Ed Miliband’s taxing attempt to stop his ratings slide

Ed Miliband is calling for an end to UK tax havens, starting with the Channel Islands and Isle of Man. Under current rules, British residents are able to keep money in offshore  accounts where it can go unnoticed by HM Revenue and Customs. Labour said the government should "start with diplomacy" to try to encourage tax havens to reform. But if that fails, the opposition said ministers should threaten to put them on an international blacklist. (1)

But shouldn't the UK be under a blacklist status too? The book "Treasure Islands" exposes how the City of London functions as a tax haven within Britain for any countries outside - Britain has a tax haven at the heart of
its financial centre.

The City's "elsewhere" status in Britain stems from a simple formula: over centuries, sovereigns and governments have sought City loans, and in exchange the City has extracted privileges and freedoms from rules and laws to which the rest of Britain must submit. The City does have a noble tradition of standing up for citizens' freedoms against despotic sovereigns, but this has morphed into freedom for money.

So, the corporation has two main claims to being a tax haven: first, as a semi-alien entity, floating partly free from Britain (just as the Cayman Islands are), and second, as the hub of a global network of tax havens sucking up offshore trillions from around the world and sending it, or the business of handling it, to London. These are possibly the biggest reasons for the City's wealth and power - yet how many Britons understand this? (2)

The fear of a Tobin tax sending millions away from the City of London - recently raised with the European meeting - led to David Cameron using a veto to prevent that. It wasn't Jersey or Guernsey that he was protecting; the bottom line for the UK, as we have seen historically with regard to unfair tax competition, is that they are quite prepared to sacrifice the Channel Islands if required, but they are not prepared to give up their own internal tax haven.

To be true, the City does channel a flow of funds from the Channel Islands, but it also cheerfully deals with flows from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, Hong Kong and the Bahamas. How will Ed Milliband deal with those? Will he blacklist the Chinese and face down any economic reprisals they may take? Since the OECD itself had trouble getting Hong Kong to sign up to the much more limited Tax Information Exchange Agreements, I think it is unlikely that he'd risk a conflict, and face embargoes from trading opportunities within China.

So what is it all about? Ed Miliband's popularity has slumped and he badly needs some kind of credibility if he is to stay on as leader of the labour party, and be potentially election material. The simplest way of getting a good lot of publicity and not to get much in the way of bad feedback is to drum up support by beating a populist drum, and closing down the Channel Islands as tax havens as soon as possible is a good way of getting that cheap publicity.

Mr Milliband says the EU is acting too slowly, but the EU has problems with moving everyone forward at the same time, to ensure that tax haven activities do not simply re-locate elsewhere in the world. Part of the problem is that within the EU - in Austria and Belgium and Ireland - as well as with Britain - there are tax haven style activities going on, nameplate companies, protected secret bank accounts. So there are internal problems with putting their own house in order. And outside the EU are havens like Hong Kong, or indeed the United States of America, where Delaware, in particularly, welcomes overseas companies under a veil of secrecy.

And of course, there is a little matter of the Labour Party itself:

Tycoon Andrew Rosenfeld, who has made an estimated £100 million from property investments, registered his international network of businesses in the British Virgin Islands – using a trust company that boasts that it 'makes full use of  the legal and tax advantages offered by different jurisdictions'. Mr Rosenfeld was appointed by the Labour leader last year to mastermind the party's General Election strategy, shortly after the businessman made a £1 million donation to Labour.

None of these matters come to light in his statement, which suggests that he is basically a poseur hoping for cheap headline grabbing publicity, rather than a serious attempt at improving global matters. Putting someone else's house in order and ignoring your own problems is the mark of a desperate man. He's got it the cheap headline, of course - the BBC has the story on its website. But in the long term he may find that a too hasty attempt to garner cheap publicity will backfire, when his personal ratings slump again as the story becomes the stuff for wrapping up fish and chips, and a leadership challenge comes from someone with rather more integrity.

Links
(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16567816
(2) http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city
(3) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083707/Ed-Milibands-efforts-tough-Citys-fat-cat-pay-culture-undermined-backers-island-tax-haven.html

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

' Ever since the Industrial Revolution, Man has polluted his planet, until now his only home. Not only has Man ruined his own environment, he has made life impossible for other living creatures. Seventy-five species of animals were made extinct in the first seventy-five years of this century. Others are threatened. The Giant Lemurs of Madagascar may soon suffer the same fate as the King Kangaroos of Australia-'

... Man is the only animal to prey on his own species. As society breaks down, armed gangsters take over. In America, with fifty murders a day, law-abiding citizens live behind electrified fences to keep criminals out. In the City of London another type of criminal exists. Property developers have destroyed-'

... The conveyor-belt system of mass production brings drudgery to the workers. Their natural creative drive is stifled. They are slaves to the machines. Working in continuous noise, unable to speak to their fellow workers, they are brutalised... '

... the brutalisation of millions of people extends from the factories to the buildings in which they live. To accommodate an ever increasing population vast tenement blocks are thrown up in our cities, providing no sense of community for the unfortunates who dwell in them. Gone is the concept of the village... '

(Re-education Room, snippets from re-education film, Invasion of the Dinosaurs)

"Invasion of the Dinosaurs" has just been released on DVD. It's the Jon Pertwee story where Central London has been evacuated due to a mysterious outburst of dinosaurs, appearing and disappearing; being a "Doctor Who" story, this is to do with the manipulation of time, scooping up dinosaurs from the past.

"My belief is that the people responsible for bringing these creatures into the present want to clear London of its population. They have some vast project that can only be carried out in a deserted London."

As the Doctor notes, the dinosaurs are just part of a bigger plan - to clear the area, and "roll back" time on earth to before mankind was settled, so that the people remaining hidden in London (and in the "safe zone") will be free to take humanity and direct history along different lines.

Not all people would agree with this, and a number have been duped into believing that instead they are going to a "New Earth". The novelisation by the writer of the story, Malcolm Hulke, makes their reasoning very clear:

'We are on our way to New Earth, a small planet similar to Earth but at an earlier stage of development.' 'You've been in suspended animation for three months,' Adam informed her. 'But it will all come back to you when you fully recover. New Earth is still pure, undefiled by the evil of Man's technology. There is air that is still clean to breathe, and a simple pastoral people, innocent and unspoiled. It will be our task to guide them so that the evils developed on Earth shall not be repeated.'

Sarah screwed up her face, and pretended that she couldn't remember what he meant. 'My memory still isn't very good, Mark. How will we live?' 'We shall found a settlement. We have seed, tools, and enough provisions to keep us going for a year. We'll be like the Pilgrim Fathers who went to America.' 'What about the present inhabitants of the planet? I don't think the Red Indians liked the Pilgrim Fathers very much. Maybe these people won't like us.' 'We shall treat them kindly and decently,' Mark insisted. 'We'll guide them, and make sure they don't make the same mistakes that were made on Earth.' 'What mistakes?' 'Surely you know. Factories and mines that destroy the landscape. Explosives of all kinds that kill and maim. Cars and aeroplanes that pollute the atmosphere.'

Ruth and Adam appeared from the direction of the main living quarters. 'Finding it interesting?' Adam asked Sarah. 'Very. Mark's just reminding me about all the awful things humans have done to ruin Earth.' She turned back to the young athlete. 'But what about medicine and education? Surely they were good things.' Ruth laughed. 'Compared with its evils, the benefits of technological civilisation are very few.' Adam took up the argument. 'Supermarkets, colour television, plastic cups. But what are they all worth?'

'Finding it interesting?' Adam asked Sarah. 'Very. Mark's just reminding me about all the awful things humans have done to ruin Earth.' She turned back to the young athlete. 'But what about medicine and education? Surely they were good things.' Ruth laughed. 'Compared with its evils, the benefits of technological civilisation are very few.' Adam took up the argument. 'Supermarkets, colour television, plastic cups. But what are they all worth?' 'They make life comfortable for a lot of people.' Adam, ignoring Sarah's reply, continued: 'We shall take the good, but leave the evil behind.' 'And who decides which is which?' 'It's all so obvious.' Adam's eyes began to look like those of a prophet who was in personal communication with God.

'But don't you think that people have a right to choose the kind of life they want?' Sarah blurted out. Ruth looked at her a little sternly. 'People on Earth were allowed to choose-and see what kind of a world they made! Moral degradation, permissiveness, cheating, lying, cruelty!' Ruth's one-sided attitude angered Sarah. 'There is also a lot of love and kindness and honesty! Didn't you ever notice those things on Earth?' Ruth's mouth set into hard lines. 'You mustn't say such things!'

And that is very much the story of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. It is a story about fanaticism, in a good cause, but fanaticism none the less. The writer Malcolm Hulke had come across in the 1970s a number of people concerned with the environment, and environmental issues, but also found that also attracted people who were extremely fanatical about their aims.

The people trying to change history in Invasion of the Dinosaurs see the earth heading towards catastrophe, and the normal mechanism for changing matters are too slow, so they take matters into their own hands. Anyone who disagrees with then has to be "re-educated" so that they can see what is right, because there can be only one right way.

'I quite agree,' added Ruth. 'She'll have to go to the Reminder Room.' Sarah backed away. 'What's that?' Adam gripped her arm firmly. 'You are in desperate need of re-education.' 'Don't worry, child,' said Ruth, taking Sarah's other arm. 'Very soon you will have returned to our point of view-about everything.'

