First Rate At Lloyds

So Lloyds is said to be preparing for a further crisis with the Euro and possible extreme conditions.

If this story is correct then they may well need to:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/stephen-merrett/lloyd%E2%80%99s-of-london-insolvent-again-government-in-denial-action-required

Here we go again, happy as can be, all good pals and jolly good company.

Expelling The Moneychangers

Holy Moses!  Today it is Pentecost and time for contemplation.  Today, a message arrived in the inbox from someone I know in New Hampshire. 

The Nashua Telegraph, a local paper that carries more real news than most of our UK media, ran this story about the Vatican Bank caper.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/mobile/962284-264/vatican-in-chaos-after-butler-arrested-for.html

It is a parable for our times.  He suggested that the Vatican Bank needs a good Compliance Officer to sort things out and knows just the person to do it. 

Also, that person would make an excellent Cardinal who can tell the difference between dogma and doctored accounts.

The only snag is that there seems to be a technical problem of status that would debar her.  Surely, the EU must have a Directive or law to forbid this?

So tonight perhaps the bootleg recording of the BBC Prom of Sir Simon Rattle with the National Youth Orchestra on 11 August 2002 doing Mahler’s 8^th, with the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus”.  It was a wonderful performance.

On his way into the Royal Albert Hall he encountered us outside.  “You know, you Prommers are all mad.”  He said, having done time in the Arena.  “It takes one to know one” was my reply.  After all, beneath the style, he remains a Scouser.

Gustav Mahler, I believe, had his vision of Europe, but preferred to keep his cash reserves in Maria Theresa Thaler’s.  What he would have made of the Vatican being involved in financial malpractices, the gifts that from the Spirit flow, we shall never know.

Perhaps he would have written something based on Machiavelli or Dante instead.

Singing For Your Supper

The real issue facing Europe and causing the most acrimony is of course the Eurovision song contest which is to blast the ears and boggle the eyes tomorrow night, Saturday, asteroids and ancient prophesies willing.

Azerbaijan is the country that is hosting it and Baku the location.  The choice was made by the performers from that country winning last year, so the complaints about it are met by “rules are rules” responses.

Our fair nation is being represented by one of my contemporaries, yes he is that old, Arnold Dorsey, stage name Engelbert Humperdinck who might have been the oldest ever contestant but has been upstaged by some Russian ladies of even greater age.

The hot money is on the Russian Dancing Great Grannies.  So whether there will more protests next year is an open question.  But given the shady behind doors fixes and betting plans it might by anyone.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has taken an interest, not as a break from the usual stuff, but because its government, financing and human interest issues give it cause to raise questions about both the nature of regime and its closeness to people in London.

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/05/22/eurovision-puts-azerbaijan-under-the-spotlight/

Although based in California where he has spent much of his life Arnold also had a pad, a big one, at Kirby Muxloe by Leicester, once a decidedly posh place to live.  The people who lived there when Arnold was a lad were the sort who owned cars, had full china tea sets and read newspapers with a lot of big words in them.

It was a place to aspire to if you climbed the greasy, or greased pole of local life and commerce and like most of the villages and communities of the Shire had a long and complicated history.

During the time of the Wars of the Roses in the 15^th Century it was the hands of the Hastings family.  These were one of the most prominent families in the Midlands and it was at Kirby that William Hastings began to build a major new home, above.

Unluckily, he was one of the losers in the vicious infighting that occurred during the reign of King Richard III, losing his head at the Tower of London in 1483 and the castle remained unfinished. 

The King lost his life a few miles down the road at the Battle of Bosworth Field of 1485.  When his remains were being conveyed into Leicester over the back of a horse the head was banged against the parapet on entering into Leicester along the road from Kirby.

Let us hope that Arnold keeps his head and makes it back to California or Kirby in one piece.  He might even get a booking to appear with the Great Grannies in Moscow.

The Future Is Private Not Public

An intriguing combination of items came up in today’s rattling around the web.  The more things change the more they remain the same.  Both are quite short but in terms of time between very long, one being the Neolithic, the other current nonsense,

The first attempts to explain what will happen in East London once the circus has ended and the caravans departed from the Olympics “village”.  It seems that there is to be a major property development which will amount to a private new town.

It will not operate under any of our present arrangements for local government or other similar inconveniences which raises the question of who it is for and who will be the financial operators.  Guess what?  There are no clear answers and nobody appears to be in charge.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/anna-minton/olympic-village-or-private-new-town

The second is that recent research suggests that the causewayed enclosures that were constructed during the Neolithic period did not take hundreds or thousands of years to be built.  Indeed, it is argued that it took only 75 years or so for them to spread across the Atlantic Isles.

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/05/2012/the-times-of-their-lives-understanding-the-neolithic-peoples-of-europe

What is a source of wonder is when you calculate how much work had to be done and what was involved then just what was the size of the population then and who were these people?

This is a Europe we know little or nothing about, notably who the people were, what or who they worshipped, how they communicated or what their social organisation was. 

But to build on this scale and with this rapidity, organise food supplies to maintain the population and to know the heavens as they seem to have done suggests a very able, intelligent population connected with others over a wide area.

What happened to them?  Perhaps, in the future when the diggers find the remains of a 21^st Century transformation of the Atlantic Isles from one form of political organisation to a collection of privately owned fiefdoms into which a servile population had been herded they might wonder why.

We may know the answers to that but those in the future may not.

This Is Not Looking Good

At the end of the next football season it will be sixty years since Liverpool were relegated from the then Division One to Division Two in 1952-1953.  To add insult to injury they were replaced by Everton who had been relegated a couple of seasons before.  The other side that went down was Middlesbrough replaced by Leicester City.

The previous season, 1951-1952 Liverpool had finished at half way after showing some promise but which tailed off in the later half.  Those of us with memories of that unhappy time will be uncomfortably aware that we could be in for a repeat.

