bozo's return

Socialism begins at home

Everyone knows Bozo is a socialist.
Everyone knows Bozo dislikes the Labour Party. Blair. Brown. Milliband. Yuck

But this new benefits policy they launched today isn't awful.

It may be awful when it gets to detail. And implementation. But as a headline idea I like it

Why?

Well I believe in socialism as Jesus did. He knew that one of the mysteries is we are not clones. We are all unique. Some are blessed massively. Some born into a life if trial.

We are supposed to take our blessings and freely give to help those less blessed.

Tory policies would be fine if we were a nation of givers. But we are a nation of tax avoiders We follow Dawkins view that we lucked out in some universal lottery. Tough titty on those who didn't. Adapt or die.

But.
This country does offer everyone free education. Everyone. Sure. Some schools are better than others.
But it's free. And you get to choose how hard you work even in a crap school.

So while admitting there are exceptions. And admitting there are extenuating circumstances. The fact remains large numbers of kids laugh in the face of free education. Toss it off till 16. Then expect the rest of us to pay for them for life.

Many of them also want to blame immigrants who bothered to learn to read abd count and spell for taking their jobs.

I believe totally in the social safety net. I believe totally in the obligation of the blessed to give generously to the unblessed.

But. I also believe if you already tossed away one free education you can't complain at being made to accept a second one before the rest of us pick up your sky tv tab.

My mum would never have tolerated my wasting my education. Never.
But then today she'd have ended up in court for giving me a slap when I got out if order.

Socialism begins at home. Caring for your kids includes an obligation to make them actually take advantage of the free education!

My mum didn't slap me often. She didn't need to. But the fact that she could and would helped me become a productive member of society.

A few more would be nice

Memphis or Soweto?

I have never been to Memphis, There - I admitted it.

So it's only being honest to say that my "sense" of the scariness of parts of Memphis came originally from the movie The Blindside. However - Although in the movie a part of Memphis called "Hurt Village" was portrayed to be as about as safe as downtown Damascus right now it is also true that according to this article three areas in Memphis are among the most dangerous in the USA.

Scarier still - the three worst areas in the USA according to the same article all belong to Detroit!

 

Now I have been to Soweto. To many white South African's we met in Johannesburg before going, the visit that Mrs Bozo and I made there in 2009 was an act of madness. And let us be honest - many of the amazingly warm and generous black South Africans we were hosted by in the township advised us not to wander the streets around our hotel at night. 

My point is this - generally speaking I didn't feel that scared in Soweto - maybe I should have - but I didn't. But both the article linked above - and the movie - gave me a very strong impression that parts of Memphis were arguably far more dangerous than Soweto.

Is it just me that wonders how parts of the richest (and we are led to believe "free-est") nation on earth are scarier than a thrid world township with a history of homicidal racial violence?

In the 20 odd years since the failure of the Soviet experiment (and we have to admit it failed) the west has seen the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer - every year. Every single year.

And, when the banks caused the almightiest financial disaster the world has ever known. That process actually accelerated! We bailed out banks whose balance sheets were destroyed by imprudent investment decisions - and then subsidized the bonuses still being paid to the losers who made those decisions! Except they aren't losers are they?

We are.

They get richer and richer.

No one ever ever ever got arrested for the dodgy dealings surrounding the crash. A crash that caused more harm to the world than the riots of a couple of years back - for which hundreds of people were jailed!

The reason that Memphis - and Detroit - and increasingly parts of my own fair city are becoming more dangerous than Soweto is complex. I admit that. But anyone who doesnt think that the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer doesnt play an enormous part in the process is - well - a bit dim.

Of course if we keep voting for these policies we will have to live with them. We do after all get the government we deserve. But Let us not expect our country to become a nicer place to live. 

Unless you are rich of course.

 

 

So let us return to shareholder value

I do not know what cash benefits Barclays had from fixing LIBOR.

I do know that any share price gains it helped them get have been eroded this week!

I do not know if cash gains exceeded the $450m fine (plus Bob's extravagant reward for presiding over the cock-up)...

So the question is, given the unknown cash value of the benefit and the fine...it is unlike the net gain(if any) has come close to exceeding the share price devaluation of the past week in terms of total affect on shareholder's pockets.

So if even Bozo can put aside the appalling moral and ethical exhibition and deal with shareholder value. Why cannot shareholders?

