Is a parent who advises their child not to walk home after dark with an expensive piece of the latest electronic equipment "victim blaming"? Is it "victim blaming" for the flying squad to advise a person transporting a large quantity of specious stones not to advertise the fact, and to employ reasonable security measures? Until people are prepared to be consistent and condemn such positions as 'at very best very clumsy... and at worst terrible' there is no point engaging with their sophistry.
Well said
Not really, because it confuses (as this argument always does) burglary with violence against the person. If I am burgled, there is a chance I could get the goods back. If I am a victim of GBH, or rape, or any other crime against the person, then that is that. It is your body, rather than your belongings, that is violated.
If someone wants to walk down the street wearing any clothes that it is legal to wear, then they should be able to do so without any hint of danger. Excusing rapists by blaming the victim is wrong.
Having said that, I have known several people who have been raped; enough to make me realise it is more common than most people think, and very under-reported. All have been raped by people in their family, or by people in a position of authority. I've never met anyone who's admitted to having been the victim of stranger rape.
A girl I know told me at the weekend that she had definitely been technically raped by exes on more than one occasion, but girls that complained about it should get over it.
Another girl I know was raped by the London cabbie John Worboys and has been in therapy ever since
So it takes all sorts. I never excused anyone, or mentioned clothing etc, and I don't want to get into the absurd position of seeming to be on the side of rapists.
My original point was that Helmer said they are all wrong, and should all be punished, its for judges to decide how serious each case is on merit. Which must be pretty much what happens, no?
Helmer also said the second case should get a "much lighter sentence". Which, depending on the ambiguity there, I'd certainly have a problem with.
(In all honesty I've got a little lost on our analogy, but I'm not sure if it was going anywhere useful).
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive taxpayer bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
Is a parent who advises their child not to walk home after dark with an expensive piece of the latest electronic equipment "victim blaming"? Is it "victim blaming" for the flying squad to advise a person transporting a large quantity of specious stones not to advertise the fact, and to employ reasonable security measures? Until people are prepared to be consistent and condemn such positions as 'at very best very clumsy... and at worst terrible' there is no point engaging with their sophistry.
Well said
Not really, because it confuses (as this argument always does) burglary with violence against the person. If I am burgled, there is a chance I could get the goods back. If I am a victim of GBH, or rape, or any other crime against the person, then that is that. It is your body, rather than your belongings, that is violated.
If someone wants to walk down the street wearing any clothes that it is legal to wear, then they should be able to do so without any hint of danger. Excusing rapists by blaming the victim is wrong.
Having said that, I have known several people who have been raped; enough to make me realise it is more common than most people think, and very under-reported. All have been raped by people in their family, or by people in a position of authority. I've never met anyone who's admitted to having been the victim of stranger rape.
A girl I know told me at the weekend that she had definitely been technically raped by exes on more than one occasion, but girls that complained about it should get over it.
Another girl I know was raped by the London cabbie John Worboys and has been in therapy ever since
So it takes all sorts. I never excused anyone, or mentioned clothing etc, and I don't want to get into the absurd position of seeming to be on the side of rapists.
My original point was that Helmer said they are all wrong, and should all be punished, its for judges to decide how serious each case is on merit. Which must be pretty much what happens, no?
Helmer also said the second case should get a "much lighter sentence". Which, depending on the ambiguity there, I'd certainly have a problem with.
(In all honesty I've got a little lost on our analogy, but I'm not sure if it was going anywhere useful).
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
chortle.
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
And the fact remains that banks that were heavily exposed to property took a hit since it was straightforward asset inflation, a bubble which went pop. So why the hell Osborne is repeating the same mistake eludes me.
So Spain Ireland UK all went belly up because their banks were stupid and avaricious and taxpayers had to pick up the tab. As for Germany, it has had no major crisis to date. You Southies like to wheel out Handelsbanken as your comfort blanket but given the choice between the occasional mid size bailout with a finance system which funds industry and commerce and bust big bucks banks which overcharge and overpay salaries, I'll happily take the German model.
Not really, because it confuses (as this argument always does) burglary with violence against the person. If I am burgled, there is a chance I could get the goods back. If I am a victim of GBH, or rape, or any other crime against the person, then that is that. It is your body, rather than your belongings, that is violated.
If someone wants to walk down the street wearing any clothes that it is legal to wear, then they should be able to do so without any hint of danger. Excusing rapists by blaming the victim is wrong.
Having said that, I have known several people who have been raped; enough to make me realise it is more common than most people think, and very under-reported. All have been raped by people in their family, or by people in a position of authority. I've never met anyone who's admitted to having been the victim of stranger rape.
Burglary and robbery are offences against the person. One form of burglary is trespassing with intent to cause grevious bodily harm, another involves causing grievous bodily harm as a trespasser. In any event, to reduce burglary, where somebody has stolen from your home, simply to an economic crime is absurd. Can a person's sense of safety and security not be irreparably damaged? Robbery is theft with a threat of unlawful violence (whether carried out or not). So your first point is utter folly.
There is no debate that people should have the right to engage in lawful behaviour and that criminals are to blame in law for their actions. What is in dispute is whether advice can be given that might reduce the likelihood of a person being a victim, and whether such advice can ever be legitimate, or whether it is "victim blaming".
As for your third point, whether a person has been raped is an objective question. The mere assertion by someone to that effect is not enough. Sex crimes will inevitably be under-reported because often the only witness is the complainant, and they may, for whatever reason, be unwilling to report the matter to the police. The conviction rate for rape is higher than a number of other indictable offences.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
Securitization was all about bundling mortgages.
Securitization is fine as a technique. What went wrong was that banks allowed themselves to believe that they had eliminated risk when, as any fool knows, you can never eliminate risk, you can only manage it.
Then having convinced themselves of this they became entranced with the idea of selling CDOs and CDOs squared and cubed to each other to earn fees, not realising - because they did not really understand and did not ask basic obvious questions about what they had done - that they were increasing rather than managing their risk.
They deluded themselves above all and in so doing deluded others, principally governments and regulators, who were overjoyed at the money rolling in.
And then reality intruded.
I take two lessons from this: the only thing which a bank (however large, small, big or complicated it may be) does is manage risk, not eliminate it but manage it, and it needs to do that well. Any bank that does not understand that does not deserve to be in business. Everything it does is about managing the risk it takes on with its own and its customers' money. It's boring, "sweat the small stuff" work but it's essential. Forgetting this basic lesson is why the finance sector went wrong.
The other lesson is obvious but you'll have to come to the very successful talk I do on this very topic. Only to select audiences mind.
And on that shameless SeanT-style note of self-promotion, have a good evening.
Helmer seems either a very brave choice or a very foolish one. I don't believe he was accurately represented in his comments on gay people, but he's hardly likely to soften UKIPs image any.
