Two Letters

When George Osborne arrived at the Treasury, he found a Post-It note written by his predecessor. It said 'Sorry, all the money's gone. Letters included for emergency use only.' Underneath were two plain envelopes, numbered one and two. 


Six months ago, with British economy failing to respond to his austerity medicine, £300 billion of quantitive easing and countless initiatives to boost growth, George opened the first envelope. In the middle of the page were two words: 'Blame Me'.

Today as he digests the full awfulness of the recent economic data, Mr Osborne opens the second envelope. There he reads: 'Now sit down and write two letters.'

Fibre Optic

This post is aimed at anyone living in London, anyone frustrated by perpetual roadworks and anyone who doesn't like to see large amounts of money shoved in a hole and burned. About a month ago, I made a call. Here is is, more or less verbatim, plus a few extra jokes for me, writer's privilege.

SALESPERSON: Thank you for calling Virgin Media. How we can help?

JK: I'm interested in getting fibre optic broadband.

He checked my postcode, only to say... 

SALESPERSON: I'm sorry but we don't offer broadband in your area. 

JK: Why not?

SALESPERSON: It's too expensive to put the cables in. 

JK: Really, that seems odd.  I live in Westminster, on a well-off street with a population density about the same as Hong Kong. 

SALESPERSON: Sorry, there's no plans for your street. 

JK:  Come on. People round here will pay £5 for a tiny portion of cake from rip-off merchants Baker & Spice. There's one shop where they charge £150 for a cushion. You could charge them whatever you liked for a fibre optic connection, especially if you said it was organic.

SALESPERSON: It just don't make sense for us. 

JK: What about when they dug the street up for two years to replace the water mains, why didn't you put the cables in then? We had total traffic chaos, at least you could have taken advantage. 

SALESPERSON: Yeah, maybe someone should have thought of that. 

'Maybe someone should have thought of that'. Those seven words say it all. Yes, maybe one of the overpaid executives at BT, Talk Talk, Virgin Media to name but a few, should have thought of that. Maybe a council leader could have thought have that; maybe Boris Johnson should have thought of that.

'Maybe someone should have thought of that'. That's the UK's motto for 2012. 

Wealth Creators

Nothing will now surprise me about the behaviour of British banks. I fully expect to discover that Bob Diamond and the entire Barclays Board subsist only on fresh human blood, harvested from a giant facility stocked with nubile virgins located in the wilds of East Anglia. (Keeping it secret is a lot easier than keeping it fully stocked with chaste maidens in that region).

What will it take for our politicians and the commentariat to understand that Diamond and his parasite breed are not, repeat not, wealth creators.  You have to run the counter case, imagine all of this turbo finance never happened, what would the national balance sheet look like then? The answer is that nearly everyone would be better off, except bankers. No £1.2 trillion liabilities for the Treasury, house prices in the South East might bear some vague relationship with rationality, clever and intelligent people might have been encouraged to use their talents for the  common good, rather than inventing ingenious ways to rip off everyone else. Modern banking subtracts value from the wider economy, simples.

I'll give you an example of true wealth creation and how back to front our value system really is. Rockstar Games is a UK based software company who rose to global fame with the game Grand Theft Auto. You may remember how morons with column inches lambasted them for encouraging violence and generally debasing the youth. Of course they couldn't present any evidence, they just asserted that if you watched the something on a screen most people couldn't help copying what they saw like psychotic suggestible sheep, with guns. In fairness, right after watching Gladiator  I did stab two swords into a waiter's chest when he brought me the wrong starter, so maybe they have point. 

I should mention that the two chief games developers went my school and have featured on Time's most influential people of the century. So what is my point, other than I'm never going to be able to top that. Why does it take a US magazine to celebrate British entrepreneurial and creative success? And why do we continue to brownose talentless, grasping thieves from the financial industry who have got away with the greatest fraud in human history, rather than praise our software sector which creates wealth without landing the general public with vast debts, so colossal you need a scientific calculator to type in all the zeroes?

Repeat after me, modern bankers are wealth extractors not creators. They are to free enterprise what Tony Soprano is to the construction industry. And once the British public finally wakes up to the scale of the scam, I would strongly advise that Diamond and his ilk leave this country, perhaps for some ghastly rich ghetto like Monaco. 

The wonderful thing is we would all be better off. Except of course bankers.

Hey, you, wanna buy a CDS?

