Touring On Drugs

Yesterday, the organizers of the Tour de France brought everyone together in Paris to launch the programme leading to the competition for the 100th Tour in 2013.  For the first time in many a year it will be run entirely in France, beginning in Corsica.  It is October 2012 and still the Lance Armstrong saga continues.  Every day there is some new piece of nonsense as the cant and hypocrisy proceeds unabated.  Now the UCI has officially stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France wins and, presumably, they will strip him of every other race win as well.  Floyd Landis has been stripped of his win in 2006 — he did fail drugs tests.  On Monday, Pat McQuaid, the President of UCI called Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis "scumbags" for testifying against Lance Armstrong to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA),  Tyler Hamilton has demanded that McQuaid resigns; a call echoed by Greg LeMond, now the only American who is still in possession of wins in the Tour de France.  But McQuaid has a point.  Lance Armstrong is being made No.1 scapegoat for all drug users in the Tour de France and other cycling events.  Slowly, everyone seems to be coming round to the realization that when Armstrong was winning, there were very few bike riders in long distance road racing who were not using drugs.  They cannot all argue that Armstrong bullied them into using drugs.  Floyd Landis got caught and after protesting his innocence for years finally admitted to drug use and joined the army of testifiers against Armstrong.  Tyler Hamilton was a rider for whom I used to have quite a lot of respect after he got on his bike after a crash on day one in the Tour de France and rode for three weeks all the way back to Paris with a broken collar bone — coming 4th overall in the race.   Now he has testified against his team-mate, Armstrong, and written a book about his experiences as a drug user; a book, which will put him in a good light, will bring him lots of money and, with his testimony gets him off the hook with USADA. It is not a record of high minded disinterested moral principles.There are one or two honourable men who have defended Lance Armstrong.  First among these is Alberto Contador.  Contador rode alongside Armstrong in the Astana Team in 2009, when he [Contador] won the race.  Armstrong had, said Contador, left a lasting legacy in the sport and he criticized the USADA report which relied entirely on testimonies from other riders, anxious to get themselves off the hook.  "Right now people are talking about Lance but there has not been any new test evidence or anything", Contador added.  Condemnation of Armstrong "is based exclusively on witness statements that could have been made in 2005.""What I do know is that if cycling is popular in the USA, it's thanks to him.  If they know over there what the Tour is, it's thanks to him.  If there are top-level teams and races in his country, it's thanks to him."Contador won the Tour de France in 2007 and 2009 but had his 2010 victory struck from the record books after testing positive for a tiny amount of clenbuterol — an amount so tiny that it would not have improved the performance of a gnat.Now various people are demanding that Armstrong pays back his prize-money and various sponsors are demanding their money back.  On the basis that all publicity is good publicity, on what basis do these sponsors think the money should be returned?  Before the great drugs scandal at the Tour de France in 1998, I had never heard of Festina.  And I believe that all the sponsors will have got value from Armstrong.Yesterday, in The Times, Matthew Syed — Sports Feature Writer of the Year — suggested that, if Lance Armstrong was being asked to pay his money back, then so should a lot of other riders.  He particularly drew attention to David Millar — who has become surrounded by his own cloud of self-generated self-righteousness, in campaigning against drugs.   When he was first accused of drug use, he, like all drug users, protested his innocence with great rigour.  When his defence became unsustainable, Millar wrote a best-selling book about his experiences with drug use — and obviously made money out of it.  In 2003, before he started using EPO, he was earning about £250,000 per year.  On EPO, his earnings went up to £650,000 per year — plus more endorsements, etc.
Bike riders used and probably still do use drugs.  I do not think any the less of them for that and neither, I suspect, does Joe Public.  Recent interviews with the man in the street have indicated that most people have assumed for years that bike riders used drugs.  So what?  Bodybuilders use drugs.  Nobody who gets to the point of stepping on stage in a bodybuilding contest has got there without drugs.   Why?  Because [a] to be a muscular freak is impossible without drugs and [b] all bodybuilders want to be the best that they can possibly be.  And so, I would argue, do bike riders.  They want to be the best in a sport which makes extraordinary demands on the human body.  If all riders are using drugs, who is cheating?  The only thing that matters is that riders do not damage their health.  No one rides the Tour de France for health reasons.  For the most part using drugs does not make the risks of health damage very much higher.  Were it not for the anti-drugs industry, it would be much easier to ensure that no drug use was detrimental to health.
Lance Armstrong was the best for seven years in a row in an era when everybody was using drugs.  No furore about his use of drugs will change that. 
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Lance Armstrong Was A Great Bike Racer

I feel rather sorry for Lance Armstrong.  That puts me into a minority group right away.  There was a time, not that many years ago, when men who rode bikes for sport were almost unknown off the European continent.  But not any more.  Britain has moved to the forefront of bike racing on road and track.  We now have a group of men and women who are among the best in the world and at the Olympics in Beijing and London we dominated the racing in the velodrome.  Also, bike riding has been on the rise in both North America and in South America.  And there are many top-rated riders from Australia — the 2011 Tour de France was won by Cadel Evans.  But today no other rider has quite the world-wide profile of Lance Armstrong — a man who recovered from testicular cancer and went on to win the Tour de France seven times between 1999 and 2005.  The problem is the revelations concerning his use of performance enhancing drugs.

I have little time for the anti-drugs establishment.  They are concerned not so much with eliminating PE drugs from sport so much as organizing yet more conferences in Geneva, Monte Carlo, Rio de Janeiro and Sidney — among other cities — in order to discuss the matter yet again.  You will note that they avoid places like Rotherham and Scunthorpe — places that  lack the sea or lake-side luxury of the listed cities.  For years, Lance Armstrong has been insisting that he never used PE drugs and he sticks to that line today.  Officially he never failed a drugs test although it is now being suggested that he did and the result was hushed up by somebody of other.  Nevertheless, it is still the case that he has no record of a failed drugs test against his name.  He has been found guilty of PE drug use by USADA as a result of a collection of sworn statements made by at least ten other bike riders who had been in Armstrong's various teams at the same time and tell us that they saw Armstrong both using PE drugs and handing them out to other riders.  All of them have admitted that they also used the drugs over many years but are speaking out now in return for immunity from any further sanctions.

I have always thought that Armstrong used drugs, just as I think lots of other riders used drugs,  When the Festina scandal broke in 1998 and the team lead by Richard Virenque was forced to withdraw from the Tour de France, there was much unrest in the peleton as French police carried out searches in hotel rooms and in team cars and buses.  Lots of stuff was rapidly dumped and poured down the toilet because Festina had been caught doing something that most other teams were doing as well.  No rider who did not use drugs stood any chance of winning anything in the Tour de France.  Armstrong was just one of many.  He got his first win in 1999 as the recovered cancer patient.  Now USADA have taken away his seven wins because he cheated.  Can they do this?  They did not award him the yellow jerseys anyway.  If he is no longer considered a winner over the seven years, who did win?  And was he 100% clean?   There is no answer to that question.  Is the Tour de France and other cycling races now completely drug free?  I doubt it.  

