I’ve been too busy to blog over the last few days and, consequently, have more things to post about than I expected, including:
1) Gordon Brown – of course
2) Tony Blair
3) Hostages
4) Something more about private equity
5) Personal news (walks, eating out etc.)
We watched BBC 1’s one extended coverage of the switch-over of Prime Ministers yesterday afternoon, chiefly shots of the courtyard inside Buckingham Palace while we all waited for Mr Brown’s audience with Her Majesty to finish. It was probably in Gordon Brown’s interests that the audience went on for a long time; it made the changeover seem like more of an event, plus, after 10 years of No. 10 spin, talking to the Queen seems a relatively transparent thing to do – rightly or wrongly, we think we know what it would be like.
I’ve been trying to think of historical parallels to Gordon Brown’s long – hope deferred makes the heart grow sad – wait to be Prime Minister. Although there any number of long waits to ascend thrones, I can’t think of any instance of a wait in a position of such power for a position of even greater power. The only comparisons seem to be Jacob working his seven extra years to marry Rachel or a Louis Pasteur or Marie Curie spending half a lifetime to researching medical treatments.
Now that his ambition is fulfilled, the signs are that neither he nor we are going to suffer any ill effects from that hope deferred. In the light of Mr Blair’s eventual loss of political capital, maybe he came to success too soon. Gordon Brown won’t be squandering any of his political capital, having waited so long to inherit it.
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Chestnuts! Last week I said that I didn’t think Mr Blair should have to risk his safety taking irons out of the fire for the Americans; I think I meant chestnuts. It was the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who steadfastly refused to see that a settlement for the Palestinians really had to be part of the equation when the war on terror began, not Tony Blair. On balance, I still don’t think this envoyship is a good idea. Having the confidence of the Israelis and the Americans is obviously one qualification for the job but it’s by no means enough. How can Tony Blair’s advocacy of humanitarian interventions play in the situation that is facing the population of Gaza, the West Bank and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon? There is one further factor to recommend him, though; no one will need to talk him through how the situations in the Holy Land, Lebanon and Iran connect to one another. Mr Blair will just how much a solution to the problems of the Palestinians could help with forming a strong front of Arab nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to help face down the threat of Iran pressing ahead with its nuclear weapons.
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Apparently, the five British hostages, who were kidnapped from a Baghdad ministry building at the end of May, are believed to be alive still, according to General Petraeus. But why has the BBC stopped following the story? Even if intense media coverage was thought to be unhelpful for negotiations, we could at least be told that. General Petraeus said that the kidnapping was carried out by a section of the Mahdi Army that probably isn’t under the control of Moqtada al Sadr, the Times reported a week ago.
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As I mentioned previously, the second of the samples of financial writing I was called on to produce was about private equity. I don’t think I’ll paste it in hear – not today anyhow. I read in the Sunday paper that pension funds are clubbing together to refuse to pay the exorbitant fees (20%) that private equity houses charge for their skills (three cheers to pension funds). Generally speaking, the financial community seem to be entering a period of asset buying frenzy – very worrying.
One of the points that I made in my article was that definitions of ‘private equity’ tends towards the sloppy. One of the loudest arguments heard in the defence of private equity is that it plays a vital role in providing venture capital for new businesses. Certainly, there was a time when venture capital and private equity were more difficult to distinguish but it ought not to be that difficult to separate the two strands now. Nurturing new and usually small concerns until their success merits a stock market quote is really different from de-listing a household name, loading it with debts and ‘monetising’ its property assets.
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Since last posting I’ve managed to have two good walks. On Saturday we went over to Frensham Little Pond and have a short walk before the rain came on. Today, I decided to have play first and work later because I was expecting more rain this afternoon. I went on a repeat walk (see 23rd March 2006) between Hambledon and Dunsfold. No sign of the unpleasant mongrel this time but I did see a deer, a heron and lots of butterflies. After all the rain I was expecting to see full streams but although the larger streams (all tributaries of the Arun, I guess) had running water in them, when in recent years they might have been almost dry by late June, they were a long way off being full. Pulborough, Arundel and Littlehampton have nothing to fear yet.
Last week I went for an evening meal at the Squirrel, Hurtmore. Actually, this was before my previous blog but I didn’t have time to post about. Anyway, it was a very pleasant evening with a hearty dish of roast pork on the bone and fairly reasonable, too.
Tomorrow, I’m off to Woking because it’s the last day of my old colleagues at my old firm. I’m not sure how much this will be a celebration or how much a wake; I’ll have to take my cue from the others when I get there.
