Bail out of the bailout

This $700bn US bank bailout isn't about money at all. It's about organisational behaviour. The approach was just wrong. It may be a good thing, but whatever the reasons for the bailout being rejected, business sense didn't come into it.

It started badly. Hank Paulson, an ex-investment banker, writes three pages guaranteeing banks $700bn in funding to offload their bad loans, at a time when Americans are starting to feel the pinch. And to grind salt into the wound, to state that it must be 'beyond legal oversight.'

So in other words: Americans felt, quite rightly, that an investment banker was demanding $5000 from every household in the USA to make sure his friends could keep their jobs... while arrogantly believing his word should trump the rule of law. In short, doing what the Bush administration seems to have done for eight years: believing executive power to be better than checks and balances, and to concentrate decisionmaking in the hands of one or two men.

Is it any wonder Americans rebelled, in a manner worthy of the French? People started calling their elected representatives. Hundreds of times a day. Congressmen and Senators had no choice but to raise questions about the deal. And the deal folded, thanks to the crassness of Paulson and Bush.

But we should celebrate the principle, if not the outcome. This means that American democracy, after a very bad few years of international adventuring, outright lawbreaking, and a timid press, is finally starting to work again. Which means that while America's economy may hit the skids, America itself - America the idea, the grand principle - will survive, no matter what.

5bed des. res, 2br, 100% Undead Pf.

Whether it's the fact I feel like one today with a heavy cold, or the upcoming London Day, I've realised what it is about my new home that makes me mildly uneasy: it isn't zombieproof.

Some people judge the comfort of their home on whether it's got sea views, or the size of its kitchen, or the greenery in its garden. I use a different measure: if the streets were full of zombies, would you be safe in it?

Now I realise streets full of zombies aren't that common an occurence in London. (Although I'm not so sure about Glasgow.) However, the principle holds. Zombies are really good at getting in through windows and small openings, and because they don't feel pain they'd have no hesitation about squeezing through jagged gaps.

The house I've rented in is a big house with far too much glass on the ground floor. The door has glass in it; there's a bay window; and at the back, the garden isn't fully enclosed, meaning all a gang of zombies would have to do is scale various garages and neighbouring fences and they're at the back doors (glass again) before you can find Milla Jovavich's number. (Come to think of it, that's a worthwhile endeavour even without zombies around.)

There's also a lot of nook-and-cranny action goin' on once you're inside - so fighting your way up to the roof would be fraught with danger. An open staircase, lots of rooms, and various ingress/egress facilities available via rooves and drainpipes. Highly zombie-friendly. Not good at all.

A zombie-proof house, on the other hand (like my own place on the other side of London) feels much more secure. Uninterupted concrete wall at the back, no windows on the ground floor, and a secure front door and garage with deadbolts and locks up the wazoo. And none of this big winding staircase stuff: narrow spaces mean you could, in a pinch, take on the zombie hordes one by one rather than three abreast.

So there you have it: the reason I haven't had many good nights' sleep yet is that this house doesn't pass the zombie test. It's actually pretty sensible.

Not a good start, Mr Osbourne

The 2008 Conservative Party Conference has kicked off. And I'm not liking the tone: it sounds more like New Labour than decent responsibilities-led Toryism.

I don't want shadow chancellor George Osbourne telling me his government will do 'everything in its power' to help victims of the credit crunch. As we've learned under a decade of spendthrift wastrels Blair and Brown, 'do everything in its power' translates as 'take everything in your wallet'.

I want the next Tory-led government to understand it can't solve everything, that the solution to every problem is not further legislation, that making progress means cheerleading for the wealth-creating and hardworking more than the weak and the workshy. I want a government that pushes for individual responsibility, and when economic corrections happen, to let them happen, and let bad banks die so that good banks can bubble to the surface.

In short, I don't want just different government: I want less government. And I'm concerned Cameron and Osbourne won't deliver.

Permeating Osbourne's speech is the damn same gorge-and-gush, soak-the-middle-class mentality that drove New Labour to turn a huge fiscal surplus when it came to power into a stunning deficit... and, through its breathtaking incompetence, do so during an era of global economic growth and rising tax take. It's all Labourites ever do: feed an addiction to spending. The Conservatives, on Day One, don't appear to be promising anything different. Worrying, worrying.

Palin-dromic Sarah on how not to give an interview

I've changed my mind. The scariest sentence in America is:

" . . . where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh -- it's got to be all about job creation too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing, but 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that."

