Let them fail

If you listen to the business news on the Today programme or read the inside pages of the Financial Times, you may have spotted something called "LIBOR".

LIBOR is the interest rate banks charge to each other. Because banks are big and have vaults stuffed with money, it's a low-risk deal to lend money to other banks and the rates are therefore only slightly more than the base rate of the central bank in question. A few years ago the rate rose significantly as the risk of the money a European bank was lending would go to an insolvent US bank increased. It wasn't possible to say with confidence which US bank was insolvent. If I presented you with a bowl of strawberries and said "one of these is rotten but the rest are fine", you'd likely reject the entire bowl. The markets did the same: they stopped lending money to the US banks because one of them was rotten. We called it the "credit crunch", and ultimately it brought down a number of banks and then the economy itself.

This rate has started to rise again, this time propelled from the other direction: the US banks are frightened that a European bank is secretly insolvent. There are a number to pick from: many large multi-purpose banks in France and Germany have heavy investments in Spain, Greece and Italy. If any of those countries defaults or if any banks in those country go bankrupt, there will be a domino effect that eventually will hit the US banks. So the liquidity in the markets starts to dry up again.

Last time round we pumped money into the system. We underwrote the losses of the banks, encouraged weak banks to merge into strong banks, even bought capital in the failing banks to keep them afloat. The reason was stark: the crisis wasn't anticipated. If allowed to play out, the next morning that cash machines would empty and not be refilled. Shops would not get a float delivery from Securicor. People paid in cash would go unpaid. People paid by BACS would be unable to access the money. The world as we knew it would've stopped.

This time, I suggest, things are different. If we see this happen again, we must let the banks fail.

Not, of course, an undisciplined collapse — more like controlled demolition. It should be easy, with forewarning, to protect the money of ordinary savers and the loans of ordinary mortgage payers. It should be easy to transfer these assets and liabilities to one of the state-owned banks we got last time round. If governments move quickly, they can take the ordinary accounts, the current and mortgage accounts, the savings accounts, the stuff people in the street like us have and move them to a safer place. The remaining sick bank left behind should be allowed to fail and take the bad debts with it.

To a degree we did this last time, especially with Northern Rock, but we made the startling error of taking on the bad debts with the good and leaving that badness on the government's books. We even facilitated Northern Rock taking the most profitable part of its business and moving it off-shore, out of the reach of the government. Last time we paid for the banks' mistakes. This time we must seek to profit from them in some way.

It's odd to hear such words coming from the keyboard of an old-fashioned socialist like me. But as long as the savings and houses of the ordinary people are protected, I don't give a stuff what happens next. The banks and the markets are not the real enemy anyway: the real enemy is and always has been unemployment. Rescuing the banks ruined the economy. This increased unemployment. I'm willing to bet that letting them fail won't be as bad. If it costs nothing to the government and sweeps away a lot of unsound debt, the increase in unemployment should be less than what it would've been with another rescue. It'll also be quicker to bounce back from.

Why is unemployment the enemy? Because unemployment, any unemployment, is a very bad thing. It's bad for the unemployed person, left almost penniless and subject the humiliation of claiming Jobseeker's Allowance. It's bad for the unemployed person's spouse, left working harder or scrimping further. It's bad for the unemployed person's children, left hungry and uncertain. It's bad for the unemployed person's community, as ordinary transactions dry up and more businesses fail leading to more unemployment. It's bad for the unemployed person's region, struggling to get investment as potential employers would rather invest were there is less??depravation. It's bad for the the unemployed person's country, because high unemployment goes hand in hand with rich people getting richer and poor people getting poorer; eventually, you have riots and looting.

In a land with total employment, the workers have power. You're difficult to replace; the company wants to keep you and will invest in your skills and raise your wages and generally try to be seen as benevolent to keep you in your job.

In a land with high unemployment, the companies have power. You're easy to replace; the company doesn't care if you leave and can hire someone with skills rather than training you. The company knows you won't ask for high wages because you fear replacement by someone cheaper. They don't have to appear to be benevolent — they can act like bastards to extract more work from you. If you don't like it: go and be unemployed instead.

Of course, there was a flip-side to this. Full employment in Britain brought real power to the workers and we misused it. We tried to use it to bring down governments (succeeding twice). We tried to use it to screw fantasy money and non-productive jobs out of employers who then went bankrupt. We tried to use it to force the government to buy the failed businesses to keep us in work (and succeeded: think British Leyland). But the answer to this was not what Thatcher did — deliberately create unemployment, foster it to destroy the workers' power and then stigmatise the unemployed to keep the fear of unemployment high. There were many, many other ways that wouldn't've destroyed so much of urbanised Britain without creating a permanent hard-core of unemployable people, whose children and grandchildren are now on our streets, equally unemployable.