Julian Assange

There's an old proverb 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', unless he's called Julian Assange, in which case he will skip bail and hide in the Ecuadorean embassy. He claims the allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden are faked,  a cunning ruse to extradite him to United States, where he might face the gas chamber. On a pedantic, technical point, neither the Federal Government nor the States use the gas chamber as their primary method of execution. So ignoring for a moment the tortuous, paranoid logic where Assange ends up on Death Row via Sweden, once he's there, he can relax, it's most likely to  be a lethal injection. (Given he's an internet geek, you really think he could have checked that for himself).

Now there's probably a few of his former supporters wishing they could administer him a fatal jab or at the very least a sharp uppercut, after Assange broke his bail conditions and left them liable for £240,000. Before indulging in wild conspiracy theories, let's start with the facts. The Swedish police wish to question him about claims of sexual assault  by two different women, this is the real Swedish police mind, not the ones from the Stieg Larsson books, and they are doing their job.

Seems to be that too many Wikileaks supporters have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. Assange is not a real life Lisbeth Salander and the Swedish authorities are not the pocket of American neo-cons. If you based your opinion of the inhabitants of Copenhagen on the The Killing, you would conclude that every one of them was sex-crazed, pathological liar with short term memory issues that never turn a light on indoors. Maybe they are all like that; I'll report back after my long weekend hanging about in disused warehouses in Vestamager.


When your hero ends up hiding in Ecuadorean Embassy claiming asylum for sex crime accusations from Sweden, one of the most liberal, open and fair societies on the planet, it is time to doubt your hero's credentials. Especially if in the  same year, he started presenting a TV show on Vladimir Putin's propaganda channel, asking the head of Hezbollah difficult and searching questions like 'Israel is an illegal state isn't it?' Assange claims to speak truth to power, but only of the power in his sights is the US government.  If there is one country that would benefit from a Wikileaks expose, it is Russia; a murderous, corrupt gangster state. Yet Assange is curiously silent about their litany of human rights abuses, probably a clause in his contract. Keep silent about Putin's murders and you need not worry about the other kind of contract he might issue. 


Sometimes your enemy's enemy is not your friend, he's a narcissist who cares only about himself. 

Irish Times

I'm back from a blogging absence, with a little story told to me by a British actor, which gives an insight into the Irish economy and its government. Every month he travels from London to Galway with two other British actors, also based in London to record four episodes of a children's cartoon series. Except the Irish government can't afford to keep Galway airport open, so they all have to fly to Shannon and then take a taxi ride that lasts 90 mins.

These three British actors then voice the cartoon, which is shown on Irish TV, as well as Australia and other countries. No Irish actors are employed in the production, so the voice over sessions could be recorded in a London location. As indeed they were originally, at a studio in the West End, neatly avoiding the five hour journey from London to Galway.

Now the funding came with conditions, that the production had to take place in Ireland, even though as you note, no Irish actors were used (couldn't do American accents apparently). True, an Irish sound engineer gets a day's work and the Holiday Inn Galway gets three new bookings, so that's probably worth it for the £1,000s in extra expenses, flying the actors over once a month for the last few years. Not.

This money, of course, doesn't originate from the Irish government, who are apparently closing down parts of Ireland in order to save cash. It was an EU grant, which given that every country save Germany is running a deficit, means the money was borrowed, which is another way of saying they took it off you, me and everyone else in the European Union.

Maybe this is a special case and Ireland reformed its ways. Although Shane Filan's Westlife has been declared bankrupt with debts of £18 million, following a failed property venture for 90 houses. No I can't work out how you can lose so much money, especially as they only built half the houses.  Perhaps they burned it in braziers to keep the builders warm.

And this cartoon, which involves the scenic tour of West Ireland for three actors, it's not even that good.

David Cameron

What is the point of David Cameron? There must be a purpose for the leader of the Coalition, otherwise that expensive Eton education and Bullingdon Club initiation were all for nothing. (Poor Dave couldn't walk straight for weeks). Wasps, for example, are often demonised by angry picnickers and beach-goers as being utterly pointless pests that ruin humans' leisure activities. Yet without wasps no fig tree could reproduce and we would be overrun by spiders. So, does David Cameron play a vital role in the pollination of a fruiting tree? No. Does he lay eggs inside spiders, keeping their numbers in check? There's no mention of it in the leaked emails about the BSkyB takeover.

So what he is for? As the allegations swarm around both Cameron and Osborne like flies around the proverbial, there must be something in mitigation. Don't worry that he picked Andy Coulson as his communications chief, a choice only marginally less wise than Myra Hindley, don't concern yourself about those dinners with Rebekah Brooks, she of paediatrician witch hunt fame, don't fret about deals done on mobiles between James Murdoch and Jeremy Hunt, because at least the Tories have got the economy going again. They might be corrupt but they get the job done...oh...whoops. Why isn't the world working the way Hayek said it would?