The credit crunch bailout is about healthcare reform and job creation in the 'trade sector'? This woman's either a complete mentalist or Dan Quayle's long-lost cousin.

So is he debating or not?

Oh, wow. This is probably the worst thing John McCain could say short of "Sarah, I'm not feeling well." The first of only three 'debates' between the two men vying to be US President, and McCain wants a raincheck?

(I use the word 'debate' loosely - American 'debates' are far too scripted and controlled to involve real surprises, unlike the shouting matches we get over here. Robin Williams once described the British Parliament as 'Like Congress with a two-drink minimum.")

It's going to be a laugh if Obama turns up and gets 90 minutes of primetime to explain his policies to America. Perhaps he'll bring a cardboard cut-out of McCain to 'debate' with.

Catchin' the Tube, doody

Two weeks after arriving back in London, I'm not in tune with the Tube yet.

Any Londoner knows deep down that to enjoy living here you've got to be in tune with the Tube. To understand how it's feeling today, to take its temperature, feel its pulse so you can take the best route through its arteries - and by association, have the best day in London itself. To tread lightly on the concrete tunnels, so you arrive at work calm and refreshed. Being in tune with the Tube gives you an advantage.

It's tacit and unconscious, but a raft of little sociological signifiers 'tell' you stuff about how the day's journey will be. You know how it is - one or two extra people on the walk to the station, a couple more kids in school uniform, a suspicious additional delay of a minute or three without explanation... hints and tips that signal something bad's going to happen. The social signs that denote all the lags and bumps in the system ... daisychained and neurally networked 'happenings' that sum to compression waves and other negative traffic patterns that can add half an hour to a journey of ten kilometres or less.

Catch these little nuances of the hive mind, sense the eddies in the tapestry of human flotsam that makes up rushhour in the capital of the world, and you can surf this city like a Hawaiian on the perfect wave, ridin' a choob across the oldest industrial society. You can move effortlessly through crowds, carve your own path through the seething mass of docile bovines, laugh as people gape slackly at your apparent ability to walk between the raindrops. But miss them and you're toast, just one of those comfortably-numb nobodies going towards oblivion one day at a time, one eye on the clock and the other on their wallet.

And a year out of my natural habitat, I've got to relearn those little signifiers again. Because without them I'm at a disadvantage, a blade with a blunted edge.

Yesterday, for example, was sheer, absolute hell. 15 mins held at the barriers deep under Victoria, then squished into Play-Dough for my four stops. An hour and twenty minutes door to door. I had no inkling of how bad things'd be.

Today, however - such immense joy. Seats on the train; a clear waltz along the passageways 'twixt Victoria and Central, about 45 minutes from lock to unlock. With no feeling for how well it'd go until I was in the thick of it, picking up a few nuances from the paucity of crowds through the ticket gates.

I'm a foreigner in my native land, not speaking the local language yet.

To 1,740,000 selfless people: thank you

Here's a thought: how many people in Britain do you think are real net contributors to the Exchequer?

In other words, how many of us pay more in contributions (NI and tax) than we consume in public services?

I'm interested in this question, because it'll show just how few people Labour's harebrained profligacy is really hurting. These people, probably a surprisingly small minority who basically subsidise everyone else, never get thanked for their contributions, never get recognised by the majority who are net drains on the economy. They're just seen as ATMs.

(I'm not blowing my own trumpet here. While I live in a city (lower unit cost of service provision), don't have kids, and have private medical and pension - making me much less of a burden to the Exchequer than, say, you - I'm not exactly paying high taxes after a year at university, so for the moment I'll consider myself a drainer rather than a contributor).

And I bet few of us realise we're drainers. The cost of public services per citizen is approximately £7700 (or £9600 if only adults are counted) per year. The mean UK income is barely £21000, which carries a tax burden of about £5500. On this broad measure, you need to earn £30,500 before you're paying your own way in the UK. (A modal distribution would of course be a better way to model this but I can't find the figures.)

Some interesting conclusions can be drawn here. If you make under £30500, you're technically not entitled to complain about New Labour's wastefulness, because no matter how much our hapless Chancellor squanders, you're not (directly) paying for his profligacy; you're more likely a recipient of it. Presumably this is the only reason Labour ever gets to govern.

If you have children, you're almost certainly a net drain, unless they're in private school. If you work for Britain's bloated public sector, you're definitely a drainer, since the taxes you pay just go in a circle and back into your salary again; you make zero net contribution no matter how high your generous government salary is. (And in Brown's Britain, public sector salaries are very, very generous - not to mention the sheer number of public servants, which has grown massively under New Labour.)

