Fiat currency and banks - when it all goes wrong

Okay, so there are our banks, running away nicely. Depositors are happy, although they'd like a little more interest. Lendees (?) are happy, although they'd like a little less interest. Record profits are being announced, record dividends are being paid, and CiF is full of articles about how many nurses could be paid for out of "Bank of Evil & Sons" bonus pool. Hunky-dory. 18 months later, it's a world of shit and pain. What could have gone wrong?

Well, go back to the simplified model we had with the two classes of assets - our 10%-ish of low risk, high liquidity, low profit and the rest in higher risk, uncertain liquidity, higher profit. There are clearly a bunch of things that could go wrong here.

• We could be pushing the edge of that 10% - it's not set to punish the banks but to ensure that a bank run can be managed. 
• We could have categorised assets incorrectly. Something we thought was low risk (or high liquidity) could turn out not to be either, or to be neither.
• The regulatory model could be wrong - some things we are told were in the top asset class could turn out to be worthless.
• Our profit model could be wrong for the higher risk assets - we could not be making enough on the good loans to cover the expected %age of defaults.
• We could have a liquidity crash. Remember - we've got to cover the fact that you have between £2000 and £0 in the bank each month - and we've got to have the cash to pay you, even though we've lent out £1000 of your money (£100 to the govt and £900 to real people.)

Or, it could all happen. And, of course, you have the usual things going on - business executives taking strange decisions (RBSG and ABN AMRO, for example) that go badly, horribly wrong.

• There was a lot of pressure, from the market analysts, for banks to generate every increasing profits. You can't do this with low-risk investments.
• Many banks don't have the time to research, in detail, the risk models of the increasingly outre investments on offer. Hence the ratings agencies. They get paid to do the specialist analysis stuff. They get it wrong, especially for a category of assets and you've got stuff you think is near-cash that turns out not even to be "investment grade".
• Government bonds. Greek and Spanish, especially. And other things.
• Yes, err, mortgages. Housing market never falls? Non-recourse loans in the USA (certain states, YMMV)? Powered by Government regulation - the Home Mortgage Disclosure and Equal Credit Opportunity Acts in the USA, the Thatcher started (and New Labour continued) war against local councils via the Council House sales (with silly discounts.)
• Ah, yes. And here is the rub. These mortgage-backed securities - the Collateralised Debt Obligations of much infame. What was the problem here? Well, some of them, particularly the junior tranches of US mortgages, became worthless (non-recourse loans in a falling market). For the rest, people couldn't work out what they were worth. So very few people wanted to buy them, except at fire-sale prices. The market became illiquid and you had a price spiral of doom.

You see, although the UK house market is over-priced (relative to average earnings and the value of land - it's a planning permission issue), UK mortgage "asset-backed securities" were probably still worth a significant %age of their nominal value. We have had a rise in unemployment, yes, so mortgage defaults will be up. We have had a drop in the housing market*, so the collateral isn't worth quite what it was. But, still, with a bit of ingenuity, you'd have probably been able to recover over 80% of the value. Taking a long term view, you may even have made a profit over nominal.

But, with daily settlement required, a long term view is hard. With "mark-to-market accounting", ingenuity has to take a second seat to panic. And there we are.

What was the only thing that could have made this worse? Delay followed by selective government bailouts. What did we get? Ah, yes, Bruin to busy saving the world to work out what he should be doing at home, UK Financial Investments Ltd and 82% HMG ownership of RBS. Oh, well ...

And, please note - there is nothing in any of this that being on the gold standard would have prevented. Gold values fluctuate all the time - and the only banks that were ever required to be backed up in bullion were the central banks. Because it isn't the value of the £ or the $ that crashed (although they've not exactly done well). It is the value of the bank assets denominated in £ or $ ...

* But, if you look around, this is actually, in the UK, largely a liquidity crash, not really a value one. Values have gone down, indeed. But not to crash levels. The average house price is down to about £160k from a peak of about £185k. Painful but not catastrophic.

Things that are currently pissing me off - 2

People who don't know the difference between counting and measuring.

So use "less" when somebody with half a brain would say "fewer".

Interestingly, I'm not aware that the other way bothers me anything like as much. Possibly because that mistake is so much rarer.

Things that are currently pissing me off - 1

People who confuse possibility and morality.

You can't do (or say) that.

