Strange Days
Oct. 19th, 2005 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksAn odd day yesterday. I had a roundtable in the city at lunch, talking about finite reinsurance (you don't want to know, trust me), with the Centre For The Study of Financial Innovation.
It was all resoundingly depressing. If these are the cream of the crop at thinking "out of the box" or whatever the catchphrase is now, then I despair. There was one accountant who claimed that there was no point in having a longer accounting period for long-term insurance business because "Lloyd's had a three-year accounting period, and that didn't solve the problem". This is a bit like saying that there is no point taking 50 samples instead of one, because neither is going to be absolutely accurate, so you might as well take the one.
Another spark of genius appeared when someone objected to tax on insurance premiums on the grounds that insurance helped the economy work and was socially desirable -- therefore it shouldn't be taxed. Thankfully someone else drily pointed out that on those grounds you should oppose income tax, capital gains tax and virtually all taxes apart from those on tobacco and drink.
Nearly everyone was stuck in their own niche, unable to see beyond the interests of their own profession. Neither the accountants, bankers, regulators, insurers or (worst of all) civil servants came out of it with any credit. Of the 50 or so people there, I reckon four of them could be described as "thinkers". However, since 40 of them were, as is the way of these things, resoundingly silent throughout, who can tell?
The Armourers' and Braziers' Hall on Coleman Street is interesting. There are a few of these old halls dotted around the city, and they are the one thing that Canary Wharf can't compete on -- heritage. Where else could you discuss modern finance, surrounded by about 30 sets of mediaeval armour?
++++
I then popped home to catch an hour or so's kip before heading back to London to play in a quiz with Jo Haslam. I rose at about 5pm and played a bit on Empire - racking up the rake, making a few dollars, and then went over to Ultimate. I planned to play for about half an hour there, but my first hand was so hilarious, I quit. It went something like this:
$2-$4 (Kill) 6 people at the table.
"We have a kill game"
I missed this, because I was still finishing off my games on Empire
Birks: BB, posts $2
Birks dealt Qs Qd
Fold, fold, check from the $4 poster, call from a short stack, call, fold fold, raise ($6) from me. Call from shortstacked big blind. call from poster, call from the two other players still in.
BTW, I still hadn't noticed that this was a kill game
Flop: Qh 7d 2s
Bet from me, fold from the poster, raise all in from first short stack, call from second short stack, fold, back to me. Reraise. Call all in from second short stack.
Turn rag, river deuce.
Birks wins $60 with full house, Queens over deuces. Two players busted do not rebuy. Four players remain. Birks declines to post small blind. Leaves. Game breaks.
Cool, huh? Pokertracker informs me that my win rate was 622.50 big bets per hour. Now, if we extrapolate that into $15-$30, multi-tabling for 20 hours a week...
+++++
The quiz was good fun. It's many moons since I have seen London at night. Attendees included Alex The Gent Goldie, whom I haven't seen for donks. He's proprietary betting and researching for Tony Bloom at the moment. Jennifer Mason and boyfriend John turned up, two other people I haven't seen for ages. Also Martin Farragher, Jo herself, James The Buck Gilgunn, Narinder and Andrew, all of whom were at Jo's party.
We came second out of 16 teams -- not a bad performance. Gilgunn excelled himself by being certain on only two answers, and he got both of them wrong. The question master managed to get a question wrong. We guessed the right question, gave the right answer, and then had the whole question voided when someone else pointed out to the question master that "how many words in the English language end in "nt"?" was not a very sensible question. We, of course, answered the question as if it were "mt". No good for us.
Martin did not seem too bereft that earlier in the day he had killed Johnny Haines. He works for Sky Sports and repeated an AP release claiming that he had died in a car crash. Trouble was, he hadn't, although he did later that night.
Fortunately we did not come second by a single point -- if we had I would have been more aggrieved that I did not follow my gut instinct on the colour of the Clangers' moon. Alex The Gent said yellow and, since he was younger than me and probably has a clearer memory of watching it, I went with that, despite my own feeling that the answer was blue. And, indeed, blue was the colour, although football wasn't the game.
It was all resoundingly depressing. If these are the cream of the crop at thinking "out of the box" or whatever the catchphrase is now, then I despair. There was one accountant who claimed that there was no point in having a longer accounting period for long-term insurance business because "Lloyd's had a three-year accounting period, and that didn't solve the problem". This is a bit like saying that there is no point taking 50 samples instead of one, because neither is going to be absolutely accurate, so you might as well take the one.