The same's true if you live in the countryside: higher fixed costs of service provision (further for the garbage truck to go, fewer people to absorb a hospital's high setup costs) may mean all countryside dwellers are drainers.

I have seen a calculation for Scotland only; it seems the figure may be as low as 150,000 net contributors, for a population of 5m. Imagine if the same proportions hold true for the UK as a whole. Fewer than 2m people make Britain's fat wodge of public services viable for the entire population of 58m. The rest are simply spongers, wasters, or at best what management accountants call 'contribution': paying a bit towards costs, but not their fair share.

My new hero? Simon Cowell. His personal tax bill came in at over £20m - meaning he's actually declaring his £50m income outright, instead of funnelling it offshore. What a guy. You thought watching Pop Thingy was fattening his bank account? Nope, he's paying for the entire audience's street cleaning.

I think these 1,740,000 people who support the entire UK deserve a word of thanks. Yet of course, from this ungrateful, spendthrift government, they won't get one.

(Yes, the above is slightly tongue in cheek, since it doesn't take account of corporate taxes or investment finance. But only slightly, because the principle seems sound.)

Thoughts, fellow drainers?

Humming along with hummus

Great lunch places around Holborn, Episode II: Hummus Bros place on Southampton Row.

They're not really doing themselves any favours with their marketing - first step of opening a different style lunch joint: show your customers what they'll be getting, with photos of some dishes. I'm pretty adventurous foodwise, but 'hummus' can mean a variety of things, and when I walked in I had no idea whether it meant a side dish, a shared bowl, a sandwich, whatever.

As it turns out, you get a bowl of hummus - crushed chickpeas and tahini, whatever 'tahini' is - with a topping. An unusual combo, since you'd expect a 'base layer' to be something plain like rice or pasta, with the topping carrying the flavour. But somehow, with a couple of small pitta breads, it all works really well together. And the side dishes - aubergines, beans, salad - are fresh too.

So: chalk up another win in the local lunch scene, like the Onion sandwich shop I discovered a few weeks back. Not bad at all.

Brown going down

Brown's just making his speech at the Labour Party conference. And it doesn't seem to have set the world alight... although the man himself may shortly be going down in flames.

It's standard Labour stuff: all about what they'll do for the weak and the workshy, while ignoring the people who work their asses off to pay for this government's endless gorging and gushing of taxes. So far, so Labour. But above all, it's simply boring. Brown had to make a strong show here. But in the audience, Jack Straw's already asleep.

I'd say this lacklustre speech clears the way for David "Brown is an inspiration" Milliband (yeah, we know what he's inspiring you to do, kiddo) to make a leadership challenge. Brown's never been a good talker, but this speech is just so unbearably dull he can't possibly survive now.

This product is stupid

Sometimes, a new product comes along that's so monumentally stupid you wonder what they were smoking. Distributing albums on.... Micro SD cards? They expect people to build libraries of albums about two centimetres square? This is a a complete misreading (and misunderstanding) of the market. The attachment (now fading) people have to 'thing value' is entirely valid for treasured vinyl or even CD jewel boxes, but the market's now educated into iTunes and the hard disk is now the storage media that matters.

The only plus point here is that the inevitable IKEA storage rack won't take up much space in your living room. Let's hope the Stones don't re-release 'Sticky Fingers' on this format though, because they'll have a hell of a time finding zips small enough to put on the cover.

What skydiving's REALLY all about

The Uncyclopedia has probably the best definition of skydiving I've yet seen.

Making mountains out of...

Hmmm. A Welsh hill has been upgraded to a mountain after gaining a metre in height. I suspect a small band of proud Welshmen may have spent the last couple of weekends carrying suspiciously-shaped boulders to the summit and rearranging the signs to the top... let's hope this doesn't reignite the discussion responsible for more geek divorces than any other: should Pluto ever have been a planet...

Neither rocking nor rolling

What's all this about Guy Ritchie's Rocknrolla being a 'return to form'? The film is mediocre at best.

First off comes one thing that really isn't Mr Madge's fault: it's all about the ever-rising London property market, which, er, stopped rising right after this film was in the can. A year's a long time in the London market, and this film feels as dated as Wall Street. However, there are too many other faults to forgive.