Today, it has been announced that the Dutch bank, Rabobank is to withdraw its sponsorship of a team in the Tour, telling us that "We are no longer convinced that the international professional world of cycling can make this a clean and fair sport," said Rabobank's Bert Bruggink.  He may be right in one sense; that drug use will continue.  Ten years ago when it was very probable that every team was using something, they were on a level playing field.  I am sorry that Rabobank have withdrawn — it may be a good time to cut back on sponsorship expenditure anyway.  There have been drug issues in the past in the Rabobank team without the bank getting too upset about it.  Before the 1998 Tour, I had never heard of Festina; now I know exactly what they are and what they do.  Is it still not true that all publicity is good publicity?

So Armstrong was just one of many, many riders who used drugs.  He may have been aggressive in encouraging other riders to do the same thing but I do not accept the line that they were pure and clean bike riders until they were forced into the dark arts by Armstrong.  If they didn't like it, they could have gone to another team.  But they knew full well that other teams were filled with drug users and Armstrong's teams were the ones that were doing the winning.

Maybe bike riding is cleaner now — drugwise — than it was but in an era of widespread PE drug use, Armstrong was the best rider in the world.   To single him out like this is OTT and achieves very little.  Interestingly, Richard Virenque — many times King of the Mountains — who admitted his drug use during a trial in France in 2000 is still regarded as a hero in his own country and he is still a commentator on bike racing on French TV and radio.  Perhaps the same will eventually happen to Armstrong.  Bike riders are still the most fantastic athletes on the planet, with or without drugs.  Lance Armstrong will still be remembered as a great bike rider long after all the officials of WADA and USADA have been forgotten.

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Experience Counts

I have posted nothing for six weeks.  I can say that I have been busy — which is partly true — but more than anything I have felt overwhelmed by the chaos.  Most of what goes on around us cannot be made up.  The world's economy is in a mess and primarily it is in a mess because of the EU.  The EU is governed by politicians of little ability.  They are all children of the system.  They discussed politics at university; they became political assistants to other politicians; they became representatives in parliament; and finally, they became ministers, rambling around the world meeting other politicians.  Consequently every daft idea dreamed up in every capital in the world becomes the next government policy that will, somehow, be the answer to all our problems.  It never is, of course.  Politicians rarely learn from their mistakes; our burden these days is that many are incapable of learning from their mistakes.  
Around the world, governments are printing money in order, they say, to stimulate the economy.  In fact, it does no such thing; it puts more money into the hands of the bankers who were responsible for much of the mess in the first place.  Printing money is wrong.  It devalues the currency.  If our currencies were supported by a gold standard, they would not be able to get away with printing money.  In Europe, the euro is doomed.  The right thing to do is to get rid of it; not to insist on more economic integration.  The EU is one of those organisations that, if it did not exist, we would not need to invent it.  It spent Eu126,000,000,000 in 2011 and, in spite of the economic mess they have presided over and which we have to live with, they are already angling for a substantial increase in their budget.  Of the Eu126 billion, Britain contributes Eu12.9 billion.  Were it not for our rebate, this figure would be Eu3 billion higher and second only to Germany.  In the last eighteen months, there has been meeting after meeting after meeting in this or that city to discuss the next application of sticking plaster to hold the euro together. It may be that they can carry on doing this for years, while the rest of teh world picks itself up and carries on without the EU.  The politicians and ex-politicians in Europe like the euro and the idea of economic integration.  It gives them lots of opportunities for jollies and they can govern for the most part without the interference of the electorates.
At present Britain is governed by a collection of rich, posh boys, none of whom has had any proper job, nor even any previous ministerial experience.  When did we last have a government where no senior minister had previously held a job in government?  We will exclude Kenneth Clarke.  He enjoys his politics and he has had many cabinet jobs — and he was a reasonably successful chancellor of the exchequer — because he now has no more than a watching brief. Britain should remain in the EU — on balance — but only if they get rid of the euro and get back to a trading union of independent states.  We do not need a single currency.  It is in no one's interest to continue — not even Germany.  Greece should be allowed to go her own sweet way and a devalued drachma.  And if Greece, also Spain and Italy.  In no country in Western Europe is there any longer any enthusiasm for the EU.  The new members from the east have a different viewpoint.  They see the EU as a protection against intrusion by Russia.  This is a justified and reasonable attitude but it does not need a common currency.
It has been suggested that the British government can escape its problems by allowing the Bank of England to continue printing money to buy government debt, which never gets paid back.  This scheme lies on the road to madness.  This is the thinking of the Weimar Republic, destruction of the currency and hyper-inflation.  This way madness lies but will anyone realize it?
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Reshuffle

I have been silent for a couple of months but now I am stimulate to say at least something about Cameron's government reshuffle announced today. I started with a great deal of enthusiasm for this coalition government — 2 years ago — but I am much unimpressed by this reshuffle. The lummox and plonker Jeremy Hunt has been put in charge of the NHS!!!!! Are you serious Mr Cameron. There is no bigger and more useless nonentity in this government than J Hunt Esq. He was in deep trouble in the Dept of Culture because of his close friendship with the Murdoch organisation and any normal person would have got rid of him then. But "Call me Dave" kept him then — perhaps because to sack him would have brought the house tumbling down on Dave himself. Now Hunt is promoted. I am sure that he will mess this up as well and slowly we will learn what Tory baggage he carries around in this job.

I hope Ken Clarke will be allowed to do something to help George Osborne who is all at sea in a rowing boat without a paddle. I am sure he hasn't got a clue what to do next. There was something in the accusation that was made recently that David Cameron and George Osborne are like a couple of rich boys on work experience. And Ken Clarke has more experience than all the members of this government put together. He is liked in the country and he was a rather successful Chancellor of the Exchequer.

We are going to have to keep our fingers crossed. If it all goes belly up we will be asked to fall back on Miliband!!! Aaaaagggh.

