Brian Bollen's Blog

Free money: nothing new under the sun

Reading this morning about the European Central Bank its targetted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTROs, or free money) I recalled a fascinating episode from history, recounted in Money, The Unauthorised Biography, by Felix Martin, a most excellent reading adventure.

When Emperor Tiberius in AD 33 enforced a law introduced by Julius Caesar, he caused a credit crunch. “All the familiar features of a modern banking crisis followed,” writes Felix Martin.

“There was a mad scramble to call in loans in order to comply. The property market collapsed as mortgaged land was fire-sold to fund repayments. Mass bankruptcy threatened to engulf the financial system. With Rome in the grip of a credit crunch, the emperor was forced to implement a massive bailout.

“The Imperial treasury refinanced the overextended lenders with a 100 million sesterces programme of three-year interest-free loans against security of deliberately overvalued real estate.”

Nothing new under the sun, eh?

Deutsche Bank appoints Tony W Chao as Greater China Head of Securities Services

Deutsche Bank has today announced the appointment of Tony W Chao as Greater China Head of Securities Services, effective today.

In this newly created role, Chao will be responsible for driving the strategy of the bank’s Securities Services business in Greater China, covering Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Based in Shanghai, he will report to Anand Rengarajan, APAC Head of Securities Services regionally, and to Dirk Lubig, Head of Global Transaction Banking – China locally.

Cats Matter

I just received this pitch from catsmatter.org. To any cat lover, it is, to put it simply, hearbreaking. Read for yourself and make your own mind up...

Story pitch begins here

We wondered if you thought our story was worthy of being written about as this is an issue constantly being raised and it affects 11.1 million people throughout the UK directly and we are keen to raise awareness wherever possible...

Our mission started when both of our cats were hit on the road and left for dead. The drivers didn't stop and no one helped them. They were then collected and disposed of at landfill by the local council who did not scan for a microchip and let us know. This meant we never got our beloved pets remains back, or closure. British law currently states this is perfectly ok for drivers and councils to do.

 

We knew we had to change that!

 

We started a campaign to make it a legal requirement drivers stop, help and report a cat they have hit whilst driving, and to get a mandatory requirement in place so councils must scan cats found and notify the owners.

 

We petitioned the UK Government as well as the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Every single one responded and already we've seen huge results!

Our Welsh petition saw the Welsh Government announce Wales as the first all-scanning nation in the world! Scottish ministers raised a motion and are currently looking in to the matter. As for England...we've submitted all our petitions already and Highways England along with the Local Government Department are currently looking in to the matter so hopefully they will implement mandatory scanning soon.

 

Also, after we produced freedom of information requests to all London borough councils asking how many cats had been collected and how many had been scanned and returned to the owners, the London Assembly unanimously passed a motion raised on our behalf for the London Mayor to implement mandatory scanning in the capitol as well as also lobby the government further on the issue.

 

This came about as FOI requests revealed that of 4194 cats collected by London councils, just 75 were scanned and returned home. The rest were ditched in landfill sites across the borough without being scanned and the owners notified. Those owners will probably still be out calling their cats names on the streets in vain as we speak, they will never get closure and that is why it's so important what we do and why we are determined to see change.

 

In terms of reportable road collisions involving cats, our petitions have already been submitted and both main political parties have pledged to look to introduce our proposals. We drafted how we believe such a law would be implemented and enforced and both DEFRA head of state Michael Gove, and shadow DEFRA sec Sue Hayman agreed with us they could work. To go in to further detail on this, on the Labour side we met with Sue Hayman at her Cumbria constituency office and had a fantastic meeting.

She said our proposals were ''extremely do'able'' and ''something the government has not seen before'' from previous petitions or campaigns. Her approval was sealed in the Labour Animal Welfare manifesto as she has written in reportable cat collisions.

On the Tory side, we are currently working with MP Rehman Chisti and we submitted our road accident proposals which is included in his current Cats Bill currently processing through Parliament. Rehman also spoke privately to Michael Gove about such who said proposals were ''very reasonable'' and he is currently reviewing the details Bill.

 

We wanted to contact you about all this as there is another part to our campaign...we know that, although we are a nation of animal lovers, there is still a mind-set amongst some that it is ''just a cat''. This is why our secondary aim is to raise awareness and educate people.

 

On our website we have details of what to do if you hit/find a cat, how to administer roadside first aid, what to do out of hours (which is a problem), who to contact , and so on. We would hope that any publicity from an article would enable more traffic to the site as that would mean many more lives potentially saved for us! With 11.1 million cat owners in the UK currently, and this issue only ever having failed previously, we also wanted people to have hope and show things are being done about the issue, and progress is moving extremely fast!

 

Why do we think we are different or will get any further than the rest? We already have really, plus we are approaching things in a completely different manor and have researched the issue extensively so we know exactly what we're asking for and to who. Both the Tory and Labour side have both expressed how they like our proposal of fines for drivers failing to stop, and each has said they see no reason why this could not be implement with further research. This all makes it extremely promising.

