The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has dismissed the £250,000-a-year he earns from a controversial second job as “chicken feed”. The Guardian.
I don’t know what Boris feeds his chickens but at the risk of stating the obvious I don’t know anyone who thinks £250,000 is chicken feed – it’d pay off my mortgage twice over and leave plenty to spare. What planet is Boris living on? Still shows the Tories true colours – they’ve no idea how most of us have to live.
If the challenge on the left is to combat a language of cuts, lower incomes and belt tightening with an agenda that can deliver growth in living standards, stable economic growth, low unemployment and a strong social safety net – then perhaps we need to start with the radical left wing governments that achieved all four against a backdrop of significant government debt -
- you know, the ones led by Harold Macmillan and Dwight Eisenhower. Hopisen, A Blog from The Back Room.
For those who don’t know Macmillan was a Tory and Eisenhower a Republican – and I can see where Hopisen’s coming from, but then again you’d have to go back to the birth of Trade Unions to find a UK government more right-wing than the Thatcher Governments.
Perhaps really we’re hankering for return of Keynesian economics. I certainly don’t see how we can carry on with neo-liberal economics however neither do I see how we can go back to those halcyon days of growth – it’s time to realise that we’re dealing with a finite world one in which there are limits: consumption can’t continually increase.
Every time I keep coming back to the Green New Deal it seems the only sensible way out.
Now if only this was my Union, because we certainly need to turn things around where I work.
Hat Tip: Lansbury’s Lido.
Andy Coulson, the Conservative party’s communications chief, will next week be questioned by MPs about phone-hacking by News of the World journalists during his time as editor of the paper. Andrew Sparrow, The Guardian.
I’ll answer a question that neither MPs nor journalists seem to be asking. What does it say about the Conservative Party when they employ a man such as Coulson? Tabloid journalism is the lowest of the low full of sensationalism, gossip, half-truths, outright lies and deceit – I tell you what it says about the Conservatives don’t trust them for a minute.
I had such high hopes after the landslide election of 1997, now 12-years later if feels like we’ve wasted almost every one of those years – perhaps we should have read this quote from 1949.
The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Friedrich A. Hayek.
Maybe then we wouldn’t have used all those focus groups and spent all that time sucking up to the likes of Rupert Murdoch.
Hat Tip: Duncan’s Economic Blog.
Whilst the rest of us suffer, the skewed corrupt and morally bankrupt system that is international banking has allowed Goldman Sachs to make profits of $3.44bn.
Goldman dedicated 49% of its revenue to paying its staff – amounting to a compensation fund of $6.65bn, or $226,000 for each of its 29,200 staff. If the bank’s bottom line prospers to the same degree for the rest of the year, employees could end up with average annual pay of more than $900,000 – an increase of nearly 150% on last year’s figure of $363,000. Andrew Clark, The Guardian.
And as Clark points out Goldman was heavily involved in the collapse of AIG and many believe Goldman owes its survival to friends it had in government.
In the case of A.I.G., the virus exploded from a freewheeling little 377-person unit in London, and flourished in a climate of opulent pay, lax oversight and blind faith in financial risk models. It nearly decimated one of the world’s most admired companies, a seemingly sturdy insurer with a trillion-dollar balance sheet, 116,000 employees and operations in 130 countries. Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times.
Although it was not widely known, Goldman, a Wall Street stalwart that had seemed immune to its rivals’ woes, was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner, according to six people close to the insurer who requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. A collapse of the insurer threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side, several of these people said. Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times.
As the crisis unfolded
The nation’s most powerful regulators and bankers huddled in the Lower Manhattan fortress that is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, desperately trying to stave off disaster.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., pondered the collapse of one of America’s oldest investment banks, Lehman Brothers, a more dangerous threat emerged: American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, was teetering. A.I.G. needed billions of dollars to right itself and had suddenly begged for help.
One of the Wall Street chief executives participating in the meeting was Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson’s former firm. Mr. Blankfein had particular reason for concern. Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times.
What was the outcome of this and other meetings?
Decisions made during the final months of the Bush administration created an environment in which the most politically connected investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, not only flourished, but saw their competitors laid waste, with firms like Lehman in bankruptcy, and others, like Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, forced to merge in desperate hope of surviving. Thomas B. Edsall, The Huffington Post.
I won’t even mention the billions they took from the American Taxpayer, but surely it’s no surprise Goldman’s posting record profits when its competition has been wiped out.
I leave the last word to Stephen Lerner, director of the Service Employees International Union.
“They have some kind of moral and economic amnesia. After we bail them out with tens of billions in taxpayers’ funds, they go back to exactly the same practices as before.” The Guardian.
Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles has accused the BBC of making dull programmes because it does not want to upset listeners.
He says that radio shows are “so formulaic [that] anyone different, like me or Jonathan (Ross), stands out”. BBC.
Moyles is so full of himself, the real reason he’s different is because he’s the biggest sexist homophobic prick they let broadcast on BBC Radio – I suggest he listens to BBC 6’s Shaun Keaveny a far superior breakfast show which unlike Moyles isn’t dull at all.
“The government’s disjointed approach is deterring the private sector investment needed to get our energy system up to scratch, bolster security and cut emissions,” said CBI deputy director general John Cridland.
“While we have generous subsidies for wind power, we urgently need the national planning statements needed to build new nuclear plants.
“If we carry on like this we will end up putting too many of our energy eggs in one basket.” BBC.
However, if the CBI is right and we’re too wind focused then the alternatives are surely be solar and wave power, not toxic nuclear power or the fantasy that is coal and carbon capture. We have to move away from burying our waste in holes in the ground, because these dumps will come back to haunt as when they inevitably start to leak. Unsurprisingly the CBI is in thrall to the big business’ of coal and nuclear power – too coal and nuclear focused.
Clarisse d’Arcimoles unearthed some old family photos and has restaged them. The results seem to ask us questions about our own relationships and mortality.
Hat Tip: BBC.
Louise Baltesz and Daughter
A family who tried to lure back a lost dog by leaving a trail of their urine on streets near their home have been criticised by the city council.
The Baltesz family, of Clifton, Bristol, lost their 10-year-old pet labrador Simon on the night of 4 July.
When Simon failed to return, the family chose their unorthodox method.
Louise Baltesz, 43, said the whole family had been “chipping in” to help lay down the scent trail.
She said she was aware of criticism aimed at the family, but they were willing to do anything to get Simon back.
She said: “I do feel mad doing it, but I’m driven to desperate measures”.
“Apparently it’s quite a normal way of doing it. You just put a little bit in a bottle and then top it up with water”.
“You put some smelly food down, they come towards the food and then catch the scent [of the urine]. You only have to do it once. We’ve left two trails.”
The family have put up “missing” posters and have received several possible sightings of Simon, who is described as “not very approachable” and naturally timid.
But a vet at a nearby practice was less than optimistic the plan would succeed.
Ian Wills, from the nearby Zetland Veterinary Hospital in Bristol, said: “I think it’s an interesting idea but I would be pleasantly surprised if it worked”.
“When a dog wanders off from home they will generally wander back when they have had enough.”
“If the dog was going to follow the owner’s scent it would be from something they wore, like a jumper. Unless they have an incontinence problem.” BBC.
Unsurprisingly we can think up a whole load of jokes like the Mirror’s headline Wee Want Him Back or I can just imagine the scene in any town centre on a Friday or Saturday night “Officer I’m not peeing in the street I’m laying a scent trail to lure my dog back home” – OK I’m no comic so I’ll quit while I’m ahead.