What of the Olympic legacy?

I have been thinking about this. London 2012 is of course only half over, we still have the fantastic spectacle of the Paralympics to go, but what of the venues and the fantastic infrastructure built to get people to and from them?

There has been much talk of legacy, of bits you can take down and so on.

Stop.... why? Haven't we the imagination to make use of the most fantastic stadia built?

There is just so much that could be done.

Lets start with the main stadium, well it could be the most spectacular concert venue ever! Did you see those light shows! Only shame is that ELO are no longer about, but wow!

That would provide quite a lot of the running costs, then, athletic events could be held there, even televised, and here's an idea, what about an annual or biannual British youth games?

The tickets would have to be cheap, and given to family members of competitors but what could we do with seeing the best of our youth competing?

Can you imagine a better way of inspiring the next generation?

UK in recession? I don't believe the numbers.

I know people will think that I don't believe the numbers because I don't want to.

Well, it's not that I don't believe the UK GDP could have shrunk by 0.7%, it's just that I don't think it could have done so whilst at the same time the number of people employed could have risen by 180,000 In fact we have had 3 quarters of employment growth matched by 3 quarters of GDP contraction. It's simply not credible to believe both numbers at the same time, the maths just don't add up. Imagine if I said what happens if you take 2 from 2? How could you get 4?

So what is actually going on?

I haven't got a clue, other than to say there is something odd going on.

The disparity is of course not completely inexplicable, as I can see some special factors that could lead to a growing economy with an oddly shrinking GDP.

Well, there is people working either short time, part time, or self employed. This could well be a large factor leading to employment being buoyant whilst the economy is slack, but we are at record employment rates at the moment.

Other things are playing a part as well. For example oil. if you look at this current graph on the BBC* you will note that in March the price of Brent crude was $125 a barrel, and fell as low as $90, over the same period the pound has risen and fallen to end at roughly the same vale, or in short if the same amount of oil and gas was produced from the North Sea, it's actual value dropped by 24% which is a huge drop. So how much is the oil and gas industry as a percentage of GDP? Well apparently from what I have googled the best  estimate I could come up with is around 6% of GDP. So in one quarter that fell by around a quarter, or 2% of GDP, but "production" in which this sector falls, fell 1.3% total, of which actually oil and gas is huge (About a half so 2% reduction in GDP would mean a fall in production of something like 15% to keep it to 1.3% means a massive growth in other parts of the sector). There must have been massive growth in the rest of production to hold the numbers up that well.

There are some other odd factors. Garden centres. Sounds lame, and this production is lost, but they haven't been busy during a very wet spring. Garden furniture and bedding plants remain unsold.

So what's the story? Personally I think there is growth, and indeed strong growth, hence the jobs numbers, but crucially, oil and gas as well as all other commodities are very volatile, and we produce a lot of oil and gas.

The next thing is construction. Well the sector is far from a boom, but one of it's problems has been the rain. There is a lot of construction that can go on rain or shine but a lot that can't be done in the rain. In short I expect construction to grow in the next quarter.

* This graph will take you to 12 months historical figures from the date you click on the link not when this article was written.

Costa Concordia Captain's lucky escape!

Apparently Francesco Schettino, Captain of the cruise liner Costa Concordia did not abandon ship, he tripped and fell into a lifeboat.

How lucky is that? I mean what are the odds?

Rumours that he tripped over 3 disabled people and a small child have been strenuously denied.*

Meanwhile Captain Schettino has hired Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf as a public relations consultant to shore up his reputation and provide credible answers.**

The BBC has this.

*I made that up.
** That too. Should I become a journalist?

Cameron was wrong to use the EU veto for city interests!

We have heard allot about David Cameron wielding the veto in European negotiations for the UK's national interests as far as our financial sector was concerned. It was wrong to wield the veto for that reason.

It is true, that were they the only reason to use the veto, I would have done it, however a better reason is that the deal on the table, whether it involved us or not, was wrong for the following reasons:

1. It does nothing to actually address the Euro's sovereign debt crisis, which was the purpose of the summit. Crucially there is no stated mechanism for the ECB to become the lender of last resort.
2. It proposes a set of rules that Euro members promised to keep to last time, and most did not but the Euro countries promise to be really good from now on. It's not credible.
3. The rules allow a country to run up it's debt to GDP ratio in good times as well as bad, creating an automatic structural deficit if a recession hits. (Gordon Brown would have met those rules.)
4. It has too little flexibility in the event of an actual recession for those countries who have behaved well to borrow what they need to as a recession hits. 

So, I don't disagree with the veto being used, but it should have been used because the deal does not fix the problems of the Euro zone, it makes them worse, and punishes the UK for it.

What we could do with though, is counter proposals. The French and German governments are busy trying to look like they are doing something useful, and forcing others to back them when all they are doing is coming up with quarter measures to keep their electorates on side. This will work in the short term. Sarkozy has an election next year. The problem is last weeks summit will only work until the new year, and then only if they are lucky. The ink will never dry on the last deal to be signed in March 2012 because it will be renegotiated at least twice before then.

The BBC has this on the state of the Euro. The Independent has this on the maths in the Euro.

Worlds smallest steam engine? No!

The BBC has an article entitled: World's 'smallest steam engine' built in Germany, except if you read the article, it is obviously not a steam engine at all.