It wasn't shareholder pressure that drive out Bobbie D was it? I mean he seemed to be surviving the decline in share prices - it was the media and the government who made the stink.

So, this man has trashed shareholder value - got paid £20million for doing it - and the shareholders weren't in uproar?

You see, we cannot legislate away bad moral codes or unethical leadership. We cannot - its too hard to force compliance - the tax bill for a regulator to have resources would be scary!

So I think - if this economic rationality, capitalist system is to work - the shareholders have to give a toss no?

We know the remuneration committee system is flawed beyond rescue. The Barclays committee has the guy from RBS, whose committee has the guy from WPP (I merely speculate) it is all totally "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" so any notion of oversight or looking after shareholder interests has long gone by the board! So what else can there be?

Well let me float another idea that is typically BozoBrilliant - and typically will never catch on.

Why not require any senior executive to sign an ethical behavior disclaimer as part of contract. In other words - if we get stung bythe regulators - lose a court case about behaving improperly or shafting our clients - get done for mis-selling products (or polluting the Gulf of Mexico - and here I am referring to Haliburton not poor Tony - the CEO of Haliburton got paid ridiculous amounts - and Haliburton were quietly proved equally liable with BP....) So - if any of that stuff happens - bonuses and golden parachutes and all those other incentives are made null, void and unenforceable.

Senior executives need to control the activities of their subordinates - lack of knowledge or intent is just as big a failure! If you aren't in control of what is going on - why should we pay you all this money??

Surely one shareholder somewhere thinks this idea makes sense? Or would they all rather encourage "so long as you don't get caught"....

 

 

Are you kidding me?

So, Bob has gone, and reportedly taken a £20 million reward for presiding for all this wrong-doing.

One still wonders how stealing a pair of trainers can get a teenage kid with a failed education jailtime but presiding over a fraud that leaves millions of people cheated gets you £20 million.

Well maybe you don't but I wonder.

I read (well more noticed) in The Standard that a witch hunt of bankers would place the city's position as global financial centre at risk. (You can tell why I didn't want to read the rest).

Really? And we care why?

Because these selfish immoral, cheating, lying scoundrels will all move to Zug? Or Shanghai? Really? And because they will employ their foreign au pairs in a foreign country?

It is just possible that the message this sends is not that society is in trouble. It is that society is already lost, game over, Satan wins!

We all scream about law and order because a few kids with no hope and no future torch a shop and nick some phones. Yet we (or at least The Standard) think we have to chuck law and order and right and wrong over the side when the perpetrators are responsible for a few billion in invisible earnings.

As far as I can work out - judging by actual events and actual decisions made by Law Enforcement agencies and Barclays Bank:

• No one broke a single law when Barclays and a few other banks defrauded the entire global financial system by lying about the LIBOR fix. That was legal apparently.
• It is all fair and square that Bob Diamond walks away from this fiasco rewarded with £20 million.
• Oh and if he signs up to an offshore scheme that means he pays £2.27 in tax this year - that's legal too.
• It is right and proper that someone who steals a pair of trainers goes to prison.

 

Is that really the society we live in?

And we aren't outraged?

Seriously?

 

 

The Issue is NOT Hypocrisy

I cannot tell you how many Bozo readers emailed me to say "I bet you will slaughter Jimmy Carr today"

And, of course, that was on my agenda - indeed my only agenda today was a few idle musings on Mr Carr, Vince Cable's attempt to allow shareholders some say over the riches of the few who manage their companies and a snort of derision over the headline in last night's Standard to the effect that:

"Politicians need to make firm choices or markets will decide"

Seriously?  I mean, SERIOUSLY?

The markets that in 2006 believed that the US housing market could never, ever, ever go down ever again? The same markets that bought and bought and bought all that sub prime mortgage debt? The markets that made the people selling the debt rich - and continue to make the dimwits that bought it rich?

Sadly Mr Ashton of The Standard is right (as in correct)

But that doesn't make it RIGHT! Given their track record of stupidity (since they don't accept cleverness as it equates with fraud in this instance) - why do markets get to decide?

Which segues me neatly into the fact of RIGHT (as opposed to Wrong).

The main reason Jimmy Carr will suffer in the wake of being outed as a tax-avoider is for his hypocrisy. As a slagger-off of the City he ought not to be doing it.

