Monday 30 July 2012

No medals day one

Unfortunately Mark Cavendish & Team came in rather down the field on Saturday :(

They had been leading for most of the game and finished all the Boxhill runarounds heading back for the Mall, when a huge group [22] sped away to the front.

It seemed as though the team just sat there and watched in disbelief as this pack forged ahead.

I'm not an expert but presumably there was a strategy problem, as I cannot believe that all four of our team had no stamina left and everyone else did!

I also hope it isn't a drug issue...

On another note:

The Olympics Minister says that the empty seats are a difficult issue and LowCog are looking into it, that's nonesense...

The selling of tickets has been a farce from the beginning and the corruption emulates from the top!

Friday 27 July 2012

Retrospect

At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 about 6,000 English archers won a surprise victory against over 20,000 French knights.

Shortly afterward the forums exploded with unhappy customers:- [sic]

The French were calling the archer class overpowered, and demanded it to be nerfed.

They also complained that the English had grinded a lot of experience with their archers, and spent a lot of time getting their longbows.

The English on the other hand were furious about server imbalances allowing the French to outnumber them 3 to 1.

Knights having much cooler looking armour apparently made lots of new players choose that class, and the English were worried that the French would just zerg them once their n00bs learned2play. :)

Wednesday 25 July 2012

UK public borrowing rises in June

Good news from the labour market this week raised hopes that the economy might not be as weak as the official figures have suggested. Today's public finances figures continue the puzzle.

Tax revenues in the first three months of the fiscal year are running 2.5% higher than last year, which is not something you would usually see in a flat or shrinking economy.

The monthly public finance figures are notoriously volatile. Part of the increase in borrowing seems also to be due to a change in the timing of spending this year, which has pushed up borrowing by local authorities even as borrowing and spending by central government has fallen.

But the figures are a reminder that the chancellor wrote his Budget when the prospects for the economy looked a lot brighter. The IMF warned this week that he might have to loosen his Budget plans if the economy did not pick up. Today's figures suggest that that weak growth may be forcing him to do that already.


So how come I am still out of work?
:(

Tuesday 24 July 2012

IOC chief Jacques Rogge hypocrite

He was whisked from the airport to his five-star hotel in a chauffeur-driven car complete with police escort.

He was transported up the M4 into central London in a chauffeur-driven BMW using the exclusive Olympic Lane and escorted by five police motorcycles.

He has ordered wine from the Hilton @ £1,000.00 a bottle.

He certainly does not live in our world...

Monday 23 July 2012

Tour de France

Bradley Wiggins has won the Tour de France, congratulations.

It's the first time since 1903 that a Brit has won the event, a magnificent achievement.

He along with Mark Cavendish & Peter Kennaugh are now preparing for the Olympics which starts on Friday 27th July, 2012.

Good luck to them all and Team GB.

Thursday 19 July 2012

The weather improves the economy

This years weather has been appalling for many reasons, some of them tragic when I think of the couple killed in their car under a land slide!

Inflation is slowly returning to the Bank’s boundary of 2%, in the last quarter it has dropped from 2.8% to 2.4% a significant drop. Put it another way, Britain's inflation rate has halved since last September - to its lowest rate since the end of 2009.

We can not expect inflation to continue to fall quite this fast. There were quite a lot of special factors at work in the June figure, including the miserable weather, which seems to have helped to push down clothing prices by forcing shops to start their summer sales early.

Funnily enough, that is almost exactly what the Bank said would happen, in its November 2011 Inflation Report forecast - a forecast many did not dare believe, given how often - and how wildly - the Bank's recent forecasts have turned out to be wrong.

Perhaps the Bank of England has started weather forecasting?

Wednesday 18 July 2012

The Olympics

Opening ceremony this Friday and half the tickets are still for sale. Why? Three reasons.

1) Tickets cost £2012 each - yer joking...
2) the Mickey mouse raffle system to purchase
3) failed websites and poor or non-existent sevice!

The greatest event of the year and it's been a farce from start to finish.

We knew that G4S had a problem as been reported last week, however, we didn't know by how much. Today at the select committee Nick Buckles the CEO has admitted they do not know how many people they have employed, how many have been trained or how many are going to turn up. OMG! It's a nightmare.

The two football matches in Cardiff & Glasgow are so under sold parts of each stadium are being sealed off as not wanted, farcical.

As the cameras move round over the next two weeks, huge gaps in all the seating area of the stadiums will become so obvious that it will be an embarrassment for the Government as Ministers try to lobby business that GB is great, some joke eh?

Tuesday 17 July 2012

Central Bank part II

They are at it again. The MPs are asking the Bank of England what are they going to do about Libor fixing and once again the Bank of England is pointing at that it has no powers available to follow this up.

Why are the MPs having difficulty in understanding this???

Monday 16 July 2012

Lords Reform

Last week a motion on the reform of the house of lords was defeated, or I should say the timetable was, and this is the real point.

99 Conservatives rebelled, and amazing number and exactly the number required to lose the vote, which obviously the Prime Minister and the rest of the right wing side of the coalition wants.

The alleged aggression did not happen, that is why it is not on film. It was one of several staged events to try and show support for a Liberal Democrat motion that hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell.

Eventually the coalition will split and the rest of the term until 2015 will be a minority government...

Friday 13 July 2012

Neglected to die!

Where did this story come from? A coroner's inquest!

Recording a narrative verdict at Westminster Coroners' Court, deputy coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe said: "Kane was undoubtedly let down by incompetence of staff, poor communication, lack of leadership, both medical and nursing, a culture of assumption."