Is nonsensical when I just have done it. Or said it. "Cannot" and "should not" are not synonyms.

Fiat currency and banks

There are some people who believe that going back to the gold standard will save the world. It might indeed solve some problems but remember that most countries started on the gold (or silver) standard and have all, even the Swiss, come off it. There must be a reason. Quite often, it involved a war or two. So there must be problems that exist because of the gold standard that are solved by having a fiat currency.

But, still, even then, there are loads of people who get upset that "banks just create money". Sighs. Okay, in a fiat currency system, banks are required to hold assets to balance their liabilities. These assets can be all sorts of things: capital from shareholders, buildings, debts they are owed by other people or businesses. It's the last that seems to bother folks.

Let's look at it. I run a business - we are currently owed about £20k by various customers, about £5k of which is overdue. I am allowed to carry all of this £20k at 100% of nominal value on my books. Indeed, if I wish to write it off, I am supposed to show that I have taken due care to recover the debt before I can count it as a loss.

So, how does it work with a bank? Well, lets say you earn £2000 cash a month, and your outgoings are reasonably spread out. You are loaning your bank, in effect, £1000. What can the bank do with that £1000? Well, it could sit on the books as a cash asset. This is the modern equivalent of stuffing it under the mattress - say, a safety deposit box. It isn't the real business of a bank - that's lending money. Okay, now the government will say that the bank has to have a certain %age of that in "low risk, high liquidity" assets*. Let's call it 10% (which is about the right value.) The bank now has £900 of your money that it can lend out to somebody else. It does that - so it now holds a debt of £900. Let's look at the arithmetic. Assets = £100 low-risk stuff + £900 higher-risk stuff. Liabilities = £1000 to you. The bank is even. Okay, it will have to put some money aside for credit risk - the chance that it won't get the £900 back from its debtor so will have to pay you back out of shareholders' funds. But that's why banks charge different rates of interest. And have secured and non-secured loans - to manage that risk.

Now, let's say that that £900 is used to buy a car. And the seller happens to be at your bank. So he deposites the whole £900 to pay for his holiday next year. The bank now has £900 cash, £100 cash-like and £900 debt. Balanced out by a £1000 liability to you and a £900 liability to the car-seller. What does it do with the cash? Well, it lends it out. £90 into (hopefully not Greek or Spanish) government bonds. £810 to somebody who wants a new carpet. So it now has £190 bonds or cash and £1710 in debts owed. Liabilities - £1900. Balanced. 

There is no magic money tree. Every loan the bank has made has been funded by folding green stuff or its electronic equivalents being given to the bank. The same as if you were depositing gold or silver. All that is happening is that banks, like other businesses, are allowed to treat debts as assets.

What happens when it all goes wrong? Well, that's another post.



* Note that these include government bonds. And the Greek government was insisting until quite recently that Greek banks treated Greek government bonds in this way. Which was entirely logical but completely insane.

Don't mix your Scotch

Wife complained about the number of nearly empty whisky bottles in the cupboard. So I am now drinking a (small) cocktail of:

• Frog
• Talisker
• Aberdour
• Old Pulteney
• & Jack

It's surprisingly drinkable ...

Oh, and there were 2 nearly empty gin bottles as well. I didn't feel up to adding them to the mix!

Guardian confusion about "Double Standards"

The paper of the "professional whiner" class has a particularly inept article up complaining about Google's "double standards". As example:

On the face of it, activists can now rest easy: if your government is trying to read your emails, Google will do its best to let you know. For those in autocratic regimes, this is true. For those in western democracies, however, the real position is very different: Google will often directly hand your details over.

Right. So their double standard is that they obey the law (Ed note: should technology companies have a free hand to disobey the law because some campaigner disagrees with that law? Don't effing think so.) - and they warn you if somebody is trying to break the law by hacking in to your account. Doesn't seem like a double standard to me? But then I'm not an ex-Wikileaker (double standards galore). I'd note that Google also has a history of resisting overbroad data requests and publishes openly transparency data.

On the surface

This sounds like every lads's dream of an excellent place to do a degree:

The Department of Sexology

University of Quebec at Montreal

Unfortunately, I suspect it is actually full of appalling harridans who've been run out even of the Sociology Dept for being too strident in their "all men are bastards"ism and a few "useful idiot" bag carriers.

