bankster fat cat food with its fable on the label

I loved the Economist cover this week

A few of us were in a wine bar in Central London when we first heard about the Barclays fine levied because they'd been tinkering with bank rates. It's one of those times when the mainly American word 'leverage' springs to mind. In this case a tiny adjustment that generates millions of dollars.

I couldn't help saying to my fellow sparkling water drinkers that the £290m fine was a mere drop in the ocean compared with the effects of the rate manipulation. Although, like the Higgs boson, most of us don't really understand how it all works unless its described in comic sans.

In the first stage the small tweaks to the rates seemed to support trader personal gains creating Bollinger magnum sized bonuses. The advantage to Barclays would have been tens of millions per day.

It all appears to have run for well over ten years. Such accumulation starts to make the £290m fine seem rather small.

Then the strangest thing, after years of these shenanigans, the generally high Barclay rate suddenly dropped into general alignment with everyone else.

It seems to be at around the time that UK Government was grappling with what to do with errant banks teetering on collapse. We saw other UK banks pressed into takeovers of one another and some getting bailed out by large injections of UK taxpayer money.

This bank escaped those fates, but maybe perhaps conveniently so at a time when the sheer affordability of all the other bail outs must have been a question for the Exchequer.

I wonder if we'll ever know? Even if we ask the man in charge of the bank.

It must be tough for him at the top, on his £20 million per annum package and now to get a further £16 million payoff. That's around 1/8 of the equivalent of the total fine the bank paid. Who needs lotteries?

And he knows nothing about any of it. Until just a few days ago. Top man.

I find it inconceivable that a fairly wide group of people wouldn't have known about this in the chatty Big Bang deregulated City.

I'm similarly bemused that the Financial Services Authority can be based a ten minute walk from the Capital Markets floors where this would have been operating, yet only flagged any of this a short time ago - just ahead of the FSA's own impending disbanding.

Maybe there is an invisible force field around the financial system that no one can see and that can only be broken in very special conditions?

It certainly feels like a very dark matter.

I notice the progressive creep of the pink and blue

I mentioned the pink and blue makeover for London in an earlier post and here's a quick example of it.

Its mainly the new signage that has been turning up in different parts of the central area. Train stations have big extra signs showing the way to key exits and there's been a progressive addition of large scale plastic pop-up signage along some of what will become the key pedestrian routes. A few of the signs are quite hand-wringing in their comment that traffic and access could be quite difficult and to plan alternative routes.

Even as pedestrians we are also getting some areas blocked off, like the whole of the access to St James Park and the Mall. It has been curtained off with steel mesh and consequent black signs showing alternative longer walk-arounds.

I've also started to spot the blue and pink cars with the Olympic logos. I gather that BMW has supplied 4,000 vehicles to ferry VIPs around between the events in the special lanes that are being created. I wonder if there will be a pecking order between the different cars on offer?

It looks as if there's some route testing occurring at the moment, so that the drivers won't get lost in their specially created outside lanes.

shard

London is always in a state of flux. At a smaller level there's the varied installations along the South Bank (currently a South African arts project). And the recent addition of the logo to Tower Bridge.

Because of my delayed entry to the capital today I found myself gently looking for the early signs that I was approaching the middle, by spotting the obvious markers on the skyline.

Anyone that commutes will recognise some of the symbols. Red buses, four rails on overground tube train lines, distant but distinct buildings. Like equivalent glimpses of New York's skyscrapers on the way in from JFK.

But the familiar landmarks of London are changing rapidly too. From the older outline of Battersea Power Station, or Westminster Tower, to Canary Wharf's HSBC and Citicorp, the later Gherkin and Eye and more recently the newly completed Shard. Then there's the emerging and slightly inappropriately named City Tower next to where the new American Embassy will be (in Nine Elms, sarf of the river) and now the Cheesegrater in the proper City just along from the Gherkin.

And Thursday evening marked the preview opening of The Shard, accompanied by laser beams and Schardenfreude from Boris.

Only a week or so since the new cable car opened across the Thames.

Some are being critical of the new skyline, but I'll embrace it. A few more symbols on the map for the capital city. We can have a separate debate about ownership.

