Well, I'm Shocked

A former police officer has been jailed for two-and-a-half years after admitting four counts of sexual activity with a 15-year-old boy.

Mark Brigham was serving with the Metropolitan Police when the incident took place in Portsmouth, in 2008.

The victim's family asked Brigham, a lesbian and gay liaison officer, for advice after their son came out as homosexual, the court heard.

You simply can't trust anyone these days, can you ?

Yes, It's Honour-Based Homophobia !

Allegedly. I'll let you be the judge.

A gay man accused of murdering his former lover by dousing him in petrol and setting him on fire has said his Muslim friend tried to frame him after finding out he was homosexual.

Nadim Kurrimbukus, 25, also known as Adam, denies setting fire to 23-year-old Charlie Davies outside his home in Templedene Avenue, Staines, at 11.20pm on June 14 last year. His co-accused Yusuf Dulloo, 27, said in a police interview he drove with Kurrimbukus to Mr Davies’ home on the same night and heard a scream after his friend had left the car, but he denied any knowledge of the attack.

But the following day they met at Hounslow train station where Kurrimbukus confessed to him that he “lit the guy”, Dulloo told detectives. Kurrimbukus, a former West Thames College and Isleworth and Syon School pupil, told Kingston Crown Court this week that his Muslim friend was lying to punish him after discovering he was gay.

Dressed smartly in a suit and tie and wearing glasses, he said: “In Islam you are not allowed to be gay. There’s such a thing as an honour killing. Dulloo’s lying as a punishment. He is trying to punish me after he found out about my sexuality.”

Hmm. I suppose it's worth a try.


(the late Charlie Davis)

More Torture In The Community

I suppose, unlike many other victims, they did at least survive.

Hounslow Council has won its appeal against a High Court ruling which awarded almost £100,000 in damages to a vulnerable couple who suffered physical and sexual abuse in their own flat by a gang of youths.

A top judge today ruled that despite the suffering the couple endured at the hands of four youths, Hounslow Council could not be blamed for what had happened.

At the initial High hearing last May, Judge Maddison said a lack of communication between council departments had led to the couple, who both have learning difficulties, being subjected to a weekend-long assault in late 2000.

The couple - referred to only as X and Y in court - were made to perform sex acts on each other, drink their own urine and eat the faeces of one of the gang members, who threatened to stab them if they did not comply.

The traumatic assaults were carried out at the couple’s council-owned flat, often witnessed by Y’s children, who are now in their teens.

A number of the assailants had been living in the flat for months before the attack after the couple tried to befriend them.

During last year’s hearing Judge Maddison said the council had acted "negligently" in its handling of the situation.

He said the council should have transferred the family to other housing and a social worker had written to the director of housing before the assault asking whether a "catastrophe" had to occur before it happened.

The couple were awarded £97,000 damages by the court.

However, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, today said the couple had made the mistake of being kind to the youths and overturned the ruling leaving the couple without a penny.

Hounslow Council today said it was pleased the judge had praised social worker Tajinder Hayre, who was responsible for the couple, ruling she was blameless in the incident.

A spokeswoman added: “This is an extremely sad case, and we have every sympathy for the claimants, who were subjected to an appalling ordeal.

"We are also pleased to note that the Court of Appeal praised the social worker involved for her 'impeccable behaviour'."

This "in the community" stuff is a godsend for councils. If the couple had been living in some local equivalent of Barnsley Hall, they would be unlikely to have had (presumably heavily state-subsidised) children, but if they'd been abused in the care of the local authority someone would be responsible for them. As it is, the highest courts in the land are telling them they're on their own :

A social worker had told police the vulnerable pair were being exploited, but was informed that no action could be taken unless the couple complained themselves.
The council employee had also called for the couple to be rehoused. Lawyers for the couple argued the social worker should have realised they were in danger and had them moved.

Hounslow Council took their case to the Appeal Court which ruled the council had no duty of care to the couple. Sir Anthony Clarke, who headed the appeal judges, said: "There is an important difference between a case where children assert that a duty of care is owed to them and a case like this where the claimants are adults living in the community, albeit vulnerable adults."

And what of their torturers ? The trial didn't seem to make the headlines - maybe there wasn't one. (Apparently three presumably anonymous 'youths' were sent down - more distressing details in this story)

As I said last time someone was tortured then murdered, a few months back :

I'm sure there were dark sides to the old "homes" and "loony-bins", where those who were once called 'simples' or 'naturals' often ended up (in the absence of devoted, fit and time-rich relatives). But there's little evidence of their inmates being tortured to death.