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Good-Bye Bob

So, Bob Diamond is gone. No period of notice, no delays. Nothing. I suppose they will have a team working out how many millions he should get in severance pay. Now Barclays have to find a new Chief Executive as well as a new Chairman. That will not be an easy task. The departing Chairman, Marcus Agius has agreed to stay on until a new CEO has been appointed. In principle, the new CEO — be it man or woman — probably needs to be a banker but which banker will take on the job, which banker can we say is untainted by the activities of his/her own bank to date and what sort of remuneration package will he or she want. One will hope that the new CEO is not an investment banker. Also, surely this is a moment when we should take a step down the road to paying bankers proper salaries, incapable of being shuffled away through a tax haven and at proper levels — with minimal or no bonuses attached. If the Governor of the Bank of England is worth only £300,000 per annum and the PM Less than £400,000 [including the £57,000 forgone by the current incumbent plus an allowance for perks of the job], why does any banker think he is worth the £20,950,000 paid to Bob Diamond last year? But they do. No matter how bad the slime floating the surface, no matter what damage they do to the world's economies, no matter how much money they need from tax-payers and customers to keep their banks afloat, no matter how incompetent they are shown to be, they still believe that they have levels of expertise that demand absurd levels of remuneration.

But the job at Barclays is a poisoned chalice. The new CEO will be in the limelight from day one. We still do not know all the facts about the rate fixing and its consequences. Is it still happening? How much is going to have to be paid in compensation? The new CEO will have to tell us what is to be done to stop all this chaos of casino banking, fixing Libor rates etc. The government has to help out on this one by introducing legislation to ensure some of the manipulation will become impossible. Also, there is the matter of separating High Street banking from investment banking — and doing it now, not in eight year's time. Will Hutton — who knows much more about these matters than I do — was arguing in The Observer on Sunday that the trillions of dollars tied up in derivative products, that are used to make buckets of money for investment bankers, serve no real practical purpose. This must become especially true if the calculations are based on the Libor rates, which most of the gamblers know is a fiction. I say a fiction because it seems now that almost every bank contributing numbers to Thomson Reuters were lying, either to boost the rate higher or to keep it lower — and also to let everyone think that a particular institution was finding it easier to borrow money than was actually the case. Yet it is these derivative products that can collapse and bring a bank to the edge of the abyss — and in some cases take them over the edge.

Appointing a new CEO at .Barclays will not be easy but the new Chairman should be someone above all suspicion — and not a banker. The Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps?

I remember the name of the Barclays Chairman as being not quite Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome and ruled from 161 AD to 180 AD. He is remembered now mainly for his Meditations — a collection of his thoughts directed to himself. This is a long work in many volumes but one or two quite Biblical proposals seem quite suitable for the Chairman of a bank to observe :

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil."

"In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself."

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Is It Time To Say Good-Bye?

Thursday of this week was probably the hottest day this year so far — getting up towards 85ºF in Horsham in the mid-afternoon. But it was a hot day in ways that had nothing to do with the weather. The Bankers are in trouble again. And leading the trouble is our old friend — "time to move on" — Bob Diamond at Barclays. Only about 2 weeks ago I had a moan about the ridiculous salary that Bob Diamond pays himself but now a new scandal emerges. It seems that traders in Barclays — as well as other banks — were systematically lying about the interest rates they were paying to borrow money in order to [1] manipulate the Libor rate and [2] make lots of money for themselves. Libor — the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate is a a lending rate that is published each day and it is an average figure that has been compiled from data fed to Thomson Reuters. The data from each bank should be the actual rate that they are having to pay to borrow money on that day. It is now clear that over several years before the great crash — and after — Barclays traders manipulated the rate by lying — either to put more money in their own pockets or to hide money problems in the bank. These operations in massaging the interest rate involved Barclays traders and their mates in other banks. This happened in the Barclays Capital wing of their operations and at the time the man in charge of that operation was Bob Diamond — now CEO. The bank has been fined £291,000,000 by the regulatory authorities in the USA and in the UK. Not a huge sum for a bank the size of Barclays and the money will come from the pockets of their customers. Mr Diamond said that these lapses were down to the actions of one or two traders who were no longer with the bank. "I am sorry," he said, "that some people acted in a manner not consistent with our culture and values." I cannot agree. They acted completely in a manner consistent with their culture and values. Refusing to resign, Bob Diamond has said that he will give up one of his bonuses for this year. "What does this mean?" I hear your cry. I have no idea. It is something of a mystery trying to establish exactly how much Mr Diamond is paid and how it is calculated. Does his fore-going of the bonus mean that he will collect it later when things have quietened down a bit? Will he have to try to get by on only £10 million or so? After all his 2011 package amounted to nearly £21 million.

Barclays have now been fined and censured several times; they have directors under investigation for fraud in Italy; they pay their senior officers — including various investment bankers/traders ludicrous sums of money; they avoid tax; their shareholders get screwed over and over again while the bankers take away their pay in wheel-barrows. Yesterday, Barclays shares dropped by 16% — ie from next to nothing to a whole lot less.

This massaging of the Libor rate does involve other banks and more sludge will come to the surface in coming months. This scandal damages the reputation of the City of London and action needs to be taken to prosecute — if possible — making it absolutely clear that these actions will not be tolerated. It is even suggested that it is still going on! Banks have to be regulated. They cannot be allowed to carry on operating like vast casinos using our money to place bets to make buckets of money for themselves or, if it all goes belly up, we the tax-payers will bail them out.

Irrespective of whatever else floats to the surface, Bob Diamond cannot be allowed to carry on as though nothing has happened. What has been happening at Barclays is that all the wrong-doing, greed, incompetence and gambling that took place in the period before the Crash is now being exposed. Shareholders and the public in general are demanding action. Everybody is struggling to sort out the mess. The government, commerce, industry, everyone needs more cash to try to balance the books, yet the only group not have to shoulder any of the burden has been the bankers; one of the groups most responsible. Still, they carry on telling us about their expertise, their importance to the economy and why they should be paid such huge sums. Yet, every day we see only just how inadequate and incompetent they really are. The very people at the centre of the financial mess carry on regardless.

What next?

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The Falkland Islands Are British

Yesterday, in a wreath laying ceremony, the Falkland Islanders remembered the day 30 years ago when the forces of Argentina surrendered to the British forces and the islands were returned to the British. The wreath laying ceremony involved some of the veterans who fought on the islands all those years ago. Yesterday's weather was typical Falklands — cold and windy with wet snow coming down horizontally. Not many people live on this group of very isolated, wind-swept islands in the South Atlantic. Argentina has been claiming rights to Los Malvinas for donkey's years and they provide an easy diversion for governments in Buenos Aries when things are not going right — which seems to be most of the time. The islanders have stated over and over again that they wish to remain British and we should defend their right to their self-determination without flinching. The islanders have now announced their intention of holding a referendum to ask the inhabitants what they want — presumably the question will be the simple one "Do you wish to remain British? Yes or No!" Yesterday the President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, went to the United Nations to demand that Britain negotiate with her country about sovereignty over the islands. This piece of theatre was backed by advertising in British newspapers in which they repeated their claims about the Falklands on the grounds of decolonization. An anachronism, she said.