The coroner added that the team caring for him failed to involve the hospital's endocrinology team to monitor his fluid balance. The coroner has such grave concerns about the case that it has been referred to police.


I'm speechless...

Thursday 12 July 2012

A scandal a day

It is not difficult to find a scandal daily in this country at the moment, so no shortage of subjects to write about. Today's gem is G4S.

A company setup to organise the security for the 2012 Olympics, given 553 million pounds to do it, and with two weeks to go, we find out that they are 3,500 employees short. So what happens, we send in the troops.

When the Home Office minister is asked whether the executive @ G4S will be punished for this outrage, he has no answer. So another half a billion disappears into someone's back pocket.

This 3,500 [extra troops] brings the total of the military involved to about 20,000! Is the tax-payer paying for this? Is Low-Cog who are charging hundreds of pounds for tickets going to fund any of this? Will G4S receive any punitive measures because of the failure?

I think not...

Wednesday 11 July 2012

Central Bank

What is the Bank of England for?

Official:
Monetary Policy.
The bank sets interest rates to keep inflation low to preserve the value of 'our' money.

Financial Stability.
The bank contributes to protecting and enhancing the stability of the financial system.

Two days ago, and yes it has taken me a while to let Paul Tucker's evidence at the treasury select committee sink in, it was clear as he was being questioned that the bank did NOT see itself as either a regulator or and enforcer of bank laws, and yet the MPs seem to be under the impression that the bank should be doing more.

Well, if that is true, then why don't they [the politicians] make the bank more independent, give it more responsibility and hand over more powers so that the bank can provide the service which the politicians seem to have implied is expected.

I feel as though the MPs appear to be asking a man with his hands tied behind his back, why he hasn't caught any fish today?

Tuesday 10 July 2012

Corrupt British Banking

We keep getting told that bankers should not be categorised as corrupt, and the example of banking hall staff, clerical even cleaning staff are used. This is a misnomer.

Marcus Agius is currently giving evidence to the treasury select committee and is repeatedly being caught out in statements between himself and Bob Diamond who attended the same committee last week.

When these two events are compared it is very easy for an outsider like myself to think that these two men are talking as though they have worked for two different companies, whereas in fact they have both worked for Barclays Bank and at the same time.

Nearly everything Bob Diamond said last week is different from what Marcus Agius is saying today, and the main reason is because the committee has letters written by Marcus Agius and he is now unable to deny them, which show that Bob Diamond last week mislead the committee. Not Good!

The trouble is this is not a surprise, because they are all at the top and they are all corrupt, we're stuffed...

Monday 9 July 2012

Natural disasters

I keep hearing people saying how exceptional the local floods are, even though there has been no loss of life, like there was in Russia [side note: wettest June on record in Britain and the water companies have hose pipe bans!] and what a disaster, "once in a century jobbie", of course these are the same people that are convinced that man is destroying his own planet with global warming!

Major disasters in just the last 40 years

Bangladesh   1970     500,000 Floods
Peru               1970      66,000 Earthquake
Vietnam        1971     100,000 Floods
China            1976     600,000 Earthquake
Armenia       1988     100,000 Earthquake
Iran               1990      50,000 Earthquake
Bangladesh   1991     139,000 Earthquake
South Asia    2004/5  285,000 Tsunami 
Haiti             2010      100,000 Earthquake

That is on average every 5 years a major loss of life happens because of a natural disaster, so how on earth can it be exceptional?

p.s. formatting table style does not appear to be available...

Wednesday 4 July 2012

Bob @ the committee

For the last three hours I have listened to a Treasury Select Committee question Bob Diamond former Chief Executive of Barclays Bank.

In my opinion [I am not an expert] this man is very naive and I am appalled that he has been able to command a salary of £20 million pounds a year.

He believes that everything bad at Barclays has been committed by 14 traders who have been sacked even though the period that the committee was talking about was spread over seven years.

It is perfectly clear that Bob Diamond has washed his hands of the affair, resignation is not a problem for him as he is going to walk away what most of us would call a fortune, but he probably calls a just reward.

It is another world...

Tuesday 3 July 2012

Europe referendum - maybe

Dr Liam Fox has just given a speech at the Tax payers alliance.

“There will be those that say that this is the wrong time and that it is politically difficult or even impossible. These are the perpetual arguments for inertia. This is not the time for party political games or tactical point scoring. Our National Interest is at stake and that trumps all other considerations. We must rise to the challenge.”

David Cameron and Liam Fox appear to be contemplating the same sort of referendum - a post renegotiation poll. What separates them is that the prime minister is clear that Britain needs to stay in whereas his former defence secretary is now ready to contemplate getting out. That's the divide that really matters.

Monday 2 July 2012

Greed at the top of the table again

Matthew Parris explains why we’re in the state we’re in…

“We have been living beyond our means. We have been paying ourselves more than our efforts were earning. We sought political leaders who would assure us that the good times would never end and that the centuries of boom and bust were over; and we voted for those who offered that assurance. We sought credit for which we had no security and we gave our business to the banks that advertised it. We wanted higher exam grades for our children and were rewarded with politicians prepared to supply them by lowering exam standards. We wanted free and better health care and demanded chancellors who paid for it without putting up our taxes. We wanted salacious stories in our newspapers and bought the papers that broke the rules to provide them. And now we whimper and snarl at MPs, bankers and journalists. Fair enough, my friends, but, you know, we really are all in this together.”