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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » No boundary changes and no AV: EdM is proving to be a lucky
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » No boundary changes and no AV: EdM is proving to be a lucky LAB leader
There is a bit of talk as to whether certain Conservative MP are able to be endorsed by UKIP and stand with two party emblems next to their name on the ballots paper. This is now possible under updated election law. This week Peter Bone MP took to the airwaves arguing for joint Conservative and UKIP candidates to take advantage of this:
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Someone should come up with a maxim about Lucky generals.
We keep on getting told that the biggest political element in the county is the anyone but the Conservatives movement.
AV would have helped that demographic.
As Chris Huhne said AV would have denied Thatcher majorities in the 80s.
Almost 10 months to the day, the Co-Op bank debt is downgraded to junk status, so far nothing from Balls, Leslie, Creasy and others who have been calling for an end to loan sharks, unethical lending and putting people before profits. Will the Labour Party's own debt be part of the junk?
Have they something to hide?
He is going to be crucified in the GE.
Degraded bank, Degraded Party, Degraded Policies on Banking Reform. So what has happened to the ethical stance in their lending division?
http://www.party.coop/lists/members-of-parliament/
It might keep some of them out of the media until it all dies down.
Perhaps this extract from the Co-op Banking Group's 2012 Annual Report might help answer part of that question:
A note on political donations
During the year, an annual donation of £563,000 (2011: £533,000) was made to The Co-operative Party. In addition, £242,000 (2011: £234,000) was paid in grants to Co-operative Party Councils. The Group Board also authorised a donation of £10,000 as a contribution to The Co-operative Party’s campaigning activities in advance of the May 2012 Greater London Authority and London Mayoral elections. In addition, a number of donations totalling £28,500 (2011: £28,500) (including in-kind contributions) were made to The Co-operative Party to support a range of activity including party conferences. The Co-operative Party reports donations to the Electoral Commission in accordance with its reporting obligations as a registered political party under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
The Group Board also approved the donation of £50,000 through the Labour Party to support the Shadow Chancellor’s office.
Furthermore, during the course of 2012, a number of donations were made to support various Labour Party events, including at a national and local level with a value of no more than £11,550. With 2012 designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Co-operatives, the Group has also supported a number of Parliamentarians who have undertaken study tours about the global co-operative sector, and these donations have been recorded in relevant Registers of Financial Interests.
Time for Osborne to try an EU style bailin by the bank's depositors?
*titters*
"The viability of an estuary hub airport would also require the closure of Heathrow – a course of action that would have unacceptable consequences for individuals, businesses in the vicinity of the existing airport and the local economy."
Not "significant". Not "large". Not "greater than other options". Just "unacceptable". It's worth bearing in mind that replacing Heathrow with an airport elsewhere would recreate all those jobs and businesses somewhere else. This doesn't sound like this has been a cost-benefit analysis, this sounds like they've buckled to scare-mongering from the BAA lobby, and local MPs.
Which bank has made big loans to Labour? Is it not odd that Ed M and Ed B are so damn quiet on the failings of the Co-Op bank? Normally if there is a problem in the banking sector they are all over the media like a rash.
Wrong to gloat; mustn't gloat. But gloat I will!
Not counting chickens though. Just dreaming!
STV by 2025, and wholly elected Upper House before that.
But could the government step in to rescue a group which is so closely connected with a political party?
Of course not, because:
(a) You've explained the principle succinctly in your piece; "Instead David Cameron’s Conservatives are now going to have to try and win back the support of UKIP while not alienating their more moderate supporters.". Precisely: FPTP forces parties to build a broad consensus on a pre-agreed manifesto. An election is not an opportunity to express some half-baked disgruntlement, nor is it an opinion poll: it's about making a choice.
(b) Anyway, even in crude party-political calculation terms, it's very unlikely that AV would help the Conservatives.
