Category: Uncategorized

Great Crested Grebes

One of the discoveries this past year has been the writing of Mark Cocker. In the 1970s I never missed Harry Griffin’s Country Diary in The Guardian, and walking in the Lake District in the early autumn of 2005, Caroline bought me A Lifetime of Mountains, Martin Wainwright’s selection of Harry Griffin’s best columns. It was reading those that persuaded me to begin these Dartmoor Letters. But it was not until I bought Caroline A Tiger in the Sand, in anticipation of our birding week in North Norfolk in late January, that I realised that Mark Cocker has been a regular Country Diary columnist for nearly twenty years. It shows how long it has been since I read The Guardian (and is almost enough to make me change the daily paper).

In his Introduction, Cocker speaks of the “emotional charge of the encounter, the deep fulfilment that flows from our engagement with our fellow creatures”. As we walked  up at the Hennock reservoirs this morning, I thought of the piece I had just read, and in particular

“Nothing we do to capture our encounters can quite match up to the living reality. It will always evade and exceed our imaginations, whether it is a tiger in the jungle or a blackbird in the garden. This is where I believe writing on nature, in its various forms, is wholly distinct from a particular kind of wildlife television. Moving images of wildlife often far exceed, in terms of dramatic content and physical closeness, our own modest experiences of nature. They leave nothing unspoken, nor hint at any wider experience and, in a way, seek to replace our experience of the genuine article and become a substitute satisfaction.”

Last Sunday we had also been at Hennock but then in late afternoon. As well as seeing six plus Bullfinches, we also saw Crossbills in the treetops in the plantation alongside Tottiford Reservoir. This was a first for us at the Reservoirs. Hoping to see the Crossbills again, we drove this morning to Trenchford. As it turned out, no Bullfinches and no Crossbills. But instead we watched a pair of Great Crested Grebes, close to the bridge over the Trenchford stream, beginning their courtship. At one moment necks intertwined, at another synchronised diving; water weed offered by one to the other and then returned. It was quite magical.

Another nail in the coffin of DB

Further to my post earlier in the week, Matching pension liabilities, the story that led the front page of the FT today, Companies face bigger pensions risk levy, points up the problem and choices that employers with defined benefits schemes face. One further thought. Norma Cohen suggests that the effect of proposals signposted by Partha Dasgupta, the chief executive of the PPF could

“prompt schemes to pare the billions they have invested in equities and would likely lead to demands the government do much more of its borrowing in long-term index-linked gilts that mirror the movements in pension liabilities more closely than any other asset class.”

And that will, in time, radically change the investor profile of many of our leading companies.

Still all to play for

We are still waiting for the fat lady to sing. An excellent analysis in Economist.com on the Texas and Ohio Primaries

What next? The nomination will go to the person who can amass 2,025 delegates. Before Tuesday Mr Obama led in the delegate count, but neither candidate would have been able to reach the magic number without superdelegates. That has not changed. So the campaigns now have to work out how to woo the superdelegates. Mrs Clinton can point to a victory in a state like Ohio and say that she can swing it to the Democratic column in November, but Mr Obama can point to his big success in Virginia and make a similar argument. Right now it seems that Mr Obama will be able to claim a lead in raw popular votes, but Mrs Clinton can point to her successes in primaries to Mr Obama’s successes in caucuses. The race between Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama will continue, and some Democrats will regret that. But Mrs Clinton has undoubtedly earned the right to be there.

It will be a long fight through the early summer, and the outcome is uncertain. Meanwhile John McCain has the Republican nomination, and George Bush’s endorsement (with the obligatory photo opportunity in the White House Rose Garden). McCain may need this to burnish his conservative credentials, but my bet is that that photo will appear in Democratic campaign ads in due course. Would you really want to be linked to the least successful US President in living memory (and that list includes both Nixon and Carter).

The death of defined benefit

Although it may still be premature to announce the death of defined benefit pension schemes, their days are numbered. As reported this morning in the FT, another pensions consultancy, Aon Pensions Consultants, has warned that

Final salary pension schemes face their worst ever deficits if plans go ahead for new accounting standards and more generous assumptions about life expectancy.

To the pensions industry this is old news (and the defined benefit scheme has in truth been an inordinately long time in dying: I was advising on changing schemes more than 15 years ago), but there is another and equally important aspect. Most public sector schemes are salary and service related, and the cost of these schemes is already far higher than many people realise. Changing the assumptions for life expectancy will only make things worse. The government recognised that action needed to be taken in relation to the state pension, and whether or not Personal Accounts are the right anwer (I am not convinced), the nettle was grasped. Unfortunately this has not been the case with public sector pensions. It will have to be, because the burgeoning costs of these pensions is a millstone around the neck of the public purse: and the quid pro quo (of receiving below private sector pay but enjoying a full pension promise) is not as persuasive an argument as hitherto. But don’t hold your breath for this government to do anything about it.