I think the choice of Helmer is very poor. Not necessarily because of the by-election itself but because it gives the perfect attack for the other parties for the Euro-elections. Why bother voting for a UKIP party list when the first name on that list is planning on jumping ship only two weeks later. The candidate should have been someone who was not standing in the Euros.
As you don't get to choose the candidate/s elected for any of the parties, what difference does it make? It might have made a difference were the election held under STV or Open Lists.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive taxpayer bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
Maybe my memory is playing tricks, but didn't Lloyds only need to be bailed out after they had been persuaded to rescue, i.e. take over HBOS?
Why the shareholders didn't sue the backside off of everyone involved in that take over is one the great mysteries of recent life. In some respects I think that is why there is still so much anger over the Crash, nobody who was responsible seemed to lose out personally. Senior people who were being paid vast amounts of money because "they were worth it", totally screwed up and showed that they had no idea at all and yet walked off into the sunset with their personal wealth intact, if not actually enhanced by pay-offs.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
chortle.
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
And the fact remains that banks that were heavily exposed to property took a hit since it was straightforward asset inflation, a bubble which went pop. So why the hell Osborne is repeating the same mistake eludes me.
So Spain Ireland UK all went belly up because their banks were stupid and avaricious and taxpayers had to pick up the tab. As for Germany, it has had no major crisis to date. You Southies like to wheel out Handelsbanken as your comfort blanket but given the choice between the occasional mid size bailout with a finance system which funds industry and commerce and bust big bucks banks which overcharge and overpay salaries, I'll happily take the German model.
It wasn't just Handelsbanken though. Look at the German banks operating through Ireland which went bust as a result of the business techniques you rightly decry. German banks were some of the biggest buyers of the CDO rubbish. For all their claims to be canny buyers and investors they were just as deluded and naive and greedy as others.
I'm with you, though, on the general point that a financial services sector has to remember that the "service" bit is about serving its customers, not primarily a few of its staff. But you won't get such an industry by allowing it to be destroyed by competitors with malicious intent - and I've no doubt that some behind the FTT do have malicious intent when it comes to the UK and its financial sector.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
Securitization was all about bundling mortgages.
Securitization is fine as a technique. What went wrong was that banks allowed themselves to believe that they had eliminated risk when, as any fool knows, you can never eliminate risk, you can only manage it.
Then having convinced themselves of this they became entranced with the idea of selling CDOs and CDOs squared and cubed to each other to earn fees, not realising - because they did not really understand and did not ask basic obvious questions about what they had done - that they were increasing rather than managing their risk.
They deluded themselves above all and in so doing deluded others, principally governments and regulators, who were overjoyed at the money rolling in.
And then reality intruded.
I take two lessons from this: the only thing which a bank (however large, small, big or complicated it may be) does is manage risk, not eliminate it but manage it, and it needs to do that well. Any bank that does not understand that does not deserve to be in business. Everything it does is about managing the risk it takes on with its own and its customers' money. It's boring, "sweat the small stuff" work but it's essential. Forgetting this basic lesson is why the finance sector went wrong.
The other lesson is obvious but you'll have to come to the very successful talk I do on this very topic. Only to select audiences mind.
And on that shameless SeanT-style note of self-promotion, have a good evening.
The bank melt-down mostly revolved around securitization and securitization mostly revolved around mortgages.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive taxpayer bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
Maybe my memory is playing tricks, but didn't Lloyds only need to be bailed out after they had been persuaded to rescue, i.e. take over HBOS?
Why the shareholders didn't sue the backside off of everyone involved in that take over is one the great mysteries of recent life. In some respects I think that is why there is still so much anger over the Crash, nobody who was responsible seemed to lose out personally. Senior people who were being paid vast amounts of money because "they were worth it", totally screwed up and showed that they had no idea at all and yet walked off into the sunset with their personal wealth intact, if not actually enhanced by pay-offs.
And some of them like Andy Hornby walked straight in to new CEO roles.
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
Yes, precisely. Absolutely nothing to do with the City, investment banking, the insurance, legal and venture capital industries, or any of the things which make the City so important, and completely unrelated to fat bonuses, high-frequency trading, and all the other things which the ignorant get so het up about.
Instead, it was boring old-style duff loans by the old Halifax Building Society merged with the old Bank of Scotland which did for Lloyds. Which would have happened with or without the City as a global financial services centre.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
chortle.
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
And the fact remains that banks that were heavily exposed to property took a hit since it was straightforward asset inflation, a bubble which went pop. So why the hell Osborne is repeating the same mistake eludes me.
So Spain Ireland UK all went belly up because their banks were stupid and avaricious and taxpayers had to pick up the tab. As for Germany, it has had no major crisis to date. You Southies like to wheel out Handelsbanken as your comfort blanket but given the choice between the occasional mid size bailout with a finance system which funds industry and commerce and bust big bucks banks which overcharge and overpay salaries, I'll happily take the German model.
It wasn't just Handelsbanken though. Look at the German banks operating through Ireland which went bust as a result of the business techniques you rightly decry. German banks by competitors with malicious intent - and I've no doubt that some behind the FTT do have malicious intent when it comes to the UK and its financial sector.
I have no time for the FTT which as you say is malicious and which I doubt Cameron will do much to stop.
Some German banks as you pointed out lost their heads in the noughties and chased silly profits thinking they had bucked the trend. The parallel is with our own Building Societies which went from being boring, staid and moderately profitable to thinking they all had to be Goldman Sachs. The privatisation of the B Socs was a retrograde step imo if nothing else they kept the mainsteam banks clean.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive taxpayer bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
Maybe my memory is playing tricks, but didn't Lloyds only need to be bailed out after they had been persuaded to rescue, i.e. take over HBOS?
Why the shareholders didn't sue the backside off of everyone involved in that take over is one the great mysteries of recent life. In some respects I think that is why there is still so much anger over the Crash, nobody who was responsible seemed to lose out personally. Senior people who were being paid vast amounts of money because "they were worth it", totally screwed up and showed that they had no idea at all and yet walked off into the sunset with their personal wealth intact, if not actually enhanced by pay-offs.
And some of them like Andy Hornby walked straight in to new CEO roles.
He should never have been in charge of a bank. He was a salesman who understood nothing about banking: lending money, taking a risk, managing that risk. Nothing. He thought that all of that had been sorted with whizzo systems and algos and clever people with quantum this and that in their degree titles. And he learnt - as we all did - that we need people in charge who really understand the nuts and bolts of the essence of banking, who are sceptical about the latest wheeze designed to make gold out of thin air in seconds and who know how to ask questions and manage lots of largely young self-important men who think they know everything and in reality know the square root of diddly squat.
"A fool thinks he is a wise man; the wise man knows he is a fool."
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
Yes, precisely. Absolutely nothing to do with the City, investment banking, the insurance, legal and venture capital industries, or any of the things which make the City so important, and completely unrelated to fat bonuses, high-frequency trading, and all the other things which the ignorant get so het up about.