The islands may have been visited by Patagonian Indians many years ago — perhaps over 500 — but evidence suggests that the islands were first discovered and marked on maps by the Portuguese in the 16th century. In 1592, John Davis an English explorer arrived there when his battered ship, Desire, was carried there by wind and seas. For a time the islands were known as "Davis Land". The English visited again in 1594 and in 1600 it was the turn of the Dutch. Then the islands were visited by Captain John Strong in 1690 and he named the channel between the two main islands after the 5th Viscount Falkland, Commissioner of the Admiralty and later First Lord of the Admiralty, who had financed the expedition.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries various naval ships and explorers visited the islands and claimed them on behalf of France or Spain or Britain but in 1811 Spain packed up and left leaving the islands again almost if not totally uninhabited. The islands were then used mainly by British and American whalers and at times up to one thousand sailors were "living" on the islands. The Falklands were occupied by Americans, British, Spanish and Argentinian Spanish for the next 20 years — including an attempt by Argentina to establish a penal colony on the islands. Then in 1833 Captain James Onslow arrived with a request that the flag of the United Provinces of the River Plat be removed and the British flag be raised. Although the Spanish commander wanted to resist he did not do so because a large proportion of his crew were British mercenaries who were disinclined to fight against the British navy. Since that time the islands have been British and most — if not all — the inhabitants are settlers from Great Britain.

I was slightly surprised to read that Argentina also claims sovereignty over South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. At their nearest point, the Falkland Islands are about 300 miles off the coast of Argentina. South Georgia is about 1200 miles away and the South Sandwich Islands are even further, about 2000 miles away. The capital of the Falkland Islands, Stanley — and where almost everyone lives is on the eastern island and is over 400 miles from Argentina. To claim sovereignty over islands that are so remote from the mainland is absurd. Of course, Argentina thinks there will be mineral wealth — particularly oil — under or near these islands and thus there is money to be made — perhaps. For Argentina to go rabbiting on about de-colonization seems to me to be an extreme example of the pot calling the kettle black — or worse. The people who now inhabit and govern Argentina are of Spanish descent because Argentina was a Spanish colony. The native Indians have little say in government and in my experience when I visited that country, the natives were treated quite badly. That is many years ago and things may be better now. But nevertheless the primary population are descended from colonists and I suppose that any referendum would confirm that the people wished to remain a Spanish speaking independent country. If the inhabitants of the Falklands wish to remain British, that should be respected and we should not under any circumstances even begin negotiations with Argentina because that implies that they have a case. And, I believe that they do not!

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What Is A Diamond Worth?

I still don't know how much Bob Diamond at Barclays Bank is paid. It is a fascinating subject since the question and its answer is symptomatic of all our questions about bankers' pay. A report on the Citywire Money page today tells us that in 2011 about 25% of the CEOs in FTSE100 companies enjoyed remuneration increases of an average of 41%. This seems spectacularly good, when most of these companies performed rather poorly and, of course, we are all in this together. Bob Diamond was at the top of the list with what was described as a "total realisable remuneration" of £20,971.000 — which seems not too bad in these straightened times. But the total, apparently, does not include “deferred bonuses awarded in the year and the expected value of share options and other share plan awards in the year, but includes instead the amounts realised from LTIPs and deferred share schemes that vest in the year, plus gains on options exercised in the year. These amounts realised are from awards made in earlier years.”

So, is there more to come or next year will he only get £15 million? And, does this total include any amounts paid to clear personal tax liabilities in the USA? And how much will he have tucked away in share options for when he leaves? Assuming that Mr Diamond pays tax on all of this income — which is almost certainly untrue — then George Osborne's reduction in the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p will reduce his tax burden by £1,041,050. I know dear Bob — like the rest of us — was struggling to make ends meet and was anxious to move on from all the discussion about bankers' pay, but this is ridiculous. Is it any wonder that the coalition government is falling out of favour when nonsense like this is allowed to happen. Barclays Bank is a big company but its performance has been terrible. Its shares are worth little more than than they were donkeys years ago and are at only about 25% of their pre-crash values. Dividends are no good either. There are no very good reasons at all for investing in Barclays and I suspect that many leave their money there in the hope that one day the shares will recover their value. In the meantime Bob Diamond carries on paying himself buckets of money for his expertise. I suppose he must argue that if he were not so absolutely brilliant the company would be in an even worse mess. They could be in a Spanish mess.

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The Resurrection of Coal

We have a government at present that cannot take decisions. There is nothing odd about this; most of our governments cannot take decisions — and even if they do, they are probably wrong. This may be a cynical outlook coming from someone who does not have to make the decisions. Can I ask a question? What are we going to do to provide us with electricity in a few year's time? We have been humming and hawing about nuclear power for years. The last government and the present have sort of taken a decision to get EDF energy to build some nuclear power stations with German assistance but the contractors are slowly pulling out. The truth is that no one wants to build nuclear power stations any more. And they are quite right. I have been opposed to the building of more such stations for years. Why? Because they are unsafe and present us with a gigantic problem when they need to be shut down and demolished. It is an extreme form of the Titanic problem. This ship was unsinkable but it sank on its maiden voyage. The chances of a nuclear disaster are very small but that disaster could still occur within the next 28 hours. The possibility is small — but not nil — but the consequences are horrendous. That is not a scenario acceptable in any risk assessment.

It is claimed that nuclear power stations give no effluents, are clean and efficient. They are none of these. The first fundamental problem is — what happens if anything goes wrong? No longer can it be argued that nothing will go wrong or that new nuclear power stations will be safer. We need to remember Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. All of these were grade one disasters that needed massive evacuation of very large areas of surrounding land, towns and cities. After Fukushima it was thought at one stage that the whole of Tokyo may have had to be emptied. It was not, of course, but primarily this was due to the efforts of workers in the power station who allowed themselves to be subjected to horrendous levels of radiation in order to do the work necessary to subdue the reactors. The situation there is still not 100% safe and the reality is that the most contaminated areas will not be usable for a few thousand years. Chernobyl was even worse. Already many men who worked to contain that disaster are dead; Many more will die prematurely and like Hiroshima the knock-on effects of radiation will be felt in the community for years to come. If a conventional power station suffered a major catastrophic failure, emergency services and teams of engineers could get to work cleaning up the mess immediately and within a relatively short time the power station could be back in operation. There would be no nuclear fall-out to deal with; no land contaminated for a thousand years, etc.

Nuclear power stations present a frightening risk of terrorist actions and this introduces another inestimable factor — which would not apply to a conventional system.

