The Madness of King Cameron

The dunnocks are displaying, the crows are pairing up, the first daffodils I've seen this year are out on the grass verge on the dual carriageway down the road and... it's snowing just a little further up north.

When will it end - give me some HEAT?

I've been working silly hours hence my tardiness with blog writing plus being out every night this week, I've managed to catch 20 minutes between arriving home tonight and eating tea before going out again. Although all these sojourns are for pleasure, (they are spiritual working activities) they are not onerous and there is plenty of opportunity to relax with friends.

Last night I met with three ladies who have invited me to join a healing group, as a healer, which will meet once a fortnight. Last night was a 'get to know each other' night and we planned how we will do the healing, we chatted about life and philosophy and did a practice healing session on each other which, I have to say was wonderful; so I'm really looking forward to this slightly new and interesting direction in my life. They have been planning this for sometime and they thought they needed a blokes balance to the group so they asked me and I said 'yes' like a shot.

I'll use my Reiki experience of 'hands on' healing coupled with their plan to ask for Angelic assistance to heal. This is powerful stuff.

You know the really sad thing about this? This is an achievement that I haven't discussed or told my wife about because she is a religious person and she doesn't agree with this sort of thing. In fact whilst she tolerates my activities, she does not agree with them at all in any way. We don't talk about it and I have no-one to share my spiritual life with other than friends who have a like mind.

Work is daft at the moment. Working in the public sector is enjoyable, frustrating, hard, rewarding and a whole lot of other contradictory adjectives you can think of. And now, not only do I have to put up with a two year pay freeze while inflation continues to rise, but I'm paying more for my pension and getting less back and probably working longer. My wife is in the same boat. I have been determined not to talk much about this because it is boring for most of you and frustrating for me, so I apologise.

I will finish by simply asking a rhetorical question why I am being punished as an individual who has done nothing wrong, paying a huge percentage of my wages for a pension, who has contributed to bailing out banks, who has worked damned hard all my working life. All this while banks are making billions in profits, giving us no interest on our savings, individual bankers are taking home millions of pounds in wages and bonuses and laughing at the public and the toothless cowardly government who are just preying on the vulnerable to solve everyone's problem in the most inequitable way possible.

What a strange world we live in, and makes me feel like dropping out and just not participating in this rat race any more. Rant over - forgive me dear blogger.

A little girl asked her father, 'do all fairy tales begin with "Once upon a time"'?
The father replied, 'No, some begin with - If I am elected.'

Chat soon

Ta-ra

Theatre of Tragedy

I have followed the news for years, partly because that was one of the main television programmes when I was a kid and we always watched it - our window on the world. In later years I followed it through professional interest and involvement in media issues. These days, I hold a reasonably responsible job linked to business risk. Fortunately there's not too much finance involved - it's mainly reputation and legal stuff. Nevertheless, I've got responsibilities and I take them seriously. I get paid for doing a good job and I enjoy the challenge (or is that a little old fashioned these days?). I was fascinated today to read the story of the resignation of the deputy chief of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) Sir James Crosby.

You see, like the reputation of Scots people for thrift and saving money, Monty Python also had a view on Yorkshiremen and their relationship with money and wealth. I know from my own experiences that there is also a fondness in this part of the country for exaggerating our hard times as kids:

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

Don't groan, it is a political bent to today's blog, but actually it affects every single one of us in this country today. Sir James was HBOS bank chief when a risk manager Paul Moore allegedly told the Board that that it was expanding too fast and he was allegedly dismissed by Sir James because he did not like what he was hearing according to the BBC News site. Sir James then became deputy of the very service (FSA) that was supposed, as an independent body, to regulate the financial services industry in the UK. To you and me, that means making sure that the banks and financial institutions play by the book in promoting fair, efficient and orderly markets.

I am absolutely delighted Sir James has resigned, after this story whether it be true or not, he has no credibility and Paul Moore is adamant that it happened. If you follow the cliche that 'there's no smoke without fire' then he had no choice. The other delightful piece of theatre was the big four bankers appearing before the select committee and apologising for what had happened in the banking industry. That may or not be enough, but I can't really get a grip of the fact that the Royal Bank of Scotland is losing 2,300 employees and we, the taxpayer has given them £20 billion to keep them afloat. Why? Because they are incompetent, and now they carry on and frankly I'm not convinced that the Government has the power or the will to act to stop this happening again in the private sector. I wouldn't want to be the Tory party today, knowing they will win the next election to have to inherit the deepest recession we have seen for 100 years.

I feel for all those who have lost their jobs in this recession and not because they were incompetent or performing badly. I feel for all the small businesses particularly many in the area I live who were carrying out business in a professional way but were let down by the very banks that are now so risk averse that they feel they can no longer support thriving and successful firms in difficult times. Banks that were so bad at their own business that others suffered and are suffering and will continue to suffer. Their arrogance is staggering and today the Government have shown themselves as toothless.

An anonymous quote in the Penguin Collection of Modern Humerous Quotations is as follows: "A banker is a man who lends you an umbrella when the weather is fair, and takes it away from you when it rains." Perhaps the very question should be asked of those regulating the financial services industry - the watchdog - what the hell were they doing while Rome burned... fiddling on their violins no doubt.

On a lighter note, what do you call 200 bankers on the sea bed? A start.

Two spelling mistakes today

Chat soon...

Ta-ra!