Instead, it was boring old-style duff loans by the old Halifax Building Society merged with the old Bank of Scotland which did for Lloyds. Which would have happened with or without the City as a global financial services centre.
* a drunken, scantily glad woman going home by herself on a dark night is likely to increase her chances of being sexually assaulted
* leaving your car parked on the street overnight with the windows open is likely to increase its likelihood of being stolen
However, in both cases the perpetrator is entirely responsible for their own actions. They are rational human beings who made a deliberate choice to commit the crime; the reckless actions of the victims do not in any way decrease the perpetrator's level of responsibility.
"Instead, it was boring old-style duff loans by the old Halifax Building Society merged with the old Bank of Scotland which did for Lloyds."
Nooooooooooo! Lloyds had nothing to do with bad-lending practices. What did for Lloyds was politicians strong-arming senior Lloyds executives to take over HBOS and said executives not doing their job as far as due diligence and so forth was concerned. I would argue that the Lloyds board were in breach of their duties as directors of a company and were therefore personally, and probably criminally, liable. That's the bit that sticks in the throat, they were bloody useless in their jobs but still got the gold watch and the big money, because "we have to pay the market rate to attract the best people".
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
Yes, precisely. Absolutely nothing to do with the City, investment banking, the insurance, legal and venture capital industries, or any of the things which make the City so important, and completely unrelated to fat bonuses, high-frequency trading, and all the other things which the ignorant get so het up about.
Instead, it was boring old-style duff loans by the old Halifax Building Society merged with the old Bank of Scotland which did for Lloyds. Which would have happened with or without the City as a global financial services centre.
Oh Richard do open your eyes. It's not just the banks - pensions where investors have been serially ripped off on annuities, private equity largely a bust model these days, LME and other trading not without their scandals.
The thing that always worries me about your approach is not your defence of your local business, you'll defend it as I'll defend mine, but the impression that you think the model doesn't need fixing. For a country this size the City is an ostrich egg in a basket. We can only either let the rest of the economy get bigger to accommodate the risk or shrink the size of the egg. But pumping it up even larger isn't going to work.
* a drunken, scantily glad woman going home by herself on a dark night is likely to increase her chances of being sexually assaulted
* leaving your car parked on the street overnight with the windows open is likely to increase its likelihood of being stolen
However, in both cases the perpetrator is entirely responsible for their own actions. They are rational human beings who made a deliberate choice to commit the crime; the reckless actions of the victims do not in any way decrease the perpetrator's level of responsibility.
Quite agree
Helmer never used the "scantily clad" line by the way
Much as I dislike Ed Milliband's proposed solutions, he is right to ask the questions he's asking. This government is weak in its response to the EU over FTT and equally weak in standing up to Pfizer. Given how important a user the NHS is, the government should be much more robust about challenging Pfizer's logic for this deal which, at the moment, seems too much like corporate willy-waving.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive taxpayer bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
Maybe my memory is playing tricks, but didn't Lloyds only need to be bailed out after they had been persuaded to rescue, i.e. take over HBOS?
Why the shareholders didn't sue the backside off of everyone involved in that take over is one the great mysteries of recent life. In some respects I think that is why there is still so much anger over the Crash, nobody who was responsible seemed to lose out personally. Senior people who were being paid vast amounts of money because "they were worth it", totally screwed up and showed that they had no idea at all and yet walked off into the sunset with their personal wealth intact, if not actually enhanced by pay-offs.
And some of them like Andy Hornby walked straight in to new CEO roles.
He should never have been in charge of a bank. He was a salesman who understood nothing about banking: lending money, taking a risk, managing that risk. Nothing. He thought that all of that had been sorted with whizzo systems and algos and clever people with quantum this and that in their degree titles. And he learnt - as we all did - that we need people in charge who really understand the nuts and bolts of the essence of banking, who are sceptical about the latest wheeze designed to make gold out of thin air in seconds and who know how to ask questions and manage lots of largely young self-important men who think they know everything and in reality know the square root of diddly squat.
"A fool thinks he is a wise man; the wise man knows he is a fool."
Yes spot on, as you say risk never goes away. Exciting and banking are for people who are risking their own money.
"Instead, it was boring old-style duff loans by the old Halifax Building Society merged with the old Bank of Scotland which did for Lloyds."
Nooooooooooo! Lloyds had nothing to do with bad-lending practices. What did for Lloyds was politicians strong-arming senior Lloyds executives to take over HBOS and said executives not doing their job as far as due diligence and so forth was concerned. I would argue that the Lloyds board were in breach of their duties as directors of a company and were therefore personally, and probably criminally, liable. That's the bit that sticks in the throat, they were bloody useless in their jobs but still got the gold watch and the big money, because "we have to pay the market rate to attract the best people".
And that self reinforcing recruitment dictum is what shoves salaries and prices up in London. If everyone recruited is a "top quartile performer" then we probably have six quartiles.
Pfizer gets more market power over cancer drugs, patients denied treatments, great headache for governments who pass buck onto NICE. Taxpayers fed up with over paying for cancer treatments.
It doesn't look good from a competition point of view.
* a drunken, scantily glad woman going home by herself on a dark night is likely to increase her chances of being sexually assaulted
* leaving your car parked on the street overnight with the windows open is likely to increase its likelihood of being stolen
However, in both cases the perpetrator is entirely responsible for their own actions. They are rational human beings who made a deliberate choice to commit the crime; the reckless actions of the victims do not in any way decrease the perpetrator's level of responsibility.
Quite agree
Helmer never used the "scantily clad" line by the way
tbh I came on the thread late and haven't had the time or energy to scroll back and find out exactly who (was alleged to have) said what.
And some of them like Andy Hornby walked straight in to new CEO roles.
Isn't it long past the time when we stopped this superstar CEO nonsense? More shareholder value seems to have been destroyed by these wonderful business men than by Marxism. Go back a bit before the craze for superstars came into being and the UK had some great companies, Lloyds Bank (once it had learned it lessons from South American loans), ICI, GKN, GEC and so on. Where are they now?
GEC must be the case study. A wealthy and successful electronics and engineering business, a new superstar CEO arrives (on a huge pay packet because "we have to pay the market rate to attract the best talent") and within a few years the company is bust and wound up. The shareholders would have been better off appointing one of the toilet cleaners as CEO and paying him £25k as long as he never said anything. My bloody cat could have run that company better.
Go wider, anyone of the posters on this board could have made a better job of running Lloyds Bank than the board when Gordon Brown said "Take over HBOS. Why because most of us would have said "Piss off" straight away, some others would have said, "I'll have to look at books because I have a responsibility to my shareholders" and the remainder would have adopted my cat's technique of looking cute and saying, and doing, nothing.
