Archive for August, 2009
Dear Gordon we the banks expect
Dear Gordon
you recall there was a little bit of a problem with that Building Society a while back that turned out to be worse than we all imagined.
Northern Rock
Then you remember how you saved the world by using money you didn’t have to invest in us with that clever idea that you would then borrow that money on the open market, so we could lend you the money that you lent us, but only after we pretended we wouldn’t, so that the interest payable on the money you were after was higher than it would have been if you hadn’t lent us the money you didn’t have in the first place.
We then agreed to let some of our best people go on the pretext of incompetence, so long as they had handsome pay-offs.
Fred Goodwin
But your team forgot about the Freedom of Information Act and all that pensions and payoff stuff came out and it made us furious, to the point that we stopped lending any money to anybody unless you came up with a better solution.
Then we had the wheeze of the pixie dust money we called quantitative easing, which was going to generate lots of money, so we could then lend out the money that you owed us that didn’t exist in the first place that we had lent back to you.
We agreed at the time that your lot would get rid of the FSA, but get them to come up with a ‘regulatory regime’ which would only last until they were disbanded and set up a new regulator. We also talked about how by blaming other international regulators for not being as tough as you, then we could actually forget all about regulations and bonus rules.
We managed to trounce that idea of dividing our retail banking business from our investment banking business, but it was a close call and no thanks to that man Cable, who you told us you would get on-side with a cushty job, what happened there?
Vince Cable
Now because we are still coming up with triple A rated piles of scrap-paper and are once again generating possible money using the superbly crafted auditing regulations, which we are not prepared to negotiate over, we are prepared to offer you some more help, but only if you are prepared to help us out of another couple of problems.
The most important being that some people actually believed the bit about us having reduced bonuses.
This is absolutely unfair. Because we have been able to make money out of our idea of Quantitative Easing which helped you, let’s be honest, in not loosing your job in May, we want to take out some real money in the form of bonuses before the whole pile comes crashing down.
Our second problem is that your investors (tax-payers), who need the loans because of the money you gave us, well they are still moaning about the fact that while BoE interest rates are only 0.5% we are charging them an enormous spread.
I think it is time you made sure that BoE interest rates rose and we demand to see that within the next 3 months. Your chaps can handle that I am sure.
In return, we will pay you back a little bit of money before the General Election and we will lend out a little more money to your investors.
In return we expect you to announce that you need to borrow some more money from us, but I think your phrase of Government Bonds is much smarter sounding. I know your boys are pretty good on the PR front and can spin this line pretty well.
Don’t worry about the Tories, we have them under control with their directorships, its your lot who are causing the trouble here and you need to remind them, they need us either to keep their seats, or to provide them with jobs next year.
Gordon, none of us are getting any younger and time is pressing and we have pensions to sort out later, so it is important that you get these things done in the next couple of months.
Oh and one more thing. If it all goes wrong and you need a job after the election, we are always here, well for the time-being anyway.
Chair,
We want our bonuses banking association
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MPs concerns over expenses
During the review of expenses in addition to all other groups we heard MPs concerns over expenses.
My starting point is that, we the tax payer should view MPs as members of staff and therefore must provide them with the tools to carry out their job, as in any employer employee relationship.
I can immediately dismiss the comments by Patrick Cormack, who suggests that MPs need a doubling of salary because the expenses loophole is being closed. This comment is so similar to trades unions who call on historic rights as to be laughable from a man who appears to have no time for Trades Unions.
Comments like his are an absolute disgrace, he is effectively acknowledging MPs defraud taxpayers to subsidise their salaries. Expenses are ‘expenses’ not income. To help the corrupt politicians who still sit in the House of Commons expenses are meant to recompense expenditure they have made in carrying out their duties, not as a way to bump up lifestyle.
- Image by johnbullas via Flickr
I won’t argue over employing spouses, as this is not an unheard of business practice. However I see no reason MPs should be responsible for payroll.
The whole system needs to be changed and MPs staff who the taxpayer pays for, should be interviewed and pay-rolled by a taxpayer representative organisation. If it were their own money from which they were paying their staff, then of course they should have the absolute right to appoint the staff they choose, but that isn’t the case. Taxpayers are picking up the bill and we need to know we are getting the right people for the right job. If they require any administration support, as they of course do, that must be provided by the taxpayer and administered and controlled by the taxpayer.
