Final Days
Jun. 19th, 2008 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksAnd so this morning I took my last 6.35am walk from Charing Cross Station, across the north side of Leicester Square, up Jubilee Way, into Leicester Square, up Wardour Street, across Oxford Street, into Wells Street and left into Mortimer St. As I perambled along I wondered if knowing that you have a terminal illness was a bit like this. I would never see the completion of the demolition of the Swiss Centre; nor would I see what replaced it. I would never see the opening of Princi or Inamo in Wardour Street. The fate of the once Intrepid Fox would remain forever a mystery. After three years of waiting, the cut-through by St Martins-in-the-Fields would never be re-opened for me.
Well, of course, it isn't a bit like dying, unless there's a life after death and you can look down on developments from above. Because in my case, there will be occasional returns to these sites, and I will see what has happened. However, it's strange how infrequent these can turn out to be. There are parts of London that you see every day for years, and then you never see them again for a decade. That's what will happen to me now. I will become familiar with cut-throughs and developments between London Bridge and Old Street. The changes in Petticoat Lane, where I worked for some time in the early 1980s, will once again become apparent. Full circle, full circle.
++++++++++
A year or so ago I wrote about a radio programme that I had heard in which Jon Ronson interviewed a woman who had been fooled by a sociopath and bore his child. I observed that, although the sociopath went to jail, from an evolutionary point of view, it showed that sociopathy worked.
Well, bugger me sideways and call me a turtle, but the New Scientist today has this story:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826614.100?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=top1_head_Bad%20guys%20really%20do%20get%20the%20most%20girls
So, it's official.
+++++++
This morning on Wake Up To Money, we had David Bennett, Chief Executive of the Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers, (and I hope that Google Search DOES send them here) who was talking about inflation. You can probably listen to the podcast to get the exact quote, but the gist of it was that old chestnut of inflation "benefiting no-one".
I sometimes wonder whether it's plain stupidity or a conspiracy of silence, but anyone who thinks that high levels of inflation benefit no-one really ought to go back to O-level economics, or whatever it is they teach now. There are millions of people in their seventies living today (including my mother) who benefited enormously from the inflation levels of the 1970s and the smaller spurt in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Inflation is a neat means of redistributing wealth, when directly taking it from one group and giving it to another would cause a social revolution. I'm not saying that inflation is inherently good. I just wish people in the world of finance would either admit or at least understand that it is not inherently bad for everyone. Providing that levels of production remain what they would have been otherwise, inflation is merely a roughshod means of wealth redistribution. All analysts likely to appear on Wake Up To Money in the next few months, please take note. It isn't that complicated.
______________
Well, of course, it isn't a bit like dying, unless there's a life after death and you can look down on developments from above. Because in my case, there will be occasional returns to these sites, and I will see what has happened. However, it's strange how infrequent these can turn out to be. There are parts of London that you see every day for years, and then you never see them again for a decade. That's what will happen to me now. I will become familiar with cut-throughs and developments between London Bridge and Old Street. The changes in Petticoat Lane, where I worked for some time in the early 1980s, will once again become apparent. Full circle, full circle.
++++++++++
A year or so ago I wrote about a radio programme that I had heard in which Jon Ronson interviewed a woman who had been fooled by a sociopath and bore his child. I observed that, although the sociopath went to jail, from an evolutionary point of view, it showed that sociopathy worked.
Well, bugger me sideways and call me a turtle, but the New Scientist today has this story:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826614.100?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=top1_head_Bad%20guys%20really%20do%20get%20the%20most%20girls
NICE guys knew it, now two studies have confirmed it: bad boys get the most girls. The finding may help explain why a nasty suite of antisocial personality traits known as the "dark triad" persists in the human population, despite their potentially grave cultural costs.
David Schmitt of Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, presented preliminary results at the same meeting from a survey of more than 35,000 people in 57 countries. He found a similar link between the dark triad and reproductive success in men. "It is universal across cultures for high dark triad scorers to be more active in short-term mating," Schmitt says. "They are more likely to try and poach other people's partners for a brief affair."
So, it's official.
+++++++
This morning on Wake Up To Money, we had David Bennett, Chief Executive of the Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers, (and I hope that Google Search DOES send them here) who was talking about inflation. You can probably listen to the podcast to get the exact quote, but the gist of it was that old chestnut of inflation "benefiting no-one".
