, but I’m not talking here about agendas: I’m referring to, simply, rank bad and ignorant reporting.

I’m sure many Sloggers see a plot in all this, but I doubt that: my money’s on incompetence. The Wall Street Journal, for example, is a Newscorp-owned paper, but its analysis of stuff is nearly always useful enough to add value. I did note that, two years ago, Reuters had been ‘caught’ editing evidence of peace flotilla arms out of a photo series they did on the Israeli boarding party, but then I’ve always thought the Reuters folks a little odd. And OK, fine, while Bloomberg is an Establishment-owned website, I rarely see bias beyond total acceptance of the economic system – but that’s generic too. And the FT is very europhile.

I’m referring not to ‘slant’, but rather to ill-reasoned drivel. Here is the FT’s take on the same story – spot the stupidity:

‘….the US economy is entering the new year on more solid ground. After fears that job growth had stalled over the summer, businesses have created more than 150,000 positions every month on average since September. New applications for jobless claims ticked up this week, but the four-week moving average of 375,000 is the lowest since mid-2008…’

I don’t really care if it’s the lowest since the Civil War, 375,000 welfare applications = 225,000 more than the jobs being created. The writer went on to assert that the economy ‘would struggle’ to lower the unemployment rate on that basis. Dear oh dear oh dear.

‘High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article’, is the message that always accompanies my performing cut and paste to illuminate an argument: there’s no point in nicking FT stuff, because it’s nearly always 24 hours behind the curve, and wrong. High quality global journalism does indeed require investment, FT. So invest already.

Also today – this time at Reuters – is this piece:

‘China’s factory activity shrank again December as demand at home and abroad slackened, a purchasing managers’ survey showed on Friday, reinforcing the case for pro-growth policies to underpin the world’s second-largest economy. The People’s Bank of China is widely expected to lower its requirement for the amount of cash banks must hold as reserves to let lenders inject more credit into the economy to fight headwinds from Europe’s debt crisis and sluggish U.S. demand….’

Deconstructing this, (a) China has been heading towards slower growth for over a year, an inevitable process in the light of Western recession, (b) purchasing managers’ surveys are an indication of intent, not empirical data, and (c) China Bank has been giving out clues on lower reserve requirements for three weeks.

Critiquing what’s mssing from this, (a) lowering the cash reserves required could very easily restart the property boom, (b) while this is an easy way to get liquidity into an economy, it is inflationary, and (c) no amount of liquidity can reverse a structural lack of demand.

The financial  press has emerged, since roughly 2005, as being every bit as lazy, robotic, unquestioning, ignorant, feeble and ill-informed as the mainstream. Some of the best economic and ‘money’ writing over that period has come from the Telegraph and the Mail – because they at least have some journalists prepared to say, “Hang on a minute…”. I cannot, for example, remember the last time I saw a financial scandal broken in the financial specialist press. Yet Money Mail manages it on an almost weekly basis.

Well, my FT subs renewal comes up in March, and I’m not going to renew it. Without a justification of premium, no paywall system is ever going to work. Financial sites and columnists need to up their game, if they are not to be accused of simply reporting rather than interrogating.

EU DEBT CRISIS: Poppa Piccolino’s cash concertina hits the highnotes.

Mario Montipinnochio

Just so we all have this clear in our minds, Italy this week auctioned almost 20 billion euros of government bonds. Or, put another way, borrowed a further 20 billion euros.

“The fact that they managed to sell this much at the end of the year should be taken as a positive sign,” said Eric Wand, a fixed-income strategist at Lloyds TSB Bank Plc in London. If you say so Eric. However, let’s just follow the provenance a little here, huh? The ECB has lent Italian banks a shedload of money at low rates, and obviously bought a sizeable chunk of these bonds. It also lent other banks further shedloads of money, so they too could buy some of the bonds. Thus the bonds that the banks were strongarmed into buying can now go to paying back those same banks the 53bn euros Italy already has to repay them during Q1 next year, prior to then borrowing a further half trillion euros during 2012 just to keep its mouth above water.

Eric love, all I can say is that you are easily rendered positive about such things.

After today’s sale, the yield on 10-year Italian notes climbed back above 7%. But Mario Monti declared that the worst was over, and his country had “stepped back from the precipice without a railing, moving in a north-westerly direction away from Greece”. He did not say whether it would now proceed over the Alps of economic growth and thence through the valley of fiscal discipline on its way to the Sea of plenty armed with water-wings, but no doubt he will tell us in due course.