No the idea that to get a good CEO a company must pay millions, is one that is past and needs to be buried. I am sure if Mr. Charles (and I think he will forgive me for dragging him into this) took over his family's business his priority would be to ensure that the business is still there and in a better shape when it comes to the time he must hand it over to the next generation. His family, I think, have been in business for about 300 years and prospered. Maybe we need CEOs who consider themselves stewards and not Masters of the Universe.
I find Ladbrokes' website extremely difficult to navigate. Spent 10 minutes trying to find the Newark by-election page with no success. Wish I'd bookmarked it a few days ago.
As we're discussing EU matters, I should stress that the Morris Dancer Party remains committed to invading France.
We'll at least start with the restoration of the Duchy of Normandy :')
There still is a Duke of Normandy. Do we all know who it is without Google? I was there last month and heard the locals toasting "notre Duc"
The Queen one assumes? Except she'd be the Duchess I suppose?
I believe so. I think the Channel Islands still make a thing about being part of the duchy of normandy, but not sure if they're constitutionally accurate.
Given the talk earlier about sexual offences, I am not sure it is a good idea to discuss the Morris Dancer Party's manifesto, which, from memory, included the clause that every attractive female between the ages of 16 and 24 would be obliged to wear school uniform.
... There is no debate that people should have the right to engage in lawful behaviour and that criminals are to blame in law for their actions. What is in dispute is whether advice can be given that might reduce the likelihood of a person being a victim, and whether such advice can ever be legitimate, or whether it is "victim blaming"...
Normally it doesn't happen like that. Such advice is always legitimate, but in the cases that discussed it crosses the line into something else entirely - ascribing moral culpability to the victim, which *is* victim blaming. Helmer's article did it, for example.
"Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Peru, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, the United Arab Emirates and Vanuatu"
Odd list - cocaine and tax havens - some kind of oligarch fan service?
Pfizer gets more market power over cancer drugs, patients denied treatments, great headache for governments who pass buck onto NICE. Taxpayers fed up with over paying for cancer treatments.
It doesn't look good from a competition point of view.
I'm nervous about the takeover, although I have nowhere near enough knowledge to say whether the Pfizer deal is good for the companies and this country. (*)
My concerns are mainly that new drugs cost vast amounts of money to make, and therefore you need large companies or organisations to do it. But medical advances often come from unexpected directions, so it's best to have several different approaches to the same problem being undertaken at the same time.
So in my inexpert view, you need a number of very large companies working on the same area, and taking different approaches. My concern is that this takeover will reduce the avenues of research as economies of scale remove promising or competing research lines.
On the other hand, it may remove duplication of effort ...
(*) Given their most famous product, I'm surprised no-one's yet said that Pfizer's got a hard-on for AstraZenica ...
"The Obama administration says a planned referendum by pro-Russian separatists on independence for portions of eastern Ukraine this weekend would be illegal."
I guess that would explain why Putin is holding back.
I thought Clement Freud backed himself to win a tidy sum? Or is that an old wives tale?
"Since his announcement as Ukip's candidate, the odds of the party winning their first MP in the election have drifted from as low as 2/1 to 5/1 this evening.
Labour saw its odds shorten from 11/4 to 5/2, but the Conservatives are favourite to win the seat with odds of 4/7.
Mr Helmer was dismissive of the odds, adding: "I can't put on a bet as I would be breaking election rules.
"But if I could, I would put £100 on me winning." "
Roger Helmer @RogerHelmerMEP Follow And another good reason for a badger cull -- it would bring down the exorbitant price of shaving brushes. 6:26 AM - 12 Jul 2011
Roger Helmer @RogerHelmerMEP Follow And another good reason for a badger cull -- it would bring down the exorbitant price of shaving brushes. 6:26 AM - 12 Jul 2011
Re Pfizer take over,I once had to do a presentation to Pfizer about disposing of waste from the Viagra process,my plan was to incorporate the waste into cement kiln fuel,"Cemfuel",I anticipated questions about the effect on the cement quality,and had planned to say it sets very hard,but when I saw the audience,I bottled. I also bottled on the " Quick acting viagra,side effect,a stiff neck" and "Viagra eye drops,very popular in Scouseland,makes you look hard", Looks like it will be a very politically challenged takeover.
Re Pfizer take over,I once had to do a presentation to Pfizer about disposing of waste from the Viagra process,my plan was to incorporate the waste into cement kiln fuel,"Cemfuel",I anticipated questions about the effect on the cement quality,and had planned to say it sets very hard,but when I saw the audience,I bottled. I also bottled on the " Quick acting viagra,side effect,a stiff neck" and "Viagra eye drops,very popular in Scouseland,makes you look hard", Looks like it will be a very politically challenged takeover.
"Newark has relatively large proportions of households which lean to the Conservatives but are also attracted by UKIP. Rural communities, older residents, retirees, empty nesters, self-employed trades people living in smaller communities, well-off older residents, commuters living in semi-rural settings; they all make up larger proportions of the constituency than elsewhere in the UK. They don't vote Labour, or at least they haven't since 1997. Most have voted Conservative, some have voted LibDem and a smaller but growing proportion have voted UKIP.
On the other hand there are large proportions of blue collar households, which have typically voted Labour but more recently have shown a tendency to get behind UKIP. "
Mr Helmer was dismissive of the odds, adding: "I can't put on a bet as I would be breaking election rules.
Okay, I know that I should know this ... but ... is this true?
I don't know for sure, but I was always under the impression it wasn't, and there were no rules whatsoever governing political betting.
Isn't there a general rule about using insider information?
Or participants having a financial interest in the outcome? The obvious danger here would be people betting against themselves, and sabotaging their campaign.
"The Obama administration says a planned referendum by pro-Russian separatists on independence for portions of eastern Ukraine this weekend would be illegal."
I guess that would explain why Putin is holding back.
Putin's hypocrisy is revealed by the fact he supports referenda in Crimea and the East, but thinks a Presidential election is too soon:
And some of them like Andy Hornby walked straight in to new CEO roles.
Isn't it long past the time when we stopped this superstar CEO nonsense? More shareholder value seems to have been destroyed by these wonderful business men than by Marxism. Go back a bit before the craze for superstars came into being and the UK had some great companies, Lloyds Bank (once it had learned it lessons from South American loans), ICI, GKN, GEC and so on. Where are they now?
GEC must be the case study. A wealthy and successful electronics and engineering business, a new superstar CEO arrives (on a huge pay packet because "we have to pay the market rate to attract the best talent") and within a few years the company is bust and wound up. The shareholders would have been better off appointing one of the toilet cleaners as CEO and paying him £25k as long as he never said anything. My bloody cat could have run that company better.
Go wider, anyone of the posters on this board could have made a better job of running Lloyds Bank than the board when Gordon Brown said "Take over HBOS. Why because most of us would have said "Piss off" straight away, some others would have said, "I'll have to look at books because I have a responsibility to my shareholders" and the remainder would have adopted my cat's technique of looking cute and saying, and doing, nothing.