But, even assuming all these matters could be overcome, there remains the matter of disposing of the waste. At present it is stored and so it will be for years to come until we can load it onto a rocket and fire it into the sun.

I read an article today which told me that last year coal was the energy source that provided for 30% of the world's energy — up from 25% just a few years ago. And last month Japan shut down the last operating nuclear power station. The government wants these stations to re-start but since Fukushima, every time a nuclear power station is shut down there has been substantial local resistance to it ever being re-started. This is not likely to change. Th beans and sandals brigade will oppose electricity generation with coal but they will oppose everything except — perhaps — windmills.

This country has problems with energy supplies as a direct result of continuously incompetent governments. We had about 400 years supply of coal buried under the British Isles. How much of that coal is now recoverable, I do not know. We mine very little of it because in the 1980s we had a prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who shut the coal mines because she was determined to quash the coal miner's union headed by Arthur Scargill. She decided that we could generate electricity by burning natural gas. That was another disastrous decision. It is great to generate electricity using this premium fuel but it wasted a precious resource. We are now in the incredible position of generating about 35% of our electricity with coal and that coal is imported from the USA and Poland. Our own resource of North Sea gas is now almost all gone and we import gas from Norway, Russia and the Middle East. Sooner or later we will have to re-open the coal mines just as we are now having to try to resurrect our manufacturing industries — also chucked down the drain by various governments — with one notable exception. When Rolls Royce got into deep trouble in the 1970s, a Tory prime minister, Ted Heath, nationalized the company and kept it afloat until it could be re-privatized to look after itself again. It is now a thriving business and one of the most successful in Britain. When Mrs Thatcher was destroying our coal industry, we should have been spending money on research to be leaders in all modern methods of burning coal and dealing with carbon dioxide emissions. But we did not and we are not and, yet again, we will come to regret it.

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What Next For Europe

The euro crisis is in a critical state yet again as Spain's banks are losing more and more money and the country's debts get reduced to near junk status. There is an urgent need for some billions of euros to keep them afloat. David Cameron is urging leaders in the zone to get something sorted. Now Angela Merkel is talking of closer political and financial union. This is what all the Euro fanatics have always wanted and which the populace of every country in Europe certainly does not want. What the proposal will means in the present circumstances, I know not. It may just be another mountain of fudge. What seems to be the case is that this scheme will be imposed on the countries of Southern Europe by the Germans and the bureaucrats of Brussels. Somehow, they will have to cobble this together in some way that will allow them to do it without having to ask the permission of any electorates in any country of Europe. Already we have Greece and Italy ruled by imposed bureaucrats sympathetic to the euro and now we will see something similar for all other countries that do not fall into line. In the 1920s and 1930s we saw the development of fascist dictatorships grow across Europe and if we are not careful, something similar will happen again. Now, we are to have dictatorship of eurocrats. At every permitted election, countries will vote for more and more extreme nationalist parties that will rid them of the impositions of Brussels. And they will be quite right to do so even if the final outcome will be unpredictable. The politicians and their cohorts in Brussels cannot solve today's problems because they will not acknowledge the cause of the problems. That cause is the euro. The euro needs to go and every country revert to each of their own independent currencies. It will now be difficult to unravel the mess because the debts across Europe have been allowed to become so enormous. But the euro must go. If Greece finally dumps the euro they will have at least a 30% devaluation, which will make their exports cheap and will make the country attractive again to foreign holidaymakers across Europe. They have already written off 50% of the debt. They will have to do the same to the other half — one way or another. These actions will create jobs, will stimulate growth and over a period of say 5 years they will get Greece back on its feet. They still need to eliminate corruption, make pension age something realistic and ensure that everybody pays their taxes.

Spain is in a more difficult situation but they need a similar solution. They need to get people back to work and start the economy growing. Their problem is the magnitude of bank debts associated with over-lending on housing. Somehow, whatever happens, the banks will have to be bailed out and some more of the debts written off.

During the next few days there will be more discussion in Europe but whether the politicians will sort things seems little more than an outside chance still. And it would be helpful if Christine Legarde of the IMF could refrain from making comments about the Greeks not paying their taxes. She is very highly paid and yet pays very little tax to anybody. We are all in this together, I believe.

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A Summer Of Sport

I am not looking forward to many of the planned events for this summer. Today is Derby Day so the crowds will be piling onto the Downs around Epsom for one of the real highlights of the racing calendar. I know nothing about horses — in the horse racing sense — but hopefully all will go well and a good time be had by all. It's a bit cool and cloudy, though.

Next week-end we have the start of the football Euro 2012 internationals in Poland and Ukraine. These countries look like potentially very troublesome venues with their reputations for trouble with Nazi gangs and racists at football matches. It is said that expectations for the England team are at an all-time low. Perhaps this is because all too often the team performs badly. I am not optimistic about this year being any different but I wish them luck anyway.

This week-end the great Jubilee bash gets under way with flotillas on the Thames and Handel's Water Music etc. I suppose its OK but I am against all the other flag waving and hanging out the bunting and the extra Bank Holiday. It all has an air of forced jollity and probably somewhere it gives somebody the chance to make a lot of money. Still.it looks as though the rains will come this evening and damp things down a a bit. The Queen and HRH Prince Phillip are spending lots of time this year touring around the country visiting people at work, at play and in their own homes and giving the image of pensioners a boost. I think this is a better way of celebrating the 60 year reign. Still, all of it is getting the republicans all hot under the collar and that can't be bad.

But then we have the nonsense of the Olympics. This crack-pot money wasting extravaganza is preceded by the torch journey around Britain. I have already commented on this but a few days ago it reached the height of absurdity — literally — when the torch was borne to the top of Snowdon — which is, said The Times, the highest mountain in England and Wales. It could be one or the other but not both, surely. Is it going up to the top of Scafell Pike, which is, I suppose, by the same reasoning, the second highest mountain in England and Wales? I suspect that the answer is, No, because the top of Scafell is a rather more rigorous climb and the summit is not served by a railway line. The crowds of people and the press and TV all gathered on top of a mountain in Wales did seem to me to be one of the more bizarre events in this trundling of the torch around Britain.

Other Olympic News: Sponsorship is becoming an issue so daft that even the wonderful Sebastian Coe must be wondering if perhaps the whole thing is out of control. WI woman knits Olympic rings onto a cuddly toy intended to raise money for charity and is threatened with legal action by the owners of the brand image — presumably the IOC. Similar action is threatened against florists and funeral directors who put rings on their window displays for the days that the torch thingy passed through. One of the commercial sponsors is Visa and they have made their mark by banning all other credit cards from being used anywhere near the Olympic venues. They have removed all money machines that accept any card other than a Visa card and imposed a blanket ban on all other cards for any purpose. Crackers!