The key sentence - as script editor Terrance Dicks points out in a documentary on the show - is "You mustn't say such things" And from there, with the re-education room, it is not a very distant step to "You mustn't think such things."

Now there are indeed major environmental issues which need to be tackled. But I've also observed how people who do take Green Issues seriously, if not as committed as some environmentalists, get labelled as "heretics". With regard to Climate Change, I've seen this with Dr Judith Curry, where her position, taking perhaps a slightly less committed approach to the interpretation of the evidence, led to her being labelled a "heretic".

It is an extraordinary term to find in scientific debate, and denotes more a pattern of belief in those who denigrate her in this way than her own position. What is happening is very akin to religious belief when that becomes fanatical, when the very best hopes are corrupted into a fascist theocracy. It can be seen in a strident tone, a determination to always have the final word, an inability to discuss, but instead to bludgeon one's opponent with mountains of "facts".

The sad thing is that there is a real problem with the way our world is run, but the way the fanatical presentation of these matters is done will in fact alienate people who would otherwise be sympathetic. As the Doctor says to Grover: "Look, I understand your ideals. In many ways I sympathise with them. But this is not the way to go about it, you know." The problems haven't gone away, but shouting at people is not the way to be heard.

In the 1970s, there was also a TV series called Doomwatch, which presented environmental issues in a dramatised form. There was not always a "right answer", although there often were wrong ones, usually caused by people cutting corners, putting profit above people etc. But in many ways that was the right way to approach the matter. When Charles Dickens was concerned about the poor, he was about to write a tract about the squalid conditions, but changed his mind and wrote Christmas Carol. That tale is still told; it gets into the minds of people far more than a plain tract would have done. A parable is often the way to tell a truth that is not confrontational but gets over the barriers and pre-conceptions people have. Using a verbal megaphone to blast away at everyone is the complete opposite, and no one will in fact end up listening because all they can hear is noise.

The story of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" has a lot to say about the wrong way to promote environmental issues. In fact, the dinosaurs are not just the monsters from the Jurassic, but those people who cannot adapt their message by listening to the response they have from other people. They talk at, not talk to, and they don't listen. That is the dinosaur still within our midst, and sadly, it probably won't go away.

The Doctor : "It's not the oil and the filth and the poisonous chemicals that are the real cause of pollution, Brigadier. It's simply greed."

The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel spins in the midst of sky

Four creatures around its edge do fly

The flux of human life in motion

Turning key in activation

Providence revealed in the flux

As it spins in vast epochs

This is the riddle of the Sphinx

How each moment fits and links

The serpent crushed beneath its frame

Time is an ever consuming flame.

Funny Old World 8

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is perhaps a pity.

A major inquiry with powers to demand documents and force witnesses to answer questions could be held into "golden implants"  to departing civil servants. The Chief Minister's department has refused to answer questions from the JEP about payouts to top staff who leave States jobs. A spokesman said "It would be an unwarranted invasion of their privacy and we are not going to reveal who signed off their contracts with what has been known as a 'tits-up' clause." It  recently emerged that two Chief Officers retired early with "golden implants" rumoured to cost around £800,000.

Dr Susan Turnbull, Jersey's Medical Officer of Health, said: "Chief Officers who take early retirement with 'golden implants' will naturally have been worried that they could be at risk of the facts becoming public, and the information emerging through the local media has been conflicting. We can give a reassurance that there is no evidence that will be forthcoming of any risk of the truth getting out."

But Deputy Roy Le Hérissier says a formal inquiry might be the only way to get the facts. "It's finally time to tear down the fence of secrecy," he said, "and I know all about fences having sat on several for a number of years."

News from Durrell. Last year saw the silverback gorilla Sy-Vret leave the wildlife park. He had been there since 1993, but because he had not bred for eight years, he was sent to his new home with a bachelor group of gorillas at La Moye de Prison in November.

Jersey-based designers are being asked how the design of new buildings could reduce crime as part of new proposals. Jeremy Castle, Architectural Liaison Officer in the States of Jersey Police, said buildings should be designed with drawbridges activated remotely by iPhones, moats with piranha fish, and CCTV on turrets with the option of computer sensor automated systems pouring down boiling oil on burglars trying to gain access.

A Waterfront report which said that the Esplanade Quarter project would cost taxpayers £50 million was kept quiet by ministers when it was delivered in 2008, it has been claimed.  It has been rumoured that Ministers were hoping the report would have sunk without trace, rather like the proposed Waterfront tunnel. The assistant Treasury Minister, Deputy Eddie Noel that any losses described in the report would have been for the developer, not the States.

An informed source says "Now the previous preferred developers are now out of the picture, the scheme has effectively been cut in half and the States of Jersey Development Company will develop it themselves without a third party, so any losses will be for the States, not the developer, and they'll only be £25 million."

Jersey politician supports narrow gauge railway trial. A Jersey politician said he would like to see the island's old railway track restored. It comes after UK railway enthusiast Nigel Harris suggested bringing trains back to Jersey running from the old Corbiere Station towards St Aubin.

St Brelade Deputy Sean Power said it was a good idea. He said: "There are lots of people out there who would like to see me passing by and giving them a cheering wave but can't because they have maybe mobility issues or disability problems. A small train on a narrow gauge like that would possibly afford them a chance to just see me as I chugged past, I think it would be good. I'd like to jump on the bandwagon."

Jersey used to have a railway until 1936 when the last train, the Terry Le Sueur Express ran between St Aubin and Corbiere. Despite its name, it turned into something of a slowcoach, and is now on display at the Steam Museum, alongside other vintage vehicles.

Brief TV Reviews - Sherlock and the Musicals

BBC1 - Sunday. The Hounds of Baskerville. A brilliant twist on the tale by Mark Gatiss, using names from the original, but cleverly making Dr Stapleton a woman, and Seton isn't a convict, although he is responsible for mysterious morse-like code. I felt there was a lot more fun to this episode than last weeks, and the location filming gave it a dense creepy atmosphere at night, and a feeling of the remote wilderness by day.

Some nods to the last show, where the picture of Sherlock wearing a deer-stalker kind of hat (only done to hide his face, and not even his hat) is now the newspaper standard image for him,. This was rather a neat mocking of the fact that is now how the character is often seen in the original Conan Doyle stories, despite only wearing a deerstalker in the Sidney Paget illustrations, and only those set in the country - in towns, he is depicted wearing a top hat.

There were also a couple of distant shots of Holmes standing on a tor which were extremely nicely done. The village and the pub did have a small whiff of Avenger land; I could imagine John Steed turning up there. But that was fine; it worked well. And he cleverly worked in the line: "Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound". Who really uses the term "hound" nowadays? There's an extremely clever reason why - it is an acronym!

BBC3: The Musical - all on the hits of the 1980s, with shows like Cats, Starlight Express, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Me and My Girl - lots of these were groundbreaking shows in terms of choreography and performance, breaking the conventions of the Broadway musical.

Even Me and My Girl (a more traditional show) did not have the high kicking line up of American ladies which the Americans thought should be part and parcel of a musical - as Stephen Fry memorably described, an American told him the men wanted to see a chorus line "kick ass"!

What also came across as clear was that theatre critics of that time really didn't want to understand these shows, and had a complete disconnect from the public, and got it almost completely wrong. Starlight Express was light and fluffy, and criticized for not being serious; Les Miserables was criticized for being too serious and gloomy - miserable! The critics seemed stuck in an American musical past, while the public had moved on, and wanted something different.

In fact, Les Miserables was slammed by the critics at the same time as it was selling out at the box office. And unlike the more traditional musicals, this show had a world-wide and translatable appeal to the non-English speaking world. It has characters and a strong emotional heart in the story, which have been taken over very well from Victor Hugo's novel, as well as fantastically rousing tunes.

It is interesting also to reflect on the musicals that didn't make it. Mutiny on the Bounty with David Essex didn't prove a draw despite its star. Chess had about one really good song, and never really took off before the Cold War ended. Cliff Richard performing in Dave Clark's Time The Musical was hi-tech, and strangely weird, lots of dazzle, pushing the boundaries of technology but with nothing to remember. It also featured a disembodied holographic head of Laurence Olivier as a Godlike figure (not too far removed from his self-image) which went wrong on occasion, putting his eyes where his lips were.

What they all didn't have was Trevor Nunn. Cats, Star Light Express and Les Miserables all saw his sure hand in the direction, and he seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing how to get extraordinarily difficult shows to work, in which the boundaries of actor and dancer became blurred. And Cameron Mackintosh as producer seems have known how to pick winners, although he later had a few flops, such as Moby Dick.

The slow burn success story was Willie Russell's Blood Brothers, a musical which failed to achieve success on its first run, and then came back and gradually built up a following in the provinces before triumphantly coming to the West End. It is now one of the longest-running musical productions in history. Unlike the panorama and spectacle of the other shows, it is relatively low key, more of a domestic and homely drama, tightly focused on the family group, but showed how you don't need acrobatics and special stage effects to make a musical that works.

It could only happen - part 2

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it yourself!"  (Emerson)

After "It could only happen in America", as promised, I've redressed some of the balance.

This follow on piece comes  the 1984 edition of "Thinks", here's a lighter piece from the editor, Ken Webb.