No the idea that to get a good CEO a company must pay millions, is one that is past and needs to be buried. I am sure if Mr. Charles (and I think he will forgive me for dragging him into this) took over his family's business his priority would be to ensure that the business is still there and in a better shape when it comes to the time he must hand it over to the next generation. His family, I think, have been in business for about 300 years and prospered. Maybe we need CEOs who consider themselves stewards and not Masters of the Universe.
Sadly Charles is willing to leave the issue of executive earnings to the 'shareholders' despite knowing full well that the 'shareholders' are another set of executives with a vested interest in increasing executive earnings. Or as is oftern the case executive 'earnings'.
Block votes in corporate management are as malign an influence as they were in the unions.
Time for some real shareholder democracy.
But little chance of that as it would threaten the executive oligarchy.
* a drunken, scantily glad woman going home by herself on a dark night is likely to increase her chances of being sexually assaulted
This isn't true:
Research data clearly proves that a way a woman dresses and / or acts does not influence the rapists choice of victims. His decision to rape is based on how easily he perceives his target can be intimidated. Rapists are looking for available and vulnerable targets . Statistics were obtained from various sources including the study Rape in America, 1992, National Victim Center, The Federal Bureau of Investigations and the National Crime Survey.
On topic ,my favourite,(not the most betting popular),is Andrew Neil,he is IMHO,the best forensic interviewer,well prepared,very well informed,and Brillo at his job.
And some of them like Andy Hornby walked straight in to new CEO roles.
Isn't it long past the time when we stopped this superstar CEO nonsense? More shareholder value seems to have been destroyed by these wonderful business men than by Marxism. Go back a bit before the craze for superstars came into being and the UK had some great companies, Lloyds Bank (once it had learned it lessons from South American loans), ICI, GKN, GEC and so on. Where are they now?
GEC must be the case study. A wealthy and successful electronics and engineering business, a new superstar CEO arrives (on a huge pay packet because "we have to pay the market rate to attract the best talent") and within a few years the company is bust and wound up. The shareholders would have been better off appointing one of the toilet cleaners as CEO and paying him £25k as long as he never said anything. My bloody cat could have run that company better.
Go wider, anyone of the posters on this board could have made a better job of running Lloyds Bank than the board when Gordon Brown said "Take over HBOS. Why because most of us would have said "Piss off" straight away, some others would have said, "I'll have to look at books because I have a responsibility to my shareholders" and the remainder would have adopted my cat's technique of looking cute and saying, and doing, nothing.
No the idea that to get a good CEO a company must pay millions, is one that is past and needs to be buried. I am sure if Mr. Charles (and I think he will forgive me for dragging him into this) took over his family's business his priority would be to ensure that the business is still there and in a better shape when it comes to the time he must hand it over to the next generation. His family, I think, have been in business for about 300 years and prospered. Maybe we need CEOs who consider themselves stewards and not Masters of the Universe.
An excellent post Mr L. It sort of highlights one of the things which has been whirring in the back ground this last quarter century where one of the pressures of globalisation has been to de-couple the UK managerial class from the UK. It's now all about big salaries and how much they can sell the business for. Sadly the idea of building a company through good products and satisfied customers has taken a back seat. And it's not just the plcs, the professions have gone the same way. A partner is now a slick salesman with a 7 year shelf life in which to optimise earnings rather than a crusty old bird who knows his subject because he's been around for a bit. And since Blair politics is going the same way.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
chortle.
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
And the fact remains that banks that were heavily exposed to property took a hit since it was straightforward asset inflation, a bubble which went pop. So why the hell Osborne is repeating the same mistake eludes me.
So Spain Ireland UK all went belly up because their banks were stupid and avaricious and taxpayers had to pick up the tab. As for Germany, it has had no major crisis to date. You Southies like to wheel out Handelsbanken as your comfort blanket but given the choice between the occasional mid size bailout with a finance system which funds industry and commerce and bust big bucks banks which overcharge and overpay salaries, I'll happily take the German model.
Interesting to read the Helmer quotes. I haven't seen any that I think are outrageous or that I haven't heard expressed by normal people. The badger one made me laugh. They just appear a bit outre because we're not used to politicians or media pundits expressing any view outside a narrow pathway of acceptable discussion. But UKIP as a national party has found fertile ground stepping off the path, so maybe Helmer can too.
His biggest problem I think will be getting space to make his arguments. The press aren't going to give him an inch. And his opinions hardly chime with those expressed by the broadcasters. But then voters are increasingly aware of spin and media bias so perhaps they'll discount the slurs? Who knows. I've not bet on him. Just hope he's allowed to be heard.
I thought Clement Freud backed himself to win a tidy sum? Or is that an old wives tale?
"Since his announcement as Ukip's candidate, the odds of the party winning their first MP in the election have drifted from as low as 2/1 to 5/1 this evening.
Labour saw its odds shorten from 11/4 to 5/2, but the Conservatives are favourite to win the seat with odds of 4/7.
Mr Helmer was dismissive of the odds, adding: "I can't put on a bet as I would be breaking election rules.
"But if I could, I would put £100 on me winning." "
What are election rules on betting ? Are you allowed any sort of bet if you stand as a candidate - what happens if you've already placed one before selection ?!
And some of them like Andy Hornby walked straight in to new CEO roles.
Go wider, anyone of the posters on this board could have made a better job of running Lloyds Bank than the board when Gordon Brown said "Take over HBOS. Why because most of us would have said "Piss off" straight away, some others would have said, "I'll have to look at books because I have a responsibility to my shareholders" and the remainder would have adopted my cat's technique of looking cute and saying, and doing, nothing.
No the idea that to get a good CEO a company must pay millions, is one that is past and needs to be buried. I am sure if Mr. Charles (and I think he will forgive me for dragging him into this) took over his family's business his priority would be to ensure that the business is still there and in a better shape when it comes to the time he must hand it over to the next generation. His family, I think, have been in business for about 300 years and prospered. Maybe we need CEOs who consider themselves stewards and not Masters of the Universe.
An excellent post Mr L. It sort of highlights one of the things which has been whirring in the back ground this last quarter century where one of the pressures of globalisation has been to de-couple the UK managerial class from the UK. It's now all about big salaries and how much they can sell the business for. Sadly the idea of building a company through good products and satisfied customers has taken a back seat. And it's not just the plcs, the professions have gone the same way. A partner is now a slick salesman with a 7 year shelf life in which to optimise earnings rather than a crusty old bird who knows his subject because he's been around for a bit. And since Blair politics is going the same way.
We need to stop the superstar CEO nonsense as well as the star trader nonsense. More esprit de corps.
It's the death of the old-fashioned idea of the professional person: someone who had a care for his personal professional honour and standing and that of his profession, whatever it was, at large and his obligations and a sense of stewardship and responsibility to his clients and to the junior staff he trained and who would take the business on after he had gone. It has not died completely of course but we would do well to encourage more of this sort of behaviour: a sense of professionalism coupled with a moral compass.