Doubtless the heartbreaking details will unfold in due course. If the past is any guide to the future, his torturers and killers will turn out to be well-known locally, "known to social services" and the law, and with habits including petty crime, assault and drug abuse. It's quite possible that at least one of them will be female.

Hmm ...

Photo : Harpymarx


What's the officer on the left thinking as he furtively eyeballs her bare midriff ?

And They Say The Law Has No Sense Of Humour ...

BBC.

A man and a woman have been jailed over the death of an innocent shopper in a queue-jumping row in south London. Southwark Crown Court heard Antonette Richardson called Tony Virasami to a Sainsbury's store in Merton where he hit Kevin Tripp, a bystander who had nothing to do with the dispute. Father-of-one Mr Tripp, 57, from Colliers Wood, south-west London, died when the "almighty blow" caused him to fall and fracture his skull, causing bleeding on the brain.

Richardson was jailed for 18 months and ex-boyfriend Virasami received four years for manslaughter.

So far so bog-standard. They've been on remand since last June, so she'll walk free (halve the sentence and knock off I think another 18 days - one of Labour's prison-emptying ideas) and he'll do another year or so. Less than two years for killing a stranger in an utterly unprovoked attack.

It's this bit that gets me :

Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC said the sentences reflected the "shock and concern felt by the public at large".

Quite the comedian, isn't he ?

Deflation ?

Petrol's going up by 2p, having crept up from around 86p to 93p or so already this year, water rates by over 4%, council tax by 3% (and that's presented as a triumph of frugality). Food prices are rising, as is the price of everything we import.

It's a pity the protesters in London today will be the usual suspects - hideously white, hideously middle-class, hideously 'left', if you can call it that, hideously tax-funded.

I'm sure there are lots of Brits who will be going to work today but are just as cross with our glorious leaders, but with more reason.

"On a lighter note" ... how a bright and savvy programmer facilitated the sub-prime disaster by creating better software to facilitate the slicing and dicing of mortgages into bonds (there are other factors, of course).

Just A Passing Thought

Back in 2004, at the last EU elections, a lot of people were cheesed off with both the government AND the main opposition parties. The BNP got 4.8% of the vote and UKIP got 16% - helped no end by a wealthy donor (was he a carpet millionaire ? I forget) who paid for an awful lot of billboards. I remember seeing them in Swindon as I negotiated the Magic Roundabout. My impression was that they made UKIP somehow look more electable. Big billboards = big party.

My gut feel is that a lot more people are cheesed off in 2009 - maybe 25% of the voters. But it must be said that despite their dozen seats and Mr Farage's magnificent demolition of El Gordo last week, UKIP haven't exactly set the Rhine on fire. As far as I knew, they didn't have a sugar daddy either, as they did in 2004. Where would the cheesed-off vote go this time ? Would it stay with UKIP, move to the BNP, or find some new party coming up on the rails ? Is Libertas the dark horse ? Didn't look likely - it looked as if the BNP might be the ones to benefit.

Enter a sugar-daddy.

The Conservative party says it is expelling one of its multi-millionaire donors after he gave £100,000 to UKIP. Spread-betting tycoon Stuart Wheeler said he had made the UKIP donation because he believed the Tories were too soft on European integration.

Mr Wheeler, an outspoken Eurosceptic, gave £5m to the Conservatives in 2001 and wanted to remain a party member. The Tories said he would be given 28 days to appeal against expulsion but Mr Wheeler said he had no plans to do so.

It's not long to the elections. I'm not a big conspiracy theorist - at least, not unless Mr Wheeler suddenly finds another half-million or more for election billboards, before rejoining the Tories in 2010 - but you do have to say it's most helpful for UKIP - and uncharacteristic, not to mention bad-mannered, of the Tories to expel a chap who's given them five million quid. Just saying.

New Polls - Brown's Ratings Improve

Harry Hutton on top form.

"The imprisonment and rape of his daughter may be taking a toll on Fritzl's approval ratings, particularly among women voters, the survey found. The Prime Minister scored higher than Fritzl on law and order and family values, though voters trusted Fritzl more to manage the economy.

Brown, who repeatedly raped the British economy during a horrific 12-year ordeal ..."

