I thought this post was posted yesterday but it appears to have disappeared (except in the edit function)

Last week was too busy; too much work, no relaxation, no posting and certainly no proper walk. Today's post will include stuff on the following:

Gordon Brown and the crisis
BBC and that appeal
Back to the crisis
What are the alternatives

Gordon Brown was back on the Today programme on Friday. But why he was broadcasting wasn't clear because all that we heard was that the financial crisis was a global problem and that the Conservatives were just sitting on their hands. Both of these claims have an element of truth in them but the Prime Minister can't just go on repeating them for the whole of 2009 (and part of 2010). It seemed as if the interview was just a pre-emptive sting drawing exercise ahead of the announcement of the second quarter of negative growth (or was it the unemployment figures?). Evan Davies didn't see to know what to do with him.

Credit to Mr Brown for keeping up with the 'appearances' on the radio but he does need to have new things to say. if he keeps on repeating himself, it just feels like we're all being kept in after school. Furthermore, some of the things he said don't ring true: - our national debt low; well, only if one takes all the civil service and military pensions, which the government will have to find the money for, out of the equation.

Earlier in the week Alistair Darling and Lord Myners made a better stab at explaining the government's latest scheme for protecting the banks from their own toxic investments. At least he was talking about current stuff and trying to explain what was going on. However,it's probably a measure of how stretched the Treasury is that we seemed to hear more about what David Cameron and Nick Clegg thought of the plan (not much) than how the government intended it to work. And it's still not clear if it's really government bail out Mk 2 or if the government should have had a toxic asset insurance scheme back in October or if it's a coherent second stage.

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Speaking of Evan Davies,; his series on the financial crisis on BBC2 on Wednesdays has been very illuminating.

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The BBC's decision on the DEC disaster appeal seems perfectly correct. The real issue about disaster emergency relief for Gaza isn't really raising the money, it's persuading the Israelis to let the emergency supplies across the border. Hamas itself could, apparently, pay for a lot of the relief with cash it holds but, of course, the Israelis wouldn't stand for that. Whether or not the supplies are allowed across is the new focus of the struggle and the recipients are just hostages of the situation. Clearly, there are different views about who is most at fault here and the answer partly depends upon how long a view you take. In the short term, there's a clear need for the aid but letting it through would be a kind of victory for Hamas. A longer term perspective might suggest that letting the aid into Gaza allows Hamas to carry on being more anti-Israeli than they are FOR their own people. also, although they have popular support there must be some doubt as to how freely it is given.

The effect of the DEC emergency relief on this equation is to put more pressure on the Israelis to allow relief supplies in than, say, if it was just donated by Saudi Arabia. Because of this it seems to me that the BBC (and Sky) made the right decision and Douglas Alexander and the Chairman of the Charities Commission had no business interfering. Tony Benn said that the BBC had given into the pro-Israel lobby but you might just as well say the corporation have stood up to the Labour government. It was badly done on Alexander's part.
Of course, as many have pointed out, the rights and wrongs of supporting the appeal financially is quite a different matter from the BBC's decisions about giving it air time.

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Having now nearly finished Robert Peston's 'Who runs Britain?' I'm more impressed than I was. I particularly enjoyed reading about the goings on of Philip Green and Stuart Rose and M&S. However, I'm not so convinced by the the implied argument that seems to run something like this: capitalism is wonderful at allocating capital fruitfully but private equity went to far. Capitalism may have looked pretty good if you were an investor or had the kind of career that the people Peston writes about have had but I suspect that the careers of most people in the private sector leave them feeling that capitalism is pretty dire at allocating human resources.

Many people must wonder to themselves why they have to work as hard as if there was a war going on when some of the things they are asked to do are so such stupid things. People daren't protest because most companies have a top down command structure and they know that the bosses don't really want to know. Wisdom is a one way street and the same holds for relations with customers.

Now, all this is more open to question than it has been for a long time. Big companies may be the best way of doing business we have but their record for providing job satisfaction, customer satisfaction, job security, pensions and increased national wealth looks dubious. For the time being companies may try to restore the status quo by requiring their (remaining) staff to work harder and the staff may try but it doesn't seem at all sure that approach is going to restore prosperity.

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William Keegan was hinting in yesterday's Observer that there might be exchange controls around the corner - at least it looked like that. Maybe the crisis summit in early April will see some strategy for cooperating on exchange rates.

Actually, Jim Rogers, who made the 'sell sterling' comment a few days ago is famed as an investor in commodities. And this looks like another areas where there might be some collaboration by governments or other developments. In part the inflation of 2007 and the first part of 2008 looks to have been partly the result of speculation in commodities (especially oil)so the cost of living indices don't seem to be doing what they used to. What we really need is an inflation index which calculates how much of the inflation is due to people investing in commodities. Buying commodities because you need them is fundamentally different from buying them because you reckon they'll store or grow value for you. The latter type of purchaser is always going to have to sell at some stage.

With energy companies already offering to let you lock on to a particular price for a few months, it may not be long before ordinary folk go onto a price insure website and guarantee themselves petrol prices or gas bills.

The way it would work would be something like this: you don't want energy price rises and falls making your bills fluctuate so the energy company offer you a deal that smooths the changes for you with, possibly, a trend upwards or downwards. this part might be a bit of a gamble for the customer. In fact it could lead to a whole new kind of gambling. It must be happening already somewhere.

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On the personal front, we've done our bit to fight recession by acquiring an analogue dvd recorder from Comet. with all the talk I was expecting the shop to be empty but it wasn't quite like that. we've managed to play a pre-recorded dvd and to record from BBC2 but haven't quite worked out how to record the Freeview channels.

Hopefully, there'l be time for a walk this week.