But the idea is still in the minds of economists and politicians. If unemployment is over 2 million, the workers will remain powerless and the corporations will make more money faster. They rescued the banks last time knowing that it would push unemployment up. Next time, they should let the banks fail gracefully, otherwise we're going to keep rescuing them again and again and each time we'll push unemployment up more.

Once Upon a Time

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this. I assumed I had, but a search suggests I haven’t. Must’ve posted it to Facebook or somewhere equally obscure instead.

Anyway, this is the title sequence to Once Upon A Time… Man, a French 1970s 26-part cartoon series (shown revoiced into English on various ITV regions at various times) that charted the history of the human race from, as the video shows, our climbing out of the sea all the way to… well, the near future when we divide into two tribes and wipe each other — and the planet — out completely. Yeah, not a cheerful ending particularly.

Still, the titles have everything I could ever want: the theorem of evolution, the history of the human race, JS Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor with the boring middle bit edited out, and a parade of logos of European state broadcasters, many now gone or reorganised. What stands out from the logos is that the funding countries were mostly Catholic (including the very Catholic KRO from the otherwise protestant Netherlands – yer actual Katholieke Radio Omroep and everything). I suspect this shows that the so-called ‘debate’ on Darwinism has moved backward (there’s an appropriate word) as Christian groups have proposed the preposterous ‘intelligent design’ as an alternative to the theorem of evolution. The KRO would sadly be less likely to openly support a cartoon showing a good version of how we evolved now, given that ‘intelligent design’ could be proposed instead.

Rickets for everyone!

As I continue to need distracting whilst I work towards my annual deadline, coming up on iTunes quite regularly are the two songs I have from Gracie Fields. 1,468 to chose from and “The Thing-ummy-bob” and “Wish Me Luck (As You Wave Me Goodbye)” are the ones iTunes has decided to play twice in the last hour.

I can stand a bit of Gracie Fields, based on the wartime connection (when her husband spirited her and her money out of the country) and the general campness that clings to her. But really, I can’t quite see the attraction. She couldn’t sing, she couldn’t act, she was no oil painting, she fell for bastards who treated her like crap and she insisted on being paid in precious dollars when performing “to her people” at the Festival of Britain on a brief visit back from Capri. No, as far as I am concerned, you can keep “Our Gracie” and all her works.

If you’ve never sat down and watched one — and why would you? — then her 1930s films can be summarised as follows: Plutocratic mill owner announces that he is closing the mill/shutting down the hospital/demolishing the sanatorium/being generally wicked in a 1930s way. The workers think things are hopeless, so turn to fellow-but-oddly-better-dressed-worker Gracie for help. She sings a song at them, then goes to see plutocratic mill owner’s son. She convinces him to join her campaign, gets on a train to that London, sees plutocratic mill owner himself, there’s a mysterious gap in the narrative as to what she said or did at this point*, she gets a train back to Grimsfield or Stonyborough or whatever Rochdale is pretending to be in this film, announces that the mill/hospital/sanatorium has been reprieved, links arms with the plutocratic mill owner’s son and sings another song at the assembled crowd.

Every Gracie Fields film is the same, except one, where she wasn’t from Rochdale, she was from Glasgow — but she was unable to maintain the accent so the producers dropped in a line about her being from both Rochdale and Glasgow, thus usefully covering the wandering diphthongs.

This video is an excellent piss-take of the standard ending of a Gracie Field film. The plot: plutocratic mill owner has unilaterally cancelled Sludgetown’s annual Rickets Fair. Sadly missing is an earlier scene, where she turns up in said plutocrat’s office to plead for the fair to go ahead; Josie Lawrence sings a song that starts “You’ll never know/What rickets/Have done for me!” whilst exposing comically bowed legs. You had to be there.

*There’s a possibility that she presented him with the Lancashire speciality of tripe and chips to change his mind. It’s more likely she put out. It was 1930s — they didn’t say.

The dirtiest shelter in town

It's deadline week at work, so I'm doing extra hours and working extra hard. My back and wrists ache and my eyes alternate between so-dry-I-can't-blink and so-watery-I-can't-see. But it's only once a year, so I can't complain too loudly.

To keep myself going and to provide the right degree of distraction (enough to stop me going mad but not enough to prevent me from actually writing) I've had iTunes on a loop with 1,486 songs (2.7 days of music) playing. Oddly, iTunes DJ gets obsessed with certain songs, so about 1,400 songs are sitting ignored while it churns round the other 86. For some reason, the song iTunes DJ loves most is the theme to the BBC's 'Kick Start'. It seems to play every 10 songs and the next time it comes up, I'm fucking deleting the bugger.

