![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I went for a walk into Greenwich on Saturday. As I said on Facebook, I was saddened to see a version of the three-card-trick being played in Greenwich Park. I was more saddened that there was not a single policeman "on the ground" in all of Greenwich. This, after all, is perhaps one of the busiest parts of London for a concentration of tourists at the weekend. For there to be no police presence at all is little short of a disgrace -- if only to give people directions. I presume that they were all on a detail to guard the Pope.
On my way back I used my Google Maps on the Dell Streak to full advantage, wandering down side streets that went I knew not where. It's incredible how there are some extremely poor council flats (think, nearly all first-generation immigrants, because the second-generation immigrants have moved upmarket) not 300 yards from the centre of Greenwich.
After crossing the railway to the Blackheath side of the tracks I went on another little diversion, off Point Hill, and came across a path between two houses that led up to Blackheath via an unmapped route (unmapped on Google Maps, that is). Very pleasant, and a clear sign that I was in an upmarket area by a predominance of signs attached to lampposts: "Maximum of four dogs per walker". In Wansted Flats one would take this to mean no more than four pit-bull terriers per British National Party supporter, but here it was clearly a sign that people are rich enough to pay other people to walk their dogs.
+++++++
I slept for 10 hours last night, albeit with a couple of interruptions, and, for the first time in months, woke up feeling awake. So this is what it feels like, I thought. I suspect that I have spent much of this year in some kind of sleep-deprived muzzy haze -- to such an extent that I simply took it as the natural way of being.
++++++
I was thinking of applying to be a speechwriter for any of the current crop of politicians. To this end, I have been researching the speeches given at the time of the Salem witch trials, since these would appear to be the most useful when referring to bond traders and bankers.
I mean, there really has been some rich stuff flying around. Clegg says that using an accountant to reduce your tax bill is "unethical". God, I don't want to pay too little tax, but I would quite like to pay the right amount of tax, TYVM. It's not my fault the tax system is so hideously complicated that I need an accountant to work out what the correct amount of tax is.
And then Vince Cable seems to go, well, mad. "The markets are often irrational, or rigged", he said, but in a fashion that implied that the second word was synonymous with the first, not an alternative. Hell, of course markets are irrational. Anyone still believing in perfect markets would have been carted off to the LTCM Funny Farm years ago. But to call them "rigged" in the same sentence -- something which happens far more rarely -- is misleading at best and downright inflammatory at worst.
But, hell, inflammatory is what it's all about, isn't it? All that money which people borrowed for 10 years in times of easy credit -- all of that was the fault of some nameless banker, who grabbed people in off the street and forced them to borrow thousands of pounds. "But they didn't tell us that it would have to be repaid!!!!" people scream. Well, er, duh. And so they go in search of scapegoats.
The banks are no angels in this. They are mendacious cunts who even now are trying to persuade me how beneficial it would be to (a) take out a new bank account that is spectacularly bad value and (b) have a chat with a "mortgage adviser" who would doubtless try to arrange a switch for me to an unsuitable product that would pocket him a few hundred quid in commission. But the point here is that I know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If something pays a seller commission, then that commission (and more besides) is coming out of my pocket. Should people be let off because they were "stupid" or, in current parlance, "unsophisticated"? If the rules as they existed at the time were broken then, yes. But if both parties were operating within the rules as they existed at the time, well, I would say, that's a good lesson in life that you learnt there, son.
++++++++
The Radio 4 programme on "The Brown Years", an illustration of the unseemly haste with which histories are put together these days, covered the early months of the 2007-10 administration, leading up to the disastrous sequence of events whereby election fever mounted, and then Labour bottled it. The justification for bottling it -- that the focus groups drifted rapidly away as a result of Osborne's Inheritance Tax promise (it was a million quid, btw....) ---- seems a fairly pathetic excuse that is generally accepted, even by the "impartial" commentator. The point being made was that it was right to abandon the election plans because it was no longer certain that Brown would win. The relevant point (that none of the participants addressed) was that it didn't matter whether he would be certain to win; all that mattered was that going in October 2007 was just about the best chance Brown would ever have.
But that is by the by. What was most interesting was the revelation that Ed Balls was the man behind the "blame game" that followed within about 15 minutes of the announcement that there would be no Autumn 2007 election. As a result of this a couple of Brown's old hatchet men at the Treasury, plus Ed Milliband, became the "fall guys" for the fiasco of raised and then dashed expectations.