The argument that they are handling confidential information and must trust their staff that they hand select, is so out of touch with reality as to be unbelievable. How do they think any organisation functions, or do they really believeMPs are the only people who handle confidential information? Do Doctors need to employ staff directly to have faith in their staff? Does the civil service HR executive appoint family and friends to deal with sensitive issues, of course they don’t. Why do 250MPs employ relatives?
Apparently MPs claim that running their office is akin to running a small or family business, what absolute rubbish. Business must generate sufficient income to cover their costs or they are likely to be breaching the Companies Act, they are not funded by ‘expenses’. The analogy of a business stops at that point. Not to mention they are meant to be calling to account the Legislature of 60 million odd people, or introducing legislation covering the country, hardly a small business.
Harriet Harman would appear to be under the belief that the idea of spouses being employed with MPs is something the public really bond with. Exactly which sycophantic focus group she got that from is unknown.
The argument of a second job is a non-sequitor. Claiming as they do that MPs work a hard full-time job, there is no room for a second job, else it becomes a circular argument. I have posited this whole argument on a different article ‘I am an MP I need to be comensated‘.
While MPs continue to publicly defend their expenses, some probably tongue in cheek, they hide behind the reality that they exist in a world in which they frame legislation which precludesMPs from facing taxes, which every other person must pay, including their severance pay when they are kicked out of office.
Members of Parliament are not a special case, they are elected representatives and are effectively civil servants. The taxpayer needs to provide civil servants with the tools to undertake their responsibilities.
If they need housing, we should provide that housing. MPs argue that they have a special need, but feel that servicemen are OK living in quarters, MPs are not a special needs group.
MPs should be provided with the tools to communicate with their electorate, this means office equipment and communication tools. The concept that my MP reclaims postage costs, stationary etc. and doesn’t have an office ispre-historic.
They will no doubt argue that they need a taxpayer funded website, this is not the case. They can not be permitted to have funding to secure their position ahead of any candidate who stands against them at an election. I can see an argument for a constituency website, over which the MP has no jurisdiction or control.
They will of course argue that a smart phone is essential, but not one they own and claim against. Yes they should be provided with the tools to communicate and the use of this phone should be scrutinised as with any other civil servant.
MPs should be meeting the requirements of the electorate and the electorate needs to fund these devices and tools directly. MPs should have no purchasing authority over these items, if they need them, we should provide them.
MPs are still under the illusion they are a special case, this must not be allowed to go unchallenged.
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Election fraud – no shock here
Reports are coming out from Afghanistan that there is believed to have been widespread election fraud. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Democracy has a shaky foundation at best and the idea that those seeking office commit fraud should really be viewed as the norm, not the exception.
In Iraq, we have had a recent demonstrations over vote rigging.
In the UK, the Scottish Parliamentary elections were criticised, local elections have seen prosecutions for election fraud and the Bush ‘chapped tickets’ decided on a recount in the State in which the eventual winner of the Presidency was a relative of the State Governor is an example of vote rigging in the extreme.
The simple fact is that Democracy is a flawed system of political leadership, with no credibility and no reason to exist, other than the ‘Democratically elected’ hold the power to call the tune.
When listening to political aspirants, they have identified quite clearly to whom they owe loyalty. They focus their conversation solely on those in power who hold the strings, ignoring pretty well exclusively, the people who theoretically have the power to vote them in to office. They do this as they know that without centralised political reinforcement, they will not gain political power. One only needs to question the reason they choose to focus on centralised parties, to appreciate the fact of how political power is vested in the hands of the few and the electorate are merely a side-show in their game.
While many are cynical of the political institutions which legislate the UK there is little reason for those who hold the puppet strings of the electorate to change, as every opponent of the Democratic system is targeted by a politicised judiciary. The Labour Government, now jumping on the band-wagon of terrorism.
The UK is run by a political party, which on election less than 70% of the ‘voting age’ population actually supported them. To presuppose that with 70% of the population not actually in favour of the legislative leadership is a sensible form of governance is fatuous in the extreme. Yet a Democratically elected Government is so focused on decrying the opposition, they completely ignore the support for that opposition, effectively decrying swathes of the population as ignorant idiots, not to mention those who either supported smaller opposition parties or declined the Democratic proposition altogether.