The characters are lazily drawn. Why was the Russian billionaire based so blatantly on Roman Abramovich, even clunkily inserting a football stadium and stubble into the art direction? And there wasn't enough violence, making the film feel lightweight: Eastern Promises did it far better. There wasn't enough comedy to make it another Snatch, nor enough storytelling to keep your attention. Worst of all, it's not even a complete film: the final frame's about the next film, leaving many plot threads untied. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

There's only one good sequence - a slow-motion chase on foot between London wideboys and Russian mobsters as they get steadily more injured - but overall, the film's slow-moving, with not enough action, and resorts to that laziest of all scripting tools, the narrative voiceover. The sense of waiting for things to happen is almost as bad as Ocean's 13. And the sex scene with Thandie Newton lasts only seconds without interesting visuals, and if you're filming a sex scene with Thandie, you really owe it to your viewers to show more than just her face.

The only reason I can imagine critics are calling this a 'return to form' is that they're comparing it with Revolver, surely a candidate for Worst Film Ever Made. It really wasn't worth the effort.

Standard Google

Here's a great example of what happens when you rub the big G up the wrong way. The business model Google's using to stamp out anything it perceives as competition is familiar to any MBA: it's Standard Oil.

The journalist is remarkably even-handed, even analysing why Google itself feels it's so wronged (all it's trying to do is provide 'the best possible user experience', but Google's at that stage of its evolution where it can't comprehend that 'best' might not be 'Google exclusively'.)

Not the best of days to start a role with 'Investor' in the name

On the day of the largest shock to the world financial system since the Wall Street Crash of the 1920s, I start work at... a company called Investor Dynamics! Well, I always did enjoy a challenge...

Goodbye

I left the Warwick campus today. Much as I arrived: in the pouring rain.

And now I'm back in London, in my new home. A cheerful top floor of a pleasantly scruffy house down south. Lying on an unfamiliar bed, in the dim light of an dusky lamp, stone cold sober, thinking. And trying not to think too much about the one inescapable fact: I'm not going back there.

The richest experiences are rich precisely because they end quickly. A skydive, a jungle trek, even a month backpacking. You troll through the time taking action to take things forward. But the MBA had a community. When you're working and studying in each others' pockets and half the cohort lives a two minute walk away, you feel wanted, part of everything, alive, even in the most despairing moments late at night before an exam you know you're not ready for. It wasn't a year out; it was a life. And now it's gone and I'm already missing it.

Lots to do, lots on the calendar. But the dreamy green campus is behind me now, and I'm sad. In just two week there'll be another crop of bright-eyed MBA students using our Syndicate rooms, eating our doughnuts, sleeping in our beds. (And, if this year's anything to go by, each other's beds too.)

It was a great year. Thank you, Warwick University. Signing off.... now.

Dissertation's in

I take the last paper-and-book laden walk from Lakeside to the Business School. A brief pause, a few chance hellos, and a final walk up to the third floor. I hand the two newly-bound copies of my 171-page, 24,220 word dissertation to the office people and wish them well.

And just like that - it's done.

Cruising on Broadway

I'm not the cruising type, but... this is one hell of a boat. Even if it has a daft name. "Oasis of the Seas"? Isn't that a bit prosaic, like "Fertile Land of the Earth" or "Breathable Air of the Sky"?

I feel sick

Weird. Now the three-month dissertation project is complete - as usual, it all came down to the last 48 hours - I've suddenly lost my usual vitality. In fact, since waking at 7 I've felt like crap.

I'm guessing the focus on a rather difficult research question kept me so occupied my body just somehow kept up, although I've done little exercise since March except jumping out of the odd plane. Now the last spreadsheet and paragraph is done, and the whole thing's PDF'd up and with the binding shop, it just let go. I feel like a normal person: listless, incurious, and physically weak. I hope this doesn't last long.

It's on!

The beam at the Large Hadron Collider has just been switched on, and it's working better than anyone dreamed! The beam has made three complete circuits already, and they might even try the second beam that goes in the opposite direction (the one that 'collides') today. Great!

Not sure about some of the personalities the BBC have reporting on it, though. Steve Punt? Dara O'Brien? Surely recreating conditions straight after the Big Bang isn't a laughing matter (although it may be good for puns?)

They could at least have invited Brian May from 'Queen'. He recently completed his physics PhD after taking a couple of decades out for international stardom.

The choice of celebrities is balanced, though, by the presence of Dr Brian Cox, possibly the world's coolest physicist. "Ex-rock star turned astrophysicist?" Now THAT'S an interesting CV.

He also gave a very scientific response to the doomsayers: "Anyone who thinks the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world is a twat."

