sandwiched

A week of sandwich bars as I travel around various parts of London and beyond. My meetings this week mean I should probably take a packed lunch, but will probably end up in Pret, Eat and similar venues.

NaNoWriMo Storyline Collapse

There I was, innocently collecting a few words for a possible story in November's NaNoWriMo, when all of a sudden the press seems to have grabbed most of them for its own story.

Sometimes you just can't make it up.

darkness
amoral
elitism
bullingdon
oligarch
allegation
political toys
retribution
spin
fundraiser
party
prince
insouciance
club rules
poison
boat
tavern

Oh well

Technorati Tags: rashbre, taverna, agni, mandy, prince+of+darkness, mandelson, osborne, yacht, corfu, oligarch, russian, allegedly

spend

I was around Downing Street today, where civil servants are creating new spending programmes to keep the economy turning in the aftermath of the banksters.

To paraphrase: "Short of cash? let's borrow more. Money is printable."

And we have John Maynard Keynes being quoted by mediaconomists as the next worthy idea.

Keynes of the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which (if my lessons with Mrs Fairclough serve me well) suggested a number of macroeconomic disconnects. Savings and investments would be independent of one another. Spending would be affected by marginal changes in wages. Nowadays we'd call it a tipping point.

The idea everyone has latched on to is that Keynes talked about counter cyclical spending (governments spending more in a downturn). Er, what if the same government has already been spending heavily in a positive market? And what if big business has been busily moving all its production and services to Chindia?

I suspect the politicos and journos are mainly looking for a simple label (Keynes? Galbraith?) and that finer points (eg of countervailing powers) will be glossed over. At the moment it seems to boil down to using public spending to generate employment, wages and grand investment projects during the upcoming tough times. Hmm - big projects using freshly printed money? ...sounds a bit like devaluation of a currency to me. Perhaps €uro 2012 is "game on" again for Britain after all?

Keynes had another thought in his theories, which related to something Lenin had said. It was about debauching a currency, using inflation to destroy wealth. I'm wondering if the City used a different form of debauchery driven from the bonus culture, with very similar consequences?

evening

Pleasant chilled evening. Hints of a Halloween sky. Chianti. Television. Reconnect.

el guincho alegranza loro muerto

Dub corrosion click loops and steel drums through a 303 are not making this wreckaged calypso work for me.

Pablo Diaz Reixa's Canary Island scratchy sample fest may be cutting edge programmed world dance to some, but its crass and badly equalized loops evoke more sunstroke and bad times in Barbados to me.

Press Release over substance. To distort a track title: "de modo que no celebren todos". No celebrations here.

Nah. Loro muerto.

not all etfs are created equal

There's an old story about Joe Kennedy hearing a shoe-shine boy giving stock tips and deciding it was time to get out of the market, shortly before the crash at the end of the 20s.

I snapped this bus advert a few weeks ago, and had a wry smile for similar reasons, when I noticed it wasn't for the latest blockbuster or a new hair shampoo.

No, it was for exchange traded funds, similar to index-tracking pooled funds reflecting performance of an index by holding a diversified basket of assets. Traded on-line, of course, with a small 'i'.

Admittedly not as simple a stock tip from a shoe-shine boy, but maybe a 2008 manifestation of a similar market mind-set.

I originally snapped it onto film and only just uploaded it. Maybe this time its already too late to sell.

crackberry

Yeah, my rather ancient blackberry finally cracked.

I caught it in a car door a few days ago and at the time it kept working, although the screen had a rather severe crack across it.

Then I used it in the rain.

Big mistake, because presumably some water leaked inside. It still worked but then one day the screen had a little mist over it and the colours started to fade. It still knew it was a blackberry, bleeped, rang and the little light flashed, but no pictures or text.

I took it in to be erased by the scientists and they gave me a replacement which is about half the size and weight. They said they needed to move my email back from the USA and then I could converge my main cellphone number and the one on the blackberry.

One less device to remember to charge.

So far so good and I'm keeping it away from car doors.

Wordless Wednesday

spot the Autumnal surveillance camera

Michelle Shocked visiting UK

My last.fm has sometimes questionable musical selections bubble to the top of my playlist, like when I travelled to Canada for three weeks and accidentally left Amy Winehouse on shuffle for about 1500 plays until Melanie visited and changed it to Manic Street Preachers.

Hmm.

Anyway, a proper high listing is Michelle Shocked, who gets classed as a superstar here at rashbre central. I even had tickets for the gig in February at UEA, but it, and that visit, was cancelled.

So it is pleasing to see Michelle's visit in early November and even more pleasing to have some tix for Union Chapel.

the moon is low

Limited time for blog posts this week because of travel. Mainly operating in darkness and powered by expresso.

plan b

Our seaside plans today didn't quite work, despite the fabulous weather.

Too many home tasks to get done, especially as I'm on the road again next week.

However, a walk in the remarkably deserted woods was still good and didn't involve lots of traffic jams.

falling leaves make horizon clearer

Crunching through leaves yesterday afternoon, after finishing one big task and before completing training modules for something next week.

Unfortunately, in addition to slamming my Blackberry in the car door by accident a couple of days ago, my recently replaced Thinkpad has developed the same fault as the previous one, in that the screen keeps cutting out. I guess the replacement one was a similar age to the one I had previously so it must be a general fault with this particular model.

My attempts to do the training modules were interspersed with calls from the helpdesk about my Blackberry "we need to move your email from the USA back to London as part of the replacement" and then blank computer screens every so often.

So the stroll to somewhere leafy was a useful mid-afternoon break from being intermittently online all day and also gave a chance to observe the changing season. Some trees have really gone for that Autumn look, whilst others are still shrugging with a kind of end of summer sunshine appearance.

I guess the serenity of the scene belies the general economic ruin occurring in the background as another squillion or two was wiped from the markets during the day. My guess is that, like the trees, there are some already affected by the coming economic season but those like the pension funds that are still shrugging at the moment, unless truly evergreens, will soon be caught in the same climate.