What transit of Venus?

Eight octets cloud cover here in the Central Belt (;_;) Still, there are the intertubes, so I can watch it through much better telescopes than I own and in comfort.

Questions from yesterday

Okay, I didn't watch the river thing but Mrs S-E did and I popped in from time to time. But a few questions (with my usual left-field focus)  ...

1. Why were Andrew and Edward in RN Day Ceremonial when everybody else was in Day Full Ceremonial? They weren't wearing the Garter sash.

2. What's going to happen to the Duke of Edinburgh's CD if he holds on long enough to pick up another bar? It's already full. (Ed notes: for anyone whining about how many he's got: he doesn't wear half of what he could; he's rather old so has picked up the odd few "cornflakes" medals; and eight of them are for war service - including an MiD and the Croix de Guerre avec palme.)

3. The RN Lieutenant i/c the Britannia launch. Just one gong and the Golden Jubilee at that? WTF has he been doing with his time? Not even a VRSM.

4. Why wasn't there a full issue of Battle of Diamond Jubilee gongs for the participants? Most of them looked old enough to have done the 5 years required. TPTB are normally good at this sort of thing.

5. They knew it was going to be pissing down. Why weren't there some coats on the Chartwell?

And some notes.

•  Props to the Duchess of Cambridge for wearing dolphins. Pity they were squint (to be honest, if they are badge rather than pin, it isn't easy.)
• The Adj of the Royal Hospital (commanding the Guard of Pensioners at the jetty) did a fair few UN tours, didn't he! (Ed notes: Might not be the Adj. Might have been the QM.
• Additional neck decorations on frock coats look silly (they are hanging down from the right coat flap.) Note that the DoE got away without having to wear any more by wearing his OM and his GCVO collar.

It says something

About the permanence of the institution, don't you think?

Did I mean "Marriage"? Did I mean "Monarchy"? Whatever you wish ...

Do you ever feel

Like using (William of) Ockham's razor to cut some idiot's throat?

CiF: the universe's "strange attractor" for morons

I cannot express the horror I felt at the economic ignorance this tautology celebrates:

We're not getting any investment right now from the wealthy - they're hoarding cash by the truckload and plenty of it in government gilts. 

What are gilts if they aren't investment, normally by the wealthy, in the government. Remember this is CiF and a penny spent by the government is worth a guinea spend by an evil capitalist libertarian baby-eater.

And 4 idiots recommended it.

Still, there was a response. And, then the response to the response, recommended by 41 of the most stupid people on the planet:

"Sorry, what do you think that Government gilts finance? They finance the public sector. The Government issues them to raise money to pay for schools, hospitals."

They finance nothing. Gilts provide savings with interest for people that can afford to buy them. When originally issued bits of paper promising interest are merely swapped for bits of paper that dont, the latter previously supplied by the State via deficit depending.

So government borrowing doesn't finance anything? WTFF are the bastards doing it for then?

I'm so horrified by this that I am actually going to have to go and do some work to clear my head before I start to enjoy the weekend!

Non-sequitor for the day

Report here:

Warwickshire's chief fire officer, Graeme Smith, had condemned the decision to press criminal charges against the three senior officers who he said had been "treated like common criminals".

But Det Sup Ken Lawrence, who led the Warwickshire Police investigation, defended the case.

He said: "We have a legal duty to investigate every death in whatever circumstances.

...

"So I would pose that question, how can anyone suggest that that doesn't warrant an investigation?"

And I would pose a question. How does a duty to investigate mean that criminal charges must be brought? Answer, in the box-ticking targets driven, "every incidence must result in a sanctioned offence" world of modern anti-Peelian policing.

It is a tragedy that the four fire-fighters died. But, let's be honest - like being in the Services, being a deep-sea fisherman or, admittedly to my surprise, a window cleaner, you know it is a dangerous job when you take it on.

Utterly stupid CiF comment

Yes, okay, I know. We're selecting from a cast of millions here. But this one really annoyed me:

If you think gay relationships are as real as straight ones then supporting civil partnerships for sisters means you must support marriage for a brother and sister.

Now note that the vermin is suggesting that the commentor they are castigating hasn't thought it through. Which is, at the least, egregiously ironic.