Laban Goes To College

It's the time of year when Britain's world-renowned universities open their doors to prospective students, and so Saturday found Laban heading for the "University of the East of Wales" (formerly Blackwood Miners Welfare), giving my son a lift to the Open Day. I had nothing else to do, so I thought I'd stroll the sacred groves and see how things had changed in the last thirty-five years.

The first change is that I wasn't the only parent on site - at least a third, maybe more than half of the prospective students were accompanied - in many cases by both Mum and Dad. That just didn't happen back in the day - you'd no more have wanted your parents on campus with you than your dentist. The generation war seems to have ended - at least as far as the middle classes are concerned. For that's the other thing that struck me as I sat in the cafeteria - how very middle-class the overwhelming majority of the prospective students seemed - far more so at this former Poly than at my Victorian red-brick alma mater. It does tend to reinforce the theory that the massive expansion of further education (and lowering of standards) has benefited the middle rather than the working classes - although of course it could be that middle-class youth just talk louder.

That's not to say that there's no radical counterculture anymore - although there isn't. The radical counterculture is now mainstream. The student newspaper points out that 'experimenting with drugs is, for many, an important and natural part of university life'. The 'Reclaim The Night' marches against male violence are now mixed-sex - it would have been a brave Yorkshireman in 1977 who attempted to join the women on the streets of Leeds.

(Although I did note that the legendary 'one in four women a victim of domestic violence' statistic is now apparently old-hat. According to Julie Bindel it's now one in two :

"In Britain, it is estimated that one in two women will experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking during their lifetime"

Whereas pretty much 100% of men really will experience physical assault - but let it pass.)

Where was I ? Ah yes. The 'one in four' stat now applies to rape, if the good students of the local Reclaim The Night march (three pages in the student paper) are correct :





My son went off to a little chat by his prospective lecturers, and left the cafeteria to darkness and to me. Why not fill a few unforgiving minutes by going along to one of these introductory chats ? After all, half the parents were accompanying their offspring to the lectures, and I could always claim to be a prospective student. I looked at the timetable of talks. Aha ! This should be good.




The head of Criminology at the University of the East of Wales turned out to be a shortish but hefty chap with a goatee, shaved head and a ring in each ear, dressed in a dark suit and black shirt - the deviant gangster effect being topped off with a pink tie. Obviously a man whose soul was in his work. The clicheometer was off the scale even before he opened his mouth - but he flattered to deceive, disappointingly sticking to listing the numbers of staff, students, and where the lectures were.

His sidekicks were a slightly camp chap in his thirties who specialised in 'Psycho-Social studies' and said 'it's about ..' a lot, and a strapping and self-assured redhead with a hard-to-place accent (Mancunian Irish ?) - between them they thankfully returned the clicheometer to full boost vertical - where it stayed for the rest of the lecture.

Psycho-Social started off, explaining to the prospective undergrads that the "common-sense solutions" to crime which might appear intuitively appealing needed to be replaced by a "sociological perspective". We had to, he said, go beyond common-sense solutions if we wanted to end poverty and racism. Nobody in his audience asked what that had to do with crime - we were sure we'd find out later (and we did). He listed the compulsory modules for the first year - 'Social Inequality' and 'Contemporary Critiques of Modern Society'. I'm pretty sure Peters Hitchens and Oborne won't feature in the latter. The general thrust was that views on crime and criminals in society at large were fairly simple - perhaps even naively so. But things were more complicated than that - a lot more. Why else would criminology be a subject you could study at university ? The good news was that you would become conversant with these complexities.

Ms Fit, resplendent in the sunshine flooding across the room (and slightly distracting Laban with the translucency - nay, almost transparency of her dress), took the floor. She spoke of 'offenders', of 'those involved in criminal acts' - and at this point I realised that the word 'criminal' had not once been spoken by these three criminologists. She reiterated that criminology 'also needs to challenge taken for granted or common sense views of crime, particularly those represented in the media'. The words ''Daily Mail" hung in the air. I breathed a silent prayer of "go on, say it !", but alas she resisted the temptation womanfully, moving on to 'the social forces and social divisions which influence which acts count as crimes'. Have you ever wondered, she asked, why white collar crime is not investigated by the Criminal Justice System ?

And so it went on. And on. I'll pass over 'factors such as unemployment, poverty ... coupled with interrelated divisions along the lines of gender and sexuality, 'race' (in quotes - because it doesn't exist) , age and economic inequalities'. I think you get the picture. I gathered that :

Year One is spent knocking those stupid 'common-sense' ideas out of you, and replacing them with 'the sociological perpective', in a slo-mo version of the first few days of an Exegesis course, or your first few months in the Army, where you drop the baggage you've brought with you, and embrace the culture of the group.