Having checked the numbers, Ferrovial's stake in Heathrow is now down to 33%. The other shareholders are: Qatar Holding 20%, Britannia Airport Partners 13.29%, GIC 11.88%, Alinda 11.18%, and Stable Investment Corporation 10%. (GIC is the Government of Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund. I don't know who Stable Investment Corporation is, but I would guess a private equity or hedge fund.)
When the expense scandal first broke, I suggested a different solution on a blog (reproduced here with minor alterations):
Being an MP is an unusual job; you have twin responsibilities in London and in a constituency. Add in other requirements, like stability for young families, and you get a set of dramatically conflicting requirements. It is not unique for people to be required to work in two far-flung locales, but it is unusual.
The state buys a nice four-bedroom family home in each constituency outside London. The MP can choose to live there, in which case they pay rent, or in their own house, in which case the state rents out the unused state-owned property.
The state also buys properties within Central London for out-of-London MPs. If an MP uses this, then they pay full market rent on it. Alternatively, they can rent a Central London flat or house on the open market. Rents will be set by price according to the local rental market on a yearly basis.
They do not get any help with paying the rent from the state; no rebates or expenses.
However if they rent both a constituency and a London state-owned home, then they only pay for each when they are in residence. This means that they can decamp to their constituencies for recess or constituency work at no cost; a reasonable compromise. if the family stays in the constituency home whilst the MP lives in London, they pay rent on both.
MPs will be able to chop-and-change whether they live in the state-owned or private homes, but only if their circumstances change, e.g. marriage, divorce, children attending new school, etc. All such changes should be approved by a committee.
Simple. ;-)
The US repeatedly sought to get the UK authorities to take an interest in criminality of an astonishing level and the UK just did not want to know (probably because we were scared that one more thing might bring the banks toppling down). That is what Osborne was talking about and he was right. What has come out since he made his comments has vindicated his position many times over.
This time the ONS announce that the UK trade deficit narrowed in March with signs that manufacturing exports to non EU countries had made a significant contribution to the improvement.
Another Richard will be disappointed that we haven't recovered 25 years of decline in one month but the less grumpy will note that the longest journeys begin with baby steps in the right direction.
UK trade moved further towards positive territory in March as the pound wallowed well below its pre-crisis highs.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that the British trade deficit contracted to £9.056bn from £9.165bn in the month before and may continue to narrow due to Sterling scraping a 20-month low in March.
Including the UK trade surplus in services, the overall deficit decreased to £3.130bn.
The goods trade deficit between Britain and other EU countries worsened, however, rising to £5.6bn in March from £5.0bn in February.
This latter deterioration came as improved trade positions with Italy and Ireland were offset by increased deficits with Germany and the Netherlands, according to the ONS.
On the up-side for manufacturers, the balance with the rest of the world – which is dominated by major emerging markets – did improve as the deficit fell from £4.2bn to £3.5bn, partly due to better exports to the US.
A word of caution though. The trade balance figures do tend to show wide monthly variances with recent figures following a roller-coaster pattern with underlying improvement slow. Still this month remains good news and the chances of it continuing remain higher with the economic recovery now well under way.
Enough here for Markit's Chief Economist, Chris Williamson to pronounce:
"Official data and surveys paint an encouraging picture of the UK gaining market share in overseas markets, suggesting the economy is showing signs of rebalancing away from domestic consumption to export-led growth."
Another Richard to take note.
There's just too much fannying around with the day to day business of government.
Take Tony Blair, won stonking majorities, but was stymied by Gordon Brown.
I have some very interesting notes on the UK electricity market from Redholm Informatics which I'm happy to share with you if you're interested. Drop me an email at my username at gmail.com
Cheers, Robert
Did the banking fraternity, even the lefty bit, really learn nothing from Ambro?
Too much fannying around.
If interest rates go up the upward pressure on wages will become severe and the government will have a lot of unhappy voters. There are no unmixed blessings in economics!
Barclays 1690, National and Provincial (NatWest) 1833, HSBC 1865 etc
"Another day, another deranged report on the future of Heathrow. This time it is the Transport Select Committee suggesting that London's main airport be extended to four (four!) runways, doubling the airport's size and blighting the lives of millions of people who live in West London.