If you support a legal partnership for aged sisters, you probably mean it without the lesbian incest. (Ed notes: there is an assumption there. But we'll ignore it for decency's sake.) In which case, you could be assumed to support a similar legal partnership for a brother and sister, without the heterosexual incest.

And, frankly, I do - and for non-bonking friends, regardless of family relationships. Particularly on the "next of kin" grounds - who would you rather make critical medical and legal decisions for you if you were incapacitated? Somebody you have lived with for years; a nephew or niece you haven't seen, except for funerals, since their 12th birthday; or the state?

The Gays are coming to eat your marriage!

For various reasons, I'm reading some of the CiFatuous responses to the Archbishop of York's interview (silly hat alert) and explanation on his views on gay marriage.

Personally, I don't agree with him. And submitted as much to the Alex Salmond Glorification Society's public consultation on the aforesaid. Even the church of which I am a semi-detached (theologically) member is pretty much in favour (both provincially and locally) of being allowed to marry gayers (and make them priests, bishops and even Child Protection Co-Ordinators!) And I'm entirely happy with all that.

But why do the "all Christians are bigots" bigots insist on quoting the Old Testament? The "Good News" - the new covenant in Christ? The difference between Christians and Jews? The reason I can eat langoustine or wear polycotton without feeling religously unclean?

Okay, if they quote St Paul, then they're on a less sticky wicket. But he had a downer on all sorts of people. And definitely wasn't the Son of God.

I really also can't get my head behind the "it will destroy heterosexual marriage" argument. I'm sorry, but I can't. I didn't marry Mrs S-E because I could but I really fancied the boy down the street. To be honest, we got married because, having lived together for a while, we thought it appropriate before we had kids. Our moral judgement - not precedent for you or anyone else. Two (or two million) gayers get married - it won't make any difference (good or bad) to how we feel about each other.

For an alternative view - well argued and relevant - see Peter Ould's blog.

Just as a note - my previous vicar was gay. I'm going to his wedding in a couple of weeks.

Me, you prat, I would

Proof that we are dumbing down to the USian level in our churnalism.

And I do appreciate that it is evidence that al-Beeb has the same sort of subbing issues as some of our more appalling daily rags:

The A word

Who would wear a hoodie with the slogan 'Asbo'?

Irony, dear Sir, irony. I met our new bishop on Sunday. I spent some time trying to consider how rude a sarcastic t-shirt I could get away with before Mrs S-E told me to stop being a pillock and put a smart shirt on. I obeyed. Rapidly. But hopefully not cringingly.

Beecroft and the Bleeding Obvious

Just sayin'.

Okay, he's pretty senior in their commune, so you couldn't just give him DFID. But couldn't he have been put in some position less obviously affected by his Maoist outlook? Health, maybe. Treasury Secretary?

Just buy

This fortnight's "Private Eye". Frankly, it's worth the £1.50 just for the cover.

Although mine is already damaged for prosperity by the spluttered dots of Burgundy as I failed to hold the laughter in.

Amended: That's now last fortnight's PE now, of course.

Gay Marriage, the ASA and Archbishop brûlée

His Grace, well on the conservative side of the debate, has got in to trouble with the Advertising Standards Authority. Which is really quite difficult for somebody who has been charcoal for quite so many years. Being the blogosphere, quite a few people have weighed in on it. So, here's my ha'penny's worth.

Firstly, the ASA should fuck right off. If there has been a complaint or ten, then they should direct their wrath, queries, whatever to the advertisers - in this case the Coalition for Marriage - not Cranmer. As per this recent case. ASDA were hauled in front of not-the-beak, not the TV company or the ad agency.

Secondly, this is a clear matter of current political controversy. There are clear ECHR / HRA Article 9 and 10 points to be made in terms of running the ads. On both sides.

Thirdly, my personal point of view? Ideally, I'd like the government just to back completely off from the whole marriage business. Allow nearly anybody to have a registered partnership - and it really doesn't need to be sexual. The whole "next of kin" thing is the clearest example, to my mind, of allowing a life-long partner, a relation or friend - subsequent to official acknowledgement by both parties - similar rights to a spouse. The right to make the appropriate decisions in nasty situations should defer to the person most likely to make the decision you would want, not some Victorian hang-over of who is your "closest relation". The "I don't want to be thrown out of our house if one of us dies" scenario scores highly too - even if you think heavy death duties are appropriate, this is only delaying, not cancelling them.