But the issue my friends is NOT hypocrisy. Does that mean it would be Ok to do it if he had never slagged off the rich? Just because it was legal?

The issue is what is right. And we are not helping our poor pressured society to see it that way.

Some dipstick in the Standard said that it made more sense to castigate George Osborne for not making it illegal than to slag off Jimmy for making use of the loophole. Hello? Why does TORY Chancellor Osborne get the gears when (theoretical) Socialist chancellor (and PM) G Brown never banned it either?

Nor will Ed (utter) Balls make any announcement to the effect that a future Labour government will make it illegal - because we all know that here, as in the US, political campaigns are financed by the rich and won or lost in the media so no party is ever again going to alienate the class of people for whom tax loopholes are relevant.

Allister whatsisname who edits City AM (in a bid for a free subscription to the Tea Party magazine no doubt) has said that people spend their money more wisely than the government does and so tax is a necessary evil and not a moral good. Er Yes - I agree that government is a wasteful spender. BUT my question is:

Spend their money on what?

Let's say Jimmy Carr has legally saved £500,000 in tax last year by his offshore shenanigans. Do I read that Jimmy has opened a homeless shelter with the money? Set up a home for battered wives? Or a drug recovery centre? Or a debt advisory clinic?

No of course not. And I think we all know that the amount of tax legally "avoided" in the past year is probably a ten digit number.

And none of those billions has found their way into any programmes to help society at all!

In the current recession the government has slashed funding for all of the programme types I listed, slashed by virtue of financially necessity because "Politicians must make firm decisions or the markets will decide!".

You know what - Allister whatsisname and his US Tea Party cronies probably have the numbers to prove to me that if a billion of currency was tax avoided that the government would have wasted half of it anyway. But to me that still leaves half a billion that could have gone into funding homeless shelters and battered wives shelters and so on and so forth.

Big government might be wasteful - but so are the rich. (Because - and this may amaze those of you with multiple homes and cars; to people who don't have one house, buying a third will always seem wasteful, no?)

If we could trust the rich and famous to do the right thing - to see themselves as blessed and give back SUBSTANTIALLY we wouldn't need taxes at all. The reason taxes are bad is that paying them allows everyone to say that fixing the problems of society is SOMEONE ELSE'S JOB - which it isn't.

Sadly the only thing the rich can be trusted to do, unfailingly, and aided by both Tory and Labour chancellors - is get richer.

The issue here is NOT hypocrisy - it is about doing what is RIGHT.

I am traumatised by the fact that we bypass the moral issue and ask only "was it legal?"

The media is full of people who are doing things that are legal - and deplorable.

No one has been prosecuted for the financial crisis - but that happened because people who had a choice to make chose to do something that was legal but wrong - but financially beneficial to themselves.

The legality of the MP expenses scandal is perhaps going to be a dubious issue to prove in court - but the fact that what they did was wrong is surely not an issue!

The defence that "everyone else is doing it" is gob-smacking and leaves our society one step from the city of Sodom.

Jimmy - it was legal - but it was not the right thing to do.

Your hypocrisy doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that society thinks illegality is the issue and not morality.

What the great philanthropic families did in the Victorian era they did - because they could.

The great tax avoiders of today do it for the very same reason. Because they can.

I never bought his cd's or dvd's or concert tickets anyway, so at least I never put £1 into his offshore pockets.

Did you?

what a load of (Ed) Balls

In the standard last night Ed Balls was saying that austerity has failed and we should go for growth.

Right.

Of course, when Ed's old boss Gordon gave away the birthright and future security of the entire nation to bail out the banks the theory was that maintaining the banks would allow them to finance the engine of growth in our (and everyone else's) country.

We all know that the several billion that Ed and his old boss gave away to the banks (I mean Ed - credit where credit is due - it happened on your watch) has been spent in writing down toxic assets - and of course paying seven figure bonuses to the traders who bought the aforementioned toxic assets and the senior managements who watched inertly while it all went tits up.

Ed - the growth money has been given away - by you - already - to the wrong people.

Government owned HBOS removed the overdraft from Bozo's company this year - totally.

That inspired me to go and grow...not.

Fortunately Bozo's firm didn't need the overdraft - but lots of others do - and the banks YOU saved don't want to help.