Forget the various horse racing scandals. We must ask: were the members of the select committee doped? Or is it just that they wrote their report without looking at a map?
It is – once again from the current political class – the sheer lack of ambition and vision that it is so depressing.
Extending Heathrow rather than looking for a proper long-term solution is simply corporatist defeatism. As though all the airline industry has to do is launch another of its interminable public affairs campaigns and the country will roll over."
The real blunder by the Tories was scuppering their own boundary reforms.
A bank has liabilities (the money it owes you, a depositor), and assets (i.e. the money it is owed by its creditors - or to put it another way, people to whom it has lent to).
So, simplified, the Co-Op would have a balance sheet that looked like this:
Loans to customers £100
balanced by
Deposits (i.e. loans *from* customers) £90
Shareholders' equity (i.e. buffer) £10
Now, if 10% of customers fail to repay their loans, then the bank makes a loss of £10, and shareholders are wiped out (their equity or the buffer is wiped out), but the depositors are still safe.
If, on the other hand, 20% of customers fail to repay their loans, then the bank has assets of £80, and liabilities of £90.
Splitting a bank into a good bank / bad bank only works if there are enough 'good' loans to cover the liabilties (i.e. customer depositors).
A halal lamb burger made by a company supplying Leicester schools contained up to 50% pork, the city council has confirmed.
The products were made by Doncaster-based Paragon Quality Foods Limited, which said it had never knowingly bought or handled pork.
The discovery was made on 18 April and the product was withdrawn but details only became public on Thursday.
A DNA test found the burger contained between 10 and 50% pork.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-22479712
As I understand it, you set "good loans" against deposits (taxpayer guaranteed), and by bringing over the "bad loans" (i.e. risky, not necessarily in default) to a new balance sheet you allow investors to look at that portfolio for what it is, a high-risk/reward one with no taxpayer guarantee.
Edit: I think leveraging is your answer, that is to say, banks lent out far more than they ever held in deposits. Thus you can achieve the split that way.
If the ego-driven people could go back to trying to get one over each other by building fantastical machines again, rather than by gee-whizz mergers, we might stop having so many of these problems.
As I say, the only way this can not cause a reduction in consumption in the UK would be if wages start to increase in real terms again by enough to set off the difference.
The latest Star Trek film is awesome, and I've seen it four times already.
And by this evening, it will be six times.
Now a certain Dan Hodges has beaten you to the post
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100216130/nick-cleggs-coffin-lid-is-creaking-are-we-witnessing-the-resurrection-of-the-lib-dems/
Ed Miliband is the Star V: The Final Frontier of politics.
The way a bank works is this. When you put money in a bank, you become a creditor of the bank. The bank then takes the money you lent it, and lends it again to someone else. The money it is owed (loans) are its assets, and the money it owes (to you) is its liabilities.
Essentially, you - when you put money in the Royal Bank of Scotland - lent money to the Candy Brothers, who bet on the Middlesex Hospital in Fitzrovia becoming a great success.
If the Candy Brothers and their ilk cannot repay the money, then the bank is bust. And they cannot repay you. It's not a question of rescuing bankers, it's a question of rescuing depositors. It was you, the person who put money in the bank, who was being rescued, not the bankers.
Edit: Before Mark Senior gets upset, the term cockroach is meant as a compliment.
The problem of bad debts is that they are a part of the operating cost so if they are higher than allowed for profitability disappears.
This is where the shareholders are supposed to provide the buffer. And it appears in the case of the Co op they can't.
Still don't quite see where buying 621 branches was supposed to help with that lack of a buffer.
Isn't the bigger problem that recapitalisation seeks to address a loss of confidence in lenders to the bank? Like a bank run (or the big name lender version)? Thus a taxpayer guarantee is part of that.
I put some question marks in there but I think it fits together.