The quotation at the top of this page is a "filler". Quite often there would be a small amount of space left which was not filled in the magazine, and Ken and I would look for some suitable quotation to fill it. Emerson is a good source of these, and my personal favourite is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,  adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines".

I came across it with a preface to a story by Isaac Asimov called "The Dying Night", and loved it ever since. It is a perfect put down to pettifogging nit-pickers.  He wrote:

Some years before this next story was written, two colleagues and I joined forces in writing a large and complicated textbook in biochemistry for medical students. We spent days-literally-on the galley proofs, and frequently we came across minor inconsistencies. We would spell a chemical one way here and another way there; here a hyphen and there no hyphen; here one phrase and yon an alternate.

We despaired of getting everything perfectly concordant and one of us finally said, 'To quote Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."' We latched on to this with ebullient joy and thereafter, whenever the proof-reader questioned a small inconsistency, we would write 'Emerson!' in the margin and let it go.

So here now is the extract from "Thinks!":

---

IT COULD HAPPEN ONLY IN THE SOVIET UNION

Russians ban Trots

Soviet authorities have ordered Western Embassy staff to stop jogging in the streets of Moscow. They claim it was disrupting the city's normal life!

Running too fast for the K.G.B. to keep up with them?

IT COULD HAPPEN ONLY ON THE CONTINENT

A not so fast lady

A couple making love in a carriage of the Orient Express delayed the train for some forty minutes. She caught her foot in the emergency brake!

Coitus interruptus?

IT COULDN'T HAPPEN HERE

2p or not 2p.

A subject of some delicacy is the usage of a Loo - particularly when the Loo in question is in a space capsule - more particularly when there is a crew of both sexes - yet even more particularly when it does not function!

Such was the problem which recently faced the American Space Administration. They spent some months overcoming the deficiency at a cost of ten million dollars.

To think we still call it spending a penny!

IT DID HAPPEN HERE

As though we men did not know.

Some interesting facts have come to light in the recent discussions on providing new Telephone facilities in the Channel Islands.

Do you know that every man, woman and child in Jersey makes on average 650 phone calls a year? The comparative figure for Guernsey is 590.

This will come as no surprise to men with teenage children - hence the reason they can never make a call on their own telephone.

It also leaves we men wondering how - with the length of each call made by children and spouse - there could ever be sufficient hours in the year.

Electoral Commission - A Few Comments

There are strong moves afoot to get Sir Philip Bailhache as the Chairman of the Review body for Electoral Reform. I am at a loss how this will lead to an independent review, as he has made his view very well known in his manifesto. Here are a selection of statements made by him on the subject.

I would note that while he says "as recommended by the Clothier panel", he is NOT prepared to take on board the Clothier panel's recommendations that the Constables be excluded from the States. In other words, he is prepared to use Clothier to back his arguments, only as long as it suits him, and if not, Clothier can be ignored. So that argument - let us follow the wisdom of Clothier - is entirely spurious.

In fact the Bailhache vision of the States is pretty clear on some matters, less so on others. He is very coy about whether Senators should remain or not - in fact, while he mentions Deputies and Constables, the only thing he has to say about Senators is that a 30 Senators Island wide mandate would be impossible to manage.

But the Constables remain, and the Island moves to superconstituences. Now that's more or less what has been proposed before by Roy Le Hérissier, and it got thrown out. I think that the recent Census highlights the disparity  between Deputies and the number of people they represent, and larger constituencies - as introduced in Guernsey, are an obvious way to go, amalgamating various Parishes. So I am in substantial agreement with this idea, as it gets what is important - voter parity - into the equation, and if Deputies represent a district rather than a Parish, the Constable can fight the Parish corner. There needs to be a balance.

Why has this been thrown out in the past? Well, the Deputies, in particular, often do not want to lose that Parish connection. John Le Fondre has stated this to me quite clearly, and I suspect he is articulating a commonly held view. Deputies are engaged at a Parish level, and a larger constituency would break some of that connection - although there is no reason why they should not remain involved in Parishes in which they live as private people, they will lose the political element.

Having looked at many elections over the years, I would say that as a rule of thumb, votes for Deputies are often made primarily on how they are viewed within the Parish, not within the States.  Provided you are not extremely right or left wing in the States to the detriment of Parish matters, political leanings in the States Chamber, and where you vote on GST etc don't count for half as much as how you supported the Battle of Flowers, or opposed a planning application, and attended Parish Assemblies.  Once that link has been broken, Deputies will be more vulnerable, they won't have the smaller base constituency that they enjoy, and have to appeal to a wider range of voters geographically and Island wide issues will matter more, as they do with the Senatorial elections.

So we can see at least one reason why the proposals have been thrown out in the past. That is why Daniel Wimberley proposed an independent commission. The States are not good at making their own mind up, and whether they will be any better if Sir Philip is in charge of the whole matter remains to be seen. He did not manage to carry the States with him on the open vote for Chief Minister, and this will be an open debate, and open vote, so he may be surprised to realise that despite his call in the Hustings for compromise, that does not come so easily.

The other matter is whether or not he is suitable having stated his own opinions so clearly. An independent body would be able to review submissions on merit, but he has already given his own submission, so he is not independent. And I think spurious arguments, drawing on only selective parts of Clothier for support, should be dropped. I think Clothier got it largely wrong on some issues as Constituency boundaries and voter parity, where the Guernsey programme of reform, the Harwood report, got it right.

So I am against his chairing the reform commission because he has too clearly stated his own views, and I think has compromised any independence or impartiality by doing so. On the other hand, his proposal for around 10 larger constituencies is one that I would personally support, and have done for years, and my own submission would be very much along those lines.

What I think also muddies the waters is his view that "the devil makes work for idle hands", and the dysfunctional nature of the States is due to too many members. I think it is due to too little democracy, too little participation and inclusion by the previous Councils of Ministers.

When I was at school, the captain of a football team would be able to choose, and would choose his chums. That's not a good basis for "team spirit", what that is a basis for is what C.S. Lewis called "the inner ring", a cozy clique of individuals where favouritism reigns. If there is any divisions within the States, that is the first thing that must be addressed. Reducing numbers does not mean this will end, as it is part of a malign ethos that has developed within the States, and let's hope the new Assembly can see its way to more consultation and participation.

If I may be permitted another anecdote - my late Aunt always tended to play favourites with her children, and she was treated as a favourite by her parents. My mother was not, and perhaps as a result, she went out of her way to ensure that myself and my sister were treated equally fairly. Favouritism, in team games, or in interpersonal relationships, is in fact an easy option; it requires effort and commitment to ensure fairness instead.

---

Philip Bailhache: Manifesto:

The reputation of the States in the Island has seldom been lower. Too much time is wasted by the discussion of trivial matters, and too much energy is wasted on personal antagonisms instead of concentrating on important issues affecting the well being of the Island. Following the introduction of ministerial government, there are now too many members of the States. The devil makes work for idle hands. Constitutional reform is urgent but it has so far proved difficult to find a consensus as to what change is necessary.

As was recommended by the Clothier Panel, the number of members should be reduced to 42. How does one get there? I do not support the removal of the Constables from the States. The Constables represent an important link with the parishes. It would diminish the office of Constable if they ceased to be in the States. With 12 Constables there would then be 30 other seats. There are ways of dividing up those seats which require discussion. Once the States have found a solution, it should be put to the people for their approval in a referendum.

St Helier Hustings

In my view we do not need an electoral commission costing two hundred thousand pounds. I am sick and tired of the employment of expensive experts and consultants because States members and their officials cannot or will not work out the solutions for themselves. The answer to the problem of constitutional reform is staring us in the face.

We all know that there are too many members; we should reduce the number to 42. Not everyone, but the majority of people want the Constables to remain as links between the parishes and the States and to ensure that each parish, however small, has a representative in our parliamentary assembly. That only leaves a decision as to how to divide the 30 remaining seats among 10, 12 or 15 larger constituencies. A larger constituency gives some of the advantages of the Island-wide mandate but without the disadvantages of a raft of candidates who cannot be properly questioned. With a smaller number you could really test them and see what they stood for and what their abilities were. With larger constituencies there will always be an election, and politics would be forced into the centre because candidates would have to appeal to a broader range of electors.

St Brelade

I am standing for election because I want to see reform of the constitution of the States and an end to the bickering and time-wasting that disfigure our parliamentary assembly and have caused it to sink so low in public esteem.

St Mary

Reform of the constitution of the States is, in my view, at the very heart of the solution to what has gone wrong with our assembly and why it no longer enjoys respect in the Island. No one has done more than your Constable to try to find a solution, but on every occasion there is a coalition of interests that defeats the proposition. There are those who favour the Island wide mandate; there are those who want the Constables out of the States, or kept in the States; there are those who want to keep the parish deputies; there are those in St Helier who quite like being elected by only 200 or 300 votes. If no one will compromise in the interests of the Island, we will never find a solution, and the shambles that we have at the moment will continue.

There are two important preliminary questions. (1) Should we reduce the number of members? (2) Should the Constables remain in the States? My answer to both is Yes. I believe that almost everyone accepts that we have too many members given that we now have ministerial government. We should reduce the number to 42. And the Constables should stay because they are a vital link with the parishes. Removing the Constables would diminish the office and make them junior to the deputy. Imagine a contentious issue before the Parish Assembly presided over by the Constable - parishioners vote to oppose a proposition to build a multi-storey car park at the Devil's Hole - and the Constable says "I will now have to ask the deputy to convey our views to the States". The Constable should continue as chief of the parish, and have the authority to represent the parish in the States.