Balls denies that he was the guilty party, but I'm afraid that the words of Mandy Rice-Davies travel through history here. "He would, wouldn't he".
__________
On my way back I used my Google Maps on the Dell Streak to full advantage, wandering down side streets that went I knew not where. It's incredible how there are some extremely poor council flats (think, nearly all first-generation immigrants, because the second-generation immigrants have moved upmarket) not 300 yards from the centre of Greenwich.
After crossing the railway to the Blackheath side of the tracks I went on another little diversion, off Point Hill, and came across a path between two houses that led up to Blackheath via an unmapped route (unmapped on Google Maps, that is). Very pleasant, and a clear sign that I was in an upmarket area by a predominance of signs attached to lampposts: "Maximum of four dogs per walker". In Wansted Flats one would take this to mean no more than four pit-bull terriers per British National Party supporter, but here it was clearly a sign that people are rich enough to pay other people to walk their dogs.
+++++++
I slept for 10 hours last night, albeit with a couple of interruptions, and, for the first time in months, woke up feeling awake. So this is what it feels like, I thought. I suspect that I have spent much of this year in some kind of sleep-deprived muzzy haze -- to such an extent that I simply took it as the natural way of being.
++++++
I was thinking of applying to be a speechwriter for any of the current crop of politicians. To this end, I have been researching the speeches given at the time of the Salem witch trials, since these would appear to be the most useful when referring to bond traders and bankers.
I mean, there really has been some rich stuff flying around. Clegg says that using an accountant to reduce your tax bill is "unethical". God, I don't want to pay too little tax, but I would quite like to pay the right amount of tax, TYVM. It's not my fault the tax system is so hideously complicated that I need an accountant to work out what the correct amount of tax is.
And then Vince Cable seems to go, well, mad. "The markets are often irrational, or rigged", he said, but in a fashion that implied that the second word was synonymous with the first, not an alternative. Hell, of course markets are irrational. Anyone still believing in perfect markets would have been carted off to the LTCM Funny Farm years ago. But to call them "rigged" in the same sentence -- something which happens far more rarely -- is misleading at best and downright inflammatory at worst.
But, hell, inflammatory is what it's all about, isn't it? All that money which people borrowed for 10 years in times of easy credit -- all of that was the fault of some nameless banker, who grabbed people in off the street and forced them to borrow thousands of pounds. "But they didn't tell us that it would have to be repaid!!!!" people scream. Well, er, duh. And so they go in search of scapegoats.
The banks are no angels in this. They are mendacious cunts who even now are trying to persuade me how beneficial it would be to (a) take out a new bank account that is spectacularly bad value and (b) have a chat with a "mortgage adviser" who would doubtless try to arrange a switch for me to an unsuitable product that would pocket him a few hundred quid in commission. But the point here is that I know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If something pays a seller commission, then that commission (and more besides) is coming out of my pocket. Should people be let off because they were "stupid" or, in current parlance, "unsophisticated"? If the rules as they existed at the time were broken then, yes. But if both parties were operating within the rules as they existed at the time, well, I would say, that's a good lesson in life that you learnt there, son.
++++++++
The Radio 4 programme on "The Brown Years", an illustration of the unseemly haste with which histories are put together these days, covered the early months of the 2007-10 administration, leading up to the disastrous sequence of events whereby election fever mounted, and then Labour bottled it. The justification for bottling it -- that the focus groups drifted rapidly away as a result of Osborne's Inheritance Tax promise (it was a million quid, btw....) ---- seems a fairly pathetic excuse that is generally accepted, even by the "impartial" commentator. The point being made was that it was right to abandon the election plans because it was no longer certain that Brown would win. The relevant point (that none of the participants addressed) was that it didn't matter whether he would be certain to win; all that mattered was that going in October 2007 was just about the best chance Brown would ever have.
But that is by the by. What was most interesting was the revelation that Ed Balls was the man behind the "blame game" that followed within about 15 minutes of the announcement that there would be no Autumn 2007 election. As a result of this a couple of Brown's old hatchet men at the Treasury, plus Ed Milliband, became the "fall guys" for the fiasco of raised and then dashed expectations.
Balls denies that he was the guilty party, but I'm afraid that the words of Mandy Rice-Davies travel through history here. "He would, wouldn't he".
__________
