A bit of Tom Stack style realism

With apologies to Thomas Gray

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day.

The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea.

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

                                                                          Thomas Gray 1716-71

Elegy in the Real World by Tom Stack

As the Evil Empire sinks its fangs ever deeper into the fabric of British Sporting Life, has the time come to repatriate our destiny, as the nation that prides itself on fair play and level playing fields.

  For if the invasion by our Antipodean allies, becomes all consuming, as appears to be the case. Especially if the launch of their new Formula One Motor Racing channel, is anything to go by, projecting it as if they now own the TV rights to F1 and every other sporting activity, in perpetuity. (It could bear distinct similarities to the way the Treaty of Nanking 1842, ceded the island of Hong Kong to the British Crown in Perpetuity). Though it could be there’s a lesson here, like? ‘Nothing is Forever’?

   Soon maybe we’ll wake up and discover they’ve hi-jacked the Horse & Country Channel and wish to charge us for watching the Ploughing Competitions. (At least that’s all in a straight line). Then when it’s all done and dusted we get to watch a Paint Drying event, just to soften us up. But seriously if we don’t act to stem this rising tide, we’ll all be drowning in a sea of subscriptions steadily and remorselessly creeping up to more than £500 per annum, on top of the licence fee.

  So with all the resources at their command, is it not time to set the BBC free to compete on a level playing field by using the massive income they enjoy for the benefit of the hard pressed taxpayers who contribute the Beeb’s income of £3,500+mn circa annually, in its entirety. Usually for no other reason than the most morbid of social engineering experimentation? Scrap the licence fee and turn it into a voluntary subscription channel. Let's have a bit of real competition. 

  No more streaming of cut price discarded snippets cast at our feet from on high, by the Evil Empire, in the way the best of British Football has been destroyed, by an Arena Mentality more suited to the Roman Empire with the following of a baying mob and a wages which make a Banker's bonus look like small change.

Watch this space, I’ll be back! 

 Tom.

Maybe the Cat can look at the King (Part II)

But can Lib-Dems command the heights?

By trying to influence government policy, is Nick Clegg condemning his party to eternal meltdown or hoping that in some way the public at large will begin to embrace the Lib-Dem mantra of wishy-washy political expediency? Though more likely this Lib-Dem posturing is the obvious result of endless generations in isolated opposition.

 

  Polls apart, the damage inflicted by going against mainstream public opinion is causing incalculable damage to UK Plc. So the flaky responses to enduring problems will come back to haunt them, as they face even more generations of eternal opposition, at the next asking.

 

  You see the big problem here for the Lib-Dems is that in opposition you can say or do anything, since you are never going to answer for the result. So as the levers of power slip effortlessly from their illusory perception of the reality of Coalition, it becomes patently clear they are singing from the wrong hymn sheet.

  Maybe Dave believes that in casting aspersions at Nick’s disapprobation of Tory realism, he is driving the dagger ever deeper into the heart of Liberal thinking. It could well be that in planting seeds of despair at Lib-Dem stalling of promised reforms, he is creating the impression of what the benefits would be if went his own way.

 

  Can we really believe this tack after so many broken promises, though in some ways  as the Europhiles go for more pernicious tax raising measures calculated to neuter the position of  UK’s ‘City’ of London as the Clearing Bank for the World. The danger of closer ties with Brussels looks doomed, as the real power brokers take over and the ‘City’ takes over the world.

 

  But hang on a mo, think on this! Does such a takeover depend on survival of Fractional Reserve Banking? The means by which, what we assume to be our Democratic Freedoms are stifled by the real Fat Controller. For it doesn’t have to be this way. We can follow the Yellow Brick Road as laid out for us by Frank L. Baum in the real Wizard of Oz, not I assert the Judy Garland version.

 

  On the other hand maybe there is no such thing as Jam Tomorrow, as the Queen insisted. Jam yesterday or jam today, but never jam tomorrow for tomorrow never comes. It’s just any other day, it’s never today.

Watch this space, I’ll be back and lookout for (Part III)

Tom.  

£161mn sterling in Bank Bonus Payments

The Bankers price for Propping up UK Plc and Whitehall? Part I

It’s a Pinch really, if you look at things from the government’s point of view. All they need to do is wait for HM Customs and Revenue to collect it, hand it over. Then they sit back and distribute as they think, to raise the prospects of clinging on to the levers of power for another four or five years. Depending of course on when they think they can pitch a winner.

  But why this witch hunt, the Bankers are doing no more than the law permits, merely extracting their pound of flesh for operating their infamous Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB). The means by which they produce money out of thin air. It’s no more than a figure on a balance sheet, with an interest bearing debt liability, collateralised by a borrower’s assets. Effectively they’re converting an individual’s properties to interest bearing debt, they can sell on to the highest bidder, before the roundabout comes full circle.