This is important. Some people say that it is absurd to have the Constable of St Mary representing 1600 people in the States while the Constable of St Helier represents 29,000 people. My answer is that this is the price for supporting the parish system - and it is a price worth paying. The friendly rivalry between the parishes is good and wholesome, and encourages efficiency and cleanliness. People are rightly proud of their parish. We should not undermine the institution by removing the constable from the States.

 I am now going to lose some votes in St Mary but I want to be straight with you. If we keep the Constables in the States, the only practical way of reducing numbers is to have larger constituencies - somewhere between 10 and 15 constituencies with 2 or 3 members in each. That would mean that there would be no deputy of St Mary. But it would also mean that there was always an election in every constituency and that candidates would have to appeal to the political middle ground. The electors of St Mary would remain an important part of a new larger constituency, and hustings would have to be held here as in the past because candidates would want your vote.

St Clement

The Clothier Panel recommended that the Assembly should be reduced to 40 or 42 and we should accept that recommendation. How should we get there? My own view is that the Constables should stay because they are an important link with the parishes. If they stay, that leaves 30 other members to be elected from the other constituencies. Many people like the Island wide mandate, but 30 senators would be impossible. Imagine 70 or 80 candidates on this platform. I think that there should be between 10 and 15 larger constituencies. This would draw politics into the centre, because candidates would have to appeal to a broader mix of people.

It could only happen in America

As the darkling skies fled before the deepening dusk, and the sun went to its slumbering sleep behind the cityscape of sheer and vivid rectanguloid outlines, glimmering in the gloom, and the sodium lights began to shine with sulphurous yellow, I decided to post this piece from the 1984 edition of "Thinks", here's a lighter piece from the editor, Ken Webb.

My American friends should take note that it was followed by other "It could only happen..." shorts on other countries which will be inflicted on the readers of this blog tomorrow. So they don't need to feel singled out!

The worst opening of a novel has been suggested as "It was a dark and stormy night" by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 book "Paul Clifford". The rest goes on:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest named after the aforementioned opening was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice, Professor of English at San Jose State University. The first year got only three entries, but when it went public in 1983, it got  10,000 entries. Here is Ken's report of that year:

IT COULD ONLY HAPPEN IN AMERICA!

A professor of English from the State University of San Jose, California, organised a competition for the worst opening sentence of a novel.

Strange to relate, there was world wide interest and no fewer than 10,000 entries flooded in. (Editor of "THINKS" please take note!)

An American (who else) won the first prize for this abysmal effort:-

"The Camel died suddenly on the Second Day, and Selena fretted sulkily and, buffing her already impeccable nails - not for the first time since the journey began - pondered snidely if this would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent with Basil."

My personal preference was for the entry of the winner of the second prize, an Englishman, who commenced a spy novel as follows:-

"It came to him in a cocaine rush as he took the Langley exit that if Aldrich had told Filipov about Hancock only Tulfengian could have known that the photograph which Wagner had shown to Maximov on the jolting S-Bahn was not the photograph of Kessler that Bradford had found at the dark, sinister house in the Sehillerstrasse the. day that Straub told Percival that the man on the bridge had not been Aksakov ..." .

He managed to keep going for a few more score words before coming - mercifully - to the all important full stop.

Such was the international flavour of this competition the third prize winner hailed from West Germany. How's this for a snappy start to a romantic novel?

"She flung her feverishly disquieted body onto the cool camnbrie of the Waldorf Astoria bed and knew, oh yes, sobbingly knew, that her love was lost, that her pearly teeth absent heartedly , in a sense, began gnawing the silky pillow her golden dreams had so recently lavishly blossomed on."

There's hope for the Editor yet.

Giant Mistakes

‎"And there were giants in those days..." says the book of Genesis. And there is on YouTube a video to prove it - a giant footprint, allegedly millions of years ago, found in South African granite.

"It is estimated to be between 200 million and 3 Billion years old because of our current understanding of the formation of granites in Earth's history."

Which explains why there aren't any giants around now - they were clearly ignorant of the fact that granite is not a sedimentary rock and is a very hot rock. To put a footprint in it (if you somehow could) would be the last thing you would ever do. Nor would it congeal around you, because granite is a plutonic rock, not a volcanic one. That means it is formed deep underground, high pressure, and very hot - it would incinerate a foot, if one good get deep underground, which one cannot. The liquid state of granite is over 1,000 Celsius.

As tectonic plates shift, rocks that were deep underground like granites get pushed up to the surface, but unlike volcanic rocks, that's not where they are formed. The process is called "uplift" - the pressure causes faults and folds in the rocks, then erosion wears away softer sedimentary rocks, until the deep rocks are visible at the surface.

The rock itself then must be a natural formation, although some people suggest it may have been "enhanced" with a chisel to sharpen parts of it - the toes.
.
It is strange that people want to believe something like this. The more prosaic facts of geology have a vast timescale, where human beings come in very much at the last minutes. Far from being "lords of creation", they are a tiny blip in time. If the 4 1/2 billion years of the planet were compressed into one 24 hour day, then single cell organisms only appeared at 4 am. Multicelled animals evolved around 9 am. And dinosaurs started roaming the earth around 11 pm, very late in the history of the planet. Human beings - the last 30 seconds! 11.59 pm and 30 seconds.

Biblical Creationists don't like this at all, as they want a literal chronology from Eden, which is why they rejoice at anything, however preposterous, that they can use as a stick to attack this chronology. The flood, of course, wiped out the dinosaurs, but that means you need human beings around at the same time as dinosaurs, like Rachel Welsh in the Hammer film One Million Years BC.

And alongside them are the Ancient Astronaut, or Atlantis supercivilisation believers, who also want anything that can confound the existing chronology. You often need, after all, lots of time for supercivilisations to rise and fall leaving barely a trace, especially if they were wiped out in some kind of nuclear war, leaving no advanced artifacts or any background radiation.

In a way, it is a reversion to the universe of Aristotle, which had man at the centre, and a stationary earth around which everything moved. The planets included the sun and moon, because planet meant wanderer, and unlike fixed stars, they moved. Aristotle knew that the earth was round - the notion of a flat earth was a myth, largely propagated by Washington Irving and his contemporaries. But the curvature of the earth, and a pretty accurate measurement of the diameter of the earth by the Greeks, was known since ancient times.

Anyone who sails must see that the earth cannot be flat, the only question which Columbus asked was how large. He thought it was a much smaller earth, which is why we have the West Indies, as he imagined he'd landed on a remote area close to India.

The stationary earth was actually very logically thought out. Firstly, we do not notice any sense of spin on the earth. But Aristotle had another argument to play - the Tower. Imagine climbing a very tall tower, and dropping objects from it. As they move down, the earth is spinning under them, so they will not end up directly below the tower - the ground there will have spun onwards as they were falling. But, as we know, they fall directly under the tower, so clearly the earth cannot be rotating. It's a very neat argument.

Galileo countered it with an argument from ships. If a ship is racing along with a strong wind in its sails, and someone throws a heavy ball (so as not to be blown by wind) across the width of the ship, the ship has moved onwards as the ball is in motion, so by Aristotle's principles, the ball should travel both across the ship, and move towards the back of the ship, moving in a diagonal, because the ship moves on once it is in the air. But of course, the ball just travels directly across - its motion is relative to the ship, not relative to the surrounding sea.  The frame of reference in which it moves is the ship, not the ship on the sea. It took a long time for people to grasp relative motion well, and even when railways started, there was a notion that air would be sucked out of the carriages as the train picked up speed.

The idea that the earth was not stationary, and the sun was the center around which it moved (albeit in an ellipse not a circle) was a profound shock, and I think people still like to cling on to a vestige of that. They can't now believe in a stationary earth at the centre of the universe, but they can place humanity on a pedestal, at the apex of creation. That's a very strong impetus.

Even early ideas of evolution tended to see evolution as a ladder, progressing up rung by rung, from bacteria and simple creatures to land creatures, mammals, apes, and finally mankind. It is a wholly misleading picture because evolution is more like a bush, with lots of branches all reaching the same height - after all, the bacteria are still here. Some branches die out relatively quickly, and we may be one of them, which in today's climate of uncertainly about the effects of climate change is something few people want to contemplate. So when anything comes along that asserts that conventional pictures of the world's history are wrong, critical thinking falls away, and the "evidence" is greedily latched onto. Perhaps the step to true maturity will be when we do recognise our small place in the history of time.

The Starry Messengers

A poem for Epiphany and wise men who study the stars...

The Starry Messengers
 
Look for the stars, night shining, the fabric of creation
O behold, look at the signs, the portents of every nation
Listen and hear, stars approach and draw near
A conjunction of glad adoration.
 
Seek the pattern, that over all things so wondrously reigns
The spheres turning, in synchronicity so softly sustains!
Here wisdom has been, we travel to where it is seen
Unfolding what now fate ordains
 
Look for the stars, night shining, wondrous pattern now see
Promise above, now falling to earth, unfolding to be
Not yet tears of grief, but a sign for belief
And a mercy that will set you free
 
Seek the pattern, when tempests their warfare are waging,
And nation fights nation, and all about death is raging
That this may cease, and stars portent peace
And friendships once more be engaging
 
Look for the stars, in the darkness of storm clouds abounding
Words of power open the curtain of night so confounding
Let there be light, away the darkness of night
Stars shine with moonlight surrounding.

