Zombie

What a glorious weekend. The trip to Oviedo was great - I was re-tracing the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona, just with no Javier Bardem! It was the beginning of November but the weather was glorious and the town is just too cute. The town is big on cider which is slightly less pleasant in the mornings as there's always a faint whiff of dried fermenting apples in the air. I toddled over to the town auditorium to watch the final grand prix with all the die hard Fernando Alonso fans, seeing as it is his home town. Turns out, he is less popular than I thought, or the fans are not really die hard at all, as the place was sparsely filled. The positive side was that I was interviewed by a national radio station who were very excited that someone from Button-land had travelled there to support the national hero. Er... hello? Have you seen the man's jaw line? Mmmm.

Anyway, I completely forgot that I had set my alarm clock at home for 3am to catch a silly-hour flight on Friday and this morning when the alarm went off, I got up, washed and did my hair before I realised it was only 3:30am!! Needless to say, I have been a complete zombie all day. There was this big conference today, it was me and 20 or so finance people sat around a circular table. The room was warm and the chat was dull. My eyes were getting heavy - I was trying everything in my power to keep the tiredness away. I could sense that my writing was falling down the page but even though I could see it on the page, I couldn't wake myself up. Am really worried about how I looked - for all I know, I may even have been snoring!

Some excitement in the UK today as there may be some retribution on the horizon for those banks that have had free access to national funds. Chance would be a fine thing - I 'll believe it when I see it.

Fort Frick

Once upon a time there was a young man called Henry Clay Frick who vehemently opposed all organised labour unions. Dubbed the worst CEO in American history, Frick was so unimpressed by the steel unions that he went face to face with the rioting masses back in the 1890s leading to several employee deaths and an assasination attempt. I don't know if this led to him lending his surname to grade 2 insults but he's generally regarded as an unpleasant being.

Well, I wish he were here now to sort out the sorry state of London Underground. For 2 days now we have had no underground metro system. Doesn't sound very scary I know, but it took me 2.5 hours to get to work this morning because I ended up walking the whole way! I don't mind a spot of exercise but not at 6:30am and certainly not if there is a whole day of work awaiting me. The journey back has been no less enjoyable.

What is making the underground workers so miserable I hear all you labour-friendly people ask? Well, in the middle of a global recession which has left most stones thoroughly turned, the underground union is demanding a 5% pay increase and a guarantee for no redundancies. I never make out like I am anything but a heartless capitalist but this is too much even for me. I would rather walk 5 hours a day than see them get job security ahead of the rest of the economy. The underground union have replaced Gordon Brown on my dartboard. Long live Henry Frick!

Completely unrelated but check out the amount of moolah being moved around in Spain - a so called bust economy. Now that's a dream team!

Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife

Isn't it ironic?

I started getting outrageous calls from EDF Energy (my electricity provider) last week saying I was seriously over due on my bills and if I didn't pay within 5 days they would take me to court. When I got home there was indeed a bill dated 28th April saying I had to make my payment before May 12th. How am I supposed to meet this deadline if I receive the letter 2 weeks too late? Inside was also a leaflet outlining the huge benefits of paying by direct debit - the day I trust utility companies to take money out of my account automatically is the day I start wearing Burberry baseball caps. Backwards. With a matching Chihuahua.

The Government expenses scandal has reached fever pitch and we are on the brink of seeing the 13th casualty (I still like it when something reaches the number 13) - and I, the good apathetic citizen that I am, am getting bored. It was funny to see them squirm at first but it's just unbelievable what they've been getting away with. The Labour MP who claimed expenses for a house with no remaining mortgage, then the Liberal MP who claimed for a house for his daughter, then the Conservative MP who claimed for a house for his ducks! Look to your left to see what £1645 will get for your feathered friends these days. All this while they are trying to make Bank CEOs take less pay.

There is a man in Texas called T. Boone Pickens. One of the big wildcatters of yore, Pickens made a small fortune in the oil industry taking him onto Forbes' Rich List but is now campaigning for renewables of all things - investing his own wealth into wind farms across Texas which has seen the US recently overtake nuclear Germany as the highest renewables generator in the world. But this is still peanuts if you consider the US uses 25% of the World's daily oil production for 4% of the World's population. I am no environmentalist - my green credentials stop at separating out wine bottles and newspapers from my household garbage. I don't understand Boone Pickens - maybe he is trying to make up for his past carbon footprint or maybe he is laughing at us all - but I can't argue with Pickens' Plan. So what if he makes money out of it too? It's a whole lot better than financing the likes of Paris Hilton.