And, if you think all that rubbish is bad enough, you can go for a sit gown, mop your brow and buy a cheese and tomato sandwich for about £4.00 and then wash it down with Dutch lager at £7.00 per pint. Sponsors deny access to old-fashioned English beers. Will the Dutch have to watch events in their underpants because orange is not a permitted colour? It has happened before. If you are a "VIP" guest you will be ferried around everywhere in one the official cars — BMW, of course. The joy of the Olympics is, so they tell us, in the taking part. You can say that again!

Now, I will cheer up. Today the Isle of Man TT Week gets under way. That's something to look forward to and for the most part it is unhindered by the OTT activities of sponsors. I hope everyone enjoys the week and that no rider is killed or seriously injured. It has to be admitted that riding a motor-bike on public roads at speeds up to 200 mph can be dangerous.

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The End Is Nigh

For a long time, I have been anti EU. I believe that it is a vast money wasting bureaucracy that serves no purpose other than to give jobs to dead duck politicians. They love it, of course, because it gives them buckets of cash and an unrestricted access to a monster gravy-train with little public limitation. It is undemocratic and useless. Now, as yet more woe piles on woe in the euro-zone, the European Commission calls for more support for "sinner states". How much support? Already the debts are heading for infinity with, naturally, no end in sight. Now Spain is heading for the exit doors becoming less and less able to fund its debts. Giving them a big bung to tide them over will yet again only delay the inevitable, making the final denouement even more catastrophic than it is going to be. Spain cannot escape. The debt is going up and up. the economy is shrinking, the unemployment rate is 25% and rising. Income falls, expenditure increases and more money has to be borrowed. At root, no politician is prepared to admit that the whole euro idea was crackers and doomed from day one. The uncritical supporters of the great European dream always wanted a federal Europe but they know now that citizens of Europe will never agree to such a thing. So they wriggle; tell us that constitutions are merely updated treaties; paste sticking plaster in every new leak and lumber the whole world with the consequences of their maneuvers.

The report published today by the European Commission proposes that the countries of the eurozone should create a "bank union" under which all countries would stand behind the collapsing banks. The Commission said that they would consider relaxing Spain's deficit reduction targets — thus allowing them to acquire more debt. The markets are not impressed since the new scheme will be rejected by the Germans.

Has there ever been, in modern times a political monstrosity to compare with the European Union? The sooner is dies the death the better. Supporters want a vast single " country" to compete with America and China. It will never happen. Where necessary we should work together as groups of countries to make things like Airbus, etc.

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Goodbye And Good-Luck Jussi

After the revelations about costs in the Premier League, matters are more mundane in the lower leagues, where most teams live on the edge. Bolton Wanderers are spending a lot of time looking at the books. Now demoted to the Championship, they have immense debts and this summer there will be a mass exodus of players — almost all for money reasons. One of those probably leaving will be goal-keeper, Jussi Jaaskalainen. He has been with Bolton for 15 years, has played 529 games and has been a great servant of the club — saving them from many an embarrassment. But now he is 37 years old and after an injury at the end of last year, his place was taken by young Adam Bogdan. Jussi has not been able to get back into the side and negotiations on a new salary deal have not looked promising — presumably on the basis that he will be second string goal-keeper in a Championship club. I would like him to stay because of his record and vast experience but all the signs are that he will go to West Ham and back to his old manager Sam Allardyce. Sam has been well served by players brought into the West Ham side who were former players at Bolton Wanderers. So Sam takes West Ham back into the Premier League as Bolton Wanderers — whom he took into the Premier League 11 years ago — sink back down to the Championship. I think Bolton will struggle with a shortage of players and money and, I have to say, I am not over-confident about the abilities of the manager, Owen Coyle.

Still Jussi Jaaskelainen is still a good goal-keeper — and goalies last a long time — and I wish him luck in a new career with the Hammers.

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Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?

A report is published today that tells us that in spite of the credit crunch and the squeeze and that "we are all in it together", the cost of wages paid to footballers in the Premier League continues to rise. The driving force seems to be the wages paid to the players at the top six clubs. Chelsea's wage bill rose by £17m to £191m — the highest in the league — but Manchester City's wage bill went up by a staggering £41m to £174m — which accounted for 114% of the club's total income. The latest report by accountants Deloitte suggests that control of wages "continues to be football's biggest commercial challenge." You can say that again. Wages, on average, demanded 70% of all club incomes but the most successful club in the league, Manchester United kept its wages down to 46% of income. In the 21st Annual Review of Football Finance Deloitte tells us — in a statement of the blindingly obvious — that pay discipline is needed "in order to deliver robust and sustainable businesses".

The business model for the Premier League is never likely to look anything other than something from Alice in Wonderland. The top clubs spend buckets of money on players and get quite good attendances at matches — 50,000+ — while smaller, less wealthy clubs struggle to get good players — the best are unaffordable — and to get enough income. Most of the top clubs rely on billionaire owners to fill in the funding gaps and this has the effect of pushing wages higher and higher. The problem is exacerbated by the stadiums. Most clubs have a stadium that will hold 30,000+ spectators — which they struggle to fill and which costs a fortune because it is hardly ever used. Most are needed for about six hours per week and for the rest they sit like vast beached whales gathering dust and occupying a lot of expensive space. New stadiums should be shared and should incorporate other things to dissipate the costs.

Overall, in 2010-2011 the Premier League recorded pre-tax losses of £300 million with only eight clubs making any profit at all. Manchester City may have won the Premier League title this year — beating their rivals at Manchester United on goal difference only — but at what cost. Manchester City posted a pre-tax loss of £82m, while Manchester United made a profit of £100m. Some difference. Is this what they call buying success?

Nevertheless, the Premier League is such a money spinner that six of the top clubs in Europe — in terms of money generation — are in the Premier League. They are, as could be predicted, Manchester United, Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea. I don't think that ex-Premier League Bolton Wanderers are likely to get onto the list any time soon — unless, of course, they can find themselves their own Russian billionaire.

