Wrong kind of snow...

Well, it's snowing again and coming down pretty thick and fast. The traffic on the High Road is moving rather gingerly since the snow is sticking despite the vehicles.

The trouble is, it's the wrong kind of snow. Or rather, it's the wrong time for snow. The tubes are all working properly and the buses are out pootling along, albeit slowly. It has to snow in the wee small hours if it's going to have much lasting effect, then it can cover the roads and tracks and bring everything grinding to a halt. Snowing heavily during the rush and then the normal day is just annoying. It won't stick hard enough for long enough.

In short, kiddies, I can't justify a snow day. But I can see the attendees on my guest list dusting off their finest apologies just in case... Maybe a shilling to the Karma Pixies was below the going rate? A Half-Crown, perhaps?

Edited to add: Furtle has gone to work, but I start out a bit later. The outliers of the Tube system are beginning to squeak and the Northern Line is reporting minor delays because of signal failure at High Barnet. The elastoplast they stuck up after the jollies of the other day has clearly dropped off in the cold...

Wrong kind of snow...

Well, it's snowing again and coming down pretty thick and fast. The traffic on the High Road is moving rather gingerly since the snow is sticking despite the vehicles.

The trouble is, it's the wrong kind of snow. Or rather, it's the wrong time for snow. The tubes are all working properly and the buses are out pootling along, albeit slowly. It has to snow in the wee small hours if it's going to have much lasting effect, then it can cover the roads and tracks and bring everything grinding to a halt. Snowing heavily during the rush and then the normal day is just annoying. It won't stick hard enough for long enough.

In short, kiddies, I can't justify a snow day. But I can see the attendees on my guest list dusting off their finest apologies just in case... Maybe a shilling to the Karma Pixies was below the going rate? A Half-Crown, perhaps?

Edited to add: Furtle has gone to work, but I start out a bit later. The outliers of the Tube system are beginning to squeak and the Northern Line is reporting minor delays because of signal failure at High Barnet. The elastoplast they stuck up after the jollies of the other day has clearly dropped off in the cold...

Shooting's too good for them...

Let me see if I’ve got this right.

The global economy is supposed to be coughing up blood; all the major economies are in or facing recession at best and though we are supposed to play three wise monkeys on the issue, the UK economy in particular may or may not be dropping out of recession into full-blown depression.

The situation is such that unemployment lines are growing, incomes are falling, production is through the floor and businesses are going bust.

My limited understanding of the situation leaves me at something of a loss to see quite how we got where we are, other than it seems to have started because a bunch of negligent bankers – maybe even criminally negligent bankers – in the United States loaned staggering amounts of money to people and institutions that had no hope in hell of ever paying them off, or at least could only sustain repayments as long as the economy was growing.

Isn’t this a glorified pyramid scheme? Aren’t they illegal?

Anyway, having indulged in a little sub-prime lending in the land of euphemism, these liabilities seem to have been sold on to other banks worlds wide who in turn have felt the credit squeeze when it became apparent that no one was going to honour these loans. And then everyone starts calling in debts no-one can pay and the whole house of cards collapses. And none of this even touches the probability of any frauds that may have contributed to the downfall of the banking sector.

I seem to recall that the banks – along with any other number of industries – have been able to creak along in one fashion or another on the back of impossibly and incomprehensively huge infusions of public money. Or rather, governments have borrowed against future tax income to bail these people out.

We don’t even know if these back-breaking bail outs will even work: it’s far too early to say.

So when I read in the Times a headline: Stampede by banks to beat bonus crackdown and that Lloyds and Barclays (following the example of the Royal Bank of Scotland, who I recall were early beneficiaries of the handouts from the public purse) are going to push out millions of pounds in bonuses to traders and senior bankers before threatened crackdowns come into force, well…

Outrage over so-called fat cats has largely passed me by in the past, but for a bank – Lloyds – that has received £17 billion in rescue money because of its culpability in the global scam that lends money to beggars , to even think of paying out bonuses of hundreds of millions of pounds for performances that should have them sacked at best and brought up before the beak at worst.

I have never seen myself as a socialist; if someone works hard and well, I see no reason why they shouldn’t earn whatever they can get for it, but that’s the key. Bonuses and awards should not be automatic; they should be clearly and closely linked to performance.

There are two things wrong: banks are gratuitously rewarding themselves for failure and they’re doing it with our money, not their own.

Come the revolution…

Shooting's too good for them...

Let me see if I’ve got this right.

The global economy is supposed to be coughing up blood; all the major economies are in or facing recession at best and though we are supposed to play three wise monkeys on the issue, the UK economy in particular may or may not be dropping out of recession into full-blown depression.

The situation is such that unemployment lines are growing, incomes are falling, production is through the floor and businesses are going bust.

My limited understanding of the situation leaves me at something of a loss to see quite how we got where we are, other than it seems to have started because a bunch of negligent bankers – maybe even criminally negligent bankers – in the United States loaned staggering amounts of money to people and institutions that had no hope in hell of ever paying them off, or at least could only sustain repayments as long as the economy was growing.

Isn’t this a glorified pyramid scheme? Aren’t they illegal?

Anyway, having indulged in a little sub-prime lending in the land of euphemism, these liabilities seem to have been sold on to other banks worlds wide who in turn have felt the credit squeeze when it became apparent that no one was going to honour these loans. And then everyone starts calling in debts no-one can pay and the whole house of cards collapses. And none of this even touches the probability of any frauds that may have contributed to the downfall of the banking sector.

I seem to recall that the banks – along with any other number of industries – have been able to creak along in one fashion or another on the back of impossibly and incomprehensively huge infusions of public money. Or rather, governments have borrowed against future tax income to bail these people out.

We don’t even know if these back-breaking bail outs will even work: it’s far too early to say.

So when I read in the Times a headline: Stampede by banks to beat bonus crackdown and that Lloyds and Barclays (following the example of the Royal Bank of Scotland, who I recall were early beneficiaries of the handouts from the public purse) are going to push out millions of pounds in bonuses to traders and senior bankers before threatened crackdowns come into force, well…

Outrage over so-called fat cats has largely passed me by in the past, but for a bank – Lloyds – that has received £17 billion in rescue money because of its culpability in the global scam that lends money to beggars , to even think of paying out bonuses of hundreds of millions of pounds for performances that should have them sacked at best and brought up before the beak at worst.

I have never seen myself as a socialist; if someone works hard and well, I see no reason why they shouldn’t earn whatever they can get for it, but that’s the key. Bonuses and awards should not be automatic; they should be clearly and closely linked to performance.

There are two things wrong: banks are gratuitously rewarding themselves for failure and they’re doing it with our money, not their own.

Come the revolution…