Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

rockfreak wrote:Yes, and HSBC is the biggest rotten apple in a pile of rotten apples when it comes to tax avoidance and evasion. The Tax Justice Network estimates that we lose something like £100 billion a year this way, enough to sort out our financial problems overnight rather than bleeding dry those at the bottom of society.
UK Uncut at least had the satisfaction of closing them down today with our picketing. We taped them up and declared them a crime scene in London, Cambridge, Cardiff, Shrewsbury and Taunton.

Normally it comes down to bad regulations / laws. In many cases what is being done is technically legal because it is not actually prohibited.

I don't think that anyone is contesting that bad regulation is the problem. Unfortunately it's impossible to get close to government to protest these days. Parliament is surrounded by a ring of steel (or concrete) and my letters to my local (Tory) MP always get a reply containing what you might call flim-flam. So protest groups must hit whatever targets they can. Although UK Uncut did manage to get close to a top Tory a couple of years ago in a protest against the Bedroom Tax. About 100 of us drove a removal van into the private road in Highgate of DWP supremo Lord Freud, got out a megaphone and demanded his removal because he's got too many bedrooms. His Telegraph reading, Tory voting neighbours were furious because they couldn't get their Chelsea tractors in or out for the afternoon.
On the subject of bankers and their motivation: that great economist John Maynard Keynes once said to his friends, after the Wall Street crash of 1929, that he was rather in favour of the huge sums of money that the people in the financial district pulled down. He said that he'd noticed by experience that many of these people were by nature domineering if not downright psychopathic and so by paying them huge sums of money you at least tied them into Wall Street and the City and this prevented them from drifting off into their natural habitat of organised crime.

You get my vote Freaky boy - the corporate welfare state, crony capitalism - socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog for the rest of us can't be the way forward.

rockfreak wrote: On the subject of bankers and their motivation: that great economist John Maynard Keynes once said to his friends, after the Wall Street crash of 1929, that he was rather in favour of the huge sums of money that the people in the financial district pulled down. He said that he'd noticed by experience that many of these people were by nature domineering if not downright psychopathic and so by paying them huge sums of money you at least tied them into Wall Street and the City and this prevented them from drifting off into their natural habitat of organised crime.

LOL
to think that my self had thought all along that you thought that the City was organised crime ...

(for English experts of which esteemed company I disclaim membership rate that on alliteration, tricolon, pleonasm, assonance, hendiadys and a couple of other forms of writing - just having fun!)

Election result. Devastated. Turkeys voting for Christmas. Off to get pissed.

rockfreak wrote:Election result. Devastated. Turkeys voting for Christmas. Off to get pissed.

For once, I agree.

Nicola Sturgeon is making watching politics interesting. Love her or loathe her, there are a lot of similarities to Margaret Thatcher, domineering and uncomprising to name but 2!

fra828 wrote:Nicola Sturgeon is making watching politics interesting. Love her or loathe her, there are a lot of similarities to Margaret Thatcher, domineering and uncomprising to name but 2!

Women always have to shout louder to get heard in our politics. The question is, how will her policies play out? She's up against the same problem that the rest of the UK suffers from - how to divert investment from the gambling dens of the City of London into more useful and stable sectors. Thatcher made matters worse by setting the City free to behave recklessly; thus under the Tories in the 1980s and '90s we had the first warnings of trouble with Barings, BCCI and the pension mis-selling scandals and then under Labour the full-blown crash of Northern Rock and the other banks. Britain today has a chronically unbalanced economy with far too much dependence on the dodgier end of financial services, foreign imports, living on credit and particularly living off the value of our houses (the very thing that got us into trouble in 1990 as well as 2007 - unsustainable property asset bubbles). Sturgeon has chosen to challenge all this rather more robustly than Labour, and I don't see her attitude as necessarily nationalistic; I see it more as an appeal to basic fairness. How Scotland will go about running things if they get independence is another matter but I applaud her courage in taking on a malign and discredited London establishment.

rockfreak wrote:

fra828 wrote:Nicola Sturgeon is making watching politics interesting. Love her or loathe her, there are a lot of similarities to Margaret Thatcher, domineering and uncomprising to name but 2!