Cameron considers himself born to rule; sadly he doesn't know why. On reaching the highest office in the land, no one, neither David nor the electorate, know what he's there for.  Perhaps that explains the lousy election result. Tories spin doctors call that win, in the manner of an England sports team (take your pick they are all equally pitiful) explaining why going nil-nil to the Christmas Islands was a decent result under the circumstances. In the depth of the deepest recession of all time and the worst banking crisis in centuries, facing a Labour leader who may actually have gone insane, Cameron blew it. Short of Gordon Brown being caught on camera interferring with one of the Queen's corgis, the Conservative Party leader could not have asked for a more favourable pre-election scenario.

Finding Cameron leading the country is an experience similar to anyone who used to order products from the Innovations catalogue. On the page, he looked useful, a moderate Conservative who had rebranded the Tories with an oak tree. Then he arrived, you got him out the packaging and realised he was totally useless. I had a similar experience when I ordered a de-ionsier, to purify the air in my bedroom. No one wants ions floating around in the air, do they? Take it from me, you'll get more value out of the cardboard box it came in. The Tories might well have fared better if they followed their rebranding to its logical conclusion and run with an actual oak tree as leader. Everyone, from squirrels to citizens, likes an oak: it has a solid, dependable, English reputation with a touch of the Robin Hood about it and you never need to worry about it saying the wrong thing.

But then it occurred to me, David Cameron does have a point or purpose in life. His role is to make us feel better about ourselves and our own judgement.  He came to power after a banking meltdown that devastated the UK economy and has potentially bankrupted us for generations. Any normal, average intelligence person in his position would think the first  priority of government was a wholescale reform of the banking industry. Not Dave, he didn't want to rush into things. For a man who believes in his own destiny, he should take more care about the judgement of history. Cometh the man, misseth his moment.

So in these troubled times, remember this heartwarming thought: you probably would have done a better job than this empty vessel.

Village People

Recently I posted a parcel to a most unusual address in London, a strange and magical place known as 'Wandsworth Village.' If you check Google Maps, the Post Office or Wandsworth council websites' you will find no trace of this mystical hamlet. Although I can recommend the council's handy interactive maps which allow you to locate your nearest grit salt bin. If there is another overnight freeze or your street is invaded by giant flesh-eating slugs neither black ice nor carnivorous gastropods need worry you again.

There are some hints of this so-called village of Wandsworth: local businesses that call themselves bizarre affectations such as 'Cafe du Village Wandsworth', an eaterie that has recently closed. No doubt it fell victim to the crippling contradiction of giving your restaurant a fake Gallic name that includes a letter, 'W', that is not found in the French language.

So other than linguistically-challenged cafe owners, why had the my parcel's recipient insisted on this odd address, when normal folk would use the simple borough and postcode combination. Technically you don't need to use the borough at all, postcode and house or flat number are all that you require, but it seems alien to have only alpha-numerics designate our homes as if we were all robots or drug controlled slaves in the dystopia of THX 1138. So let's stick to boroughs.

But my parcelee had not stuck to boroughs when he emailed his address; nope he was freestyling his location. It's most baffling when the city in question is London, which in my totally unbiased opinion as  Londoner born and bred who has lived here his whole life, is without a doubt the greatest city in the world. (And yes I've been to most of the other contenders. Sydney, for example, is wonderful city sadly filled with Australians. Paris is crammed with French people, alas).

It's as if living in one of the greatest cities on the planet is not enough and these lovers of the village suffix have to carve out their own little corner, signally to the world that they are not like the rest of us vulgar city dwellers. To an estate agent, the word 'village' tacked on the end of an area means a bump on the sale price, because it is also a code. It's a way of white middle-class, educated people telling others like themselves that there is a part of town where you are likely to find a second hand book shop, overpriced organic cakes, brand new furniture for sale that looks battered and broken on purpose and nightlife revolving around cheese tastings or mandolin recitals. There is also a one in two chance of a decent theatre.

As we have all been thinking about the dappy, delusional dame Samantha Brick last week, one phrase springs to mind: get over yourself. Cities are exciting and interesting places to live, precisely because they are not exclusively filled with rich, white folk who left to their own devices create environments so mind-numbingly dull you end up secretly craving a higher crime rate just to liven things up. If you want to live in a village populated with people exactly like you, go and live in the Home Counties; if you live in a big city, celebrate the fact. To quote Groove Armada, 'if everybody looked the same, we'd get tired of looking at each other.'

Large cosmopolitan cities such as London are one of humanity's greatest inventions, alongside Wikipedia and enormous but affordable flat screen TVs. To all those villagers, be  glad you're part of something bigger than yourself and drop the village people act.