However, in a tone contradicting his optimism somewhat, Signor Monti called for the biggest bazooka possible to be put together. Given that Italy just dived back into recession, I know what result my money’s on.

Killing two turds with one stone.

Because you are a complete knobhead

In September of this year, I wrote, ‘why is Quentin Letts such an odious, smartarsed, deeply unloveable berk? I watched his ‘sketch’ about the Labour Conference on the Daily Bollotics yesterday, and it wasn’t so much a sketch as the daubings of an infant destined for a long career in refuse disposal’.

It seems that, rather late as usual, the Left has cottoned on to Quentin’s degree of unfunniness by reading his New Year’s wishes in the Dacre Mail today, and taking it all rather personally. Even better – as a result of a Letts swipe – the Complete Barsteward Lord Prescott has challenged the twerp to a duel of some description. Were 2012 to open with them shooting each other dead, it would be the best start to a new year since the Portuguese discovered Rio de Janeiro (1.1.1502)

Coverage of the events on Sky Sports would be a distinct plus, and get me down to the nearest pub faster than the offer of free Vosne Romanee on draught. And to be frank about this prospect (the fight, not the wine) it is hard not to feel happy about twojags in pursuit of scumbags.

However, hidden down the list of truly execrable ‘humour’ in QL’s column today is this gem: ‘Steve Coogan, comedian — to drop the self-pitying, victim-of-the-Press routine and stick to Alan Partridge’. I wonder how many people of the Left understand just how worried the bespectacled bumhole would be, were the attentions of the Leveson Inquiry to turn to the activities of certain lobby correspondents in the old days before Dacre the Mad put a stop to the hackathon that was once the Daily Mail. I hear that little Quentin used two methods for getting his ‘scoops’ in those days: looking over other people’s shoulders, and digital technology.

Mind you, Quentin Partridge….now there’s a thought.

Garnering the Unaware Majority.

Awareness of our parlous state is the only thing not at record levels.

On the Friday before Christmas, a record 412bn euros were deposited at the EU’s central bank, the ECB. Some of this will be money from cheap loans given to the eurobanks last week by Mario Draghi. Take taxpayer money at 1% Tuesday, deposit with ECB at 3% Friday – result, happiness.

Hollywood released a record 28 film sequels this year.This is because short-term Bourse based capitalism demands returns above any other factor, including new ideas and doing something ground-breaking. It’s also the reason why ‘cross-over’ formats from another medium dominate the London stage.

In the face of record levels of alcohol-related illness and abuse, the prime minister wants a 40-50p minimum price per unit of alcohol in shops and supermarkets. Dave calls it his “big bang” approach to tackle Britain’s boozy culture. The evidence gathered in recent years from 13 EU States shows clearly that while price can affect purchase levels temporarily in some instances, it does not tackle an existing binge problem. There is in fact no correlation at all between absolute price and having a binge culture….as Britain demonstrates by having one of the most expensive price structures already.

However, there is a clue in that the extra tax revenue as a result of this move will go to the NHS. So then, thanks to idiotic fiscal policies, undermined cuts, bank bailouts, and the preference for gesture politics over studying data, Britain is once more doing the wrong thing in relation to alcohol.

This year, a record number of parents lied about postcodes in order to get their children into better State schools. This is a failure of teaching, and ethics. It may even be a failure of teachers to teach ethics to the adults who are now lying because those teachers are crap at teaching.

I could start at 9 am and surf the Web finding such examples until 11.30 pm tonight, but there would still be hundreds more instances to go at afterwards. I found the four above in twelve minutes this morning after waking up. What they respectively demonstrate is that the euro is doomed, but our money continues to be thrown at saving it; neocon capitalism discourages creativity in favour of money; politicians prefer votes to solutions; and their policies have delivered us a morally and materially bankrupt culture in which parents quite rightly want State education to be better – but lying is the only way to get it.

It is a sorry situation, is it not? The Left in particular would have us believe that things are as good as they ever were, but are about to be ruined by cuts. However, their news media are in dire financial straits, and at least part of the reason is that, just below the surface, fewer and fewer Brits believe the warped nonsense they churn out.