Funny Old World 7

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is perhaps a pity.

Package holiday days 'are over' says Jersey tour operator. Valerie Singleton, managing director of the Channel Island Travel Group, said she believes the days of standard package holidays are over. "The days when people would get in a cardboard box, allow themselves to be sealed in with brown paper and sticky back plastic, and have the whole package sent to the Channel Islands are over," she said. John Noakes, KPMG's head of travel, leisure and tourism, agrees. "More and more travellers opt for self-packaging online and niche solutions," he said, "and no one wants Blue Peter packaging where the tour operation prepared a standard package in advance when you can go directly to the Amazon online."

PROPOSED three-story development on Petit Port hill was described by angry neighbours as a 'huge glass box that will ruin the headland' yesterday morning. Concerns for privacy were other issues raised by the residents of the Petit Port Close residents committee at the meeting. "If people live in a huge glass box," said one resident, the late Mary Whitehouse, "there will be complaints about them exposing themselves to their neighbours. It's indecent."

Passengers travelling from Portsmouth by ferry have arrived in St Helier harbour in Jersey after spending 24 hours at sea. The Commodore Clipper was not able to dock at the Jersey port after the captain decided the strong winds and big seas made it too dangerous. The passengers on board were given free food and drinks, and a sing-a-long was organised.

Slow, slow, slow your boat,
Rough waves make you scream
Ghastly, ghastly, ghastly, ghastly
Sadly not a dream

The passengers on board all belonged to the Jersey Union Unite, and they said that the increase in food and drink offered by the States of Jersey was derisory, and there was more stormy waters ahead before they would strike anchor.

A giant wave was also spotted off the east coast of Jersey, but the Chief Minister's office refused to say who was waving goodbye, and how high their wave off was because it would breach King Neptune's privacy.

Fisheries officers will talk to anglers about conservation and regulations when they visit popular fishing areas in Jersey. The Environment department said while most leisure fishermen stick to the rules to conserve fish stocks, there was still a need for fisheries officers to visit popular areas. They would enforce the regulations and carry out educational activities such as handing out i-Spy Fish booklets. The economic development minister has approved the appointment of two fisheries officers, Henry Turbut and Hayley Haddock, to do the out-of-hours visits.

Minister says Jersey media reports were 'exaggerated'. Senator Le Marquand said he was issuing the statement to correct the worst exaggerations about his similarity to the Television character Mr Bean. "The media reports have been misleading in places," he said, "and I would like to set the record straight that I do not have a teddy bear that I take on holiday with me."

New year honours were handed out to Islanders. For those unfamiliar with the terms, and what they mean, here is a brief guide:

LVO = Low Value Objects. The Chief of Staff at Jersey's Government House got one of these from amazon.royal.com. There's currently a move afoot by the British government to stop them in the Channel Islands.

CBE = Cheesy Beef Eaters. This is not available for vegetarians. Recipients carry pikes and wear silly hats.

MBE = Multi-Band Emitter. People who get this like to tell other people about their honour. A lot.

OBE = Overtaken By Events. Former Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur received this.

St Aubin's Harbour in Jersey is to be cleared of mud. Boat owners had complained it was preventing them from working on their boats and was spoiling people's enjoyment of the port. A mound of mud will be cleared from the harbour in March, followed by a complete dredging starting in September. In the meantime, a protest is being carried on by boat owner Roy Deeming, who has staged a production of his very own boating song.

Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
I've had promises, promises, all sounding hollow
But the States just delay, and wallow in mud
And St Aubin's harbour, it is not so nice
Nothing yet done, when push comes to shove
But only glib talking, and endless advice
Trickling down, the words from above
Like thunder the harbour re-echoed the sound
Of politicians delay, behind the ears wet
I tell in truth, and my boat is aground
A picture in truth just for La Baguette

Now more muddy banks began to convene
The entrance so difficult, not very wide
I wonder now what am I to say of the scene
Of boats now stranded on mud till high tide
And anchors away, with an ear-splitting sposh
And only uplifted with help of a crane
Boat owners despair, and give up a sigh
Singing along with this haunting refrain

Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
I've had promises, promises, all sounding hollow
But the States just delay, and wallow in mud

TV Review: The Royals who Rescued the Monarchy

The last two nights, I watched "The Royals who Rescued the Monarchy", a fascinating study of how George and Mary both innovated the monarchy and moved it back to more Victorian moral values.

The first part looked at the way in which the stricter moral behaviour was in a way a reaction against the lifestyle of Edward VII, with his mistresses (before and after he became king).

The first World War, and the anti-German sentiments that engendered also saw the change of name to the House of Windsor, and the monarchy connecting directly with the people, at official events, but also visiting miners in Wales, and other similarly depressed areas. Unlike the autocratic and remote monarchies elsewhere in Europe and Russia, which were largely crumbling after the Great War, the British monarchy established a much more direct connection between themselves and the people, away from the aristocratic land owners. In public, George V realised that he could not be remote and autocratic.

At home, however, George V could act like an absolute monarch, and did, regimenting and bullying his children. A photo shows the children in children's "sailor outfits", looking for all the world like the regimented children from the Von Trapp family in "The Sound of Music". Perhaps it is not surprising because like Captain Von Trapp, George V came from a strict and orderly Naval background.

Innovations included the first Radio broadcasts at Christmas, the tours of both George V and his wife Mary (and not the monarch alone, as had often been the case) to meet ordinary people, the presentation of cups at popular sporting occasions, and the invention of the OBE - a medal for ordinary people rather than already privileged ones, and visits to the dominions as Emperor and Empress. All these held the monarchy in good stead as the crowned heads of Europe came tumbling down. The Tsar in fact looked for refuge in England, but the unpopularity of him in the British press led to George V pressing hard and getting his initial offer refused.

We may think that Katherine Middleton as a commoner was a first, but in fact marrying outside the Royal families of Europe was a major first - their son Bertie (later George VI) married Lady Elizabeth Bowler-Lytton, who was not of a Royal bloodline. That was a major break with the past, where Royal always married Royal.

A curious omission - the King was supposed to be increasingly fonder of the well-behaved Bertie rather than Edward, yet other accounts show Bertie's speech impediment was not helped by bullying by his father. Also interesting - the funeral showed the crowds, and the voiceover mentioned the great esteem in which the late King had been held, but evidently the Government of the day did not entirely have the same faith in the crowd - there were countless policemen in evidence.

Lovely moments - the description of the King's voice on radio by one commentator - "he spoke in a mellow voice that appeared to have been marinated in an ancient whiskey, as indeed, it probably had. In fact what was good was the sound archive, that you could actually how George VI spoke.

The "time bomb", as the commentator pointed out, was the emphasis on a moral Royal family, no place for the playboy style with mistresses of Edward VII. The second part saw the impact of that on Edward VIII, wanting to marry a divorced woman, and of course one can't help see the impact of that on today's Royal family, from Princess Margaret onwards.

In the second part of  "The Royals who Rescued the Monarchy", the theme was how Mary helped shape the Monarchy. Originally May (of Teck), she changed her name to Mary when her husband became George VI.

It was good, but the first half-hour was rather padded by some identical clips and comments from the first part yesterday - obviously some of the historical clips would be the same, yet some of the modern interviews were also word for word the same.

But later on there was some fascinating colour footage from George V and Mary's 1935 Silver Jubilee procession. It was striking how the brilliant reds of coaches and coats, for instance, contrasted with the rather dull clothes of the crowd, in a way that black and white footage misses. I was also struck by how people waved white cloth handkerchiefs or hats in the air - so many men with hats - today it would be small flags on sticks bought for the occasion, as hardly anyone wears a hat, and paper hankies do not wave well!

The last half hour was new stuff because it was after the death of George V. I would have been disappointed if it had not mentioned Mary's kleptomania - when visiting, people with any inkling of her would hide any valuables, or she would tell them how good they would match one she had at home, and wasn't it a shame they were parted! And they did - unlike George VI who was a stamp collecting bore, she loved antiques, and also the history behind them. Mary was clearly brighter than him, and made sure the young Elizabeth had a better reading list than that prescribed by her mother - 19 PG Wodehouse novels! She also imbued Elizabeth with a sense of duty, which I think possibly only Princess Anne has really inherited from her. Her final act was to save the name "House of Windsor" when Mountbatten wanted to rename the Royal family as the "House of Mountbatten" - he came across as rather an egoistic snob hungry for privilege, which of course, he was.

It is interesting that she refused Wallis Simpson the title HRH, and Queen Elizabeth stripped it from Princess Diana - both cases indicating Royal disapproval. Quite a bit of footage of Wallis Simpson and Edward, but I don't really know why the commentary persisted in saying he was "handsome" - he clearly had some kind of thyroid condition, a case of goiter if ever I saw one, which became more pronounced as he aged. But the chief mark against him was that he wanted a private life, and quite a hedonistic one, and as a future king, he was not allowed to have one. His less formal manner and latest suits must have seemed very modern, but while the clothes of George and Mary have a formal, timeless, quality, Edward's now quite dated style of clothes, his often pale looking face, and the slightly jerky film make him seem more like a relative of Buster Keaton.