Slick thinking

Although there's nothing like a good fiction novel, I've been reading a fair chunk of non-fiction of late - mostly biographies of people who inspire me but also the history of large corporations. Have you ever wondered how Exxon started life? A man in Ohio called Rockefeller sowed the seeds for what is now the largest public company in the world. Over a hundred years of history seeped with family feuds, public humiliation, Government intervention, forced break up... could almost be the storyline for the next Dallas series.

It's particularly interesting within the context of OPEC and the controlled regime with which we produce oil and gas globally now. Although having said this, we like to think there are regulations in place to protect us but really the balance of power is shifting to the emerging markets who still have reserves of oil to drill. In the US, imports of oil are now more than double what is produced nationally.

Which brings me on to Peak Oil - probably most famously associated with Hubbert's theory that predicts the point at which any given oil field hits peak production after which, it goes into decline. People have tried to apply this on a global level to see when World oil fields will go into terminal decline with varying predictions from the pessimist "it's already happened" to the optimist "won't be til after I'm dead". Answers on a postcard please!

The price of oil spiked at $160/barrel last year which had people stocking up at petrol stations and saw our electricity bills and transport costs go through the roof. And yet we pay $3 for a litre of bottled water which is equivalent to $475/barrel. I don't even pretend to understand the complexity behind setting oil prices (one would like to think it is just a by product of a free market) but it's scary to think there are people out there who do this for a living and can have such a big impact on our daily lives.

Bad Vs Evil

Welcome to the House of Shame.

The war between the bankers and the politicians continues, and as biased as I may be, the bankers seem to be winning by default. The government have shot themselves in the foot once again this week as their frivolous past manipulation of allowable expenses has been brought into the scathing eyes of the general public. Hot on the heels of their intention to raise taxes to 50% next April, we find that our taxes have been used to pay for politicans' late night pay-TV, home improvements (someone even had a new wet-room installation paid for!) and fine dining experiences. Even our Great Leader has been paying his brother £3k per year to clean his house.

Words that spring to mind are rocks and glass houses. Pretty poor form to be advocating national belt-tightening and quantatative easing when the Government are using our taxes to pay for their second, third, fourth homes. Some politicians are exploiting some pretty dubious loopholes to try and justify the £15k kitchen they've had put in, but it all sounds a bit Enron-esque which I'm fairly sure they all deemed morally corrupt at the time...

I've got nothing against rewarding people who are doing a good job but I don't think any one in politics is deserving of that accolade just now.

No credit but plenty of crunch

There are actually polls and surveys saying that lending to households and small businesses is increasing and that house prices were up in March - I don't know what or who these surveys are based on but as a consumer of the great economy I would have to disagree. Since the big blow out in 2008 - much accelerated post the Lehmans bankruptcy - there has been much press coverage of the financial turmoil and the various world leaders trying to find the best 'global' solution to help themselves.

But how has this effected you and me? I see increasing mortgage renewal costs - a sore subject I closely follow given I am due to renew this Summer; paltry interest rates on my savings - yes I worked hard to pay off my student debts but that is clearly not valued although allegedly all the banks are supposed to be fighting for my money; and most alarmingly of all perhaps, ever growing job insecurity.

I think this was perfectly encapsulated today with the news that RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), one of the big lenders in the UK, is making another round of redundanices. This is of particular note because it is one of the banks who had the most aggressive lending policies and because they are in a very public battle with their recently fired Chief Executive, Fred Goodwin (known to his friends as Fred the Shred), over his £17m pension pot. Now that the bank has reached a sufficiently small size on the stock market for the Government to be able to take full control, this pre-agreed pension is being aired in public with the full knowledge that it will pull on people's emotions and make Sir Fred Goodwin face a tough moral dilemma.

Whilst I am not a fan of the media manipulating people's emotions (the casualties are far ranging encompassing all sectors - George Bush, Britney Spears etc), I would hate to be in Sir Fred's shoes right now. The 9,000 extra people who are up to be redundant this time are the support function staff who earn a decent but not excessive salary (about $30k a year). One fat cat's pension or 9,000 separate individuals having to uproot their lives and those of their children?

No credit, but plenty of crunch...