@Alanbrooke - No, my point wasn't a diversion. My point was absolutely central to the argument: countries with or without a large financial services sector were hit, some of them more badly than us. Therefore, it is a major blunder of logic to blame the fact that we have a large financial services sector for the bailout costs.
If you actually look at the crash and the bailouts, the underlying cause of much of the trouble was nothing much to do with investment banking and the other financial services (insurance, foreign exchange trading, capital raising etc) which the City does so well. Instead, a lot of it was property-related: boring mortgages.
Still don't believe me? Look at Lloyds - banks don't come more boring than Lloyds, they had no investment banking arm to speak of. Yet they needed a massive bailout. And Barclays - which has a large investment banking arm - didn't.
chortle.
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
And the fact remains that banks that were heavily exposed to property took a hit since it was straightforward asset inflation, a bubble which went pop. So why the hell Osborne is repeating the same mistake eludes me.
So Spain Ireland UK all went belly up because their banks were stupid and avaricious and taxpayers had to pick up the tab. As for Germany, it has had no major crisis to date. You Southies like to wheel out Handelsbanken as your comfort blanket but given the choice between the occasional mid size bailout with a finance system which funds industry and commerce and bust big bucks banks which overcharge and overpay salaries, I'll happily take the German model.
German GDP fell by 9% in the first crisis.
So what ?
Ours wasn't that far off and theirs recovered much more quickly . Our GDP might just recover to 2008 peaks this quarter, Germany passed peak GDP in 2010.
I thought Clement Freud backed himself to win a tidy sum? Or is that an old wives tale?
"Since his announcement as Ukip's candidate, the odds of the party winning their first MP in the election have drifted from as low as 2/1 to 5/1 this evening.
Labour saw its odds shorten from 11/4 to 5/2, but the Conservatives are favourite to win the seat with odds of 4/7.
Mr Helmer was dismissive of the odds, adding: "I can't put on a bet as I would be breaking election rules.
"But if I could, I would put £100 on me winning." "
What are election rules on betting ? Are you allowed any sort of bet if you stand as a candidate - what happens if you've already placed one before selection ?!
Re Pfizer take over,I once had to do a presentation to Pfizer about disposing of waste from the Viagra process,my plan was to incorporate the waste into cement kiln fuel,"Cemfuel",I anticipated questions about the effect on the cement quality,and had planned to say it sets very hard,but when I saw the audience,I bottled. I also bottled on the " Quick acting viagra,side effect,a stiff neck" and "Viagra eye drops,very popular in Scouseland,makes you look hard", Looks like it will be a very politically challenged takeover.
And some of them like Andy Hornby walked straight in to new CEO roles.
Go wider, anyone of the posters on this board could have made a better job of running Lloyds Bank than the board when Gordon Brown said "Take over HBOS. Why because most of us would have said "Piss off" straight away, some others would have said, "I'll have to look at books because I have a responsibility to my shareholders" and the remainder would have adopted my cat's technique of looking cute and saying, and doing, nothing.
No the idea that to get a good CEO a company must pay millions, is one that is past and needs to b the Universe.
An excellent post Mr L. It sort of highlights one of the things which has been whirring in the shelf life in which to optimise earnings rather than a crusty old bird who knows his subject because he's been around for a bit. And since Blair politics is going the same way.
We need to stop the superstar CEO nonsense as well as the star trader nonsense. More esprit de corps.
It's the death of the old-fashioned idea of the professional person: someone who had a care for his personal professional honour and standing and that of his profession, whatever it was, at large and his obligations and a sense of stewardship and responsibility to his clients and to the junior staff he trained and who would take the business on after he had gone. It has not died completely of course but we would do well to encourage more of this sort of behaviour: a sense of professionalism coupled with a moral compass.
From the military there are some interesting analyses showing that when elites get too big they become counterproductive. While concentrating talent in a few units the rest of the army suffers as the talent lost would raise the overall performance if more evenly spread.
Though I suspect a lot of UKIP would support that, their current website doesn't actually mention it either way despite having a variety of 'old fashioned' crime policies (longer sentences and so on). I can't find a copy of the 2010 manifesto but the BBC 'at a glance' summary of it from the time mentions various crime policies but not the death penalty.
Of course, we can't introduce capital punishment in peacetime while being a signatory of the ECHR. And we can't be a member of the EU without the ECHR.
Obviously UKIP would be changing the 'EU' bit ;')
The ECHR does not rule out the death penalty outside of wartime, it is quite happy with killing rioters or people we feel should be executed if we also happen to believe war is imminent. Given that british soldiers have been in combat for a lot of the last 2 decades and before that we had the cold war I am pretty sure we could argue that we are in imminent threat of war for most of that time
Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights – Right to life
1. Everyone has the right to life. 2. No one shall be condemned to the death penalty, or executed.
Source: Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, 14 December 2007, Official Journal C 303/1 Explanation on Article 2 – Right to life [snipped some to get the post in]
2. The second sentence of the provision, which referred to the death penalty, was superseded by the entry into force of Article 1 of Protocol No 6 to the ECHR, which reads as follows: ‘The death penalty shall be abolished. No-one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed.’ Article 2(2) of the Charter is based on that provision.
3. The provisions of Article 2 of the Charter correspond to those of the above Articles of the ECHR and its Protocol. They have the same meaning and the same scope, in accordance with Article 52(3) of the Charter. Therefore, the ‘negative’ definitions appearing in the ECHR must be regarded as also forming part of the Charter: (a) Article 2(2) of the ECHR: ‘Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in contravention of this article when it results from the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary: (a) in defence of any person from unlawful violence; (b) in order to effect a lawful arrest or to prevent the escape of a person lawfully detained; (c) in action lawfully taken for the purpose of [b]quelling a riot[/b] or insurrection.’
(b) Article 2 of Protocol No 6 to the ECHR: ‘A State may make provision in its law for the death penalty in respect of acts committed in time of war or of [b]imminent threat of war[/b]; such penalty shall be applied only in the instances laid down in the law and in accordance with its provisions (…)’.
I have this feeling that when the results of the referendum in the Eastern Ukraine are announced, and it goes to those favouring union with Russia, Putin will send his troops in.
This feeling is particularly strong tonight, as Obama and Kerry denounce the referendum in pithy terms.
"The Obama administration denounced as illegal a planned weekend referendum by pro-Russian insurgents pushing for autonomy and independence for portions of eastern Ukraine.
Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday the referendum being planned for Sunday would be "bogus" and would not be recognized (sic) by the West.
"We flatly reject this illegal effort to further divide Ukraine," he told reporters after meeting at the State Department with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton."
I see that the EU and Ashton are in the mix again.
Comments
(In all honesty I've got a little lost on our analogy, but I'm not sure if it was going anywhere useful).
US report on the trillion plus dollars of loans made by the federal reserve to household name banks during the credit crunch.