Say, now THERE'S a good-lookin' graph

Not to blow my own trumpet, but I do think this chart that's just emerged from my dissertation research is one of the coolest looking graphs ever!

Four days to zero hour

In the game now. My final few days at Warwick University, still working furiously on my dissertation project, with the 25,000 word report due at noon on Friday. Only a hiccup with the Large Hadron Collider represents an alternative!

Sick of the blasted rain

I know these are the last days of my dissertation and staying inside is a Good Thing, but I'm really sick of the rain Britain's been getting. It's not very Action Hero to be stuck inside your dorm room all week is it? After a zero Summer, couldn't we at least have some warmish days going into Autumn? Statistically I mean? Yet the week's been a washout. Oh well, I'll be back in the warm embrace of London soon enough. Not long now.

Reboot successful

One thing you have to hand to 007's production stylists: the way they've rebooted the non-ironic 1980s-motif of the Bond franchise is awesome. I mean, deconstruct the promo image here. No girls, no villains, just Bond alone. And the gun - an expert touch. The Walther PPK Bond traditionally carries is a bit of a girl's gun; putting this assault rifle thing (I think it's a Steyr AUG) in the hands of Bond while he's still wearing his suit and tie is a masterstroke. With Casino Royale, it completes the franchise's successful reboot.

Around the turn of the century, films like Vin Diesel's XXX attempted to deliver the death blow to Bond. (XXX even had a cheeky pre-title sequence of a dinner-suited secret agent failing due to his inability to fit into grungy nightclubs.) Bond had got stuck in the 80s: power dressing, clunky gadgets, when foreign travel was still just about rare enough to be cool. Through the awfulness of 'Day and Tomorrow, 007 limped on, but only just. But how could technology impress when global satellite navigation devices were available in Argos?

Luckily, XXX was deep-sixed and put on Ice, and the Bond team learned from its mistakes. Casino Royale was a triumph, inspired by the raw bruises of the Jason Bourne films, even if the narrative was somewhat wanting. (How, exactly, did Vesper go from prim sidekick to loving companion between frames? Was she making an ironic comment on the fact that modern woman only likes men when they're powerless and emasculated?)

Let's hope they've got the script sorted this time, but as for the cinematography and image system - it's looking good to go.

The Colony: another name bites the dust

London's Soho changed a lot between my teens and thirties, when I was away for a decade, and one of the bars that defined and captured the area's bohemian feel was The Colony. I've been there a couple of times since 2001, and it still felt special and edgy, so it must have been intense in its 1970s prime.

The owner says he'll relocate, but it'll never be the same. Vibe rarely travels and edge, like humour, can't be bottled or built from a recipe.

International House of Pancakes. What does it mean?

Sometimes, the XKCD cartoon is so good it goes beyond mere brilliance and into.. genius.

Summary of August's political news from Britain

David Miliband (early August) - "We're f**ked and I'm the man to fix it."

Alistair Darling (mid August) - "We're f**ked but it's not my fault!"

Charles Clarke (late August) - "We're just f**ked."

Is this a trend - Labour politicians suddenly developing an honest streak?

In a world gone mad .... there is one man... who everyone thought was immortal

And now... he's DEAD. Even if you don't know his name, you'd know him the moment he spoke to you. You know all those movie trailers with the narrated soundtrack in a booming, sonorous American accent? That's Don.

My personal favourite, out of the thousands of movie trailers he narrated? Undoubtedly the most miscast one: 'Miss Potter'. Somehow, the trailer for a tale of an English country children's author sounded like a secret agent thriller, full of double agents named Flopsy, Bopsy, and Cottontail.

Goodbye, Don. You'll be remembered.

Low energy day

Well, after dealing with a credit card fraud on Saturday - kudos to Barclays and PayPal here; they made a big and messy job about as simple as it could be - and suffering the syrup-slow train services into London this weekend, I'm starting Monday dog tired but positive about the future.

I moved into my new London home yesterday, top floor of a sprawling townhouse in southwest London. (My own house is rented out right now and I've no immediate need for it back.) This place is much further from town than I'm used to - overland train rather than Tube - but it's quiet and relaxed and with a kitchen that works; I don't mind sharing for a few months after the scrum of university accomodation, and anyway the room's got an entire wallful of cupboard space, so I can get ALL my stuff together in one place for once. Carrying 400kg up six flights of stairs wasn't fun, but at least it's all done now, and the room itself is large, simple, and carries a single monthly fee. Exactly what I need post-MBA.

The ache of body and mind persists, but I'm excited.