The song I love most at the moment (it has only come up once this week) is the one above, seeing as it combines my two favourite things — World War II and smut.

A victory of sorts

I case you don't remember, a couple of months ago I took issue with the BBC over something very minor – the way they were displaying the telephone number for people wanting to take part in John Barrowman's godawful variety show. I know it sounds petty, but why show numbers wrongly when it's so easy to show them correctly?

The BBC replied to me with an out-and-out lie. They said that they displayed numbers in an easy-to-remember format, even though this meant the numbers were actually wrong. If that were true, there would've been research to prove it: hand it over. They ignored me, so I submitted a freedom of information request to get the research. After much searching, the BBC came back: there is no research (surprise!). So I complained to the BBC Trust.

At last I feel the BBC has listened to me. The reply shows that, for once, the BBC read my complaint rather than scanning it and assuming the contents. They admit that BBC Complaints isn't up to the job at the moment and needs reform. I suspect the problem is that most complaints are from out-and-our ranting nutjobs with an agenda to push or an axe to grind. Actual complaints from the relatively sane are getting buried under these mad ones and BBC Complaints is treating all comments like they're coming from Scientologists, internet conspiracy theorists and members of the Tory right. So reform is due and it probably needs them to step back from giving personalised but wrong replies and instead go back to the old system they used in the 1970s — pre-printed cards reading "Dear ______ Thank you for your comment, which the Director General was pleased to receive. Yours sincerely, <BBC manager>" — for the nutters, since no reply will satisfy a nutter, and personal responses for those asking serious questions or for general information.

My faith in the BBC is thus restored to a degree. I still don't like that the knee-jerk, gut reaction was to tell a lie. But I'm willing to trust the Trust to work on that. I'll still keep an eye open for the BBC telling lies in its editorial output — these things don't happen in isolation, they get into the culture — but I'm pleased that a bit of the BBC, of my??BBC, our BBC, the best broadcaster in the world, is on the case.

Lightning tree and other symbols

Follyfoot is too early for me to have seen it, although it was repeated several times. I still didn't see it because drama series about horses have never appealed to me (they're for girls). For that matter, much of the made-on-film children's drama of my childhood didn't appeal to me. It was usually stultifyingly dull, worthy and often ended with a message, sometimes quite divorced from the plot, a message that we should be nice to each other or look both ways before crossing the road or obey our teachers or not leave your grandfather's house to go live with Fr??ulein Rottenmeier or the like. Fuck that: I wanted adult drama, where the message, if there was one, was a bit more subtle. Often.

But I may have missed out. The theme tune, by The Settlers, is a jaunty, folky number that I really like, albeit sadly not anything whatsoever to do with the plot of the show as far as I can see (the show was about horses, not exciting fires in fields). Also, Steve Hodson, the male romantic lead, is very cute by 1970s standards. Probably less so now. Also also, it had Desmond Llewelyn in it! Q! I now think I'd quite liked to have seen him read out words in Follyfoot, having seen him read out words in a number of other things.

Best of all: the above video has the YTV frontcap left on. I loved frontcaps — you always knew what you were getting next. Silver man-horse-flag combo: something shot on cheap video. Big white star/cross thing: something shot on film in the countryside/near the sea/both.??Ilk lee-moor bah-taaaat!: something more worthy than it should be by rights. Big gold ship (amazingly rare): programme on film involving Plymouth in some way. Silent pointy G: something even more worthy than Yorkshire was putting out.

Them were the days.

I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you

A fortnight ago, I??escalated??a complaint from BBC Complaints to the BBC Trust??when BBC Complaints appeared to have told me a bare-faced lie. So far, no reply from them. But evidence has emerged that BBC Complaints do indeed, as I feared, lie to people who complain as a matter of routine.

During the recent riots, the BBC helped themselves to images and videos they found online. These were then credited on-screen to a website, not the original cameraperson. Andy Mabbett challenged BBC??Complaints??about this — rightly believing that broadcasters should credit the person behind the lens rather than the method of hosting the file. After all, if you show someone a photo and they ask you who took it, you don't reply "The Family Album volume 7" or "the photo belongs to iPhone 4", do you? (And if you do, seek help).

Worse, the BBC credited the photos to Twitter, who didn't at that time even host images. The images were hosted on sites like twitpic and yfrog — they were just found using Twitter. "Who took this photograph? Oh, it was ICI, because the plastic sheeting covering them in the album was made by them".

