Another Met Office balls-up?
Once again Britain’s weather forecasters have made a balls-up. Who can ever believe the climate change cranks?
5 September 2008: the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average.
Now they say the UK had its coldest winter for 13 years. The average mean temperature across December, January and February was 3.1C – the lowest since the winter beginning in 1995, which averaged 2.5C.
Tossers!
Is Ukraine falling apart, and does UK know what it is doing?
A quick look at the UK press for 3 March 2009
The Times
EU must pay price to keep Eastern poor relations in the family
The crisis in Central and Eastern Europe has been triggered by the world’s financial turmoil. But the European Union was already set for an unpleasant showdown between its older members and its newer ones. Any recession — never mind one as acute as this — would have driven home the point that the east wants more than voters in the west want to pay.
The Independent
Ukraine: Nation on the brink of bankruptcy
International financiers will say, without wanting to be quoted, that Ukraine is already, for all practical purposes, bankrupt. They do not like the D-word, default, though that is clearly on their mind. Ukrainian officials like the word still less, smacking as it does of national humiliation. But the taboo was broken in recent days, when a senior IMF official, Marek Belka, director of the fund’s European department, was quoted in the Ukrainian press as rejecting that idea. Which, in many Ukrainian minds, only made the prospect more real.
Financial Times
Lack of Bank policy details fuels concern
The Bank of England and the Treasury are poised to rip up the blueprints for monetary policy on Thursday and start flooding the system with cash in an effort to raise spending and halt sliding prices.But they have been silent so far on the most important question relating to this “quantitative easing” – what would be a bold move, and what is just dabbling? This unaddressed issue is creating uncertainty and gives the impression that the authorities do not know what they are doing.
My selection of today’s UK newspaper stories
My choice of stories from UK newspapers for 2 March 2009
Financial Times: Late mortgage payments hit record levels
Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agency, examined the performance of loans bundled into securities – bonds or notes – and sold to investors. The rate of delinquent or overdue payments, particularly those late by 90 days or more, are a leading indicator of the losses that lenders are likely to make on those loans.
The Independent: Brown can’t save the world – and even Obama can’t save him
This is a good time for him to be in Washington. Mr Obama still seems to be on honeymoon with his electorate. Mr Brown will hope that some of the glamour rubs off on him. In advance, the Labour spinners have been working hard. We are told that the Brown/Obama meeting will be a progressive coalition against the forces of international conservatism. Every American leftist who was involved with the Obama campaign, however peripherally, will be wheeled out to conflate David Cameron and the Republicans who opposed the Obama fiscal measures.
The Guardian: Summit fails to heal EU’s divisions over recession
Despite Sarkozy’s apparent climbdown on cars, suspicions are rampant among newer EU members in central Europe that Germany, France, Britain and Italy are preoccupied with national salvage schemes that are shredding the European rulebook. “We fear there will be two plans to save the European economy, one for the west and the eurozone and another for the rest. That’s an idea that would be very dangerous for the EU,” said Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Poland’s Europe minister.
The Times: Bank of England set to pump cash into economy to avoid deflation
This week, the Bank will deploy its last resort, and begin printing money, or at least its modern equivalent. It has been forced to ask permission from Mr Darling to begin this quantitative easing. The MPC will inject billions into the economy by buying company and government bonds, their IOUs, from banks. It will create money by electronically crediting the banks’ accounts. In turn, this is intended to allow the banks scope to make billions in new loans. But the strategy raises huge questions: over whether it will work, what it means for MPC independence, and how such desperate measures became needed.
The Daily Telegraph: Mandelson warns Post Office row is harming Labour
Britain facing unprecedented crisis, warns leading left-wing economist
John Prescott: Dock RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin’s massive pension
We’ll fix law to grab Fred’s bread
Minority groups to get extra Government help to protect them from the recession
Guru says ‘There will be blood’ (and he ain’t wrong)
Something else you won’t see reported on the BBC, me thinks:
The global crisis is far from over, has only just begun, Harvard author and financial crisis guru Niall Ferguson said in an interview before delivering a presentation to public-policy think tank, Canada 2020.
Policy makers and forecasters who see a recovery next year are probably lying to boost public confidence, he said. And the crisis will eventually provoke political conflict, albeit not on the scale of a world war, but violent all the same.
“There will be blood.”
Japanese scientists dispute Global Warming claims
Not all scientists support the claims that global warming or climate change is man-made. Here is some research that cuts through some of the bullshit
Don’t expect it to receive much coverage by organisations like the BBC, who are sold out to the likes of Al Gore and the IPCC muppets.
Fiddling while all around is chaos?
The Kentish Peasant has no time for the EU and even less for the corrupt wankers who run it. They are all having a good time, apparently, oblivious of the chaos all around them. Nice item in the Daily Telegraph from Bruno Waterfield: Sing along with recession-proof eurocrats
British middle-class to go on rampage?
The Kentish Peasant would not normally allow The Guardian in his lavatory, let alone his house, but finds that he has to agree with it on this one. Today they posit that the British middle-classs will take to the streets soon and The Plods are ready for ‘em.
Ukraine going bust?
