2012 — 13 July: Friday

I don't suppose any reasonably healthy people like to think of themselves as vindictive1 (though dear Mama could in former times have given a world-class lecture in the fine art of grudge retention). I have to admit, however, that signing this petition to the hapless twit who (as a politician) thinks he's in charge of the UK economy gave me an almost visceral pleasure.

Chancellor George Osborne has just started an official public consultation on whether reckless bosses should be jailed. But the banks are lobbying hard against it, and we need a massive surge of people power to drive these reforms through.
If we can get 100,000 people in the next three days to say yes to criminal charges for bankers, we can get George Osborne to face down the banking lobby and pluck up the courage to put the bank bosses behind bars.

Alex Wilks of Avaaz.org


"Banksters behind bars" indeed. Excellent idea. And a jolly good start to the day. Why on earth would the banks be lobbying hard against it? I can almost imagine the sun trying to break through the grey clouds out there.

Just think. We could also tackle the politicians, the hedge-fund quants and traders, the analysts, the regulators (if we can find any), the media barons, the tax avoiders... but we would, of course, need larger prisons. Which we now can't afford 'cos we're too busy paying for the Olympics, the bank bailout, endless pointless wars and stonking great bonuses as rewards for failure to all the lovely chaps at the top of the various pyramid schemes that define our rotten structures.

Don't get me started :-)

People staring...

... at computers. What a fascinating story. If mine's looking at me it can probably sense I'm ready for some breakfast. (Link.)

Foggy thoughts

As I sit here, just after noon, listening to "A Heart of Glass" from the 1986 album Filigree and Shadow by This Mortal Coil (and how cool a name is that?) I find myself wondering whether or not it predates "Fog Tropes" from the music to the film "Shutter Island". It doesn't. If the LA Philharmonic Association can be believed, Fog Tropes was composed by Ingram Marshall five years earlier in San Francisco at the behest of John Adams, building on an even earlier 10-minute tape piece that used ambient sounds from around the Bay. Makes sense. Nice music, too.

If it was...

... their own money they were spending, do you think they might be slightly less profligate?

Private Eye

Probably not. I really must decide whether to stop reading "Private Eye". <Sigh>

Rumble, rumble. Time (19:38) for my evening meal — a tasty chicken tikka masala with slightly more lemon juice added to the pilau rice than I intended because the sprinkle valve came out of the neck of the bottle and stuck inside the screw-top. Still, I noticed before too much damage was done. [Pause] Yummy.

The last time I had chicken so heavily lemon-flavoured was in April 1965. It had been specially prepared by the matriarch of the family we'd visited, in their out-of-town getaway pad in the hills above Turin (with the Alps visible in the far distance in much clearer air than down in the sweltering hot Po valley). This was on my first holiday overseas.

The cheerful soul liked her English 'bambino' (I was cute at 14) and was determined to see me eat as I fear I had spurned all the varieties of pasta and antipasta on offer. 'Twas ever thus in my younger years. It's funny what senses evoke which memories, isn't it? Actually, I was quite powerfully reminded some while back when I saw the ravishing landscapes in the 2009 Tilda Swinton film "I am Love".

  

Footnote

1  Or not on a long-term basis.