  Presumably it was borrowing by government to promote their own particular political agenda that accumulated this mountain of debt we now have liability for. They did it in our name fer chrissakes! But in the end, it brought about their downfall, as the commitment became unsustainable from income and they had to resort to more borrowing to prop up their faltering political aims.

  It’s funny how things work out and it’s amazing how true the aphorism that: ‘Things work out the way they’re supposed to’, turns out to be a truism of immense perspicacity. I recall it from a film I watched many years ago and reflected on it from time to time, when things didn’t go quite the way I planned.

  But hey presto along comes an altogether unexpected event or happening that changes everything and things are not quite as black as you thought they were. But in truth this is not a mountain of debt just a mountain of interest that may or may not be collectible. So it gets written off, as in the case of Greece. But in effect this destroys credit and forever the politicians are bleating we need more lending. Why? Because only through this lending and (FRB) can the money be raised to sustain them in power  

Watch this space, I’ll be back! So lookout for Part II

Tom.

For whom the bells Toll

Time to ring the changes

Each day of late as the Euro imbroglio deepens leads me ever closer to the understanding that the all consuming power of the bankers and their Fractional Reserve Banking is so firmly embedded into the fabric of society as to prove almost impossible to remedy. Governments have surrendered the initiative, to the point where they are impotent, totally enthralled by the income it produces to their respective Treasuries.

The insatiable lust for interest and loan sharking by the banks has enabled them to plunder in the name of incentive, to a point where it blurs the difference between right and wrong, Something they attempt to justify as incentive, by claiming it’s merely a percentage of the profits they produce. Even though their record in creating these massive profits margins, is rarely unblemished and often demands an outrageous degree of human sufferance.

Banking is rotten to the core and governments lack the courage to take a grip and shake it till the pips squeak. The system we have is no longer fit for cause except to fill the boots of the major players with obscene amounts of loot.

It's time to follow the Yellow Brick Road before anarchy reigns supreme. Time for the authorities to get a grip and face down these latter day Robber Barons.  Though it is entirely possible that this is in train at this very moment, but little can happen till the deficit has been addressed and eliminated.

Whatever the outcome of this particular phase in our island’s history, it is certainly time to ring the changes. Time for the emergence of a new period where sanity is regained in the way our fortunes are regulated an amassed. For the good of the nation and not just a privileged and fortunate few.

Watch this space, I'll be back!

Tom. 

Bankers: Chancellor to turn screws?

By tomtom

 Is that a Thumbscrew I hear squeaking, from lack of use?

Hardly, it’s probably just another sop to hard pressed UK subjects, for if they think the bankers are squealing, then the government must be doing something right.

  The big problem here is the fact that all this government debt is created for the Banks, by the Government as its Debt Office issues interest bearing bonds. But it does not have to be this way. For centuries the Roman Empire traded with nothing more than coins made from copper and bronze. It was not till Julius Caesar decided to switch to gold that problems emerged which culminated in ‘Et Tu Brute’ and the senators bumped him off.

  After Henry I ascended the English throne in August 1100AD, Tally Sticks were introduced and they were used extensively till the early nineteenth century. Only since then, as the guinea and the sovereign took over did problems arise.

  The barbarous relic it’s often been dubbed and it opened up all kinds of chicanery from clipping to dipping. Dipping was the practice of making similar coins from a base metal and gold plating them. Clipping involved trimming slivers of gold from the edges to save enough for another coin and a devaluation that was extremely difficult to spot. This led to unforeseen consequences for those who fell for it and that included most of  Continental of Europe.

  Isaac Newton as Master of the Mint in 1717 wanted to value the golden guinea at £1-0s-8½d in order to mint 89 guineas from a troy lb of 22carat gold. He was overruled by parliament who decided it had to be £1-1s-0d. This changed the silver/gold ratio from 15/1 to 15.5/1. and it allowed the British merchants to exchange silver for gold in Europe for less than its value in England and so they transferred most of the Continental gold and gold coinage to London.

  Napolean realised what was going on, but his defeat at Waterloo in 1815 meant this scam continued to be perpetrated throughout the Victorian Period as they built an Empire.  While Tally Sticks continued here in England till they were finally retired in the early part of the nineteenth century. They had been legal tender for over seven hundred years and it was decided to burn them, which resulted in a fire that razed the Houses of Parliament to the ground.

  Other seminal moments in the history of gold are well known and the fact that it will never again be adopted as regular coinage exists to this day. For the strictures it applies are too draconian for today’s world. Though if the government were to re-introduce the gold standard it would require a mammoth revaluation of the value of gold in the order of several tens of thousands of US$ / troy ounce. to cover the all the $IoUs they have printed since August 15th 1971. When President Nixon ended the US$ link to gold. The French and Swiss were threatening to swap all their US$ for gold. 