IIRC, Britannia is the Quebecois government fund
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/10048475/Half-of-families-suffer-in-hospital.html
real life experience versus NHS statistics, who to believe ?
We've even had people here argue, apparently in all seriousness, that Brown should have let RBS and Lloyds go bust. That would have wiped out some enormous proportion - I'd guess up to half - of all the businesses in the UK.
By the way, the Co-Op's cunning plan was to buy the 621 branches by borrowing money from the government at low interest rates. The hope would be that they would make enough money operating these branches over the next few years that the hole would be filled by cash flow. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us taxpayers), Danny Alexander refused to sign off on it.
"The ECB is obviously in a difficult position. For Germany it would actually have to raise rates slightly at the moment, but for other countries it would have to do even more for more liquidity to be made available and especially for liquidity to reach corporate financing."
The same pressures will also apply here in the UK if the current pace of growth persists.
A lot though depends on inflation.
Even though headline inflation is higher in the UK than in Germany and the rest of the EU (2.7% vs 1.2%), which would indicate that upward pressure on rates should be higher here, this argument is not clear cut. The UK figure carries the effect of recent fiscal and administrative pricing changes and hides an underlying rate estimated to be around 1.8% [Goldman Sachs]. So with little pressure on inflation from wage settlements, the BoE should be able to hold interest rates low in the short to medium term. Economists are even revising down the BoE forecast that inflation will peak at over 3 percent later this year.
In addition, Osborne has loosened the BoE MPC mandate to allow it to pursue broader targets of growth and employment rather than just inflation which may allow increases in interest rates to be delayed even longer than would previously have been the case.
Osborne will no doubt be hoping that the BoE keeps interest rates low at least until standards of living start to both improve and be felt by the public to be improving. My guess is that his ideal time for a significant rate rise might be around June 2015!
The way our banks were saved protected the vested interests of the staff, the shareholders and the depositers in that order. Had we had legislation in place (AND WE STILL DON'T FOR PITY'S SAKE) that protected the depositers ahead of the other interests they could in theory have gone hang. Like that was ever going to happen.
Too big to fail, too big to jail, too big for their own boots. The conduct of our bankers makes a rightwinger like me even more angry than the performance of Gordon Brown.
One is to raise interests significantly, to suppress inflation (and lower long-term expectations for inflation), which I don't think will happen since the economy seems to fragile, including consumer spending;
The other is to indicate that the UK is on the mend by raising interest rates slightly, perhaps to 1%. The effect on inflation expectations might be enough to cancel out the pain to borrowers, whilst giving a positive signal about growth. Of course, this plan backfires if the economy turns downward again. If there is any movement on interest rates - and late this year is I think the earliest - then I think it will be more like this.
Coop was stuck in the middle ground - the theory was increasing the scale allows them to amortise the regulatory burden over a greater income base
Depositors in these institutions, on the other hand, kept all their money.
And there have been very substantial job losses in the financial services industry. Between the 4th quarter of 2008 and the start of last year, the number of people employed in the sector dropped by more than 100,000, and there will have been more lay-offs in the last year.
So: depositors kept their money, shareholders lost most of theirs, and lots of bankers lost their jobs.
Thanks for that info. It certainly supports your view, but from an initial browse and a little thought I do have some doubts, particularly over economic recovery and other factors.
I'll peruse and ponder more over the weekend.
That is how Central Government is holding all the Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley mortgage books through an asset resolution holding company.
So the Britannia mortgage books could be split out from the Co-op bank and transferred to central government.
A dummy run for the RBoS and Lloyds group restructuring plans perhaps? Although that may mean Mervyn King in his dying days stealing the wizard's mantle from Mark Carney!
I wouldn't have thought it would be impossible to find a way of managing their bankruptcy that didn't bring the rest of the economy down with it, but if that is the case then the only alternative is for the state to run banking
If the credit crunch eases, as it seems to be doing, then the BoE is going to have to move very carefully and skillfully. Hmmm...
By first picture you mean Star Trek: The Motion Picture?
Into Darkness is cinematic magic.