Blog
23 july 2012, still waiting
Monday 23rd July 2012
Three months after the london riots of last year, justice was being efficiently and deservedly meted out to many rioters and looters; but the wheels seemed astoundingly slow for the potentially worse crime that sparked them off. Almost a year on, and we’re still waiting to find out who killed mark duggan (26 november 2011). One verdict at least is in, on the death of ian tomlinson, a passer-by struck for no reason by a policeman managing crowds demonstrating against the g20 in 2009. He subsequently died, one of 1,433 people since 1990 who have either died in police custody in the UK or following other contact with the police. The policeman, simon harwood, was cleared of manslaughter last week.…
22 july 2012, back to the balkan future
Sunday 22nd July 2012
A few short years ago, the prognosis for balkan countries joining the eu was good. In the enlargement report of 2006, croatia was on track to join by the end of the decade, macedonia was lining up to be a few years more down the line, montenegro and serbia were making progress, and even albania, kosovo and bosnia were treading a serious long-term path. How times have changed (25, 26 may 2011. Romania and bulgaria joined in 2007, but have since been the leading case for why to go no further. Slovenia made it in 2004, redefining itself from balkan to central european, and croatia, still kind of on track, has not joined yet, and much will continue to slow…
12 july, 2012, tale of two cities
Thursday 12th July 2012
Between home, work and the trust, I have been absolutely submerged these last weeks, hardly able to breathe. The effect was amplified as my hungarian niece has been staying, and so we filled our weekends first with a long-planned trip to paris, and then an impromptu one to london. The french spur was a very good session I had at the oecd, and then the family was reunited for a sunny long weekend as unashamed tourists climbing the eiffel tower, taking a boat up and down the seine, visiting notre dame and eating ice cream on the ile de la cite. The kids loved the place but less the touristy bits, so on the last day we split and…
6 july 2012, the bank-lash begins ?
Friday 6th July 2012
LIBOR is something rather obscure I had the pleasure of using back in my days as a corporate lawyer; me and other thousands involved in the $400 trillion or so of contracts that use it as a reference. There are now many explanations of what it actually is and how its calculated, but it’s actually quite a banal index that is used by many parties, including the banks, in contracts with each other. There seem to be two issues. In the first phase, some traders might have been trying to fix it for their own gain. They could conceivably have budged it, but only by the merest margins, although on the volumes traded, that might still have added up to…
25 june 2012, hot potato
Monday 25th June 2012
When public money is increasingly tight, welfare payments inevitably come under scrutiny; as now in the uk. Work on the main political parties’ manifestos for the next general election, which will take place on 7 may 2015, is underway, and with the conservatives convinced that welfare reform, as well as reducing immediate costs, is a vote winner, the prime minister has floated a wide variety of ideas. My experience of unemployment includes my father, in manchester 25 years ago, and my other half, in frankfurt about 5. While one got a very small amount and was basically left alone, for many years, the other got real training she needed to get work (german lessons) and also two thirds of…
22 june 2012, night at the monastery
Friday 22nd June 2012
Quite an inspiring night yesterday, at gorton’s remarkable franciscan monastery. A pugin architectural masterpiece of the late eighteenth century, it was at its peak the centre of a whole community, but by the 1980s was deconsecrated, and by the 90s desolate and vandalised, to be turned into flats and with anything of value stolen or sold off. This included 12 remarkable statues of saints that sat high on plinths between arches, becoming mystically lit up at a certain time of day. At rock bottom though, a few remarkable people started to care, stopping the auction of the saints as garden ornaments and beginning to clean and fundraise. Year after year the volunteers grew, grants were found, a new roof enclosed…
16 june 2012, the greek election
Saturday 16th June 2012
We are already in a least bad scenario, but what is needed this sunday ? First, stability, which means greece being able to form a government in the next few days, and one that will last through what will be a very stormy few months. For that to happen, the best case is for what have emerged as the two main parties at this point, the traditional centre right new democracy and the radical new centre left syriza, to emerge as strongly as possible. The winner gets an extra 50 seats, putting it in pole position in terms of forming a government. The key point is not really the platform, as in fact all greeks pretty much want syriza’s platform,…
12 june 2012, woods and trees
Tuesday 12th June 2012
I remained unable to quite grasp the power of technology, and to be master rather than servant of the unstoppable flow of information that comes to me even directly by email, let alone the infinite vistas of intelligence available on the internet, but which without a map are utterly suffocating. One thing I’ve always thought myself good at was quickly getting a grasp of an issue, and then constructing from it an understandable narrative. Before doing that though, you need understanding, and an ability to check and validate, which is where the now endless waterfall of information becomes a barrier, as to wait for its end is to drown. I’ve noted before (28 march 2010) that in 2003 it took…
10 june 2012, manchester as europe
Sunday 10th June 2012
Judging the veracity, or otherwise, of this little fantasy, is limited to those that know well the geographies of both the european union and greater manchester. See both as a collection of sovereigns, bound together in a broader union that the evidence suggests drives economic growth, but of which they remain suspicious, because pooling sovereignty, to a degree, is losing it. For germany, largest member state and economic powerhouse, read (the city of) manchester. For the other, albeit smaller, half of the essential partnership, read salford: germany and france are the eu’s irreplaceable motor. The third leg, italy, always destined to be a leadership also-ran, is a nation barely a century old yet was in at the eu’s creation: with…
1 june 2012, yes
Friday 1st June 2012
Referendums have a habit of getting a no (20 february 2011), but in ireland, when on a european treaty, they usually have a second try to get the right answer, both on nice in 2001 and lisbon in 2008. Then, the fate of the eu pretty much hung on a purist irish constitution that empowers people over parliament but is a process subject to populist pressure. Today though, they resoundingly said yes, in a reluctant vote against greek-style self-seeking victimhood rather than take the medicine; which would have meant more medicine administered more harshly. The vote signals ireland’s maturity and is a milestone on their long road back to growth and stability. For europe it is also a minor…
30 May 2012, no easy road to increasing competitiveness
Wednesday 30th May 2012
The stagnation of zero growth stalks the economy, dreadful public finances, very high unemployment, the universalist welfare state under threat, a radical government trying to make the labour market more mobile and the now-traditional driver of the economy, the consumer, resolutely not spending. The uk in 2012 – and germany in 2005. In that year gerhard shroder’s centre-left government gave way to a grand coalition led by angela merkel, but the hard and unpopular work of reform continued almost without missing a beat. The economic pressure made germany's big companies restructure and cut costs, helped by workers and trades unions that ultimately accepted less and less pay, bringing down unit labour costs, helping germany become more and more competitive -…
25 may 2012, greece on grease
Friday 25th May 2012
Few stories have dominated the news like greece has (I’m at 2:45 and later) for now so many weeks and months; quite remarkable for a small country of just 11 million people, although disproving the truism that all publicity is good publicity. There remains such a wide variation of possible outcomes that no-one at all knows what will happen and that level of uncertainty totally undermines confidence not just in greece but in growth in europe, to such a degree that we might not even make it through to the june elections. In an ironic way this is something of a success, in showing how deeply interconnected the eu has become, and especially the euro, which now is really the…