Year Two is spent discovering that prison is at once a tool of social control and an expensive way of making bad people worse - or it would be if they were bad people. On analysing the stats (you see, that's what criminologists do - look at real data), and discovering that 'incarcerated offenders' are statistically more likely to be poor and/or black, it is but a short step to the conclusion that they have been convicted because they are poor and/or black.

Year Three is spent analysing the Daily Mail, whose writers and readers have not done years 1 and 2, and bemoaning its influence.

I looked round the room at the eager young faces, all athirst for knowledge. Poor sods, I thought. Let's hope the social life makes up.

Psycho-Social took the floor again. What kind of job will a criminology degree get you ? Where do our graduates go ?

#1 - further study

#2 - social work, probation service, "community work" and other jobs in the criminal justice system

#3 - teaching

#4 - personnel (loads of 'social science' grads end up there. That's why you get asked your ethnic origin when you apply for a job)

A great wave of cognitive dissonance came over me. Both lecturers had said explicitly that they and their department were challenging 'society's' view of crime. Yet they were providing the social workers and probation officers of today and tomorrow. I got no inkling from their chat that the state-funded EEW criminology department was out on some left-wing limb - indeed rather the opposite - that theirs were the views of mainstream UK criminology (and have been IMHO for some thirty years).

Yet they were apparently the rebels, the iconoclasts - despite controlling the universities and great chunks of the criminal justice system . In their shoes, wouldn't you be tempted to wonder why, after years in which your views have completely dominated the education system, those views have so stubbornly refused to take root among the general population ?

Who and what was this 'society' and what power does it actually have ?

I came to the conclusions

a) people who've not done Criminology and/or read the Daily Mail

b) not a great deal

More Music ...

Someone has put up the studio mix of John Martyn's Hurt In Your Heart.


(and I see that the Who's Baba O'Riley is still filling dancefloors nearly 40 years on. There are mixes here. And here. And elsewhere. Some bearable, some dire. Imitation ... flattery.)

Friday Night Is Music Night

The first two via my son. This one sounds amazingly like 'Press To Play'-era McCartney. But it's good for all that. Bon Iver. Love that guitar.




This guy was a management consultant. But it's good for all that. John Legend. The guy can sing.



A long while back I blogged inter alia on Pedro Gutierrez, aka Pete Terrace, King of the Boogaloo.

I'll see if I can get 'Do the Boogaloo' onto Youtube in the near future, but in the meantime - It's Boogaloo Time !



UPDATE - Done it. More boogaloo.







On a more depressing note ... I always wondered how ageing beauty, wonderful singer and hopeless smackhead Nico, on whom I have blogged here and here, got on in her declining, Manchester days hanging out with the likes of John Cooper Clarke. Nico - in the chip shop queue ?

Alas, it was all pretty damn sordid. From her last keyboard player and collaborator James Young's book, some excerpts. Not child or work-friendly - don't read while having your tea.

A Wee Post ...

At Biased BBC.

Inflating Our Way Out Of Debt

It has become apparent to commentators like Liam Halligan that the Great Deflation Scare of 2009 is, in his words :

"... largely a myth – an alibi for wildly expansionary fiscal and monetary policy concocted by Western governments and their media lackeys.

After all, where is deflation? Data released last week put annual US core inflation at no less than 4pc. So why is the Fed doing this, following the Bank of England's lead? Because the real solution – forcing banks to face the music, while rescheduling massive private and public debts – is too politically frightening for our so-called leaders to contemplate.

A decision has been made, but not announced: we'll inflate away our debts instead"

Media lackeys ? That's a bit strong. Anyone in mind, Liam ? Robert Peston's been waving the spectre of deflation for some time - as has the entire BBC news output.

I invite readers to study the evolution of Tuesday's lead BBC news story, from "Deflation risk as prices to fall" all the way through to "Surprise hike in consumer prices". Bloggers like CityUnslicker and Alice Cook were far more on the ball than the mainstream media.

It turns out that the only component of inflation to fall is mortgage costs - completely under the control of HMG/BoE. Everything else is going up. The only deflation is caused by the Government - and then they've used the spectre, aided by their "media lackeys", to start up the printing presses. Peston's December comment that "The US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England regard the great threat right now as deflation" remarkably ignores the parallel appreciation of the dollar and depreciation of the pound. In David Bowie's immortal words "This is not America".