The rest of the Establishment continues to want to stay in a bankrupt EU, continues to do nothing substantive about immigration, and continues to follow social, foreign and economic policies that can only be ruinous for Britain. It gives us all phony websites where we can Have Our Say – and thinks that this solves the problem of a populace slowly realising that we need something far more radical than anything they have to offer.

There was a time when the media talked about The Silent Majority. I believe that we now have The Unaware Majority. By this, I do not mean ‘braindead’. That still remains around roughly 25% of the electorate. What I mean is the majority of people who are either apathetic (“It makes no difference”) or still going with the flow (“Something will turn up”). Together, they represent just under 65% of the total electorate, although roughly three-fifths of them don’t vote at all currently.

It isn’t a homogenous group. They variously (and mainly) think themselves to be Tory, Labour or uninterested. A minority sub-group are 45+ and middle to upmarket. A bigger sub-group are 18-30, middle to downmarket, and struggling to find employment. What they have in common is that, if made aware of the possibility of a radical approach to improving Britain’s culture, they would be in favour of it to various degrees.

The missing links at the moment are:
1. For folks to realise this is what they think, and work up the energy to move away from pc-think, the mainstream media and the major Parties.
2. Getting those people to believe that, via the internet – not individual bloggers – they can with organisation and minimal effort stop the mad folks in their tracks.

In the past, that has been an impossible ask. But if they don’t get some hope that people with influence somewhere have a real alternative to more of the same, they will become The Angry Majority. And that road leads to nothing nice at all.

Please, spare me the ‘nice dream John, but it’ll never work’ comments. If that’s what you think, then we’ll never get anywhere….and you’re just as big a *anker as David Cameron.

News Ketchup

“I rob banks because that’s where the money is”. So said a famous American villain; but the world is now so completely upside down, in many cases this is no longer true. I imagine you’d still be OK doing a stick-up at JP Morgan or Rothschild, but very probably Bank of America and Credit Agricole are running on empty, so caveat robber and all that. Imagine breaking into the European Central Bank’s vaults, only to find eight billion Greek five-year bonds.

The ECB, in fact, is the one we should all be worried about. I posted just before Christmas on the subject of the inestimable cost of propping up euro*ankers, and in the meantime Earthbound alien John Redwood has written this piece about whether central banks can go bust. The profoundly daft thing about the whole ‘liquidity provision’ process is that, at the current cost running rate, we could forgive all the ClubMeds their borrowing, and give the eurobanks all their risk monies back.

As it is, we have the central banks hosing the private banks down with our money, and those same banks demanding a zero haircut. Only the start of the First World War matches this for unbridled stupidity.

*       *       *       *       *

How long does it take to bury a Korean leader? It’s a good question. After all, you can’t bury the bugger twice, it wouldn’t be seemly. But it seems the funeral lasted two days. I suspect the reason is that, given the depth of mourning involved, North Korean citizens had to do it in waves, so as to avoid congestion.

“The snow is endlessly falling like tears,” said a soldier shown on state television. “How could the sky not cry when we’ve lost our general who was a great man from the sky?” What a complete load of old bollocks. If you’ve ever spoken to people who lived under Communist regimes, then you’ll know that there is no such thing as ‘brainwashing’: over 90% of citizens keep their emotions to themselves, while seeing the Daliesque drivel they’re force-fed for exactly what it is – deranged nonsense.

North Korea remains the world’s most impoverished nuclear power, and it seems to me that the leadership needs a more commercial outlook. After all, an opportunity like the death of a God doesn’t come along that often, so it is amazing to me that no sponsors for the Kim Il-Sung planting were courted.  Interflora, I suspect, would’ve jumped at the chance. And California Cryogenics Inc must be wondering why they weren’t contacted.

*       *       *       *       *

A third of all Brits claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance have a criminal record. Bizarrely, this information was not revealed to an unsuspecting public by the Dacre Mail: the analysis has emerged from a data sharing agreement between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice.

In turn, 26% of the country’s 4.9 million benefit claimants have been cautioned or convicted in the past decade while many tens of thousands more criminals are also claiming other benefits such as disability allowances. You see, as I’ve often written, we shouldn’t assume that the disabled must be automatically nice: I have it on good authority that 1 in 8 of all safecrackers is entitled to use a disabled parking space. This helps when you’re about the tricky job of breaking into Tesco of an evening.