Democratic governance is a lazy way for the populace to accept leadership and for whatever reason is accepted as the right way to go by vast swathes of the population. Whether this type of leadership should be foisted on other countries is a different proposition altogether.
Churchill famously quipped, ‘It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.’ I wonder whether a leadership which decries over 70% of the population being irrelevant is in itself relevant?
It is of no surprise that the Afghan elections are besieged by election fraud, this is the nature of Democracy.
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New Media and the Political mismatch
Politicians love to pretend they have a handle on pretty well everything and now the Labour Party has chosen new media co-ordinator.
While it is good to see politicians engaging on the internet, the new Labour Party appointee still doesn’t appear to have understood social marketing on the internet.
She says in an interview with Labourlist
‘…Rather than being something completely new, campaigning using new media is simply doing what we’ve always done in a new setting – and rather than replacing traditional ways of doing things, it is about making traditional campaigning methods even more effective….’
It would be good to see British Politicians actually understand what they are getting engaged with.
Had Obama just used ‘traditional campaigning methods’ it is highly unlikely he would have received his massive funding through private donations, nor achieved the wide spread popular support. He continues to use the internet as a way to promote what he is seeking to achieve and has not reverted to just the ‘traditional’.
In her interview she focuses on Social networking and blogging, but doesn’t seem to have grasped the enormity of the potential to put ‘traditional campaigning’ to the back seat.
People have lost time for politicians partly because of traditional campaigning methods, where the only time most people see an MP is in ’surgery’ dealing with a problem, or when MPs want their vote.
As a twitterer, she is already in a position of having started undoing ‘traditional campaigning’ by being out there, along with some of her colleagues with their twitter, facebook and blogging accounts. This is far from the traditional methods of engagement.
I keep various twitter accounts to enable me to follow and manage different interest groups and have recently set up a twitter account focused on the political sphere, as it was apparent an increasing number of politicians were using the site.
Experience is showing that the value of social networking has swum past many of those with political interest. They push pretty much the same dogma through their twitter stream as they do through their media appearances, with the odd piece of personalisation.
They absolutely refuse to cede any discussion from their mainstream opposition and focus pretty well all of their energies on boosting either their own ego or that of those in their party.
Whilst this swims well with the ‘Political set’ it has very limited potential to reach a wide audience and is typically the same group of people speaking to the same audience about the same things, ie. traditional campaigning.
Setting out on a social networking strategy the first decision, to make is who is the target audience and how do you engage with that audience. Evidence I have found suggests that the political social networkers and bloggers are aiming to target other political networkers and haven’t worked out that the target audience could be very different.
Reading the blogs, the MPs are not trying to reach a wider audience, referring to each other constantly and only commenting on the blogs of their little set.
They gauge each other on their own success in their niche market, failing to acknowledge there is a wider world out there.
That is absolutely great for those who are purely engaged in that market, why would they have a wider interest group. However, for MPs continually swimming in the same pool, will not change anything or reach a wider audience.
As an internet business model, this will never grow beyond a small niche market as there are virtually no new relationships. The MPs are relying on the odd person who comes in from the outside world to spread their message for them. On the internet this wont happen.
The Labour new media expert talks about facebook as being a place to connect with old friends, she evidently doesn’t have a clue about facebook, and the use of groups and pages. Many people use Facebook as their internet, rarely leaving its portals, to fail to grasp the significance of facebook, is myopic.
She talks about people coming to find politicians on the internet, as though it is up to individuals to do the work. Were I not interested in politics I wouldn’t have bothered to set up a new twitter account, wouldn’t have a clue about her new appointment and certainly wouldn’t bother to ‘find’ a politician online. Obama didn’t wait on his backside for people to come and find him.
As an example of how British politicians just don’t get social networking:
The NHS campaign she seems to believe was something that politicians developed.
Reading the list of posters on the save the NHS hashtag shows enormous numbers of people who don’t appear to engage with politicians. Instead of working out a way to use this demographic and create a continuing crowd, she misses precisely the value of twitter as an engagement and resource platform and where its limitations lie and how now developing a friendfeed; a facebook group, or a myriad of other group sites, such as Ning etc., could easily build an engagement platform by the politicians getting off their backsides and being proactive, she just wants to claim political ownership of the campaign and leave it to lie.
It would be great if Politicians did get the internet, but from the initial interview from the new media expert for the Labour Party, I really don’t think they are any where near understanding Social Networking and engagement.