To be fair, the inflation's caused by HMG too. The weakness of the UK economy, the government's massive and increasing deficit as tax receipts collapse, the fact that they spent in the good times and have nowt left for the bad, not to mention the announcement that the presses would roll - these have devalued the pound by some 28% since last summer. It's this that is driving inflation, given that we import a lot more than we export.

We're actually 1.2% above the BoEs official (albeit fiddled) inflation target of CPI at 2% - so they should be raising interest rates. I wonder why we're not ? And RPI stood at 0% in 1960 - did we start up the presses then ?

Bloggers like Matt T suggest I'm in danger of succumbing to conspiracy theories. I always try to use Occcam's Razor when presented with such a thing. For example, the UK cultural collapse can be explained quite neatly without bringing in any Zionist plotters or master-plan of Antonio Gramsci's.

But printing cash makes logical sense (from Labour's perspective). They won't/can't stop spending - I'm sure Polly Toynbee would argue that the State is needed more than ever in these hard times. Just like Mugabe's soldiers, the key client groups need paying. Tax receipts will continue to fall. The pound will really take a hit, and HMG won't be able to borrow, if they run an even greater deficit, as even Mervyn King has warned. Where else will they get the money from ? I really can't see anywhere.

I was expecting the FT to fall to maybe 2500 this year - but since then it's risen from about 3400 to nearly 4000 as Brown and Obama print away. Whether this is a bear rally and prices will resume the downward trend is yet to be seen - but there can be little doubt that all this newly-created dosh will in the long term cause asset prices to rise again, and my pension to be devalued, as the bubbles are reflated. It's all a question of timing. When will inflation kick in ?

(a shorter version of this was posted yesterday at Biased BBC)

What's Been Going On, Then ?

The economic crisis, and the government's responses to it, is still the biggest story around. And it won't go away for years - perhaps decades, at the rate HMG are clocking up the tab marked 'future taxpayer liabilities'. I'm still reading stuff like UK Bubble, the Capitalists and the FT's excellent Alphaville blog (I'm sad to see that having bailed out the Scottish banks, a Scottish building society, the Dunfermline, may be next in the queue) pretty much daily.


HMG's plan is to deflate away the value of outstanding debt, devaluing fixed incomes (like pensions) in a transfer of wealth from savers to debtors (and to governments - after all, they own the presses). They're aware that too much borrowing and not enough saving created the mess in the beginning, but in the interests of keeping the show on the road they've reluctantly decided that these habits must be reinforced rather than curbed. The collapse of asset prices is such that the bubble must be reinflated.

When the markets saw what Labour were doing, they devalued the pound. What's really scary is that the Swiss - of all people - have been selling off Swiss francs to drive down the value of their currency - while the US have followed Gordon to the printing presses.

The Swiss example wasn't too bad, although surprising - a competetive devaluation. If all countries do that, the net result is pretty much zero. But if all countries start up the presses, the inflationary implications are that it's time to get out of cash and find some asset - any asset - which will hold value. Shares, gold and oil all rose on the news of the US printing.

Obama seems not to have a grip on the crisis - admittedly, neither has anyone else. The bail-out is turning into the biggest pork-barrel in US history.

President Obama still enjoys the popularity that comes with not being George Bush, especially in a city top-heavy with Democrats. But his initial response to the global calamity that he found on entering the Oval Office has not inspired popularity’s more sober elder brother, confidence. Large constituencies, notably business, are voicing their scepticism openly. The President’s much-vaunted $787 billion stimulus package is being widely interpreted, even by some of those (such as Warren Buffett, America’s second-richest man) who openly supported Mr Obama for the presidency, as a serious failure. And we are only just past the first 50 days.

Mr Obama is lucky that his Republican opponents in Congress are disorganised, incoherent and without ideas of their own.

The big question from a purely selfish point of view is - will there be a window of opportunity between now and inflation kicking in ? When prices are still falling and cash still has some value ?

I've been reading Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers over the last week or two :

"he provides a straightforward and persuasively argued thesis: Great Power ascendency (over the long-term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military "over-stretch" and a concomitant relative decline is the consistent threat facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for"

It's not exactly rocket science. Countries with a military clout greater than their industrial base warrants will in time lose that military clout. Countries with a hefty economic base will find it easier to develop military clout. And (as applies to individuals as well), if it can be done, it often will be done. It's a long time since Cheng Ho's fleet sailed the Indian Ocean - I just have a feeling I may see his successor admiral in my lifetime. I was thinking that as I assembled my son's new Argos corner desk for his homework last week - bolt-together veneered chipboard from China.

"whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for" - Afghanistan, anyone, as our soldiers continue to be blown up in under-armoured vehicles ? Iraq ? What's scary is that the US is also becoming such a nation - and, like us, they've chosen to keep the existing, declining system going - it's the rational short term thing to do.

As I'm continually pointing out, when an economy declines, financial hegemony will move on. Florence and Antwerp are no longer the capitals of world banking.

One other nice little quote from the book, which is apparently taken from C. McEvedy's Penguin Atlas of Recent History. Particularly relevant in the light of Boris Johnson's illegal immigrant amnesty plans (he also wants to keep taxes low for high earners). He's talking about the late Austro-Hungarian Empire :

(For most European Great Powers) a majority of the citizenry shared a common language and religion. At least 90 per cent of Frenchmen spoke French and the same proportion belonged at least nominally to the Catholic Church. More than eight in every ten Prussians were German (the rest were mostly Poles) and of the Germans 70 per cent were Protestant. The Tsar's seventy million subjects included some notable minorities (five million Poles, three and a half million Finns, Ests, Letts and Latvians, and three million assorted Caucasians), but that still left fifty millions who were both Russian and Orthodox. And the inhabitants of the British Isles were 90 per cent English-speaking and 70 per cent Protestant. Countries like this needed little holding together; they had an intrinsic cohesion. By contrast the Austrian Emperor ruled an ethnic mishmash that must have made him groan every time he thought about it. He and eight million of his subjects were German, but twice as many were Slays of one sort or another (Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovenes, Croats and Serbs), five million were Hungarians, five million Italians and two million Romanians. What sort of nation did that make?

The answer is none at all.

Have a nice day.

Gloria In Excelsis

The seven day BT customer service nightmare is nearly over, the second line engineer detected a line fault that the first had missed (apparently "damp" in a junction box somewhere) but still couldn't get a connection, so we're due a broadband specialist engineer today.

But at 11pm last night the ADSL light suddenly stayed on. I then spent an hour trying to connect (with the old modem - there was nowt wrong with it - £45 wasted on a new one) but just couldn't get a BT internet link.

Come down this morning - all lights are on and the connection is 50% faster than it was before ! Still only 768K, but it was 512 when it went off. We are at the end of several miles of wire - the next house up the road is on a different exchange - at the limits of the technology - so any wiring problems and we're sunk.

I say the nightmare's 'nearly' over. We now have to tell the broadband engineer not to come out. Ring the BT Broadband help number in the book, after many an option it asks you to ring a different number. Ring that one (Bombay) to be told 'you have to ring this UK number - but only after 9am'. The engineer might be on his way by then - still, I did try.

My letter to the Customer Services director of BT, which opens 'I write as one who is rapidly losing the will to live', should have arrived yesterday. He must have the thickest skin in the UK - I have a vision of a Durham postman bent double under the weight of a huge sack of complaints letters - which then get emptied into the furnace to heat the offices.

Blogging will recommence tonight.

A People's Bank

"Making the Post Office the "people's bank" could secure its future and help those not served by banks, a coalition of MPs and interest groups is arguing.

They are due to outline plans for a Post Bank, offering a wide range of financial services at its branches.

Unions say it would help those without bank accounts while business groups say it could create as many as 11,000 jobs.

Ministers, who want post offices to offer more products, "welcomed" the ideas being put forward."

Supporters of the Post Bank model want it to become a fully fledged "socially inclusive" alternative to commercial banks, serving more than 20 million customers every week.

Didn't we used to have banks like that ?

The Trustee Savings Bank, or TSB as it was commonly known, was a British financial institution which specialised in accepting savings deposits from the poor. They did not trade their shares on the stock market and, unlike mutually held building societies, depositors had no voting rights nor the ability to direct the financial and managerial goals of the organisation. Directors were appointed as trustees (hence the name) on a voluntary basis.

Whatever happened to them ?

In 1995, the TSB merged with Lloyds Bank to form Lloyds TSB.

Oh. I must say, I'm not sure what services the rump of what used to be the Post Office Savings Bank still offer. But I do think you can save with them. A British 'National' organisation run by a German company with the back-office jobs in Madras (aka Chennai) - what's not to like for a Labour lefty ?