I sometimes wonder whether it's plain stupidity or a conspiracy of silence, but anyone who thinks that high levels of inflation benefit no-one really ought to go back to O-level economics, or whatever it is they teach now. There are millions of people in their seventies living today (including my mother) who benefited enormously from the inflation levels of the 1970s and the smaller spurt in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Inflation is a neat means of redistributing wealth, when directly taking it from one group and giving it to another would cause a social revolution. I'm not saying that inflation is inherently good. I just wish people in the world of finance would either admit or at least understand that it is not inherently bad for everyone. Providing that levels of production remain what they would have been otherwise, inflation is merely a roughshod means of wealth redistribution. All analysts likely to appear on Wake Up To Money in the next few months, please take note. It isn't that complicated.
______________
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Visiting places frequently - then never
Date: 2008-06-19 02:43 pm (UTC)Somewhat similar is the people you get to know quite well through working for the same employer. All too often you never see again once one or other of you moves on - or in my case retires.
Somerset - worked there 10 years but only in touch with one former colleague.
Daventry College - also worked there 10 years, now only in touch with two former colleagues.
Guilsborough - 4 years but fell out of touch within weeks. Oh dear!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 03:44 pm (UTC)"Inflation is a means of redistributing wealth."
a) Wealth has to be perpetually created. That is not a given.
b) A generation has to acquire wealth. Stop working. Live off savings/investments. Whilst the creps live off their wealth, inflation must gobble up their money just afore they croak. Again, not a given.
c) The following generation has to be guaranteed jobs. Not a given.
d) "Stuff" needs to be created and sufficiently desirable to make the following generation work hard and to beg, borrow or steal money from the previous generation. Not a... let's say, "Ain't necessarily so."
See what I'm getting at?
The Arnhem of inflations.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 03:59 pm (UTC)Why am I talking to myself?
Batten down the bullion and pass the ammo!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 04:05 pm (UTC)Is there anybody else in that bunker?
Yes, please. I'll take M107 .50s. I'm a sniper man, myself.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 04:13 pm (UTC)I was rather suspicious of some of the types at those poker games. Young Birks excepted.
It wasn't cocked and the live chamber was empty so don't go ape, PJ.
Anyway, I sold it afore leaving London so Mr Plod can go shag himself.
Young Birks?
Date: 2008-06-19 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 10:32 am (UTC)I think that I cover most of your points here with my phrase "Providing that levels of production remain what they would have been otherwise". But, although your points are tangential to my argument, I don't necessarily disagree with you. If production nosedives, then wealth falls and so does the value of money. Indeed, this was one of the simple arguments that derails the monetarist line that to stop inflation you just need to stop printing money. They tried this in Zimbabwe and the sole impact was to increase the life expectancy of notes.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 10:39 am (UTC)I must remember not to speed-read Peter's blog.
Agendas. Agendas. Everyone has their agenda to the exclusion of all others.
Shamefacedly yours etc. etc. xxx
Inflation
Date: 2008-06-19 03:51 pm (UTC)Either way, it's horrible, and distinctly more meaningful than "Wake up to money!"
Inflation is another one of those intractable concepts in which economic theory abounds, isn't it? Retail, consumer, factory gate, tin-foil hats from Mars ... I mean, what possible application does it have to my personal circumstances?
The only reasonable filter for consideration of inflation seems to me to be "predictability."
If you're in early Weimar Germany, or in the current Zimbabwe, then you obviously have a problem with predictability.
If, on the other hand, you are in the middle classes in China, then you can toddle along quite nicely with an inflation rate that seems to vary between around 8% and 10%.
It's interesting to me that the financial hoo-hahs of England are quite happy to pay lip-service to the idea that "industry needs a long term stable fiscal policy in order to plan ahead" without conceding that the actual level of inflation is totally irrelevant to such planning -- provided that it is predictable.
Two per cent or four per cent or six per cent? Who cares? Unless, of course, you've done your bollocks on a bet on Libor futures, in which case you're not looking at the malign consequences of inflation. You're looking at being a prat with a dud bet.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 06:30 pm (UTC)I really must pop over to Canary Wharf some time - it's about four years since I worked there. I wonder what's changed there?
free lide sir?
Date: 2008-06-22 10:30 am (UTC)For me the big change when I returned to central London after nigh-on seen years, it was Pret a Manger. I then saw the growth of coffee culture first-and, from 1996 on.
I was in Canary Wharf not too long ago and the main change that I noticed was that there was a greater number of shops and restaurants and that the place no longer completely dies at weekends. It's certainly a more pleasant place to work than the City, provided your travelling isn't too awful.
PJ