So... how exactly are you  planning this "go for growth" (in the unlikely event that voters have forgotten whose scottish banking cronies did this - and who paid them out anyway.

#

Question Time

Last night on Question Time a woman asked:

"Can UK PLC afford to be compassionate?"

Interestingly the panel were not unleashed on that one... which is a shame because it is such a great question.

The woman herself didnt think so - she felt we were not as rich and powerful as we think we are - and that if we are going to solve our own problems - we need all our cash to do that.

And from one side of the argument - you have to agree with her - after all we do have a lot of problems - and since Gordon and his Scottish banker mates bankrupted us - cash is hard to come by for social welfare projects n'est ce pas?

Of course there is another perspective. I once heard John Ortberg say that some ridiculous percentage of the worlds population lives on $1 per day.  Which is true.

Everyone in UK PLC is among the top 10% richest people in the world. So we, and all of western europe, North America, much of the middle east and much of South America can absolutely afford to be compassionate! If we cannot, who can?

But I think the key to what she said was "UK PLC" - because UK PLC went broke bailing out the banks. That's a factoid its hard to get away from.

But having bailed them out - this year those publicly supported/owned banks paid a tiny tiny minuscule fraction of our population a few billion pounds in bonuses.

Now when you have 2-3 homes, 2-3 cars and a pension worth a few million - well then you can definitely afford to be compassionate.

of course affording to be and being are world's apart - just like the bonus recipients and the poor people.

Gender and Society

Being a man - I always thought the gender debate was for other people to worry about.

Not that I didn't think the under-representation of women at board level was wrong - or a problem - but clearly - when I was in mainstream employment - not my problem - and as a self employed dude - even less so.

 

Of course being married to the clever Mrs Bozo - I am more in tune with a woman's troubled journey to board level than i was! But I have another issue to talk about today - and indulge me by allowing me to come at it by a roundabout route. I am of course - like any other writer in the internet-attention-span-of-less-than-a-minute-age prepared to lose thos of you who don't care - because people not caring is at the heart of all problems anyway.

A recent addition to my list of buddies is a smart well-educated man (a psychologist) who does some charitable work for a charity (whose name I have forgotten to my shame) that deals with the issue of how teenage boys are falling behind in education. Let us call my friend "A"

Store that as a fact.

I had a heated discussion on Saturday night at a very lovely wedding reception with a smart, clever, well-educated ambitious single lady. She, like Mrs Bozo, is very concerned about the glass ceiling. Let us call this young lady "D"

Store that as a fact.

Store also that Bozo proclaims right up front that he can see a lot of benefit in women succeeding at the highest levels. After all male dominated business hasnt got much to crow about right now has it? So if we end up with 70% of all board level execs being female - it may indeed turn out to be a very good thing....

 

Now let us look at some deeper issues behind the facts.

At Mrs Bozo's company 60% of the graduate intake are female. But only 22% of senior partners are female. Being an enlightened firm they see that as an issue worth dealing with.

My friend A thinks it is too. So do I. But my friend A says that the reason that 60% of their graduate intake is female is that 60% of the UK undergraduate population is female. And he says that its a problem at least as big as the low board level female population.

Some conversations with him have persuaded me to take up his cause.

Do not get me wrong (or him) neither of us is saying that the lack of female CEOs and the like doesnt matter - we believe it does - we believe it should be solved - but - it seems to us that the media and government are all over that one. It also seems to us that no one seems to be all over the failing boys issue at all.

Leaving "why not?" to one side...let's just deal with the implications.

My friend D thinks that boys being outcompeted is a Darwinian thing - they need to get with the programme or fall behind.

I kind of agree - I truly do - if we think school and college etc are a dog eat dog world where the best go on the worst fall behind...then fine. Go for it.

Of course - the dog eat dog world of board level promotion is why there are too few women isn't it? Men in power work the system to suit themselves. If you can't compete then tough ...

But we all now seem to see that just leaving Darwinian laws of competition to sort out the top women isn't a valid solution. So why is it a valid solution at school?

My friend D thinks getting women to the top matters more than equalising gender at University. Naturally -she is a woman heading for the top!

But, I happen to know she is a single woman who would ideally want a husband...

So let me propose a candidate for her.

Let's call him Jim.