And alongside these bigger changes we have the whole central area getting its short term pink and blue makeover.

in which i acquire accidental disaster movie (lite) powers

I started to wonder if I'd inherited some accidental disaster movie powers today. Nothing too widescreen, just some accidental mishaps as I moved around the city.

The first was innocent enough, I'd picked up some train tickets yesterday for a trip today but when I arrived at the station this morning I discovered that it was closed.

Simply a delay to last night's engineering works. A bus service would be provided, but I calculated that this would cause a major disruption based on where I needed to be by 8 a.m.

So it was into the car and off to a different station where I did pick up a train, although it too was delayed because of a previous train that had broken down on the track.

Then to meet my colleague and off to our meeting, where we discovered that there was to be a full scale building evacuation as a test run ahead of the Olympics.

We managed to leave before the start of the test and I then headed into a Boots the Chemist, just as it started to have a power failure. Flashing lights and all, although the till still worked and I managed to get my hay fever tablets.

Then onward uneventfully, until later when I decided to buy some milk but discovered that the supermarket (in a completely different area) had closed all of its chilled food for some indeterminate reason.

I then had to rescue my car from the off-route place I'd left it earlier in the day (did I mention that the parking ticket machine hadn't worked either?)

And back homewards, via a petrol station which - yes - had sealed off the pumps for some kind of maintenance.

I feel as if I've spent the day in a Peter van Greenaway novel.

set your nightingales to stun

After my rescue of the pranged nightingale, I spotted the imprint it had left on the window. It's not as well defined as the ones from robust pigeons flying headlong into glass, but as this one appeared to stun itself, I thought it worthy of a snapshot.

Somebody will know what the coating is that the birdies have which makes the marks, but I'm not convinced the mark on the window does anything to stop other birds from accidentally flying at the same glass.

My theory is that the bird can see through to another part of the house with a window and thinks its a safe flight path.

in which we need to keep taking the tablets

This weekend didn't really go to the original plan.

It started on Friday when we were phoned to say that the place we were supposed to be staying on Saturday had been flooded. They offered a refund and we scrapped our plans completely, although some tickets became unusable.

I'm reminded that I'd seen a single magpie in the garden but am not superstitious in that 'one for sorrow' way, although a little later a novice nightingale flew into a window and succeeded in knocking itself out.

I moved it into some bushes and a few hours later saw it hopping about again. Stunning stuff.

Then we had a mini illness sweep the house. I'm okay, but we ended up getting a supply of antibiotics and narcotics from the weekend doctor.

Personally, I'll be sticking to drinking coffee. Freshly ground at the moment.

So Saturday was scrapped and Sunday diverted. Normal service should have resumed by Monday.

a state of England

A few days of travelling around the centre has given me a chance for some reading. I realise I've pretty much abandoned new normal books now and tend to use the Kindle.

It wasn't something I was expecting, but there's the convenience factor of small size and ability to store a whole reading pile instead of limiting to a single book.

That's not to say I won't pop into bookshops as well, but it does highlight a change.

And yes, I realise my iPad also has a Kindle reader, but there's a few factors that keep me using both. One is reading outdoors, where the iPad isn't as clear if its sunny. The other, which sounds a little feeble is the respective weights. The Kindle is decidedly lighter and more compact than the iPad when reading for a while.

Alongside finishing my proper paperback copy of Hemingway's 'To have and have not' which is set in Key West (which is where I bought it), I've been reading the latest Martin Amis book 'Lionel Asbo'.

They both feature a main protagonist who has to do 'a bit of this and a bit of that' to keep head above water, but for Hemingway's character there's a bit of a downward spiral, whilst Amis gives his character a lottery win.

I've always enjoyed the turns of phrase in Martin Amis writing, and this one continues that, with a set of Dickensian named characters and places set in a missing part of London called Diston, conjuring any number of Hackney/Dalston/Leyton-esque parts of the capital.

We get a slice of London, rough, violent, fairly disgusting and the subsequent magnification of the characters via the immense money that appears within the plot line.

I know Martin Amis leaves many readers divided but I'm one who has enjoyed quite a few of his novels over the years. The early Rachel Papers was a singleminded plot line first book but then the middle books where he painted some of his London street life characters whether directly or indirectly engaged in some form of crime.