As always, we are left with the eternal chicken/egg debate: does unemployment make people turn to crime; or does a criminal nature automatically find it easy to burgle houses while defrauding the State?

*       *       *       *       *

Britain faces an “absolute crisis” in social care for elderly people as a result of cuts to services, the director of the country’s leading charity for older people has warned. Michelle Mitchell, the director of Age UK, said increasing numbers of older people with considerable care needs were “getting absolutely no support at all, or poor quality and limited support” as a result of cuts to local authority provision.

Michelle Mitchell – along with the Guardian, where this fiction first appeared – should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. To employ the long-term plight of old people as a propaganda club with which to thwack the Coalition is no different at all in essence to Arab Islamists using children as a human shield against attacks upon their redoubts. For both the Age boss and the Rusbridgers know perfectly well that the crisis in aged care was apparent ten years ago – a decade during which New Labour did zip to alleviate the problem, and then towards the end of its disgraceful record used Alan Johnson as the plausible frontman for a cynical attempt to present £15bn of existing DSS monies look like new expenditure.

It is of course completely unpardonable that banking and fiscal criminals throughout the EU are being showered with cash while our old people die in unpleasant third-rate retirement homes. But to blame this on ‘the cuts’ – when local authorities have great freedom to fire loafers and useless social workers as well as cutting non-essential services – is beyond cynicism. It is in another place, called The Sanctimonious Left. Think Lord Mandelson, and you’ll be on the right track. Think George Orwell, the USSR, and Aleksander Solzhenytsin’s books…and all will become entirely clear.

 

 

 

 

 

Slogger the Grump goes Alpine Ambling

When visiting Geneva Airport, you can walk in and out of Switzerland as many times as you like. This is because a third of the airport is in France, and two thirds in Switzerland. The downside of being a complete idiot, and getting pleasure from going back and forth from one bit to the other, is that you wind up with 28 text messages from Vodafone. Fourteen welcome you to France, and fourteen to Switzerland, and they all give the phone rates for one or the other.

None of them ask WTF you think you’re doing at your age, but that’s automation for you: computers cannot frame their own enquiries. I read somewhere last year that by 2038, computers will be a million times more intelligent than us. If it’s true, then they need to get a move on: we’ve had them now since 1958, and to my mind – while they may have the IQ of Boris Spassky – they also have the autism of Mr Bean, and the sh*t-from-putty discernment of Ed Miliband.

I’ve endured ski resorts in many places around the world,  but the greatest contrast is between French and Swiss venues. Quite how a nation of organisational surrealists wound up sharing some of its borders with a country run by regimented anal retentives is completely beyond me, but it happened. The public khazis in Switzerland have loo-seats with oil-damped closure. The shiny new ski cabines and chair-lifts look like they came from a James Bond set. A little man with a curling sweeper follows every skier as he goes down the piste.

There is no litter in Switzerland. Not wearing a seat-belt gets you the death penalty -  twice if you argue. You can be deported to Devil’s Island for putting your washing out on the wrong day. And in many suburbs there are municipal signs warning ‘Annoying noises prohibited’. Amazingly, that last one is true.

As we all know, it’s not the same in France. But here in our chalet, things are well-run without being antiseptic. The chalet we’re all sharing is probably the most perfectly insulated thing I’ve ever been in. It is so efficient that if you put a heater on for longer than thirty seconds, old people dehydrate.

But the reason I talk about enduring ski resorts is partly to do (outside of supremely perfect Switzerland of course) with the odd people who get elected in ski-resort municipal elections….and partly to do with the sport itself.

The main (downhill) sport I don’t do any more. The reasons are a mixture of age, cowardice, terror, and inconvenience. But the clincher was the inconvenience. Arriving at an overcrowded place, and rushing immediately to overcrowded shops wherein people bark impertinent questions at one, is not my idea my idea of a great start to a holiday. Schlepping skis down icy streets to a telecabine centre while encased in Frankenstein shoes, and sweat trapped behind layers of thermals, is my idea of a contemporary staging of the Twelve Stations of the Cross.