There are a lot of peasants in Ukraine, a far off country of which we know little but should know more. The Financial Times today seems to indicate that it i about to go down the tubes, with knock-on effects for the rest of us. there is some indication that the currency markets are already reacting. A taster:
Austria’s finance minister warned last week of the risk of an economic “catastrophe” in the 46m-strong country triggering a “domino effect” of problems further west. Ukraine’s finance minister, meanwhile, resigned amid differences over budgetary policy that delayed the second tranche of a $16.4bn International Monetary Fund loan, due this weekend.
Oz bushfires: All fault of ‘green’ lobbyists
The Kentish Peasant has been battling environmentalist/organic/climate clap-trappers for years. The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting take on just how dangerous these people are. A quick taster:
Fuel loads above about eight tonnes a hectare are considered a fire hazard. A federal parliamentary inquiry into bushfires in 2003 heard that a fourfold increase in ground fuel leads to a 13-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.
Things are no better in NSW, although we don’t quite have Victoria’s perfect storm of winds and forest types. Near Dubbo two years ago, as a bushfire raged through the Goonoo Community Conservation Area, volunteer firefighters bulldozing a control line were obstructed by National Parks and Wildlife Service employees who had driven from Sydney to stop vegetation being damaged.
The poor management of national parks and state forests in Victoria is highlighted by the interactive fire map on the website of the Department of Sustainability and Environment. Yesterday it showed that, of 148 fires started since mid-January, 120 started in state forests, national parks, or other public land, and just 21 on private property.
CBI, home of bullshit?
As the Kentish Peasant stumbles through life he is used to being confronted by piles of bullshit in his way. Today is no different. The Financial Times reports that the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) expects a 3.3 per cent decline in economic growth this year (the worst year for growth since comparable records began in 1949), foresees four quarters of decline, following the two quarters of falling GDP at the end of last year, ‘before the economy begins to expand again early in 2010.’
Gobsmacking! The world is in the grip of its greatest-ever financial crisis and some smart-arse at the CBI can forecast economic decline with accuracy and tell us when expansion will begin. God help us all if anyone takes this kind of expert crapology seriously and, worse, makes financial decisions based on it.
To begin at the beginning
Who am I? Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out (if you get it right, I’ll buy you a pint in The Royal Oak, Nonington.) Sufficient to say that I was born in Kent in 1947 of Kentish parents, although neither their birthplaces nor mine are in Kent now, having been stolen away by those wicked people in Lunnon, that bad ol’ place.
Once upon a time some of the peasants of Kent turned a bit nasty. Revolting, actually. One of their leaders came from a place ‘by hill and vale where Darent flows along the fertile lea’ and where ‘Caesar’s Legions tramped the road from London to the sea.’ That’s where I went to school.
The revolting peasants had just cause. The peasants of Kent today also have a just cause, as do all the peasants of England, against the financial mis-governance of their country by spivs and foreigners.
This blog is just a small attempt to chart the interesting times we are now living in while trying to stir up a little trouble for the spivs and foreigners whenever possible and awaken peasants everywhere into action.
PS For the purposes of this blog a ‘foreigner’ is someone born outside the traditional county boundary of Kent.
Someone to watch
If you have any interest in trying to understand the financial turmoil engulfing the world then I suggest you take a look at some of this guy’s videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/FeverIAm
There are a lot of people posting vids about the present money madness but FeverIAm seems to be well informed and appears to have significant insight. I discovered him about three months ago, and have learnt a great deal from making my own studies of the issues he has raised. Until recently his general theme has been ‘Don’t panic, but be prepared.’ More recently he seems to be hinting that the time to panic has arrived. I think he is right.
Lloyds & HBOS. Corporate mis-governance?
We are going to hear a great deal about these two outfits in the next few days and weeks. Let me say right now that I am no friend of Lloyds. During the early 1990s just before the last recession/depression they were giving money away like it was going out of fashion. They gave some of it to me but pulled the rug on my business by wanting it back well before the agreed time, destroying the business and my health. Their stupidly precipitous actions resulted in them not receiving a penny. Frankly, I would not piss on them if they were on fire. (I have similar feelings about estate agents.)
That having been said I was not that surprised when I read that one Eric Daniels, Lloyds’ chief executive, who pushed through the HBOS merger last autumn in spite of turmoil in the credit markets admitted Lloyds had carried out “three to five” times less due diligence than normal on HBOS’s balance sheet before agreeing to the deal between them but insisted it would prove to be a ‘very good purchase.’
Breathtaking! Buying into £10 billion losses ‘a very good purchase.’
The deal was ‘facilitated’ by Gordon Brown who waived competition rules. I do hope I live to see the day he answers for that in court!
I digress. I had always assumed that company directors had to carry out their duties ‘in the interests of shareholders’, and that this was clearly laid down in the various Company Acts passed by Parliament.
I admit I may be wrong, but it appears that the 2006 Company Act changed all that. I refer you to this intersting but very complicated academic paper discussing S 172(1): http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/1690/3/THE+SUCCESS+OF+THE+COMPANY.pdf
I’m going to try and understand it and will report back here. I would appreciate comments. Perhaps from Mr Daniels, who, no doubt, knows the section by heart.