Richard, Lloyds were a well run bank until they they bought HBOS. They overpaid for someone else's problem.
And the fact remains that banks that were heavily exposed to property took a hit since it was straightforward asset inflation, a bubble which went pop. So why the hell Osborne is repeating the same mistake eludes me.
So Spain Ireland UK all went belly up because their banks were stupid and avaricious and taxpayers had to pick up the tab. As for Germany, it has had no major crisis to date. You Southies like to wheel out Handelsbanken as your comfort blanket but given the choice between the occasional mid size bailout with a finance system which funds industry and commerce and bust big bucks banks which overcharge and overpay salaries, I'll happily take the German model.
There is no debate that people should have the right to engage in lawful behaviour and that criminals are to blame in law for their actions. What is in dispute is whether advice can be given that might reduce the likelihood of a person being a victim, and whether such advice can ever be legitimate, or whether it is "victim blaming".
As for your third point, whether a person has been raped is an objective question. The mere assertion by someone to that effect is not enough. Sex crimes will inevitably be under-reported because often the only witness is the complainant, and they may, for whatever reason, be unwilling to report the matter to the police. The conviction rate for rape is higher than a number of other indictable offences.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27293243
Then having convinced themselves of this they became entranced with the idea of selling CDOs and CDOs squared and cubed to each other to earn fees, not realising - because they did not really understand and did not ask basic obvious questions about what they had done - that they were increasing rather than managing their risk.
They deluded themselves above all and in so doing deluded others, principally governments and regulators, who were overjoyed at the money rolling in.
And then reality intruded.
I take two lessons from this: the only thing which a bank (however large, small, big or complicated it may be) does is manage risk, not eliminate it but manage it, and it needs to do that well. Any bank that does not understand that does not deserve to be in business. Everything it does is about managing the risk it takes on with its own and its customers' money. It's boring, "sweat the small stuff" work but it's essential. Forgetting this basic lesson is why the finance sector went wrong.
The other lesson is obvious but you'll have to come to the very successful talk I do on this very topic. Only to select audiences mind.
And on that shameless SeanT-style note of self-promotion, have a good evening.
Why the shareholders didn't sue the backside off of everyone involved in that take over is one the great mysteries of recent life. In some respects I think that is why there is still so much anger over the Crash, nobody who was responsible seemed to lose out personally. Senior people who were being paid vast amounts of money because "they were worth it", totally screwed up and showed that they had no idea at all and yet walked off into the sunset with their personal wealth intact, if not actually enhanced by pay-offs.
Mind you, recall also that Cable whined when Barclays actually found private money rather than needing state support. Some people are weird.
Mr. 1983, welcome to pb.com.
I'm with you, though, on the general point that a financial services sector has to remember that the "service" bit is about serving its customers, not primarily a few of its staff. But you won't get such an industry by allowing it to be destroyed by competitors with malicious intent - and I've no doubt that some behind the FTT do have malicious intent when it comes to the UK and its financial sector.
Instead, it was boring old-style duff loans by the old Halifax Building Society merged with the old Bank of Scotland which did for Lloyds. Which would have happened with or without the City as a global financial services centre.
Some German banks as you pointed out lost their heads in the noughties and chased silly profits thinking they had bucked the trend. The parallel is with our own Building Societies which went from being boring, staid and moderately profitable to thinking they all had to be Goldman Sachs. The privatisation of the B Socs was a retrograde step imo if nothing else they kept the mainsteam banks clean.
"A fool thinks he is a wise man; the wise man knows he is a fool."
twitter.com/Ed_Miliband/status/463699273046327296/photo/1
* a drunken, scantily glad woman going home by herself on a dark night is likely to increase her chances of being sexually assaulted
* leaving your car parked on the street overnight with the windows open is likely to increase its likelihood of being stolen
However, in both cases the perpetrator is entirely responsible for their own actions. They are rational human beings who made a deliberate choice to commit the crime; the reckless actions of the victims do not in any way decrease the perpetrator's level of responsibility.
Nooooooooooo! Lloyds had nothing to do with bad-lending practices. What did for Lloyds was politicians strong-arming senior Lloyds executives to take over HBOS and said executives not doing their job as far as due diligence and so forth was concerned. I would argue that the Lloyds board were in breach of their duties as directors of a company and were therefore personally, and probably criminally, liable. That's the bit that sticks in the throat, they were bloody useless in their jobs but still got the gold watch and the big money, because "we have to pay the market rate to attract the best people".
The thing that always worries me about your approach is not your defence of your local business, you'll defend it as I'll defend mine, but the impression that you think the model doesn't need fixing. For a country this size the City is an ostrich egg in a basket. We can only either let the rest of the economy get bigger to accommodate the risk or shrink the size of the egg. But pumping it up even larger isn't going to work.
Helmer never used the "scantily clad" line by the way
Much as I dislike Ed Milliband's proposed solutions, he is right to ask the questions he's asking. This government is weak in its response to the EU over FTT and equally weak in standing up to Pfizer. Given how important a user the NHS is, the government should be much more robust about challenging Pfizer's logic for this deal which, at the moment, seems too much like corporate willy-waving.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/council-spending/10811772/Switching-off-street-lights-helps-me-sleep-says-Eric-Pickles.html
It doesn't look good from a competition point of view.
Best prices:
Con 4/7 (various)
Lab 11/4 (Hills)
UKIP 5/1 (PP, Lad)
LD 250/1 (various)
"Retweeted by Roger Helmer
trutherbot @trutherbot · 12h
Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10294082/Global-warming-No-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html …"
https://twitter.com/RogerHelmerMEP
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/what-scotlands-young-voters-think-of-indyref.1399377443
Do we all know who it is without Google?
I was there last month and heard the locals toasting "notre Duc"
GEC must be the case study. A wealthy and successful electronics and engineering business, a new superstar CEO arrives (on a huge pay packet because "we have to pay the market rate to attract the best talent") and within a few years the company is bust and wound up. The shareholders would have been better off appointing one of the toilet cleaners as CEO and paying him £25k as long as he never said anything. My bloody cat could have run that company better.
Go wider, anyone of the posters on this board could have made a better job of running Lloyds Bank than the board when Gordon Brown said "Take over HBOS. Why because most of us would have said "Piss off" straight away, some others would have said, "I'll have to look at books because I have a responsibility to my shareholders" and the remainder would have adopted my cat's technique of looking cute and saying, and doing, nothing.
No the idea that to get a good CEO a company must pay millions, is one that is past and needs to be buried. I am sure if Mr. Charles (and I think he will forgive me for dragging him into this) took over his family's business his priority would be to ensure that the business is still there and in a better shape when it comes to the time he must hand it over to the next generation. His family, I think, have been in business for about 300 years and prospered. Maybe we need CEOs who consider themselves stewards and not Masters of the Universe.