Broadcasters should be doing a little extra research — and it's honestly just two clicks, not a punt up the Amazon. Now: the churnalist in question is sat at a PC. They see a retweet of an interesting photo and download it, crediting Twitter. In future: the journalist in question is sat at a PC. They see a retweet of an interesting photo and download it, noting the @username of the person who posted it on twitpic or yfrog or the like. It's not brain surgery, it's basic journalism and the @username is in huge type at the top of the page. It's not like they need a giant calculator and Fred Harris on hand to interpret the results.

Now here's the rub. Mabbett complains in strident tones. BBC Complaints reply, having only skimmed what he said (they say he was calling on them to stop using Twitter as a source. He wasn't). The person replying says:

Twitter is a social network platform which is available to most people who have a computer and therefore any content on it is not subject to the same copyright laws as it is already in the public domain.

This is not true. Not one part of this is true. Not, even for a moment, is any of it true. Yes: BBC Complaints have lied to another stakeholder to try to make them go away. The BBC have been caught red-handed at a practice that all journalistic organisations have fallen into because it's cheap and quick and lazy. But we hold the BBC to a higher standard, whether they like it or not, because we all, collectively as a nation, own our BBC.

And the BBC does have some really good arguments instantly at hand for using the images with a correct credit: "fair dealing", prior publication, expectation of reuse, the host's terms and conditions… lots of arguments. But they, again, resorted to telling an out-and-out lie instead.

I know this is how society now works. Big organisations now regularly, as a default, lie to us. 'Dave' Cameron can hardly open his mouth without letting a lie slip out. Gideon Osborne runs with them from both ends. Nick Clegg sleeps with a blankie made out of lies sewn together. British Gas has just stopped door-to-door selling because of the lies their representatives spew on the doorstep. Even the Co-operative has lied to me in the last 6 months, as a reflex, without a qualm. Lying is now normal.

Nevertheless, I say again: I love the BBC and I'd happily pay double the licence fee (it'd still be great value compared to Sky). But the lying has to stop. Now.

Mennie happie burthdays

For some reason, I find this really beautiful. This postcard probably dates from between the wars — easily 1920 if not earlier.

The joy of it is that "grannie", whoever she was, has written in phonetic English. To me, it sounds like she's an East Ender (Cockney, as we used to say), based on her spelling of "am". It reads:

Dear Artha

Just a line

to wish you

mennie happie

burthdays from

Grannie ann

grandad xx

xxxx

I ham sending

you some stamps

to get somthing

for your self

grannie

It's a wonderful piece of history from a woman who will be long gone. The card was clearly put in the envelope with the stamps. They can't have amounted to much, as any sum over a shilling or so would've been better sent as a postal order. I'd assume she put 10d or so of stamps in the envelope — 90p in today's money and an awful lot for a couple who probably only had the 7s 6d a week (??8) Lloyd George pension to live on.

To a generous and loving Grannie: I salute you from 90 years into the future.

I predict a riot

A third night of rioting, now mainly based around the concept of looting stores then setting them on fire. It's a new thing for Great Britain, something not seen since the (more politically justifiable) riots of the 1980s.

Three years ago, a chain of events previous thought impossible occurred. The banks had become reckless, spending money they didn't have on schemes they didn't understand. Lined up like dominoes, exposed to each other's risk, they started to teeter and then fall. Each bank that fell took the next one along with it. The good times, the boom we'd got used to under Labour, turned to a bust. The government staggered on but lost the following general election and in came the Tories with Liberal support.

What happened next was predictable. Senior Tories are very friendly with senior bankers. Indeed, senior bankers are the senior Tories. Members of the Tory front bench gave up lucrative jobs in investment banks to take their seats in parliament. The new government had an emergency budget where they made it clear to everyone that the collapse of the banks had to be paid for. And it was to be paid for by the poor. Taxes on the poorest rose whilst tax on the rich (the "wealth generators" in Reaganism's discredited "trickle-down" theory) was cut. The tax on bankers' bonuses was removed as was access to welfare for the sick and disabled. Cuts were made across the board, except in the most leafiest of the Tory Shires, where more money was made available. And the bankers would not pay for their mistakes: we would, as they were rewarded by further showers of unearned cash.

We all saw this and most of us were appalled. It was unfair, even disgusting. The students and the "feckless" public service workers took to the streets, but mostly we shrugged and thought "well, that's the price to be paid" or "well, that's what Tories do".