Another spark of genius appeared when someone objected to tax on insurance premiums on the grounds that insurance helped the economy work and was socially desirable -- therefore it shouldn't be taxed. Thankfully someone else drily pointed out that on those grounds you should oppose income tax, capital gains tax and virtually all taxes apart from those on tobacco and drink.
Nearly everyone was stuck in their own niche, unable to see beyond the interests of their own profession. Neither the accountants, bankers, regulators, insurers or (worst of all) civil servants came out of it with any credit. Of the 50 or so people there, I reckon four of them could be described as "thinkers". However, since 40 of them were, as is the way of these things, resoundingly silent throughout, who can tell?
The Armourers' and Braziers' Hall on Coleman Street is interesting. There are a few of these old halls dotted around the city, and they are the one thing that Canary Wharf can't compete on -- heritage. Where else could you discuss modern finance, surrounded by about 30 sets of mediaeval armour?
++++
I then popped home to catch an hour or so's kip before heading back to London to play in a quiz with Jo Haslam. I rose at about 5pm and played a bit on Empire - racking up the rake, making a few dollars, and then went over to Ultimate. I planned to play for about half an hour there, but my first hand was so hilarious, I quit. It went something like this:
$2-$4 (Kill) 6 people at the table.
"We have a kill game"
I missed this, because I was still finishing off my games on Empire
Birks: BB, posts $2
Birks dealt Qs Qd
Fold, fold, check from the $4 poster, call from a short stack, call, fold fold, raise ($6) from me. Call from shortstacked big blind. call from poster, call from the two other players still in.
BTW, I still hadn't noticed that this was a kill game
Flop: Qh 7d 2s
Bet from me, fold from the poster, raise all in from first short stack, call from second short stack, fold, back to me. Reraise. Call all in from second short stack.
Turn rag, river deuce.
Birks wins $60 with full house, Queens over deuces. Two players busted do not rebuy. Four players remain. Birks declines to post small blind. Leaves. Game breaks.
Cool, huh? Pokertracker informs me that my win rate was 622.50 big bets per hour. Now, if we extrapolate that into $15-$30, multi-tabling for 20 hours a week...
+++++
The quiz was good fun. It's many moons since I have seen London at night. Attendees included Alex The Gent Goldie, whom I haven't seen for donks. He's proprietary betting and researching for Tony Bloom at the moment. Jennifer Mason and boyfriend John turned up, two other people I haven't seen for ages. Also Martin Farragher, Jo herself, James The Buck Gilgunn, Narinder and Andrew, all of whom were at Jo's party.
We came second out of 16 teams -- not a bad performance. Gilgunn excelled himself by being certain on only two answers, and he got both of them wrong. The question master managed to get a question wrong. We guessed the right question, gave the right answer, and then had the whole question voided when someone else pointed out to the question master that "how many words in the English language end in "nt"?" was not a very sensible question. We, of course, answered the question as if it were "mt". No good for us.
Martin did not seem too bereft that earlier in the day he had killed Johnny Haines. He works for Sky Sports and repeated an AP release claiming that he had died in a car crash. Trouble was, he hadn't, although he did later that night.
Fortunately we did not come second by a single point -- if we had I would have been more aggrieved that I did not follow my gut instinct on the colour of the Clangers' moon. Alex The Gent said yellow and, since he was younger than me and probably has a clearer memory of watching it, I went with that, despite my own feeling that the answer was blue. And, indeed, blue was the colour, although football wasn't the game.
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Tax sanity
Date: 2005-10-19 07:19 pm (UTC)I do, I do. Glad to see the nudity of the emperor is gradually becoming apparent.
Re: Tax sanity
Date: 2005-10-19 07:27 pm (UTC)-- Jonathan
no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 10:01 pm (UTC)Trawl through and you'll find blue, grey and even dull yellow scenery behind our little knitted pink friends. Since you did come up with the answer the quizmaster was looking for I doubt I can make a strong case though.
Nice to see you again.
Alex the Gent
Dropping Clangers
Date: 2005-10-20 06:40 am (UTC)Never underestimate the power of a quiz question when it comes to generating historical research. History of The Clangers? Just drop by.
On Jonathan's point: unfortunately, the gentleman in question then spoke in support of income tax as a social good on the grounds that it involved the redistribution of wealth, so I fear that his line was not (from your point of view), the undesirability of taxes. His line was, er, well, gibberish as far as I could see.
Since when I was young I watched The Clangers in black and white, I still think that the answer "grey" should have been allowed.
PJ
Re: Dropping Clangers
Date: 2005-10-21 07:54 pm (UTC)Re: Dropping Clangers
Date: 2005-10-21 07:55 pm (UTC)-- Jonathan