And along the way there was Time's Arrow, which took a stark theme and played the action in reverse, I can still remember reading a sample chapter of that in Granta before it emerged as a novel and wanting to finish it when we arrived at my station.

So what to make of the latest one?

A banged-up convict who wins crazy money and dates a Formula 1 Pit Pet who wants to be a poet and sell underwear. A nephew with a torrid secret who is trying to tread an altogether conventional path. A stately home guarded by pitbulls named after murderers. You get the picture?

Some of Martin Amis' writing is truly tonto and all the more fun for it. Other recent London books I read were 'Hackney - that rose red empire' by Sinclair and 'Capital' by Lanchester. Sinclair's was a heavy book and sometimes dull. Lanchester's grounded a believable street story which at times became an over-explained soap opera. Amis drives his questionable set of characters and situations relentlessly right up to the edge. And somehow turns it back on us all.

posh bubble lies

I passed David Cameron in the street again this week. He was walking back from Parliament to Downing Street, which is a brisk 5 minutes, dependent on traffic and obstacles.

It proved to me that he was back from Mexico where he'd distracted from Eurozone and Syria with UK tax dodging and the Falklands.

So his feet on a local pavement might be useful as world media start to provide a London focus for the upcoming games.

The bubble world creates an easy distraction. With the City as a place that makes money out of money, there's every chance to be caught in virtual unreality, like the business guy sealed into his mobile office car in Cosmopolis.

When the Libor thing first appeared in the papers it was on about page 7, along with a mention of the mere £250m fine imposed on the bank implicated in profiteering on billions. Here's the people in the city that makes it's main living out of trading promises, yet here's some of the same self-interested people trading on lies.

It's difficult to comprehend the scale of deceit now in the financial trade, with dodgy housing loans, mis-sold swaps, poor insurance practices, bale-outs at the scale of national economies, global interest leverage fixed by cartel and exploitation of small businesses through sneaky interest rachets.

No wonder submarine captain Osborne whispered "bring about" on the petrol surcharge, as another distraction. I can't work out (a) whether anything is left from that budget or (b) why cowardly Osborne still has his role.

That last statement's not true, of course. Anything's OK if you're in the Riot Club.

on the wrong side of a police line

I found myself on the wrong side of a police line today. I'd been in a meeting in Central London and when it finished I exited the building into sunlight and a surprisingly quiet street.

That's when I noticed the red and white tape.

And then the blue flashing lights and the policemen.

I looked along the road the other way - a similar scene.

Hmm, the door I was existing from seemed to be about in the middle of a 200 metre strip of street that had been cordoned off.

I decided to walk towards the policemen, and the large crowd of people behind them. I also noticed the traffic seemed to be quite backed up behind the police and the flashing lights.

I was fairly aware of the helicopter overhead, but not sure if it was related.

Of course, as I exited the cordoned area I asked the policeman what was happening.

"Suspect package."

Old habits made me walk around a corner. There was now both distance and large building between me and the tape.

As I then walked back towards Whitehall, I noticed what is probably my personal best for a row of buses. It's not so unusual to see a dozen buses in a row in Trafalgar Square.

This time, as I walked towards Westminster Bridge I counted 33 buses. Actually I think there were more but I gave up counting at around that point.

All caught up in the same cordon and road shutdown. I'm hoping it was part of the various London practices that are taking place.

And then over the bridge. Westminster Bridge - after what I'd blogged yesterday, I noticed it was strangely devoid of Eastern Europeans playing card tricks or shell games.

It turns out that today a Route 2 red bus had been commandeered by the police. They drove it alongside the Romanian card players and then swooped to round them all up. Actually, they had attempted to drive it to the bridge but were initially stuck in the dense traffic that I'd noticed. London has its own variation on a car chase. One could surely say the card tricksters were BUSted.

I noticed Shrek and the bagpipe player were still in operation.

we are the space invaders

I've written previously about crossing Westminster Bridge during busy times. If I'm alone I sometimes think of it like a game of Space Invaders, where there's all manner of unexpected obstacle to traverse.