Then there’s the sheer push and crush, and multiplicity of things attached to one’s body. Put the elasticated ski-pass in the machine; feel excruciating pain as, on removal, it flies backwards at high speed into the upper lip. Wonder in panic where the gloves went, realise that they are the thing trapped in the telecabine door while also being clicked onto the ski jacket now surprisingly crushed onto the increasingly numb thigh. Look around in horror as the world turns green, only to realise that those expensive designer goggles previously perched fashionably on the hair got pushed down onto the nose by the elbow of the unfeasibly tall Austrian to one’s left.

These are just a few of the reasons why I long ago decided downhill was not for me. Langlauf is better exercise: there are no chairlifts or crowds, the shoes do not make you look and walk like a tragically disabled person, and the silence as you skim through silent valleys is one of life’s great experiences. But in the infinite quest to add additional neuralgia to the ski-resort experience, the good burghers of such places are hard at work trying to make it possible.

Bus stops are their main concern. Every year they change the location, and every year the siting of the bus stop is more dangerously insane than the last. Icy corners, poubelle centres, road forks – nothing is too silly for a bus stop location: and every one will be deemed useless if it does not produce a line of frantic, hooting French motorists behind the bus of at least 400 metres in length.

Signage is the second priority, although at times there’s a photo-finish required for first place in the Madness Stakes. In Chatel, where we are, there are signs showing the visitor where toilets, pharmacies, bus stops, gift shops, crooked chimneys and cracked roof-slates are, but not one saying where the telecabine station is. The assumption behind this Council decision can only have been that Chatel attracts incontinent, prescription-addicted shopaholic roof inspectors, and these far outweigh all those who might want to indulge an ecentric minority interest like skiing.

The elected officials of Chatel are also very obviously of the view that what this tiny, cramped little corner of the Alps needs is the maximum number of private cars clogging up the limited number of roads from dawn until midnight. You can deduce this not only from the bus-stops-at-traffic-lights location policy, but also by the fact that the bus station is called Place de L’Eglise. Not Place des Autobuses or Place de Transport Publique, but Place de L’Eglise. If there are no buses parked there (and there  usually aren’t) it might just as well be called Place des Folies Municipales for all the difference it’d make to your ability to tell it from a petanque pitch.

Up the mountain itself, the Chatel councillors have surpassed themselves with the dearth of sensible signs, and surfeit of misleading information. At a key point in the pedestrians’ hike stand nine directional guides fashioned in wood. Only three of them refer to anything on the tourist map, and of the remaining six, two point in the same direction to places which – according to the self-same map – are complete strangers, located as they are in opposite directions. Somehow, having set off on a randonnee of two kilometres, we wound up back where we’d started within fifteen minutes. I am a man of many talents, but I can’t walk two kilometres in fifteen minutes any more.

However, some things never change whatever the location or nationality of the resort. By far the most reliable of these is the curious practice of charging roughly three times what any form of food is worth up at the piste cafes. The consistency of the ripoff, I find, tends to give the game away: plate of chips, 10 euros, bowl of undressed salad, 10 euros, pint of beer, 10 euros, charcuterie selection, 10 euros, and not forgetting ice cream, 10 euros.

But the sense of endurance is completely overwhelmed by good company, and I’m lucky in having a maritally adopted family who are fun, easy-going and like a drink. The chalet is fully catered (given the price of food outside, this is an excellent way to cut costs) and the cooks Jana and Robert are pretty damn good. Yesterday, however, Robert broke his collarbone while snowboarding: will Jana be able to manage on her own? We don’t really care. She is so beautiful, we’d happily accept Heinz Spaghetti on hotel toast if she served it up.

ISLAM: Sharia’s law-abiding Christmas hit parade.

Boko Haram: Christmas hit in Nigeria

Most of us feel sorry for those who have to work over Christmas, so spare a thought this morning for all those dedicated Sons of Allah who set off bombs across Nigeria on Christmas day – three targeting churches – including one that killed at least 27 people. Claiming responsibility with a certain pop-eyed glee was the Boko Haram Islamist sect. It aims to impose Sharia law across the country, which it hopes will put a stop to such outrages and return the country to correct Muslim order. Boka Haram did the same thing last year, so it is obviously trying hard to become part of the African Nativity tradition. The organisation has come a long way in show business since that wonderful hit from 1967, A Lighter shard of Nail.