It was a time when the owners were in dispute, there was disarray in management and in the dressing room and the club, despite the level of its support did not have the cash to rebuild a team that had enjoyed success since the end of the War.

This season after the turn of the year Liverpool’s form was that of a relegation team and it was only that enough points had been gained earlier to keep them up at the half way level.  If they begin next season in this way they may not recover. 

Their luck in the Carling Cup means that they have a place in the lesser European contest but as too many clubs have discovered the fixture and injury complications from the many games these involve, not exactly big crowd games, could seriously impair what needs to be done in The Premiership.

Next years Premiership has all the signs of being highly competitive with a number of well funded teams able to take care of themselves.  It would be very easy for Liverpool in their current state to be locked into the grim struggle as one of four or five teams desperate to retain their place.

Sixty years ago they were not scoring enough goals.  This season has been much the same and has meant dropping points against sides in games they should have been taking the maximum points from.

The lower divisions of the football league are littered with teams that were once great names, even in the Conference there are some to be found that at one time enjoyed a time at the highest level.

In the next few seasons it is inevitable that some teams now in the Premiership will drop down to lower levels to join all those clubs of the past whose ageing fans cling on to either their own memories or those of their parents or grandparents.

Often in the past such falls have been down to bad management, disagreements between owners and over optimism about the accounts.  All these are in place at Liverpool who in addition have the modern curse of the cloud of agents, financial advisers, lawyers and consultants taking much of the money and increasing the levels of debt.

From “The Political Economy Of Football” an item “Talking To The Lawyers” taken from “The Lawyer” of 22 May “Heading Skills” dealing with the legal in and outs of several Premiership Clubs.  This is the item on Liverpool.

Quote:

Liverpool FC

When things are going well at a football club, as it is for Manchester City’s Simon Cliff, it can be a dream job for a sports-loving lawyer.

Two years ago, when The Lawyer spoke to Liverpool general counsel Natalie Wignall (22 March 2010), this was undoubtedly the case. But if two years is a long time in football, sometimes so is a day.

Between The Lawyer arranging to speak to Wignall last week and the actual interview the following day, manager and club legend ‘King’ Kenny Dalglish had left the club and Wignall was tied up in negotiations.

It has been a tumultuous season for Wignall and her beloved Reds, with several executive departures creating a climate of uncertainty.

Liverpool’s director of football Damien Comolli left last month, followed quickly by club sports science head Dr Peter Brukner and goalkeeping coach John Achterberg.

There has been speculation that the club’s owner, the US-based Fenway Sports Group, was unhappy with the way the Luis Suarez race claim case was handled by its legal advisers.

Wignall supported McCormicks senior partner and sport, media and entertainment specialist Peter McCormick, along with club secretary Zoe Ward, when Liverpool striker Suarez was found guilty by an FA commission for racially abusing Manchester United’s Patrice Evra.

But the club was then roundly condemned for its stance in support of Suarez after he was banned for eight games.

Wignall previously told The Lawyer that the in-house legal role was her “dream job”. She has been at the club during a testing time, with legal wrangles on and off the field, including the international dispute over the club’s ownership (TheLawyer.com, 8 March 2012).

The ongoing action has brought work to a number of the North West city’s law firms.

“I have to pinch myself when I come in to work every day,” the born-and-bred Scouser, who lives within walking distance of Liverpool’s Melwood training ground, told The Lawyer in 2010. “It’s just the best job in the world.”

She conceded that the intense scrutiny of the club can be difficult to deal with.

“It’s the extent to which everything you do is in the public eye,” she says. “It’s just not like any other business where you might win and lose big contracts, but either way you get on with it. Here the performances on the pitch affect the business so much more.”

Unquote

In the media we are constantly told that the English Premiership is the market leader in the world with huge revenues to come from all those foreigners daft enough to be persuaded to show loyalty to the brands in question.  We are told that this is all “good for growth” and national pride and all that.

With most of the Premiership now in foreign ownership, most of the leading players from further shores, most of the huge debts owed to global financial interests and most of the revenue going into players off shore accounts it would be a sector of the economy that would be closed down if it were not still capable of being able to part fools from their money.

Or the Premiership may simply be one of the world’s most obvious money laundries.  I do hope George Osborne enjoyed his works outing to Munich with the Chelsea people.  Perhaps he learned some lessons in debt management there.

Liverpool may survive at the top, but don’t bet on it or ask one of the teams of lawyers to advise you.

Telling Fortunes

Thin posts this week, up to a point; but for today if others are saying a lot it is worth pointing to them.

The first item is a site that normally wants to see the markets doing well and things on the up.  So they tend to be optimistic about finding some good news somewhere to encourage investments. 

The item is a longish one, but does say a lot from an American standpoint.  It means that what some of us thought possible, that the 2007-2008 Crash was just the beginning may well turn out to be the case.

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/lehman-type-megashock-looming-49669

The second is about the Clinton’s and power, or rather not being in power and the profits to be had from it.  Tellingly, the last Act of Bill Clinton’s Presidency was to sign off a bill deregulating derivative trading.

Whatever has happened to other people it seems that he has made a good living since.  You may make your own list of UK politicians who have been doing very well since they left office.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/its-not-about-reelection-bill-clintons-80-million-payday.html

If there is to be another period when the world economy wicket gets sticky and we return to the breathless hush in the close with last man in the two obvious periods in the immediate future seem to be early June or then late July into August.

In the meantime the North Anatolian Fault has been “bracketed” both to the East and to the West by earthquakes on either side of the suggested site of the long predicted next big one.

And the hurricane season seems to be starting early.

Happy Days

"Wow, just look at that Euro endonegous growth curve!"


Perhaps its the way you tell them.