Last Post

The author of this blog has decided to call it a day and this post and the one below shall be my final utterances from these pages . I feel that it has been a long time coming, it has been increasingly difficult to keep 'in character' and also write about the various issues of the day- social, political, theological etc- without slipping into my own personal view. Therefore, despite the fact that this has been a jolly  good show, myself and Lord Lavendon have decided to go back to the country club, where he and I shall content ourselves with a good old brandy, cigar and the occasional bit of grouse shooting, fox hunting, fishing and all the other wonderful country pursuits that the previous socialist government banned. Cherry pip, tally hoe  and pleased be advised that your are all welcome to come and visit a new site, here, in which the author of this blog writes as himself.

Best regards all readers and thank you for reading over the past couple of years.

hacked off

My brief musings on the phone hacking scandal (I trust readers will be able to search the Internet on the back ground on what this is about ) :

• State-imposed censorship is wrong, but so are the actions of the NOW, who have clearly been sticking two fingers up to the law for some time and have brought not just themselves into the gutter but also all the good journalists, who do act with integrity.

• Brookes should go because as Truman once said "the buck stops here". There is no excuse to claim that she was on holiday when apparently the hacking of some of the people happened and therefore attempt to get off by placing the blame of all these serious allegations,on minions (who could presumably do what they  allegedly wanted?).

• The takeover of BskyB must now be halted as at present I cannot see that News International are "fit and proper" to run a flower stall, let along a listed corporation. The culture secretary is hiding behind rules and regulations, but if they really wanted to stop this, then I am sure that they would find a legal way to do so (just as Labour, flouting competition rules, found a way to merge Lloyds and Halifax to a mega bank in 2008).

• The police also have a lot of questions to answer and this will lead to the same drop in reputation as journalists, although it is worse for the police because they are supposed to be the authority of the law. For every honest copper has now been tarnished by the actions of the greedy and corrupt.

• Finally, Cameron must be wondering what made him hire Andy Coulson as his spin doctor and then director of the Downing Street spin machine (before he was pushed out). How many more errors of judgement has our prime minister made (that we don't yet know about) that will come back to haunt him and the conservative party?

Wow to that ocean of debt!

So the politicians have until 2 August to agree to terms which will allow for an increase in the amount of money that the US government can borrow or if not the government will default on its obligations, be unable to pay its civil service -in effect a  shut down & (even worse a repayment crisis) with the usual doomsayers predicting a financial meltdown if that occurs.

There  are negotiations and horse trading in return for agreement on increasing this limit between the political parties, the congress and the white house, which is turning into a bun fight about cutting spending,  raising taxes and the rest .

[ I cannot quite grasp the point of this, given that it took half a year to get the 2010-2011 budget agreed and it was a compromise agreement anyway, as one would assume that when this was voted upon Senators and Congressmen  might have had  an inkling that the debt ceiling would be breached during the year- which it did 1 month after the budget was finally passed- it is not as if the Congress does not have its own non-partisan budget office, but perhaps some-one else would like to explain this to me, as I really am at a loss about it].

The problem with the US debate (as it is in the UK ) is that I  would suggest that the politics has gotten into this debate a bit too much  or  perhaps the wrong type of politics,because the difference between the two parties (as in the UK) are relatively trivial when you have a $14,400 billion debt to repay. For example, the 2011-2012  budget debates have started in earnest, but from what I can gather the difference between Democrat and Republican spending plans is $200 billion; i.e. Democrats  (more accurately Obama) want $200 billion more, Republicans $200 billion less. $200 billion is a colossal amount to me and to the reader, but note - the US is borrowing $150 billion a MONTH adding to that already high overall figure previously mentioned-so $200 billion in this context is  little ink blot  in the sea of red  which is the US government debt.

One final thought on this- even if the debt ceiling is increased , there will be a time when the bond market will simply not be able to buy the vast amounts of bonds which are being used to fund the US government or becomes convinced that there is simply no way that the US will ever, ever pay back what it has borrowed, because of the refusal of the political elite to grasp economic fundamentals- a failure to  understand that even an economy as vast as the US cannot borrow $ + 1,000 billion a year forever. This hasn't been a problem so far because of the QE programme, but even that will not and can not be sustained for much longer.