From the south side it starts as you pass the hot dog stand 'chili dogs available' and then progresses all the way to the traffic lights by Parliament and the soon to be named Queen Elizabeth Tower.

There's random tourists, groups of students with identifying hats or tee shirts or jackets, people with cameras taking pictures of "Big Ben" at various distances according to their camera lens.

One of my favourites is the small groups of tourists with wheely bags and cameras, clearly distracted about what they are doing. They sometimes remind me of those little toys that whirl around looking for edges to bump into.

There's always a selection of dodgy traders and someone usually playing bagpipes or an accordion. Nowadays there's a few rickshaws toting for tourists and parked along the red lines as well.

Then there's the rotation between people dressed up as characters from Shrek or the people playing three card trick and shell games. Take a picture of someone in the costume and expect to donate a banknote. And weirdly the card playing crowd or shell game crowds all seem to have a general Eastern European family resemblance to the person operating the game. Except for the normally far Eastern tourist waving £20 banknotes around in the middle.

There's always the gang's 'watcher outers' for whatever illegal operation is under way and they will set up 6 or 7 pitches across the bridge at one time. Nowadays the police are using pedal bikes as a way to home in rapidly on the naughtiness.

I suppose it's inevitable that the area will attract modern day costermongers to ply their wares but rip-off gambling in the shadow of Parliament still seems wrong. I blogged about this some time ago but yesterday noticed that it has now been discussed in Parliament, presumably as another part of the tidy up for the games.

Oh, and on reflection, maybe it's more like Galaxian than Space Invaders?

ancient corner of a marsh

We stayed at a pub after the gig, in a small 17th century place on Romney Marsh. Next door was a churchyard and we had a proper look at the church the next morning.

I initially wondered about the large construction next to the main church, which looked something like an Oast house used for storing hops.

Then I wondered if it was the remnants of an earlier church, maybe in a Nordic style?

It turned out to be something rather improbable. It was the belltower, typically something you put on top of the church. Apparently there's a legend that when two very unlikely people got married, the steeple jumped off the roof of the church.

The practical version is that the original construction was built in the 11th Century as an open structure with a single bell to warn of impending floods. Then it was modernised in the 15th Century by the addition of the external cladding and a full complement of church bells.

For such a small church the main building was well stocked with unusual artefacts too. There was a 13th Century wall fragment showing St Thomas of (nearby) Canterbury and a leaden font from the 12th Century (probably nicked from France), inscribed with the signs of the Zodiac.

And tipping its hat to modernity was a set of precision weights and measures which included the differentiations of a Winchester pint and a separate Wine pint.

They were from as recent times as 1799.

detached viewing?

We were zipping about around Kent at the weekend and did spend some time at a music concert. On the way in there was the usual bag check, but I noticed a slightly different phrasing of a question.

"Do you have a camera?

"Does it have a detachable lens?

I suppose it's a sign of the things to come at the Olympics, where there appears to be a specification for maximum permissible camera. The spec appears to be a maximum size of 30 cms, including the lens.

I presume these measures are to stop commercial photography. I go to a wide range of music venues, from small pubs to muddy fields to theatres and arenas and in some cases quite enjoy taking a few snaps of whom I'm seeing.

I get it that theatres have "no pictures" policies, but I'm less sure about the other categories.

Events like Glastonbury (not on this year) have been kind to picture takers and I guess it spreads the word about some bands as well.

At such an event, there's still the fun of getting to the front for some shows, although its actually quite easy if you follow a more mellow approach to the music.

It's different with a mainly 'single artist' show, where the true fans have queued for hours to take their spot. We polled into the gig on Saturday about 10 minutes before the main act was due to start, so there were about 6,500 people in front of us in any case.

So we initially found a spot on the stripy cable casing that runs from the mixer desk to the main stage. It gives a usable height advantage if you are late and don't mind a slightly oblique angle.

But true to form, many of the people who had spread out picnic cloths and little chairs actually moved forward as the main act started, so a better position was available in the front but quite a long way back.

That's why the pictures are all 'top halves'. There were too many people in front to get legs as well. And I had to use an itsy little camera without a detachable lens.