Author: wilks

I called myself wilks when I first started blogging. The idea was that it would afford a measure of anonymity. For much the same reason, there was no photo. Times change, hence the photo, but I decided that even when I changed the blog’s title at the start of 2009, I should remain wilks.

The Gadarene swine

I am not sure which was worse: that MPs decided to keep their allowances or that Gordon Brown and most of the cabinet stayed away, and that a number of senior cabinet ministers voted with the troughing pigs. Only five, Yvette Cooper, John Denham, Jack Straw, Des Browne and Harriet Harman voted for the reform of the arrangements.

See Nick Robinson’s post, Heroes to zeroes?.

Not that long ago, a senior Labour MP, no doubt seeking to put a gloss on the behaviour of her fellow MPs, of all parties, remarked that she believed all MPs went into politics determined to make a difference, and help people. It seems that helping oneself first is what it is really all about. But it was ever thus.

Asleep at the wheel

A damning article by Luke Johnson in this morning’s FT, Bank leaders are a disgrace to capitalism. Johnson reserves his special contempt for RBS,

“Bank directors are not under-rewarded. The six executive directors at Royal Bank of Scotland, for example, took home £16m in cash last year – on top of their accumulated pension entitlements of £26m. These are not entrepreneurs who risk their own capital in life – they are just bank employees. That sort of cash should buy geniuses who never fail. It should pay for leaders who understand the larger role RBS plays in the system, and the vital contribution it makes in financing the private sector, since it claims it has the number one brand in corporate banking.

Yet in undertaking the “largest banking acquisition ever” by buying ABN Amro after the market had begun to turn, RBS has destroyed value and its management credibility on a breathtaking scale. How can they dare to withdraw facilities and berate borrowers when no one has been sacked for such gargantuan incompetence? How do the bosses retain the confidence of their staff, clients and stockholders? RBS was forced into a rescue £12bn rights issue in spite of saying it did not need one. The arrogance of certain of our top bankers is a disgrace to capitalism, while many of the board members of the Big Five appear to have been asleep at the wheel in the past couple of years.”

Yet only a few weeks ago, one of the senior local managers of the bank was telling everyone that the “success” of the rights issue meant that they now had plenty of money to lend. Quite unbelievable.

Going up

From the June edition of Wired,

“What high-speed means of transportation emits less atmospheric carbon than trains, lanes, and automobiles?

The humble counterweight elevator put into service in 1857, which has made vertical density possible from Dubai to Taipei.”

Mind the gap

An interesting article by the FT’s Economics Editor, Chris Giles, this morning in which he suggests that ‘the gap between action and sentiment puts the economy at a tipping point’.

Take surveys of households and companies at face value and the economy appears to be in free fall. Most measures of business confidence are sharply down on a year ago and the Gfk/NOP poll of consumers’ confidence about future economic prospects has declined to its lowest level since 1982.

But what households and companies are saying and what they are doing has rarely been so different. For all the misery poured out to pollsters, hard figures so far show people behaving as if they really believe Britain’s economy problems will be short and shallow.

Companies are not yet taking really tough decisions to cut costs. Instead they are keeping their workforce intact, presumably in the belief that it is better to hang on to employees in bad times because the good times will be with us again soon.