The toast is "The Queen, our Duke" or "La Reine, notre Duc"
"EU grants visa free travel to 19 states"
"Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Peru, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, the United Arab Emirates and Vanuatu"
Odd list - cocaine and tax havens - some kind of oligarch fan service?
My concerns are mainly that new drugs cost vast amounts of money to make, and therefore you need large companies or organisations to do it. But medical advances often come from unexpected directions, so it's best to have several different approaches to the same problem being undertaken at the same time.
So in my inexpert view, you need a number of very large companies working on the same area, and taking different approaches. My concern is that this takeover will reduce the avenues of research as economies of scale remove promising or competing research lines.
On the other hand, it may remove duplication of effort ...
(*) Given their most famous product, I'm surprised no-one's yet said that Pfizer's got a hard-on for AstraZenica ...
"The Obama administration says a planned referendum by pro-Russian separatists on independence for portions of eastern Ukraine this weekend would be illegal."
I guess that would explain why Putin is holding back.
I thought Clement Freud backed himself to win a tidy sum? Or is that an old wives tale?
"Since his announcement as Ukip's candidate, the odds of the party winning their first MP in the election have drifted from as low as 2/1 to 5/1 this evening.
Labour saw its odds shorten from 11/4 to 5/2, but the Conservatives are favourite to win the seat with odds of 4/7.
Mr Helmer was dismissive of the odds, adding: "I can't put on a bet as I would be breaking election rules.
"But if I could, I would put £100 on me winning." "
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/474359/I-regret-rape-blog-as-it-s-dominating-Ukip-s-Newark-campaign-says-Roger-Helmer
Roger Helmer @RogerHelmerMEP
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And another good reason for a badger cull -- it would bring down the exorbitant price of shaving brushes.
6:26 AM - 12 Jul 2011
Will link later.
I also bottled on the " Quick acting viagra,side effect,a stiff neck" and "Viagra eye drops,very popular in Scouseland,makes you look hard",
Looks like it will be a very politically challenged takeover.
Will they be looking to erect new offices?
Does the deal stand up?
Will the government take a hard line with them?
Will the management stiff the workers?
Does Boris Johnson have a role to play?
WiIl Miliband cock it up?
(ok that's enough)
I see nothing on betting (haven't read through fully, but using word search results).
"Newark has relatively large proportions of households which lean to the Conservatives but are also attracted by UKIP. Rural communities, older residents, retirees, empty nesters, self-employed trades people living in smaller communities, well-off older residents, commuters living in semi-rural settings; they all make up larger proportions of the constituency than elsewhere in the UK. They don't vote Labour, or at least they haven't since 1997. Most have voted Conservative, some have voted LibDem and a smaller but growing proportion have voted UKIP.
On the other hand there are large proportions of blue collar households, which have typically voted Labour but more recently have shown a tendency to get behind UKIP. "
http://election-data.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-constituency-of-newark.html
Or participants having a financial interest in the outcome? The obvious danger here would be people betting against themselves, and sabotaging their campaign.
I knew you did not accept global warming, but I didn't know you believe the Earth was actually cooling.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/60370f30-d4fb-11e3-adec-00144feabdc0.html
Block votes in corporate management are as malign an influence as they were in the unions.
Time for some real shareholder democracy.
But little chance of that as it would threaten the executive oligarchy.
Research data clearly proves that a way a woman dresses and / or acts does not influence the rapists choice of victims. His decision to rape is based on how easily he perceives his target can be intimidated. Rapists are looking for available and vulnerable targets
.
Statistics were obtained from various sources including the study Rape in America, 1992, National Victim Center, The Federal Bureau of Investigations and the National Crime Survey.
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/myths.html
We saw King Charles III at the Almeida the other day.
Absolutely ripping. Well written. Well acted. Probably sold out.
Anyway, it's all in jest, as constitutional democratic republics are the only way to go. Wilkes and liberty!
Still one spot open for PB 2014 Mk3 at http://www.playdiplomacy.com (password: catsandkittens).
His biggest problem I think will be getting space to make his arguments. The press aren't going to give him an inch. And his opinions hardly chime with those expressed by the broadcasters. But then voters are increasingly aware of spin and media bias so perhaps they'll discount the slurs? Who knows. I've not bet on him. Just hope he's allowed to be heard.
It's the death of the old-fashioned idea of the professional person: someone who had a care for his personal professional honour and standing and that of his profession, whatever it was, at large and his obligations and a sense of stewardship and responsibility to his clients and to the junior staff he trained and who would take the business on after he had gone. It has not died completely of course but we would do well to encourage more of this sort of behaviour: a sense of professionalism coupled with a moral compass.
Ours wasn't that far off and theirs recovered much more quickly . Our GDP might just recover to 2008 peaks this quarter, Germany passed peak GDP in 2010.
Password catsandkittens
From the military there are some interesting analyses showing that when elites get too big they become counterproductive. While concentrating talent in a few units the rest of the army suffers as the talent lost would raise the overall performance if more evenly spread.
Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights – Right to life
1. Everyone has the right to life.
2. No one shall be condemned to the death penalty, or executed.
Source: Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, 14 December 2007, Official Journal C 303/1
Explanation on Article 2 – Right to life [snipped some to get the post in]
2. The second sentence of the provision, which referred to the death penalty, was superseded by the entry into force of Article 1 of Protocol No 6 to the ECHR, which reads as follows:
‘The death penalty shall be abolished. No-one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed.’
Article 2(2) of the Charter is based on that provision.
3. The provisions of Article 2 of the Charter correspond to those of the above Articles of the ECHR and its Protocol. They have the same meaning and the same scope, in accordance with Article 52(3) of the Charter. Therefore, the ‘negative’ definitions appearing in the ECHR must be regarded as also forming part of the Charter:
(a) Article 2(2) of the ECHR:
‘Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in contravention of this article when it results from the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary:
(a) in defence of any person from unlawful violence;
(b) in order to effect a lawful arrest or to prevent the escape of a person lawfully detained;
(c) in action lawfully taken for the purpose of [b]quelling a riot[/b] or insurrection.’
(b) Article 2 of Protocol No 6 to the ECHR:
‘A State may make provision in its law for the death penalty in respect of acts committed in time of war or of [b]imminent threat of war[/b]; such penalty shall be applied only in the instances laid down in the law and in accordance with its provisions (…)’.
I have this feeling that when the results of the referendum in the Eastern Ukraine are announced, and it goes to those favouring union with Russia, Putin will send his troops in.
This feeling is particularly strong tonight, as Obama and Kerry denounce the referendum in pithy terms.
"The Obama administration denounced as illegal a planned weekend referendum by pro-Russian insurgents pushing for autonomy and independence for portions of eastern Ukraine.
Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday the referendum being planned for Sunday would be "bogus" and would not be recognized (sic) by the West.
"We flatly reject this illegal effort to further divide Ukraine," he told reporters after meeting at the State Department with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton."
I see that the EU and Ashton are in the mix again.