Meanwhile, on Boxing Day in Iraq the Islamic unity that is such a magnetic part of its attraction to followers showed itself to be in fine fettle as seven people were killed by a suicide car bomber outside the interior ministry.  A crisis has erupted between the Shi’ite-led government and Sunni leaders after Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sought the arrest of the Sunni vice president last Monday, and asked parliament to fire his own Sunni deputy.

As this was beginning to look like a trend to the Sunnis, they resorted to the Islamic method of choice when trying to settle a disagreement. It’s just eight days since the Americans left, by the way, so we’re already beginning to grasp with some finality just how important it was for Tony Blair to pervert the UK constitution in order to invade the country all those long years ago. Time for peace envoy Moral Tone to go back in there and sort it all out. (Older readers will also remember Sunni & Shi’ite for their 1965 Number One,  I hate you Babe).

Syria is divided on a slightly different basis: between the Government led by President Bashar al-Assad, and everyone else. Everyone else wants there to be an Arab Spring soon, as things are obviously running late, but Basher is less keen on the idea. The people of Egypt also want the Spring they thought they’d got, but the military is being careful to ensure that it should be springtime for them too. Particularly upset about it being springtime for anyone but them in most of the new improved Arab countries are the Muslim Brotherhood, so I would imagine that, as they seem to be in the majority pretty well everywhere, this time next year there will be lots of rounding ups and arrests of all those Christians and ordinary Muslims who couldn’t give a shoe-bombers toes either way.

It’s a man’s life being an Arab, but at the end of the day what all these warring factions need to do is remember what they have in common: a desire to wipe Israel from the map, and thus end once and for all the Zionist conspiracy to make life miserable for Arabs and peace flotillas everywhere. As the vast majority of Left-leaning Parties in Europe want as near as damn it the same result, in the long run the triumph of Islam is assured. Using the good offices of Recep Erdogan, various Useful Idiots in Brussels, the New York Times, and correct British multiculturalism, pretty much everything from Bradford to Brazzeville will be under Sharia Law by 2030.

It is an exciting prospect for progressives everywhere, especially those feminists with little use for the genital regions, beyond a hankering to be baby machines dressed in black. I look forward to the eternal harmony all this will surely bring.

Christmas over, Labour internal war reignites

Guardian front-page attacks Two Eds’ performance

The season of midwinter Solstice goodwill lasted exactly 24 hours in the Labour Party. This morning – with a banner headline no less – The Mandelsonian aka Guardian was straight back on Ed’s case.

This is quite significant, because first, The Guardian never features bad poll news for Labour; and second, the spin put on the data is openly anti-Ed Miliband: it refers to ‘Labour’s failure to make progress on the all-important financial battleground’ – a clear swipe at Ed Balls hammered home with this sharp thrust of the knife:

‘Asked to put their own voting intentions to one side and consider which team is better able to “manage the economy properly”, 44% of respondents plumped for Cameron and Osborne, as against just 23% who preferred Miliband and the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls. The 21-point gap in the favour of the Conservatives is almost twice as large as the 11-point margin they enjoyed on this count in October’s Guardian/ICM poll. At the end of a year which has seen both a renewed rise in unemployment and an unexpectedly sharp jump in the cost of living, Labour will be especially dismayed by these results.’

But the piece dwells at length on the contrast between Claymation EdM  and Toughguy Dave:

‘By a 10-point margin of 50% to 40%, voters judge [Cameron] to be “good in a crisis”, an attribute which pollsters say is especially valued in political leaders. For Miliband the position is dramatically different, with just 21% deeming him to be good in a crisis against 44% who take the opposite view, a deficit of 23 points.’

In fact, some of the data will worry the Coalition: 3 in 5 respondents believe Cameron “does not understand people like me”, and by a two-to-one margin, voters say Britain will be “a more miserable country” next year. But the tone (and front-page position) of this piece show the hand of Lord Fondlebum. Lines such as ‘The findings come in the wake of reports about Labour’s high command growing restive about its failure to break through on the economy’ are pure Mandy. The ‘reports’ consist of, um, one…in the Guardian last week. No sources or substantition were offered in the piece.

This is the second major offensive launched by the Blairite modernisers. The first was Mandy’s dig at the Ed Miller Band’s awful PMQs performance, the subtext of which was that Ed didn’t seem to have a better solution than Blairism.

Allegedly, the disgraced but as yet unconvicted Peer Manglesum has retired from active politics. But not, it seems, from hyperactive plotting.