But we forgot that there was a class of people who saw this but were unable to vocalise the scandal they felt. A class of kids from the fourth or fifth generation of poverty, with no aspirations because we'd given up on them and forgotten them. A class who were to be hit hardest by the foolishness of the super-rich. A class who didn't protest about student fees because they were never going to university in the first place.

What that class saw was the same as we saw: the rich getting richer as the poor paid. They saw the middle classes queuing outside the Apple store for the latest glass-and-aluminium trifle while their parents couldn't get Jobcentre Plus to pay for tonight's dinner. They saw this deep inequality. A spark — another murder by armed policemen but it could've been anything — and the place was on fire. This class, however, saw an opportunity. They saw that they had been shafted by society, by the bankers, by the Tories and they did what our consumer culture should have expected: they took supermarket trollies and looted. They stole the trainers they're heavily sold but can't afford. They stole the games consoles they see advertised everywhere that they didn't have. They stole the posh frocks and the expensive food, the carpets and the furnishings, the things they didn't have but we'd continued to make them want.

Of course, it spread wider than that – the looters included people from further up the social scale who wanted their slice of the freebies. It spread beyond the worst places in London to the nicer suburbs and then to the country's other cities as people all wanted what they'd been promised but couldn't have. Our leaders sat in their luxury villas in Tuscany and the like, enjoying the foreign holidays this class will never get. And back home, the shopping streets burned.

None of this provides an excuse. Looting and rioting achieve nothing and invariably make the social, political and economic situation in the areas affected far, far worse. There was zero chance of this right-wing Liberal/Conservative government pouring jobs and investment into these areas before; there's zero chance now. Rioting destroys the very homes and jobs the rioters are concerned about; it is the ultimate in self-defeating action.

Meanwhile, it has thrown up something interesting. At a recent royal wedding, 5000 police were available to keep the pampered couple safe from the rest of us. As London burnt, the Met could only find 1500 officers to do anything and said they were powerless to stop it. At the wedding, the police happily rounded up any elements that didn't fit the picture postcard image the Tories wanted us to see; the homeless and the republicans and the people having a party dressed as zombies all went into the cells. As London burnt, the police said they were powerless to stop it. During the protests over Liberal??hypocrisy??on student fees, thousands of officers 'kettled' peaceful women and children for hours whilst politicians talked about how 'violent' they'd been. As London burnt, the police said they were powerless to stop it.

'Dave' Cameron flew home overnight. He needs to be visible but not let anyone see how tanned and well-fed he is (Crisis? What crisis?). He needs to be seen to be in control whilst continuing his streak of doing nothing. He needs to tell everyone it will get better whilst??pursuing??policies that he knows, truly knows, will make everything worse. And in the midst of this active inaction, he needs to remember that while the looters are responsible for what they've stupidly done, he is also responsible for goading them into it.

Well, I’m convinced!

From: iyamahsylvani@gmail.com

Re: SCAMMED VICTIM/5 MILLION BENEFICIARY.REF/PAYMENTS CODE: 06654 5MILLION USD

ECOBANK COMPENSATION UNIT, IN AFFILIATION WITH THE UNITED NATION.

Attn: Sir

SCAMMED VICTIM/5 MILLION BENEFICIARY.REF/PAYMENTS CODE: 06654 5MILLION USD

This is to bring to your notice that I am delegated from the United Nations to ECO BANK PLC. Nigeria to pay 100 Nigerian 419 scam victims $5 Million each, you are listed and approved for this payments as one of the scammed victims, get back to as soon as possible for the immediate payments of your $5 Million compensations funds.

On this faithful recommendations, I want you to know that during the last UN meetings held at Abuja, Nigeria, it was alarmed so much by the rest of the world in the meetings on the lose of funds by various foreigners to the scams artists operating in syndicates all over the world today, in other to retain the good image of the country, the president of the country is now paying 100 victims of this operators $5 Million USD each, Due to the corrupt and inefficient banking systems in Nigeria , the payments are to be paid by ECO BANK PLC. Nigeria as corresponding paying bank under funding assistance by the National Westminster bank London According to the number of applicants at hand,

84 beneficiaries has been paid, half of the victims are from the United States, we still have more 20 left to be paid the compensations of $5 Million each. Your particulars was mentioned by one of the syndicates who was arrested in Lagos Nigeria as one of their victims of the operations, you are hereby warned not to communicate or duplicate this message to him for any reason what so ever, the US secret service is already on trace of the criminal.

You can receive your compensations payments via any of the both options you choose, DRAFT PAYMENTS or WIRE TRANSFERS,I shall feed you with further modalities as soon as I hear from you.

Yours faithfully,

IYAMAH SYLVANIUS.

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