After the abdication, there was another first, Queen Mary attended the Coronation of her son, now George VI (a nod to the legacy of his father), and there are lovely shots of the whole family, including Mary smiling, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace before a huge crowd below. Usually dowager Queens would stay away from the new King's enthronement, but her presence served to remind people of the continuity, and the fact that the Royal family was indeed a family, not one autocratic ruler. In many ways, she mellowed when not under the thumb of George V, and rather than incessantly boring shooting parties, could get out to the theatre more often.

In the Second World War the dowager Queen Mary was evacuated to her niece's house at Badminton, where she waged war on the ivy, getting anyone she could to tear bits of it off the house. She also wanted to chop down the cedar tree outside her window, and only stopped mentioning it when her niece said it would come down "over my dead body". But while she was dripping with jewels, she still had a common touch, and would get her chauffeur to pick up any serviceman she noted walking by in the nearby town and give them a lift, whether British or Americans, much to their surprise! She also took time to give the future Queen Elizabeth lessons in the history and meaning of paintings and ornaments in Royal Palaces like Windsor, and together with George VI led to Elizabeth's strong sense of duty.

Kenya: Debt and Debate

I've had permission to reproduce here an email from Ed Le Quesne about Kenya's economy, and also the comments on the state of play by his son John on the figures. Ed notes that:

John was born in Kenya but left with us when he was 6 months old.   He came with me on a visit to Kenya last June.   We have lively debates about how far Kenya is the author of its own problems or still suffering a colonial hangover.

Technical terms used are "internal debt" and "external debt". These are

External debt (or foreign debt) is that part of the total debt in a country that is owed to creditors outside the country. The debtors can be the government, corporations or private households. The debt includes money owed to private commercial banks, other governments, or international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

Internal debt owed by a government (money a government borrows from its citizens) is part of the country's national debt. It is a form of fiat creation of money, in which the government obtains cash not by printing it, but by borrowing it. The money created is in the form of treasury securities or securities borrowed from the central bank. These may be traded but will only rarely be spent on goods and services. In this way, the expected increase in inflation due to the increase in national wealth is lower than if the government had simply printed the money and increased the more liquid forms of wealth (i.e., the money supply).

Public borrowing may become costlier for the government especially when it resorts to public borrowing by issuing bonds and debentures. Such bonds and debentures carry a high rate of interest to the extent of 15 percent. The impact of such interest payments may develop manifold and still worsen in the future if the government stick to the same policy of borrowing in the years to come.

This means that the "internal debt" is to some extent misleading. It is generated by the government issuing treasury bonds (and the like) on which interest is paid and while it is structured so that it can only be used internally, it can be used as a form of collateral for external debt.

For instance, in Kenya, treasury bonds are restricted to: (1) Resident or non-resident individuals and/or corporate bodies who hold an account with a local commercial bank (2) Resident or non-resident individuals and/or corporate bodies who may not have an account with a local commercial bank but invests as a nominee of a commercial bank or investment bank in Kenya. However, there is also this note:

Treasury Bills are not traded at the Nairobi Stock Exchange. However, investors may pledge them as collateral (or for lien creation) security against credit facilities (loans), and may also be transferred among holders of CDS accounts. CDS Statements are adjusted accordingly to reflect these transactions. Commercial banks also use them as collateral for liquidity management through Repurchase Agreements (Repos) and Intraday Liquidity Facility (ILF).

Here are the emails:

---

Jambo,

You may have read about the pressures on Jersey to bring in a law to stop vulture funds using the Jersey court to claim a large sum from Congo.  As part of our response to the States consultation paper,  Christians Together in Jersey invited Tim Jones from the Jubilee Debt Campaign  to visit Jersey and talk about the debt issue,  He was an excellent speaker and we have made our submission on this issue to the States and await their response

Tim has done detailed research recently on the debts owed by Zimbabwe.   Some of these debts go back to loans to Ian Smith to maintain UDI in Southern Rhodesia!  Others were given as they tried to rebuild the country.  Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling for an audit of all their debts to judge whether they are legitimate. 

I have much more information about Zimbabwe but I also asked about Kenya and got the reply below from their website

Kenya:
Total external debt: $6.8 billion
Total external debt payments: Kenya gives $364 million each year to the rich world in debt payments
Total debt payments: Kenya allocates $1.6 billion a year to paying debts, including domestic debt*
UK debt: Kenya owes approximately £20 million to the UK
Population: 33 million
Average income: $1.32 a day per person
Percentage of adults who can read and write: 74%**
Average life expectancy: 48 years
Total health spending: $430 million a year*
(All figures 2004, except * are 2005/06 and ** is 2003)
 
Debt cancellation status
Kenya is officially classed as a low-income country by the World Bank. It is considered to have a 'sustainable' debt: this is measured by the size of external debt in comparison to the value of exports, without taking into account domestic debt or what Kenya needs to spend on tackling poverty. It is therefore not eligible for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative or the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. It is theoretically eligible for additional debt assistance from the UK, but has not met the conditions required to qualify.

What do campaigners say?
"We ask the Government of Kenya to be firm and united with debt campaigners in demanding 100% unconditional cancellation of Kenya's external debt, in order to release funds for the country's and people's sustainable development. Our debt is largely odious and illegitimate, contracted by a corrupt ruling elite and conveyors of the creditors out to make money. This is a matter of justice. We have paid this debt many times over, through direct monetary repayments, and through colonial and post colonial injustices by the creditors."
Njuki Githethwa, KENDREN (Kenya Debt Relief Network)

Last updated: April 2007

From Jubilee Debt Campaign website

It shows that Kenya  is  paying  almost a  million dollars a day to the rich world, or was in 2007, and little has changed since. This is more than their spending on health.   This is why those who support the work Hezron is doing through our donations should also give some support to campaigns on the campaigns for justice that are run by a number of agencies, including Jubilee Debt Campaign, Oxfam, Christian Aid etc.

I certainly look forward to seeing the report that Tim produces in the next two months.

Best wishes

Ed

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John Le Quesne:

It looks like Kenya's debt payments are mostly internal (total debt payments are $1.6 billion and external debt payments are only $364 million or less than 25% of this). This means that the total debt repayments wouldn't change that much even if all the debts were repaid. Also, bribery / corruption is estimated at $1 billion a year!

I also did a chart comparing Kenya's debts to those of the UK (based on World bank figures) for my benefit with all the debates we hear over here - I used 2010 figures in USD to take currency out of the equation. Kenya has less debts than us on all measures! Also our debt figures are potentially rather understated as if we included pension liabilities + PFI etc, the public debt % would at least double! The other difference is the GINI index which is a measure of the inequality of distribution. In this case 0 means everyone has the same and 1 means all the income is with just one person. In this case, the UK is a more equal society (btw Namibia is the worst, Sweden the best).

GDP
Kenya: 66 billion
UK: 2.17 trillion

GDP per capita
Kenya: $1,600
UK: $34800

Debt (external)
Kenya: 8.46 billion
UK: Not quoted

Debt per capita
Kenya: 210
UK: Not quoted

Revenue
Kenya: 7.02 billion
UK: $908 billion

Expenditure
Kenya: 9.04 billion
UK: $1140 billion

Budget surplus (% of GDP)
Kenya: -6.30%
UK: -10.30%

Imports
Kenya: 11.2 billion
UK: $563 billion

Exports
Kenya: 5.22 billion
UK: $410 billion

Public debt (% of GDP)
Kenya: 47.70%
UK: 76.10%

Distribution of wealth (GINI index)
Kenya: 42.5
UK: 34

Its a murky world.
John

 

January - The Diary of a Country Parson

This year I'm looking at some of the entries in the "The Diary of a Country Parson". This was a diary kept by an English clergyman, James Woodforde (1740-1803). Woodforde lived in Somerset and Norfork, and kept a diary for 45 years recording all kind of ordinary incidents which paint a picture of the routines and concerns of what Ian Hislop terms "the middling folk" of 18th century rural England.

One of the notable events in January 1779 was a great deal of very bad weather, and as I write this, gale force wind and rain are lashing at the windows, so once more bad weather is the norm. Diaries such as this can provide useful records to show us the weather before scientific measurements became commonplace.

No weather yet as been quite as bad as that of January 1362, where the weather destroyed much of the coastline, as well as many lives, which seems similar in its devastation to October 1987 but more extreme:

Few great weather events in British history were as devastating as the "Grote Mandrenke", the great drowning of men, which took place in mid January 1362. A huge south-westerly gale originating in the Atlantic Ocean swept across Ireland, Britain, the Low Countries, and northern Germany, causing at least 25,000 deaths. The first warning of the storm came from Ireland, where homes and buildings in Dublin were devastated by the high winds. Next to experience the brunt of the storm was southern England, where thousands of trees were blown down. Massive damage was caused to the few high buildings, notably churches, and many spires or towers were destroyed. Most famously, the wooden spire of Norwich Cathedral fell through its roof. Worse was to come. As the storm reached the North Sea, it combined with high tides to produce the phenomenon most feared by coastal communities, a storm surge. Ports all along the east coast of England, and across the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, were destroyed, as the power of the wind and waters changed the shape of the coastline.(1)

There is a reminder both in Parson Woodforde's writings and earlier that a changeable climate is not the prerogative of our own times, and climatic change - of whatever cause - can lead to devastating consequences. Weather forecasting is only as good as its interpretation, and the example of weatherman Michael Fish, who cheerfully dismissed reports of a hurricane in 1987, shows how easily even modern forecasters can get it wrong because of the complexity and speed in which it can change. Now they tend to play safe and publicize the highest possible winds - recently (just before Christmas 2011) a Jersey forecast suggested winds like those of 1987. If they get it wrong, that is soon forgotten, but Michael Fish's forecast will be remembered for a long time, no doubt much to his chagrin.