I guess they spend too much time slapping each others backs to realise the internet is far broader and bigger than their political swimming pool.
addition:
The Labour Party has an internal conflict in the use of new media, as Hazel Blears commented just a few months ago when Gordon Brown made his now ridiculed foray on youtube
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Does the Geneva Convention hold any value?
In World War one, one civilian was killed for every service personnel, these figures how now been reversed with ten civilians dying for every one service personnel. Does the Geneva Convention still hold value?
Sixty years ago this week, the Geneva Convention was agreed, with the objective of ensuring civilians were protected in war time, but things seem to have become far worse.
Conflicts around the globe continue and the field of military operation has changed, it may not be that the Geneva Convention is meaningless, or without teeth.
Countries such as the UK, which permit war criminals free reign, if their crimes were committed before 2001 they can not be prosecuted here and only people who are resident in the UK, can be prosecuted here, regardless of the date of the war crime, do not help with their implementation of International Law.
The British Government has just in the past month decided to consider pushing this date back to 1991.
It is perhaps time to look once again at the Geneva Convention and ways to protect civilians from military conflict. The areas of concern, do not just include the US alliance in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but areas such as Darfur, Rwanda and Sri Lanka.
On the anniversary of the Geneva convention and the year in which the last survivor of fighting in the trenches in WW1 has died, it may be that the Convention needs re-assessment in light of the disturbing numbers of civilian who are being killed as a direct result of military intervention.
It would also be of value if Countries operated a parallel implementation of International Law, surrounding war crimes, in support of the Geneva Convention and its intentions.
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Conservative IT policies and Cloud Computing
Like dinosaurs slogging it out to the end, the two major political parties in the UK are determined to tear chunks out of each other, while the rest of the Country keeps evolving.
Having seen the debacle of Government being responsible for data security, the Conservative Party have managed to come up with a new wheeze, claiming that Google is a far more appropriate guardian of our data and in particular our medical data.
On the face of it, anyone other than a Government Department corralling data, ready to be left on some-ones lap top while it in turn is left in the boot of their car, may seem more appropriate.
The Tory Party are attempting to portray themselves as the denizens of IT probity, seeking to scratch some cheap political scar on the wheezing Labour Government. However their new sheepskin coats just hide another wolf, keen to reveal as much information about individuals as the Labour machine.
I wouldn’t like to suggest the Tories don’t know what they are talking about, so I can only assume they are well aware of Cloud Computing and the H.R. 3162, the ‘USA PATRIOT Act’ and subsequent amendments.
The Act, among a host of other issues provides for US agents to look at any computer record held on American soil, without need for any suspicion of criminal activity, it also enables data handlers, to be forced to hand over all the information held on file.
This isn’t some long-shot concern. Canadian government IT organizations are told not to use services which store or host the government’s data outside their sovereign territory. They especially are not to use services where data is stored in the United States because of fears over the Patriot Act.
The Tories appear to: not care; have some reason for wishing Data to be stored under the jurisdiction of foreign Governments; or are too busy warrign with Labour to look beyond the Wesminster parapet.
The US+EU’s Safe Harbor program allows US companies to certify that they are correctly handling the data of EU citizens. This is to comply with the EU data protection standards. The safe harbour programme is not of much reassurance and of no value if data is stored in Russia, for example.
Let’s assume that the data is stored not in the USA, rather in say, one of the Google data centres in Russia, or China. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which Russia decides they too would like a ‘Patriot Act’ and go about checking the medical records of senior politicians, judiciary, Military and Intelligence services and manage to find some embarrassing trips to consultants. I wonder what joy they would have with that data.
Well Google can store all the data in the UK and all will be well, slight problem on that one. The UK is hardly awash with Google data centres and building another one isn’t a cheap proposition, each data centre project has an estimated cost of US$600 million.
Google world wide data centres
Google European data centres
The Google model of cloud computing is designed for far larger data storage and retrieval than the medical records of the UK population and choosing a provider which is ultimately regulated by a foreign Government seems absolutely ridiculous. In addition Google is working towards software layers that automatically move loads between data centres, thereby circumventing any ‘national boundary’.
I am amazed that the Labour Government didn’t jump aboard the cloud computing band wagon sometime ago, as they could have quietly asked the US Government to look up any file for any citizen in the UK, to which they would normally have to go through judicial process.
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