Strangely Perfect

Guillotine and “The Reign of Terror” Funny how I missed this during the summer – I was in hospital, I think. This video is Henry Paulson, stumbling and squirming, as he struggles to evade quite simple questions for someone in his position.  (I talked about his deceit last year here and here, at the start [...]

How Bad was Thatcher’s Recession compared to the Current Economic Slump? Q. Well, how would you find out, exactly? A. Surprisingly easily.  This graph here compares historical economic slumps with the current one, on a month by month basis.  It’s taken from the “National Institute of Economic and Social Research” (NIESR) website here.  Notionally, it’s [...]

New Jaguar XJ In common with most cars like this, it’s a lovely looking machine – a style marvel; sleek and vapid, mercurial. It’s also a waste of space and a waste of effort. It’s two tonnes of mass for a 400kg payload is pants.  An ecological disaster zone. Money for Old Rope Not only [...]

Why Economists and Scam Merchants are the Same Today’s news that the cost of the global credit crunch meltdown has quadrupled in a year should come as no surprise to followers of the GoogleTreasureChest scamsters.  See : Meltdown losses of ‘$4 trillion’ Last year, the highly salaried ‘professional’ economists at the IMF, many having spent [...]

It Goes From Bad to Worse! RBS In a completely passive demonstration of non-government and how toothless our government’s words are, it’s now been shown that not only does former RBS gaffer, Fred Goodwin get a massive pension of ~£33k monthly take-home, but the pot from which it’s being taken is already £2 billion under-funded!! [...]

Willie Sutton In a curious parallel with the Great Depression when many millions lost their homes and money, I’m reminded about the phrase reputedly said by a USA bank robber of the time, and how it could equally well be applied to our current predicament…. When asked “Mr Sutton, why do you rob banks?”, he [...]

Introduction Following up an earlier post of mine “Use the Green Stick, Mr Postman!” and how unfriendly competition in the delivery market actually is from the point of view of the environment and the actual service to the customer (us!), the recent news of a  Delivery firm’s 686 jobs at risk should be taken with [...]

Clearly, there is something wrong with the motor and finance industries of the world (a.k.a America for this article, because when America sneezes, the world catches a cold). We are all acutely aware how their problems affect us. We believe that we live in healthy democracies where we vote for the people and systems that [...]

Many moons ago I read the short story with the above title. Although not one of Pohl’s best works, it has nevertheless left an obviously lasting impression on me. Written in the mid-fifties, it’s a future tale of consumerism gone mad. In the tale, it’s illegal not to consume as much as possible.  The hero [...]

Two days ago I read an astonishingly factual and honest article on the BBC Magazine website, called; The myth of record debt Author Michael Blastland (who wrote The Tiger That Isn’t: Seeing Through a World of Numbers) explains very well how statistics and their presentation can be used to hide or expose anything the presenter [...]

Yay!  Today, 15 Nov 2008, with only a few weeks of his tenure as US President left to go, he still can’t stop saying one thing and doing the other. Bush warns over ‘protectionism’ is the news today.  This is at the Washington meeting of 20 countries, the G20, which represent 85% of the global [...]

Finally it’s starting to dawn on a few people that battery powered cars are not the way out of our low-carbon energy conundrum. Bolivia holds key to electric car future.  In this piece, the BBC note that Lithium, the 3rd element in the periodic table, a major power source for everyone’s laptops and mobile phones, [...]

Ahoy there! Now we are fully sated in our lust for fresh information on the Credit Crunch and the US Presidential elections, we can now see what’s really going on in the world as the news organs adjust focus for something else to talk about as Ross and Brand are old hat now. Apart from [...]

In another twist in the constantly churning world of the “Credit Crunch”, it was revealed on Sunday that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has NO FAITH in the banking system!  Yes.  It’s true. Apparently, as revealed in Sunday’s Le Journal du Dimanche, his bank account was hacked by cyber-criminals and “only a small amount of money” [...]