 

Hopefully you see a story in all of this, and if there is anything further you need such as specific contacts or the FOI results direct for example, anything, please do just let us know. We will pop in a photo of us, this was recently taken as we got the result from the Welsh Assembly that Wales is the first all-scanning nation in the world. Here we are stood with David J Rowlands AM, handing our petition in to the Welsh Government.

 

We have also popped one in of us with Rehamn Chishti MP who is spearheading the Cats Bill for us, here we are at the Blue Cross hospital stood over a cat who has been hit by a car and is having a microchip inserted. Veterinarians were explaining how quick, pain free and easy it is to chip and how quick it is to scan. Such a simple procedure which could be life saving and spares an owner a life times worth of never having closure.

 

Best wishes

 

Mandy & Tiya

--

www.catsmatter.org

Watching 'The Plank' like doing a comedy archaeological dig

Having recently read the mostly enjoyable autobiography of Eric Sykes, I thought I would search out his short tv film 'The Plank', to which he makes reference on a number of occasions. He, and others, clearly think it is a comedy classic, emphasising the fact that it is silent as some kind of badge of undisputed quality.

I vaguely recall seeing it when I was about 10 years of age, slightly baffled by it, and I couldn't recall much that was funny about it. Maybe as an older person I would see it differently.

My wife and I watched it last night, appalled from start to finish, at just how bad it is, encapsulating the state of television comedy art at the time (1967, IIRC). No wonder Monty Python happened, we both said, almost in unison.

Every tired cliché and stereotype of vaudeville and silent comedy was on display, from funny business with car doors opening and closing and falling off, car bonnets opening when they shouldn't, people being hit or narrowly avoiding being hit by the eponymous plank and other objects. And, of course, leering at a mini-skirted young woman by randy older men, a staple of tv comedy until alternative comedy arrived in the early 1980s.

Just what you might expect from a programme 'starring', inter alia, Jimmy Edwards, Jimmy Tarbuck and Kenny Lynch. The latter was the inexplicable sine qua non of variety tv throughout the 1960s, even though he never seemed to be called upon to actually DO anything, other than appear on screen as a professional pal to the stars.

It was like watching a comedy archaeological dig, hoping against hope that we would find an immaculate top quality Roman mosaic at the bottom of the trench only to find we were in fact digging the latrines.

According to 'If I don't write it, nobody else will', the autobiography in question, Peter Sellers thought the concept fantastic and was set to star in it but accepted an offer to do something in Hollywood instead. Lucky him, I'd say. His replacement, Tommy Cooper, looked throughout as if he did not have a clue what was going on, almost as if the creator was making it up as he went along.

And guess what. At around 47 minutes long, The Plank is not exactly short. And it is not even silent...

 

One Football, No Nets

Title: One Football No Nets

Author: Justin Walley

Publsiher: Bennion Kearney

Pps: 340 including closing photos

Price: ??

ISBN: 978-1-910515-64-8

 

I had my doubts when I was offered a copy of this book to review but I thought the underlying concept, of an amateur football coach becoming the national team manager of Matabeleland in 2017, sounded intriguing, particularly given the promised involvement of Bruce Grobelaar, the one-time Liverpool goalkeeper who effortlessly creates a stir wherever he happens to go.

It is actually quite well written, as a combination of unifying narrative and diary entries detailing the journey from an extremely unpromising start (a clue is in the title) to the CONIFA World Football Cup in London in 2018 (not a competition of which I have ever heard but featuring also the Isle of Man and Tibet, the latter of which, we discover, has been screwed over by Yorkshire). 

But - and this is where my doubts about its being another self-publishing venture re-awoke - when you use the word 'peddle' instead of 'pedal' as the author does on page five (I found myself cycling home, so tired I could barely peddle'), it suggests a certain element of basic illiteracy in regard to two different words on behalf of the author or of whoever edited the book. A shame, because that puts me right off. Exacerbating matters is an unfortunate formula of words on page six in which the author says 'I would return there this year to aid the dire plight of the elephants'. I can work out what he means but it is clumsy to say the least.

These howlers are a shame, as Walley's description of the religious Colditz (his exact words) in Macedonia where he accidently finds himself on retreat with a group of young men who could be bona fide ex-prisoners or on the run, is gripping.

The chapter titles show a level of wit and ability to grab the reader's attention (If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans; Aim low and work upwards; WIndolene smuggling; Frogger; 17 players and a truck) and the story itself is strong enough to persuade the reader to continue. Walley is good at word pictures, of that there is little or no doubt. En passant, he paints a portrait of the economic collapse of Zimbabwe and the third world challenges faced by people who are little more than children losing parents.

I can, hand on heart, recommend giving it a go, but without knowing the price I can equally say hand on heart that I don't know whether it represents value for money. I have looked everywhere you would expect it to be but just can't see it.