The last entry in these extracts also features the the first mention of an umbrella by Parson Woodforde. Umbrellas did not come into general use in England before the 1780's, and Lieut.-Colonel James Wolfe, writing from Paris in 1752, mentions the people there using umbrellas for the sun and rain, and wonders that a similar practice does not obtain in England. But the man who first appeared with one in 1778 in London was jeered by the mob. They were regarded as effeminate. John Macdonald related that in 1770, he used to be greeted with the shout, "Frenchman, Frenchman! why don't you call a coach?" whenever he went out with his umbrella. It is significant that in 1787 Parson Woodforde only succumbed to having one held over his head during a frightful blizzard at a funeral.

And the first entry also features what has been called the Little Ice Age, where he skates down on the Thames.

The diary is also interesting that it features a kind of strange light, a "will of the wisp", which Woodforde hopes is not an omen of some kind, but he also rationalises it as a natural phenomena in an after note.

January - The Diary of a Country Parson

1763 JAN. 24. We skated down to Abington where we dined and for our dinners there etc. each of us pd. 2s. 6d. We were going down about an hour and half; N.B. We walked above 2 miles out of it. It is about 10 miles by water.

1767 JAN 1. I read Prayers this morning at C. Cary Church being New Year's Day. I dined, supped and spent the evening till 10 o'clock at Parsonage, and after ten I went over to Mr. Clarke's new Hospital where I spent the whole night and part of the morning till 4 o'clock a dancing, on account of Mr. James Clarke's apprenticeship being expired. A great deal of company was there indeed, viz., etc. . . . We had a very good band of musick, 2 Violins and a Base Viol. We were excessive merry and gay there indeed.

1768 JAN. 4. . . . Jack did not come home till near four in the morning. He was much in liquor and quite unhappy. The Devil has had great power over him today. O Lord, grant him strength from Thy Holy Place, to withstand him better pro futuro.

1768: JAN. 6. I read prayers this morning at C. Cary Church being Epiphany. I had a small congregation, it being excessive cold, as cold and severe weather on all accounts as in the year 1740. . . .

1771: JAN. 10. . . . Brother John was greatly astonished by a light this evening as he came thro' Orchards, a field by Ansford Church, which light seemed to follow him close behind all the way through that field, and which he could not account for. I hope it is no Omen of death in the Family. N.B. The Reflection of the snow I apprehend occasioned the light that my Brother saw.

1771: JAN. 16. . . . Extreme hard frost with a cutting wind. It was allowed by my Father and Aunt Anne this afternoon that the weather now is as severe as it was in the year 1740. . . .

1779: JAN. 1st. I breakfasted, dined, supped and slept again at home. This morning very early about 1 o'clock a most dreadful storm of wind with Hail and Snow happened here and the Wind did not quite abate till the evening. A little before 2 o'clock I got up, my bedsted rocking under me, and never in my life that I know of, did I remember the Wind so high or of so long continuance. I expected every Moment that some part or other of my House must have been blown down, but blessed be God the whole stood, only a few Tiles displaced. My Servants also perceived their Bedsteds to shake. Thanks be to God that none of my People or self were hurt. My Chancel received great damage as did my Barn. The Leads from my Chancel were almost all blown of with some Parts of the Roof. The North West Window blown in and smashed all to pieces. The East Window also damaged but not greatly. The North W: Leads on the top of the Church also, some of them blown up and ruffled, besides 2 windows injured. The Clay on the North end of my Barn blown in and the West side of the Roof the Thatch, most all blown away, leaving many holes in it. The damage sustained by me will amount I Suppose to 50 Pounds if not more. However I thank God no lives were lost that I hear of and I hope not. Mr.
Shaddlelows Barn, Michael Andrews's, with many others all blown down. Numbers of Trees torn up by the Roots in many Places. In the evening the Wind abated and was quite calm when I went to bed about 11 o'clock. Since what happened this morning, I prolonged the Letter that I designed to send to my sister Pounsett to relate what had happened here by the storm. And this evening sent it to her by Mr. Cary. A smart frost this evening. As the year begins rather unfortunate to me, hope the other Parts of it will be as propitious to me.

1783: JAN. 26 Thos. Carr dined with our Folks to day. I read Prayers and Preached this Afternoon at Weston. Mr. Custance and a Mrs. Collier, an elderly Lady, at Church. Sent old Mary Adcock at Noon -- a hot rosted Fowl, a fourpenny Loaf and a Bottle of Beer.

1787 I read Prayers and Preached this morning at Weston Church neither Mr. or Mrs. Custance at Church, nor above 20 People in all at Church -- The Weather being extremely cold and severe with much Snow on the ground and still more falling with cutting Winds. After Service I buried a Daughter of Harrisons an Infant aged only 5 Weeks -- I think that I never felt the cold more severe than when I was burying the above Infant. The Wind blowed very Strong and Snow falling all the time and the Wind almost directly in my Face, that it almost stopped my breath in reading the funeral Service at the Grave, tho' I had an Umbrella 1 held over my Head during the Time.

Links
(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2011/mar/07/weatherwatch-great-storms-1287

The Family Album

This is my god-daughter's baptism. She's the little baby. I'm the young fresh-faced young man just standing beside her mother (in the red hat). Her father Terry Hampton, the Vicar in the picture was a great friend, and I remember happy times visiting the family, as well as some very quirky memories - Terry's beloved Cello (in its case, thank goodness) slipping from his grasp and bouncing down the cobbles of St Aubin's High Street. A dolmen tour with him and his son Mark. A gunfighter shoot-out at a themed Cowboy evening at the Parish Hall, where the photo of Lord Coutanche sported a very fetching sheriff's badge and moustache, and where Terry and the Methodist Minister Gerry Stoddern had a shoot out. Terry clutched his shirt, which was red with blood - actually a specially prepared sachet of Congo Red from my chemistry set!

I was watching a TV documentary on John Thaw, and it had reminiscences from his work colleagues, but also, and unusual in these kind of documentary, a lot of interviews with his family, his wife Sheila Hancock, and his three daughters, and quite a substantial amount of home movie footage as well. That allowed the viewer to get behind the TV face, and see - at least partially - the man himself as he was at home, and hear about his home life. There were even the odd clips of him with a young baby daughter on the set of the Sweeney. He seems, in many ways, to have been as pleasant at home as he was when he appeared in public - not perhaps as Jack Regan in the Sweeney, but in his personal favourite, Goodnight Mr Tom.

The God Janus, after whom January is named, was one of the few Roman deities without an analogue in the Greek pantheon of Gods; he had two faces, one looking backward, one looking forward. And the start of January is a month when we look back at the end of the old year, and the past stretching out behind us, and forward to the future.

Both in looking back and looking forward, memory is important. We have a sense of time that other animals do not have. We can project backwards and forwards on a cosmic scale, but also on a personal scale, because we are not machines, we are human beings, with all the emotional complexity that entails, and that means relationships - friends and family.

The past slips away, seemingly into oblivion, but when we look back at photos, or home movies, or just the pictures that we have in our minds of the past, we can bring back those memories to the present.

And it is that which gives us strength to build on for the future, which is a difficult task for those who have been scarred or damaged in some way in their past. John Thaw's mother walked out on his family when he was quite young, and Sheila Hancock could see that this effected often how he reacted to pressures. He had impressed on him that if he and his siblings misbehaved, they would be taken away from his father, and into care, and if they encountered trouble, someone trying to pick a fight, to avoid it at all costs, to walk away. As she noted, this meant that negatively, he would avoid talking about personal difficulties, because he shut that off, he walked away from anything confrontational. On the other hand, when he decided to walk away from an addiction to drink, he did so with that same resolve to leave trouble behind, and never went back to his alcoholism.

My partner Annie Parmeter used to tell me - as part of the counselling that she did - that this kind of behaviour was not uncommon. It is getting stuck in a repeating pattern of behaviour, learned often unconsciously, from childhood, which determines how we react, because we have never looked critically at our own behaviour. Memory should be examined, to paraphrase Socrates.

And memories also carry regrets of people who are no longer there, who we can no longer talk too. That is also part of looking back. But if those people changed us, their memories live on. Annie, who loved Star Trek, would have been pleased that my sons are also fervent fans, and we are currently watching The Next Generation. It brings back happy memories to me, of watching the entire series with her.

More than the original series, there is some very thoughtful philosophy along with the science fiction, and the episode we watched tonight, Skin of Evil, has one of the Enterprise Crew, Tasha Yar, killed, apparently just out of malice. At the end of the episode, there is a short sequence in which a holographic image of her speaks to her friends, about family. Like Tasha, Annie, who was an only child, always considered her friends to be her family.

Lt. Tasha Yar: What I want you to know is how much I loved my life, and those of you who shared it with me. You are my family. You all know where I came from, and what my life was like before. But Starfleet took that frightened, angry young girl and tempered her. I have been blessed with your friendship and your love.