PS - the engineer came yesterday, and without testing announced it was the ADSL modem. One new ADSL modem and £44 later I still have no ADSL signal. La lotta continua.

Golden Age of Steam II

I haven't stopped blogging, broadband's been out for the last few days. God willing, having finally negotiated my way past the Bombay helpdesk ('no, I am not going to turn all the computers on the network off and on again') the BT engineers will be doing something about it today.

I must just go and put some more methylated spirit under the modem's little boiler ... blogging will be light until it's fixed.

Brilliant ...

Shuggy :

I'll leave the final word to Jim Knight, Minister for Schools. He ministers to schools - hence the title:

"There are thousands of highly talented individuals in this country who are considering their next move, who want to do something challenging, rewarding, that is highly respected and where good people have great prospects," Knight said.

Mr Knight, sadly, will never know how much comedy he's managed to pack into one sentence there.

Busy ...

... alas, too much work. But not enough work is worse.

This is, while not totally surprising, still food for thought :

The CIA is now running its own agent networks on an unprecedented scale in the British Pakistani community. A British security source told me that somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent of CIA activity designed to prevent a new terrorist spectacular on American soil is now directed at targets in the UK ...

A former CIA officer who still does freelance work for the agency, said: ‘Britain is an Islamist swamp. You don’t want to have to spend time spying on your friends.’

As far as our closest ally is concerned, Britain is not part of the problem, Britain is the problem. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East expert on the NSC for three presidents, who has just been appointed to head Barack Obama’s overhaul of Afghan strategy, told me: ‘The 800,000 or so British citizens of Pakistani origin are regarded by the American intelligence community as perhaps the single biggest threat environment that they have to worry about.’

The Economist was only the other day bemoaning that the new Brit 'Hearts and Minds' strategy wasn't doing the biz.

You don’t have to support the Iraq war or Israeli aggression to know that governments need to be free to make decisions in the national interest without trimming their sails to avoid annoying potential homegrown terrorists. But the quest to prevent a new atrocity has become the secret driving force of British foreign policy. The reason is the debilitating fear of what would happen if British militants succeeded in an attack overseas. David Miliband’s trip to India after Mumbai was a diplomatic disaster. Imagine how much worse it would have been had British extremists, as was originally feared, been behind the attacks. British India policy now would be a protracted effort to placate and apologise.

I've already pointed out that we are approaching the stage where one community may be able to wield a veto over certain aspects of foreign policy. But not quite yet :

Muslim extremists shouted abuse at British soldiers during a home-coming march by the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment. A group of around 20 men in traditional Islamic dress held up banners and placards that read: "Anglian Soldiers Butchers of Basra", "Anglian Soldiers Criminals, Murderers Terrorists" and "Baby killers".

As the battalion, which is nicknamed The Poachers, reached Luton Town Hall the small group shouted and yelled "Terrorists" and "Anglian Soliders Go to Hell." The protestors then had to be protected by police as angry supporters of the soldiers turned on them shouting: "Scum" and "No surrender to the Taliban."

As the parade finished in St George's Square in front of the Duke of Gloucester, Colonel-in-chief for the regiment, the Lord Lieutenant of Bedfordshire, Sam Whitbread, a General Sir John McColl KCB and the Mayor of Luton, Councillor Lakhbir Singh, police had to force the protestors into a small area reserved for them by the town's Arndale Shopping Centre.

Elsewhere, a commenter called Amnesty2009 posts as follows in the Guardian :

I am a retired UK Immigration officer, I experienced four amnesties under various guises during my time with the Immigration Service. Each one acted as a powerful magnet to illegal entrants. My colleagues and I spent long hours engaged in the demoralising activity of endorsing travel documents of immigration offenders with leave to remain after they had succeded in circumventing the legitimate border controls imposed by Parliament.

Most of these offenders obtained this leave with the assistance of legal aid, advice agencies funded partly or entirely from public funds or from charitable sources within the UK that arguably should have devoted their resources to legitimate UK needs.

The UK does not need any more primary immigration.It does need to adopt a genuinely firm and fair border control. The new UKBA and the policies it is espousing will not protect employment for the British people or control the influx of persons likely to harm society.

It is disappointing that UKBA current management, now mainly people who have very limited experience of how border control really operates, will always offer a "success story" mantra when the reality is a state of close to collapse almost all the time.