It is in fact a Stirling engine, originally invented by the Rev Dr Robert Stirling (and his brother) in 1815 as a safer alternative to steam engines because many of his parishioners had died in boiler explosions. It is positively not a steam engine and is nothing at all like one.

I know journalists love to bask in utter ignorance, but this is really irritating. You do have to wonder where else they talk compete and utter rubbish because they are simply ignorant of the facts.

That may sound like an unfair rant, and in some ways it may be. However the news media spread knowledge and information and it is dangerous when they get it wrong as they frequently do.

Nabila Ramdani twitter spat Another thought.

I want to point that Nabila Ramdani seemed to make it her business as a French citizen of Algerian decent to keep popping up on places like the BBC claiming that Libyans were as a group, inflicted with a tribal mentality such that they could not get on without Gaddafi to keep them in some kind of line. Should he fall Libya would, by implication turn into some version of Somalia. Whilst Libyans were dying in numbers, it is unsurprising therefore that Libyans seemed to take some exception at being described as such and as a consequence may have described Nabila Ramdani in terms which were either less than charitable or possibly not repeatable in polite company. Given the nature of her comments, were you to cast Libyans as a race her comments would be racist and as such I can entirely understand their anger.

Then when Gaddafi met his fate, it appears she changed her tune a bit. (In part because spouting the same somewhat inexpert nonsense would not do her any favours.) Some began to speculate at he volte face and indeed possible motivation for spouting bile about Libyans in the first place and subsequently changing her tune. It is in this context that the tweet was made and the reply given which was retweeted by me.

The moral of the story is, calling 6 million people who are dying to overthrow a vicious dictator a bunch of tribal ingrates may not get polite responses from them.

If after reading what I have just written you think my actions are capable of any criticism I would welcome hearing why.

The Nabila Ramdani twitter spat update

There is now a blog post over at the Telegraph here, by Katharine Birbalsingh who claims to have read my blog post but clearly had not properly (is she supposed to be a good teacher?).

It has had some of the more defamatory elements removed. However a comment by Andy Cooke here is a very good summary of the events so far, and it is here:

Hmm.
So, the facts of the case are:
1. Mr White (who, according to the blog linked above, grew up in the Middle East before his family fled the violence), was understandably interested in the Libya campaign and followed (and contributed to) the discussion on Twitter

2. Ms Ramdani also was involved in the Libya discussions, repeatedly opining (in wider media sources as well as online) that if Gaddafi were removed, Libya would fall into chaos and tribal warfare.

3. A number of people on Twitter (including Mr White) disagreed with and attempted to debunk her claims.

4.  When Gaddafi finally fell, Ms Ramdani "popped back up saying that maybe Gaddafi deserved it and her tone changed"

5. Some of the people on twitter who had taken exception to her implication that Gaddafi's removal would be a bad thing for Libya, highlighted the sudden change of tone with an implication that she had had a financial interest in the issue.  Specifically, the Twitter uses "LibyaNewDay" stated it in a disbelieving tweet that BBC news were broadcasting her, to which Mr White responded "Yes, but she did say that Gadaffi getting it was his fault ... maybe she isn't getting paid any more"

6. "LibyaNewDay" responded "Exactly what I was thinking, @NabilaRamdani has toned down her love of Gaddafi. No more paypacket #Gaddafiwhores", which Mr White retweeted.

7. Ms Ramdani blew the incident up to the police and papers, including writing an article for the Guardian accusing Mr White of calling her "an immigrant prostitute", claiming that they used a 'whore' hashtag and "spiced up their principal insult with as many sexual allusions as they could fit into the 140 characters that Twitter allows".  the latter appears to be completely unfounded.

8. Ms Birbalsingh pops up and uses the spat - well, as seen in the article above, whilst claiming to have read Mr White's version posted on his blog (which, incidentally, contains links to the primary source (the Twitter feed) unlike Ms Ramdani's version.

I've seen plenty of discussions on the internet, and terms like "commentwhoring" and "karmawhoring" (aiming to write comments specifically to gain support rather than to engage in debate), and, of course, "attentionwhoring".  None of them ever seem to be interpreted to mean that the person discussed (usually more frequently male than female) is in fact a prostitute.
Of course, anyone aiming to blow these comments up out of context to make a point unsupported by the facts would of necessity separate the "whore" bit (as Ms Burbalsingh did above) or drop off the rest of the word entirely (as Ms Ramdani has done).  None of Mr White's comments even seem to imply anything sexual at all, let alone her being "an immigrant prostitute".

On the face of it, it seems that Ms Ramdani has used the incident to try to make a political point that isn't there, using it as an excuse to try to slam the Conservatives.  An unkind observer would possibly suspect mischief on her behalf.  Ms Burbalsingh has used the incident to lament the fact that such claims damage the chance of a full Tory Government in power, and baldly state that Mr White is guilty of "racist and misogynist behaviour".   Similarly, this would seem to be playing into Ms Ramdani's hands - explicitly claiming that her accusations are true but trying to wash the Conservatives hands of Mr White.

Personally, if I were Mr White, I'd wonder if Ms Ramdani's statements were actionable, and Ms Burbalsingh's likewise - a number of the statements in the article above being apparently unsupported by the facts (which Ms Burbalsingh states she had access to via Mr White's blog and link to the relevant discussion) and heavily insulting of Mr White's character, yet repeated in a public organ with wide circulation.  It does call into question Ms Burbalsingh's reliability on any article she has published.

Looks like a good summary to me. My previous article on the subject is here.