My friend Data. You see things with the wonder of a child. And that makes you more human than any of us.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard. I wish I could say you've been like a father to me. But I've never had one, so I don't know what it feels like. But if there was someone in this universe I could choose to be like, someone who I would want to make proud of me - it's you. You who have the heart of an explorer and the soul of a poet.

And it returns to memory once more. We carry forward into the New Year happy memories of the past; they make us what we are, and they keep alive our friends and family who are now dead.

Lt. Tasha Yar: [her final words] Death is that state in which one exists only in the memory of others. Which is why it is not an end. No goodbyes. Just good memories. Hailing frequencies closed, sir.

Capt. Picard: Au revoir, Natasha.

Armageddon 2012?

I was watching the film Armageddon with Bruce Willis a few days ago - as happens with these matters, it came to a freesat channel, doing the rounds, and I managed to record it. It is all about an asteroid hitting the earth, and mankind facing the prospect of mass extinction. That is, of course, quite a feasible scenario, although with NASA budget cut backs, the chances are slim indeed of any kind of drilling operation to split the asteroid asunder - even if it was possible to do this so that the pieces didn't hit the earth, as happens fortuitously in the film.

In fact, the film is in part about rough edged human beings, thrown into a wilderness to fend for themselves - the asteroid is a surrealist nightmare of craggy rocks, sharp and pointed light cathedral spires. Although the setting is space, the theme in part is the frontier spirit of America, the explorers trekking off into the outback and facing a sometimes hostile environment. I won't spoil the denouement, except to say that as expected, the project succeeds.

There's a token Russian for comedy effect from the Russian space station, and he has some of the best lines. Starting a jammed fuel line with a spanner, he says - Russian systems, American systems - all made with parts from Taiwan! And Paris gets wiped out - someone in the movies didn't like the French!

But the end of the world is often on the horizon in other ways. The Christian Harold Camping had predicted the end of the world, or at least the start of it, with the "rapture", a supposed moment when Christians are snatched away from an earth that will be dominated by the antichrist. This started with J.N. Derby, was very popular in the 1980s with Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth (the EU was the empire of the antichrist, the beast with many heads!) and continues to this day with the "Left behind" series of Tim LaHaye which presents it in a fictional form. It seems to be a peculiarly American phenomena, for while there are no doubt Christians in Britain and Jersey who believe it, it has never dominated the Christian mainstream, but remained resolutely on the margins, for fringe sects, and University student fundamentalism.

The New Age has its own take on the end of the world. According to a reading - actually a misreading - of the Mayan calendar, the end of the world will happen in 2012. Nonsense is also disseminated about the start of the Mayan calendar, which recent studies have pinned down not to tens of thousands of years BC, but to around  August 11, 3114 BC - based on archeological evidence from the date used on inscriptions, astronomical events recorded which tie in with the calendar in inscriptions, and historical documentary material (such as the Chronicle of Oxcutzkab). 4004 BC for the Usher Chronology of the Bible is actually earlier!

The "great cycle" of the calendar is 13 Baktuns, or 1,872,000 days, which neatly brings us to  December 20, 2012 but on a west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of the text projects into the future to the 80th Calendar Round, which would be 13 October 4772. There is no evidence the Maya thought the world would end in 2012, but rather the contrary.

One significant matter is the length of years, just over 5,000 in a "great cycle", and I've heard it said in all seriousness that meant that the Mayans computed time in much vaster periods than other peoples. But a 5,000 year cycle is hardly large. Even 100,000 years, which would take us back to the Paleolithic, is barely something like 20 seconds to midnight on a clock which had all the age of the earth compressed to one 12 hour period. Or as another geologist said:

"Consider the Earth's history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the King's nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history"

No ancient calendar came anywhere near estimates of the age of the earth. Eternalists like Aristotle thought it had no beginning, but the notion of deep time of an age of the earth of 4,540 000 000 years old was beyond them. If the Mayans had a calendar which could put the creation of the earth back then, I think their calendar would have a bit more credibility for 2012 end of the world.

And of the mass extinctions which have taken place - and there have been five significant ones - one was almost certainly set off by an asteroid impact on the earth around  65.5 million years ago, which led to the end of the dinosaurs. That remains the one real possibility, but I don't think it is that likely on the exact date of 20 December 2012.

What will happen after? Harold Camping has "recalibrated" his date, recalculating after he missed his date. I suspect strongly that the Mayan end of the world theorists will do the same!

My Top Ranking Posts of 2011

My last posting of 2011 looks at the top stories on my blog, as given by "Google Stats".

Top of the list is "Lionel Logue and the King's Speech" with (according to Google) 1,121 page views! This is my review of the film, and also some of the background that I discovered researching Lionel Logue. I'd recommend the film if you haven't seen it,

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/lionel-logue-and-kings-speech.html

Next on the list is "Tweedledum and Tweedledee", a pre-election post summing up the achievements - or as I saw it lack of achievement - of two Jersey politicians who almost always voted the same way on significant matters. Unlike some bloggers, I regard "the power of the blog" as marginal compared to other media, but it was curious that both of them came more or less bottom in the October elections. The reason, of course, isn't really the blog posting, it's the fact that other voters were not oblivious to the near Trappist lifestyle of those States Members.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/08/tweedledum-and-tweedledee.html

"There's No Place Like Home", a transcript of James Thurber's brilliant article, which I posted when taking a break from "News from Nowhere" in the summer. It languished off the scale, then about a month ago, shot to the top, and is still getting hits, Word of mouth is clearly getting out. If you haven't read it, it is a look at a traveler's phrase book - well, the English parts. I defy anyone to read it with a straight face. I wish I could be half as funny as Thurber - he set a high standard. Here's a taster:

Trouble really starts in the canto called `In the Customs Shed.' Here we have: `I cannot open my case.' `I have lost my keys.' `Help me to close this case." I did not know that I had to pay." I don't want to pay so much." I cannot find my porter.' `Have you seen porter 153 ?' That last query is a little master stroke of writing, I think, for in those few words we have a graphic picture of a tourist lost in a jumble of thousands of bags and scores of customs men, looking frantically for one of at least a hundred and fifty-three porters. We feel that the tourist will not find porter 153, and the note of frustration has been struck.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2010/08/theres-no-place-like-home.html

From 2010, "Jersey's Sex Offenders Register - Why the Delay?"  comes next. This was a proposition launched in 19th August 2009, carried unanimously on 08 October 2009, and still not in place when I was writing in November 2010. Thankfully we now have the law in place, and it would be interesting to know if some of the suggested costs materialised. There seem not to have been any court challenges, for example, by those on the list. Also while Jersey was putting its own law into place, the UK was moving on with pilot schemes on "Sarah's Law" after the murder of Sarah Payne, which allows significantly at risk members of the public such as single parents to check that they are not entering into a relationship with a listed sex offender. This is now being rolled out across the UK. Jersey, as usual, seems to be lagging behind in this area, and something that should be taken up with the new Council of Ministers.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2010/11/jerseys-sex-offenders-register-why.html

http://www.sarahslaw.co.uk/

An example: A single mother meets a man who she likes but is worried that she does not know enough about his background to allow him fully into her family's life. She telephones the local police and requests information about the man. "If the mother is given the information, she will be asked to keep it confidential - and could face civil or criminal action if she does not" The police will check the background of the man because the request has come from a mother - someone who is directly responsible for children. Officers will carry out two checks - a priority check within 24 hours, followed by a more thorough risk assessment which takes longer because it will delve into someone's history. If there is a criminal record, the pilot constabularies say they would use special child protection measures, jointly run by police and probation officers, to work out how best to deal with the suspect.  If there is a serious risk, police may also pass on some of this information to the mother - but only if they are convinced that it is necessary and proportionate to protect the children. If the mother is given the information, she will be asked to keep it confidential - and could face civil or criminal action if she does not. If the investigation does not find any record of sexual offences, but does find other worrying behaviour, such as a conviction for domestic violence or intelligence of worrying behaviour, the mother may still be given information to help her protect her family.

Note that scenario could not - at present - happen in Jersey. I think it should.

"Independent Advisory Group - A Comment" - again from 2010, this highlights problems with the chronology of complaints made by the group with regard to Haut de La Garenne investigations.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2010/07/independent-advisory-group-comment.html

But on a lighter note, "How to Entertain Without A Maid" looks back on some of the advice given in a cookery book which I obtained second hand. No recipes, I'm afraid, but a window into a past that really seems rather amusing in the way it is written!

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2010/07/independent-advisory-group-comment.html

John Mbiti's "The Concept of God in Africa" features next. There is a general lack of information about African beliefs, and people have all kinds of vague notions about "primitive religion". This attempts to address the balance. It's from 2007, but is still getting hits.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2007/01/concept-of-god-in-africa.html

"RIP: Bob Tilling" has some general information, and some personal memories about Bob Tilling as well as more on his music than was given in local obituaries, and a chance to read one of his music reviews.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/rip-bob-tilling.html

"Jersey General Election - Results and Comment" - this one speaks for itself.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/jersey-general-election-results-and.html

"Philip Bailhache and the Roger Holland Affair" deals with the mishaps and general ineptitude that led to a paedophile becoming a member of the honorary police, and remaining so - even after evidence of previous convictions had taken place. It is worth reading, as a warning against complacency which I hope will never happen again.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/philip-bailhache-and-roger-holland.html

And that's it - the top listed postings by Google Stats. I'll be doing a retrospective of the year next week, but for now, this is my last blog posting of 2011.

Have a happy New Year!