An amnesty will without doubt encourage the extreme right, I believe this would be a most damaging move at this time.

and (responding to "there has never been an amnesty on illegals. There have been a variety of concessions e.g. if your child is still under 18 and has lived here for more than 7 years (that one has now gone). Most of what he/she refers to as "amnesties" have been very real humanitarian decisions")

The concessions to which you refer were never called amnesties but the had the same effect. The first was for the old style "clandestine" illegals in the 70's. Those who had "come up the beach". I spent a lot of time interviewing people who claimed to have done just this thing "years ago" and founf a great number to have been recent arrivals, visitors from Asia and Africa in the pre visa days who had come specifically to take part in the "amnesty".

Later were the "family reunion exercises" where one member of a household would present to an Immigration Office to declare that he now had an extended family in his home country that needed to join him in the UK. Not infreqently these individuals were found to have returned to the land from which they had fled in order to maje arrangements for these relatives to join them.

There have also been concessions for the "unremovable", those who will not cooperate with the redocumentation process and cannot thus be removed to their country of origin. I have personally encountered a great many Albanians who, after gaining settlement in the UK, travel to Albania with impunity. Some even obtain Albanian passports from their Embassy and apply to have the residence stamp transferred from their refugee travel document into the previously unobtainable Albann national document.

There are genuine refugees out there but there are a great many foreign nationals in the UK who have outragously abused the asylum system and a great many intelligent people who have facilitated their devious acquisition of residence in the UK. It is to the great shame of the legal profession how many solicitors have obstructed the work of my former employers over the years. I am glad I am no longer responsible for trying to do the right thing for the British people as it is desperately depressing seeing the failure of the control again and again.

and

I believe employers do hold an important key here. If they are concientious in their pre hire checks then the pull on inward migration will be greatly reduced. Nothing will stop the black market but there are a limited number of areas where this is a major factor. The Chinese criminals will always find work for the luckless individuals that have been trafficked for example.

If employers really do check the status of job applicants then the huge number of Brazilians for example will have less incentive to come here.

The EU problem is probably too difficult to resolve, Romania and Bulgaria were not ready to join and it is arguable that the Baltic states were on the edge of economic effectiveness. We have received huge numbers of Romanians who do not have jobs to come to, the Police are well aware of the increase in crime engendered by these individuals, I know of Romanian interpreters who are making a huge amount of money in the Met police area.

We are currently obliged to accept all EU nationals and the restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians are in name only. When I was still working (2007) we had no instructions to treat these nationals any differently from the rest of the EU. We can do something about the non EU illegal workers but Home Office has no stomach for the fight. Senior managers would rather spend money on two new uniforms in two years than provide sufficient detention and escort capability to enable my former colleagues to effect the removal of failed asylum seekers and illegal entrants. These offenders are frequently "bailed" and then abscond.

and

You are indeed correct to say that amnesty results in rapid advancement to citizenship. I again draw on 21 years experience on the border control to observe that many UK passport holders of non UK origin encountered speak very little English yet have acquired British citizenship ,following asylum, claims , after only four or five years.

Prior to my last job at Heathrow I worked in the Croydon office of the then IND, there was then a requirement for applicants to demonstrate a knowledge of the English language prior to naturalisation. I don't believe this has ever been adhered to or that it ever will.

Finally - this cracking polemic, on knife crime, Jade Tweed, and one or two related matters, from Martin Kelly. Agree with every word (as so often).

Easy Like Sunday Morning ...

PA.

A Bank of England supremo said it would be "easy" to stop inflation from racing ahead despite "printing" £75 billion of money to boost the economy.

Writing in the Daily Mail, the bank's deputy governor Charlie Bean said although it sounded "too good to be true", the extra money was needed to help save the country from a "particularly nasty recession".

The cash injection - technically known as quantitative easing - happens through the central bank buying up a range of financial assets from the private sector. It is designed to bolster firms' spending power for other goods and services, helping to drive up economic activity.

Mr Bean said: "In normal times. an injection of extra money of this magnitude might be expected to lead to too much money and spending in the economy and a rise in inflation.

"But right now, there is not enough money and spending in the economy and that is what we need to rectify.

Funny. Wasn't the ostensible reason to prevent deflation last week ? (Inflation is currently 1% higher than HMGs 2% target).

Now the problem is that "there is not enough money and spending in the economy".

It's a long long time since I studied economics and I'm sure it shows. But if there's not enough spending (aka the money's velocity is too low) will adding more improve things ? Will the dosh go to improve bank balance sheets ?

And when the velocity does pick up, won't prices take off as that extra dosh emerges ?