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Jaguar Land-Rover On The Up

Good news in the newspapers today that Jaguar will next week unveil profits for 2011 of about £1.5 billion, which is probably a record. I am sure that Indian owners Tata will be very pleased with this. Only a few years back they were struggling to survive but much has been achieved as a result of work put into the company by the efforts of previous owners, Ford. They could never reap any real benefit because they had to sell the company to help bail out the parent company in America. I still love my X Type and apparently lots of other people still love their X Types as well. When Jaguar stopped making this car, senior executives at Jaguar said that they were giving up on the idea of making cheap cars for the masses and would concentrate on niche marketing. I thought it was a daft idea then but there were lots of motoring pundits who agreed with them. But, just the other day, I was reading that "many people are wondering why Jaguar gave up the X type — still very popular and holding its second-hand price — without first coming up with a replacement". Now they have a new design on the books and a new "X Type" will be on the roads in 2014 — probably a competitor for the BMW 3 Series. It will be the smallest Jaguar ever made and will be priced at about £20,000. Right! Exactly what they should have done before dropping production of the old model and, remember, this car always sold in more numbers than all the other cars put together. Alongside the XF, XK and the brand new F Type, they will have a good range. I am still not over enamoured with the new XJ. I still think that the old one was a much, much better looking car — with character. The new XJ still looks like something Germanic that didn't quite work out.

In a recent edition of Autocar, it seems that the old S series Jaguar is still No 1 for a good comfortable ride and handling. Extraordinary, considering how much it was slagged off by many — including the team on Top Gear.

But the motor industry is doing well all round. Vauxhall are expanding the factory at Ellesmere Port to make Astras for the next ten years and have got a good agreement with the unions for flexible working. Nissan are expanding in Sunderland — a factory which has the highest efficiency and productivity in the group and is best on quality issues. Who would have thought things like this could happen in the British motor industry. Sadly almost all is now under foreign ownership. Even Bentley and Rolls Royce are doing well. In the last year, for the first time since 1976, we exported more cars than we imported. Perhaps we can get some economic growth after all.

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Facebook Friends

Euro Crisis : Part 111.

Has anyone any meaningful or useful advice to offer on where to invest my savings — or anyone else's savings for that matter. After last Friday's IPO of shares in Facebook at $38.00 each, it is already quite clear that this is a big turkey. After the initial [10 minutes] surge to $45.00 the shares fell on Monday and on Tuesday and are now at $31.00 and still falling. Reports are appearing about the total mis-handling of the biggest IPO ever. NASDAQ failed, the underwriting banks — JPM, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America — failed and Facebook failed. Apart from the bad management on the day, it now seems that the public were not told the full truth about the potential for the company in the days before the IPO. Mark Zuckerberg suffered almost certainly from that affliction of autocratic company executives that mentally over-states the value of the company and then comes to believe in their own hype. But the lawyers and underwriters should deal with this. There were, it seems, one or two phone calls to institutional investors but none to Joe Public. I always thought that the initial valuation of this company seemed over the top. Everything suggested the price as way to high. What do they do to make money? They sell advertising. They do not make a product which has a defined demand — unlike Apple, for example. But what do I know? I am not one of the financial wizards that understands all the jiggery-pokery of the banks and markets. New pundits are appearing from the woodwork who are suggesting that the true value of the shares is really less than $10.00 per share. So all those punters who have invested their hard-earned cash are in for a shock-horror loss. The authorities in the USA are launching an enquiry.

Here we go again. Everything involved in an IPO for Facebook or any other new company involves payment of buckets of money to the investment bankers; these people who have such sophisticated expertise that the need to be paid millions of dollars per year to stay on board. And here again, they will walk away with their multi-million dollar payments and leave the wreckage to be picked up by the government or the public — or both. It is not possible at this stage to "borrow" Facebook shares and short sell them but any investment fund that has bought even small holdings in Facebook is seeing its shares borrowed and short sold. One such investor saw its shares fall by 25% on Monday — bringing a nice little profit for some hedge fund managers.

While all this nonsense is carrying on, we have another meeting of Euro-leaders gathering today with more bags of sticking plaster to stick on the Greek debts. They really are useless. They are in the depths of a catastrophe which was perfectly predictable — ie, setting up the euro in the first place and then waiting for it to collapse into chaos — and now they will do nothing to face up to reality and a proper solution. The euro must go. It will be chaotic but they must do everything they can to minimise the chaos. Hiding away from it will not do. But the reality is that they are afraid of [1] loss of face for introducing the absurd currency in the first place, [2] the consequences of a potential Europe wide collapse, [3] Germany does not want its exports to become more expensive —as they would if the country reverted to the Deutsch Mark — and Germany pays all the bills. But how long will German voters go along with a system that demands they work harder and harder to bail out the Greeks? And as they float along lost in the fog, the world's economies flounder. There is no growth, the currencies are all weak, the debts are astronomical and growing and world unemployment is getting worse. Everyone wants growth. But in this system, growth means taking on more debt.

So, can anyone suggest a good investment for my hard-earned cash?

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Buy An Olympic Torch

Is there no end to the absurdity of the Olympic Games. High on the list is, surely, the nonsense of the Olympic Torch. The idea of parading the Olympic Torch around the host nation was dreamt up by the German government for the Berlin Olympics in 1936 in order to boost the image of the Nazis and the Master Race. This torch thing for the 2012 Olympics is being carried over 7,000 miles around Britain and, apparently, needs a team of 350 people, lots of police, several vehicles and a couple of dogs to "organize" the trip. It is an honour, we are told, to be selected to carry this torch for a few hundred yards and anyone so honoured can buy their torch at a reduced price of £250.00. Some have bought them and immediately stuck them on e-bay with prices from £500 to £150,000. The highest figures are I think, intended to be part of money raising for charities. I know that the Olympics these days is all about extracting money from ordinary punters, while the suits and the hangers on and the officials and the politicians and Sepp Blatter and his crew get complimentary tickets to all the main events, 5 star hotels and chauffeur driven cars. In fact it is so corrupt that many of the people paying for the whole shebang can't get tickets at all — unless they are bought abroad. I will be glad when the whole sickly business is over and forgotten and we just have the memory of the empty stadiums left behind and various committees trying to think of some possible future uses — in the manner of The Dome

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The Crisis Heads for the Soup Kitchens

It has not been a very good week. Even the world's great leaders will acknowledge that. And I think that we are in for a few more not very good weeks. It now looks as though we are in the depths of the worst financial crisis in our history. Things are so bad that it is almost impossible to judge just how bad. The numbers being mentioned associated with debts in Europe and the USA are huge; billions are being replaced with trillions and multipliers ease ever upwards. I have no confidence in the world's leaders to sort out the mess. They are overwhelmed by the chaos but will not admit that the mess is insoluble. Or at least it is insoluble as long as politicians continue flogging the same dead horse in order to avoid accepting that previous decisions were wrong. There are two overwhelming failures. [1] They failed to see the looming disaster as economies and governments were financed by ever increasing debts and there was a complete and utter failure to regulate the banks. And [2] the invention of the euro. The latter was like piling everyone into bus, setting off down the road, tying up the driver and then waiting to see how long it would be before the bus crashed.