  So we can take it as read that the gold standard is indeed a barbarous relic, it  is not going to happen, though it could be an entirely different matter for Tally Sticks. Bring ‘em on George, issue their equivalent as debt free money and see what a difference it makes. After all it worked OK for over seven hundred years. 

  

  The Chancellor will back plans for a fundamental overhaul of the UK’s banks on Monday, as the Daily Telegraph reveals City fears, (that now is not the time to hamstring the industry). Is there ever a good time to hamstring the bankers? To hear them talk, you would have to conclude NO.

  Will there ever be a good time? Possibly not, but something needs to be done for there is no merit in pandering to their whims as they fill their boots and slip off the radar to salivate over their booty.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.

 

Whew! Another Loch Ness Monster

By tomtom

Anglo/French  relations Plummet

While the ‘City’ gears up to fight off challenges to its Global dominance of Worldwide Finance. What did Sarko and his good buddies expect, a kiss on each cheek? These upstarts trying to pretend they were players in the Big Game. But for France, it looks like the Big Game is over, as it reels from the perception that anyone involved in the Euro, other than possibly Holland and Germany, are doomed. The rest? Well they’re heading down the ‘Road to Nowhere’.

  In the end it is the broad socialist sweep of their policies that is doing for France. They missed the bus, for the time when they should have re-organised their subsistence farming is long past. It hangs like an Albatross around the collective Gallic Neck or as recently reported, it’s a new ‘Loch Ness Monster’. Something most people have heard about, but few had caught a glimpse of. Until that is, the Eurocrats unveiled fresh details of their latest ‘Lead Ballon Masterplan’  to save the Euro.

  Way back in the mists of time when the USSR collapsed and Germany was re-united, France sailed blithely on, thinking they were on a roll. They reckoned they had the measure of Perfidious Albion and it was just a matter of time before we came crawling.

  The Germans and French between them shoe-horned BAE Systems out of Airbus, as the Germans moved to restart commercial airline building after various attempts to get things moving forward. They were anxious to be more than just a component builder. So they cosied up to the Anglo/French Airbus consortium for permission to create a production line for construction of Airbus A319s. It was to be the thin end of a wedge, as they reckoned it could be a way of regaining self interest in aircraft construction.

In much the same way Chancellor Kohl stood atop the Berlin wall waving his handfuls of ‘Begrussengeld’, to end his Chancellorship as the man who re-united East & West Germany. That it worked there can be no doubt, though whether the full ramifications of exchanging the Ostmark one for one with the Dmark have yet worked through, are still not fully accounted for.
Germany has huge borrowings, over €2trn at the last count and all this debt needs at some time, to be repaid or refinanced. This at a time when export markets around the globe are set to retract and one of re-united Germany’s main planks of economic activity, engineering exports are key. For the mighty German industrial machine is the engine of their economy. Equivalent it might be said to the importance of the UK’s Financial Services sector in the City of London to our own economy.

It’s not certain what exact parallels there are in the French economy, it could Airbus, though it’s doubtful if it makes any real contribution other than maintaining a degree of employment. No one can say for sure if it makes a profit, probably the main reason BAE systems flogged off its wing building operations in the UK.  So they’re left with cheese, wine and horsemeat as their main exports and there’s not a lot more you can say about that, as British expats desert in droves. In the sure and certain understanding that the party’s over.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.

Isolation is a Beautiful Thing

By tomtom

From this Freedom, Responsibility of the person flows

‘By this sacredness of individuals’ wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1803/82. ‘The English have in seven hundred years, evolved the principles of freedom.’

   To have it snatched away by unelected, unaccountable Eurocrats appointed by Dictat is something you would expect any Red-Blooded Anglo-Saxon to rail against, without further discussion or thought. Except of course the Socialist apparatchiks seated on the Opposition’s Front Bench.

   But see it happen  we did in a welter of  Fabian Socialist Gradualism, in the  thirteen years of Socialist domination of our Mother of all Parliaments.

   Now there are people claiming Dave was outwitted by Sarko. The only person outwitted by Sarko and his legion of subsistence farmers, relying on the CAP, was Angie. But in the end it’s the Moneymen who will decide.

   If the Shylocks sense their juice is in danger of default. Italy, Spain and France will be playing catch up with Greece, when it comes to selling their bonds. The blithering idiots and their Flim-Flam Treaty, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard explained it.

   January, February and March will decide the fate of the Euro when the Italy, France and Germany have to refinance huge loans in the order of €33bn+ and there’ll be no paying for Xmas with plastic for them. It should be interesting and Dave could well turn out be a Super Hero.

   So in the words of a Parliamentarian: “Will the Prime Minister agree with me that, Isolation is a Beautiful Thing.”

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.