Jim was good at making stuff and he was pretty good at sport too. Not good enough to be an artist or a professional footballer though and he wasnt successful in finding an apprenticeship in anything practical nor was he much of a reader. He left school at 16. Fell in with a crowd that didnt value work that much - certainly didnt want to do the jobs they could get - and couldnt get the jobs they wouyld want. Jim got his girlfriend pregnant - and decided not to stand by her - his dad hadn't stood by his mum either. He has had several casual relationships, and has never held down a job.

Fancy marrying him? What if he was a plumber?

No, she wouldn't - and Jim isn't even an extreme example - the extreme examples are in our rapidly growing prison population  -  the extreme examples have more than one illegitimate child - the extreme examples are doing drugs - or being ambitious and selling them.

No, my friend D would like to marry someone like herself. A smart, well-educated, driven ambitious executive.

So...let us do the math.

Take a sample of 100 people leaving Uni with degrees - 100 heterosexual people that want careers and marriage and all that stuff my friend D wants. (I say heterosexual not to say the gays leaving Uni don't matter - merely because they won't be in my friends pool of marriage candidates! And I assume gays will be of both genders - in due proportion).

So that sample of 100 will have 60 women and 40 men.

So let us say that in some efficient way 40 of those women marry the 40 men.

So what do the other 20 women do?

• Marry Jim?
• Steal someone else's husband?
• Or stay single, adopt, hire a nanny etc?

The problem caused in society by a growing pool of underachieveing, disenfranchised un-motivated youg men is going to be far far deeper than merely to shrink the pool of potential husbands for our new breed of high flying women - but maybe some consideration of the math will get them to acknowledge that the problem of gender is wider and deeper than how many women are on the boards of FTSE 100 businesses.

 

 

The Price of Stuff

I understand that my old mate Richard Chartres (Bishop of London) has published a pamhplet which has been distributed to MPs.

I am also given to understand from the summary I heard of its contents that it may well have been created from reading old Bozo Blogs... but I am sure this is one of those times when great minds have thought alike.

Here is the summary I heard (I havent read the Bish' original stuff):

Since the accession of the Queen in 1952 - the material wealth of this country has increased vastly. (perhaps more than in any 60 year period of British history)... but at what cost?

In the same 60 years:

• Divorce has increased
• single parent families have increased
• crime has increased
• and so therefore have prison populations
• promiscuity has increased
• so therefore has abortion

So one wonders if it has all been worth it - after all its only money - and - I failed to be surprised that actually

• Depression has increased
• and so the prescription of antidepressants has increased

And none of us actually need the Bish to tell us that while the dismantling of the old class system makes it look like we are a fairer, classless society compared with 60 years ago - any fool can see that the rich (even if the are nouveaus riche) are much richer - and the poor - while perhaps not poorer - are certainly further away from the rich than they were at any time since the end of world war one.

Our society is not fair. That is what accounts for our growing prison popluation - that and the fact that the marketeers have convinced everyone that having more "stuff" will make you happy. (And if you arent among the privileged then stealing it is ok too). That being on tv will make you a celebrity (and not a spectacle) and that a few dollars more is all you need to have "happiness" cracked.

Everyone knows I am a republican - but this is not the fault of the monarchy - or the old ruling classes.

It is OUR fault - all our fault - which is bad enough.

And we show no signs of learning any lessons - which is worse.

In the Victorian Era - without doing any empricial analysis - my gut feel is that the gap between rich and poor was likely greater than now - or as great at least.

But in the Victorian era we had the Peabody's the Cadbury's, the Rowntrees and others spending their riches on social housing and giving something back to the community.

Now we have people who complain about the 50% tax rate - even though it transpires that millionaires in this country only pay about 11%...

We have a society whose leaders (and i dont mean politicians so much as the people who lead the country in terms of fame and public image and money - want to take take take and keep keep keep.

And we want to lock up the teenagers from council estates who want to take take take and keep keep keep.

 

Evangelical Atheists

Something occurred to me last night.

Didn't atheists used to just quietly not believe in God?

When did atheism become something that people tried to convert everyone to?

And why?

Christians are actually bad at going out and evangelising (I generalize - we all know some Christians who do it voraciously and well (and sometimes both)). But christians were told to evangelise. By Jesus.

But who told the atheists to make non believers of all nations??

Don't get me wrong. Atheists have every right to convert the world to non belief.

Just seems a bit religious to me.

Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone from Virgin Media