This week there has been increasing evidence of an accelerating run on the Greek banks. The Greeks are withdrawing their money and transferring to German bonds. How this will pan out is difficult to judge. Presumably, if this continues the Greek Banks will have to be supported by the ECB which will be supported by the German government using the money invested in German binds by the Greeks!! And, in the meantime, Greece has no government. An interim government headed by a judge will lead a sort of administration until new elections are held in June. Does anyone think they will get a different result? Are Greek elections like Euro Referendums in which electorates are asked the same question over and over again until they come up with the right answer? The Greeks are protecting their cash in preparation for Greece leaving the euro-zone. And momentum is building in Spain as 16 Spanish banks have their credit ratings lowered. Interest rates on Spanish bonds are heading towards 7% which means they are on the brink.

Britain is also in a terrible position because we have too many very big banks with lots of rubbish loans piled up, hidden away, in the deepest of deep vaults in the hope that nobody will notice. If Spain, Portugal and Italy go down the tubes our banks will be near collapse. Our government is waffling on about cutting our debts but it is not. All it is doing — even if it succeeds — is slowing the rate of increase of debt. If all goes well, by 2015 the government will have increased government debt by no more than about £700,000,000,000, which is pretty impressive and scores a good 9 points on a scale of 0 to 10 on a chart of debt reduction failures. But bad as this is, Labour wants to abandon debts "reduction" and go for growth by borrowing even more. This even worse than back of fag packet economics. Soon, fag packets will be unobtainable and we will need a new work surface for dodgy estimating.

Greece and Spain have huge unemployment rates — which in each case increases the government debt burden — and queues are growing at soup kitchens. It is reminiscent of USA in the 1930s and it took a world war to cure that problem, in spite of the best efforts of FDR [President Roosevelt].

To add to my gloom, Bolton Wanderers were relegated from the Football Premier League last Sunday when they failed — as they have done so many times this season — to hang onto a lead at the end of the second half. How they will get on from here, I do not know. They have eleven players out of contract this summer, have huge debts, will need to cut their wage bill and need to find some very high quality cheap players to help escape quickly from the Championship. It is a daunting prospect! Are they up for it? I hope so.

Eric's mum is practicing making vast amounts of soup at very low cost ready for the next crisis in our economy. I don't think that the inexperienced rich boys in charge understand the concept of queuing for soup.

Unfortunately, Winston Churchill is dead.

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Olympic Insanity

I ought to give up on the Olympic Games but hardly a day goes by without some new piece of nonsense that leaves me both depressed with the ludicrousness of it all, with the pathetic exaggeration of the importance of this three weeks of school sports and with the strange economics which allow the price to go up and up without the cost increasing.

This week, we are, apparently, trying out the security measures for the games. We have radar spy planes flying around, RAF fighter aircraft flying over London, very heavily armed troops and police operating in the streets from Heathrow to Barking. The police are being equipped with 2 automatic pistols each as well as sub-machine guns, gas canisters, security scrambled communication systems — all of which are unavailable for controlling ordinary crime.— and they are all masked. Why? They are not MI5 or MI6 men — are they? But most ludicrous of all: there are to be missile systems installed on the roofs of east-end flats — without the local inhabitants being consulted. Do they seriously intend to fire missiles at something over Central London? Can we expect to see a high-jacked airliner being blown out of the sky over Canary Wharf? The whole thing is utter madness. This security system will cost £1 billion+. Is this included somewhere in the unmoving Olympian Budget of £9.5 billion? I suspect not. On my reckoning we have about £2.5 billion in total to add to the £9.5 billion but I am sure that much of these cost will be lost in such add ons as road repairs, thousands of extra staff at Heathrow, etc. The final cost — if everything is included, is edging inexorably towards my budget of £15 billion. All very well worthwhile, of course and only an old miserable cynic like me would think otherwise.

The BBC has told us that they will show everything. Every run, jump, swim, throw or stand still of the whole 2½ weeks. This ignores the build-up which will drive us to suicide before August.

Oh, to be in England in September when the daises are in bloom

And no more an Olympian feat before our aching eyes doth loom.

This morning, news reaches us that Argentina has put out an advertisement on its TV stations showing one of their athletes taking part in the games but training in the Falkland Islands. Who this pathetic bit of propaganda is supposed to impress, I have no idea. It has not gone down too well in the Falkland Islands of that we can be sure. The government in Argentina is in an economic mess and the president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has been batting on for months about her country's ownership of the Falkland Islands — which at the nearest point, are some 300 miles off the shore of Argentina and the capital, Port Stanley, is 400 miles away. And the people living in the Falkland Islands want to remain inhabitants of a British Overseas Territory. All of the 2,500 people there are of British descent and the islands have been occupied by the British since 1833. Still Argentina pursuing its claims for sovereignty fits all the criteria for the sort of logic that thinks spending billions on sports days in the east end of London makes any sense.

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Picture Post

I was going to include a picture with my last post but I forgot which one. When I remember, I will add an addendum

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Memory Loss

Some years ago, my mother's window cleaner knocked on the door of her house to tell her that he had finished cleaning the windows, up and down, back and front and to ask for his payment. As often happens to all of us as we get older, he spoke to her slowly and loudly. "There is no need to shout or to speak slowly." she said. "I am neither deaf nor suffering from dementia." After that he always addressed her as a normal human-being, even though she was in her nineties. It is a problem we all worry about; the onset of dementia. My memory is not as good as it was but it is still not too bad. I know many worse.

Loss of memory is becoming quite a problem these days. The Leveson Enquiry has turned up some awesome memory losses. It is not just one or two individuals forgetting the odd detail. It is the massive collective loss of memory of almost everybody being interviewed. Is it catching? Is it a virus that has spread unseen through the corridors of power? James Murdoch can't remember anything about phone hacking at the News of the World. He doesn't remember reading various incriminating e-mails. Rupert Murdoch similarly can't remember things. Although he has been in out of Downing Street for years — via the back entrance — why? — he can't remember meeting several prime ministers and he does not remember ever asking them for anything. Nor does he remember anyone telling him about the problems at the News of the World..

James Murdoch can't remember the close exchange of e-mails between News International and BSkyB and the government and Jeremy Hunt can't remember any of the e-mails either. All 163 pages are a closed book to all concerned. Extraordinary! In fact Jeremy Hunt seems to have been entirely unaware of what his specially appointed adviser — the surely free-rolling Adam Smith — was doing any of the time. The memories of members of the Murdoch family may be a bit selectively shaky but it defies credibility to suggest that a special adviser to a minister is operating entirely without the ministers knowledge. I don't like Jeremy Hunt and I expect that sooner rather than later his ministerial career will bite the dust — and we can forget all about him!

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