Women always have to shout louder to get heard in our politics. The question is, how will her policies play out? She's up against the same problem that the rest of the UK suffers from - how to divert investment from the gambling dens of the City of London into more useful and stable sectors. Thatcher made matters worse by setting the City free to behave recklessly; thus under the Tories in the 1980s and '90s we had the first warnings of trouble with Barings, BCCI and the pension mis-selling scandals and then under Labour the full-blown crash of Northern Rock and the other banks. Britain today has a chronically unbalanced economy with far too much dependence on the dodgier end of financial services, foreign imports, living on credit and particularly living off the value of our houses (the very thing that got us into trouble in 1990 as well as 2007 - unsustainable property asset bubbles). Sturgeon has chosen to challenge all this rather more robustly than Labour, and I don't see her attitude as necessarily nationalistic; I see it more as an appeal to basic fairness. How Scotland will go about running things if they get independence is another matter but I applaud her courage in taking on a malign and discredited London establishment.

And, unfortunately, with Cameron back with a clear (small) majority this time, I can now see more of the same.

Nothing to do with politics but more sad news today with the death of BB King. Maybe you have to be my sort of age, but I feel increasingly depressed as one more icon of the sixties goes down, not just because of all the brilliant music but also the hope and optimism of that decade that is now being trampled underfoot.

rockfreak wrote:Nothing to do with politics but more sad news today with the death of BB King. Maybe you have to be my sort of age, but I feel increasingly depressed as one more icon of the sixties goes down, not just because of all the brilliant music but also the hope and optimism of that decade that is now being trampled underfoot.

A person I respected used to read the front page of "The Thunderer" every morning. Assured that his name did not appear as deceased he felt he could proceed and enjoy the day.

Respect for BB King, yes, though I prefer the styles of Johnny A and Santana

rockfreak wrote:Nothing to do with politics but more sad news today with the death of BB King. Maybe you have to be my sort of age, but I feel increasingly depressed as one more icon of the sixties goes down, not just because of all the brilliant music but also the hope and optimism of that decade that is now being trampled underfoot.

Quite so, Rocky.

I'm afraid when you reach my age, funerals are a far more regular occurence, rather than Christenings or marriages.

I've just totted up the amount of 'dispatches' Jan and I have attended in the last couple of years. Many for people younger than me. Somewhat frightening !!

rockfreak wrote:Election result. Devastated.

ISTR a rabid far left (aren't they all?) union leader retired a decade or so ago and became a London guide (good for him). He quickly went from far left to mid conservative; that is called maturity. Remember that the age profile is getting towards pensioners; the question is whether Labour will go the way of Lib Dem.

Don't worry; my armour is Labour resistant but not tried (yet) against UKIP mpressionable

Edit: What I forgot to mention is that when my son was studying for A levels his teacher took three days off to lecture the class as to why conservatives are far to the right of the nazis and why the only hope for Britain is labour. That's why the youth vote labour.

Did anyone see the boy Hilto's remarkable appearance on Newsnight this week? What a performer. The pale blue top to match the melting pale blue eyes. The "Aw shucks, I'm so hurt for the plight of the ordinary guy" demeanour. The squirming shoulders to match the bleeding heart sentiments. This is the guy who was polishing Cameron's fake one-nation Toryism credentials (greenest party ever, hug a hoodie, etc) before the election while also plotting £26 billion of social security cuts. But of course some might say this is what boarding school teaches you. Soft voice, nice manners, sophistry, evasion, and, in the end, an ability to even deceive yourself perhaps. Unfortunately, the old boy network after school means that these sort of people inexorably find their way into positions of influence. Why are people taken in? I remembered something in Brideshead and there it was when I got out my dog-eared copy. Anthony Blanche is giving chapter and verse to Charles on what he calls our weakness for English cream cake charm. I'm a dago, an outsider, he says, so I can see it. It doesn't exist outside this soggy isle.

While I can't disagree with most of what you say (nicely put, if I may say so!), the idea that there is no similar 'old boy network' in many other countries is way off the mark. It's not what you know, etc. etc.