Marriage can then be left to the churches. The Quakers, Episcopal Church and Reform Jews can marry gayers. Islam, the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox (Christian or Jew) can refuse. Of course, this won't happen. In which case, my personal view is that allowing gay marriage is a good thing. YMMV.

And, I can't see the legal point being made following the ECHR Schalk judgement. If the government makes marriage available to homosexuals - as it already has to trans-sexuals, there is nothing in that judgement which says that churches will be able to be forced to conduct gay weddings. Divorcees, trans-sexuals, non-confirmed members of the relevant church are already permitted marriage, yet the various faiths are specifically and explicitly permitted, unlike civil registrars, to allow or deny wedding services based on their beliefs. I cannot see any difference in ECHR between these cases and homosexuals.

Although, as a corollary, I could see that a law permitting civil marriages to homosexuals while banning churches from conducting gay weddings could be subject to Article 14 challenge. I expect that the current legal status is only maintained because a similar ban on conducting heterosexual registrations with religious overtones or on church premises applies.

From the "Draft" Archives

Spring cleaning time at the blog. Here are the titles of some posts that didn't make it:

• "In defence of Eric Joyce" (about his Labour Uncut piece.)
• "ACPO - Not even following their own rules." No idea.
• "Yes, we have a new National Idiot." - Iftikhar Ahmad
• "Libertarianism and the Election" Analysing various party policies on a statist / libertarian slant. I gave up, in disgust, half way through the Tory manifesto headlines.
• "Self Congratulatory Puff Piece". I really can't remember. I must have been wonderful, however.
• "Will you just stop going on about RIPA?" Journalists and facts - never known to mix company.
• "The Bastard Children of Creationism". No idea. I was annoyed at the time. Tagged "swearing" already.
• "For the Greater Good*" Military casualty reporting.

It's not a "super moon"

It is the same moon that it has been for some billions of years. You are channeling an idiot astrologer.

All that is happening is that perigee (the periapsis point of a system dominated by the Earth - Gaia) is co-inciding with the full moon. The Earth / moon system has a periapsis point every lunar orbit (about a month.) We have a full moon every month (where we get the name from - it is a hint.) Some times they happen about the same time.

I'd note that the gravitational effect is even greater when perigee occurs at the new moon. But that's much less spectacular, so you don't get idiots (or journalists, but I repeat myself) writing about it.

Next occurence - June 23rd next year. Unless, of course, the world is destroyed as we roll over into a new Mayan Great Cycle, apparently some time in Dec.

Officer Voldemort, I presume?

Sighs,

Mr Williams' family has told the inquest they believe he may have been killed by an agent "specialising in the dark arts of the secret services".

Then he wouldn't have been left in a bag in a rented flat where he was bound to have been discovered. He might have been left, dead, in an extremely compromising position. Or simply disappeared.

If you accept the (widely accepted) premise that SIS do actually run around in tuxedos, drinking martinis (shaken not stirred) and killing people.

Et tu, Brute?

Speaking personally, Cardinal O'Brien, I consider that the Catholic church's positions on:

• contraception,
• AIDS,
• women priests,
• gay marriage,
• and, most of all, its complicity* in paedophile rape,

are utterly shameful and far, far worse** for the world than the entirely economically rational decision not to support an FTT. Hell, if you want to criticise the Cleggalition, there are plenty of wide open targets. Why pick the one thing they are clearly correct about?

* Not reporting, moving of paedophiles to other locations where they would still have ready access to victims, etc, etc.

** Okay, maybe not women priests. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with them (yes, they do tend to be a bunch of screaming mad harridans but that's no different from the blokes) but they've not yet made their mark on the world stage.

Diamond Jubilee Medals on eBay

Yesterday, stuck in one of the country's marginally less appalling airports, I watched in fascinated horror as a Diamond Jubilee Medal sold, on eBay, for £155. As I type, there is one on "Buy It Now" for £185. Now, this is quite a lot of money for something that is mass produced from base metal (there is no silver in 'nickel silver'!) But, I'm sure, there are a few people who want to large it up over the extra Bank Holiday but without meeting the qualification criteria to get issued one. Their money, their choice, clearly. Although copies are trivially available, from the usual suspects, for a mere £30.

But (and I know it's still their money), people have bid an empty Diamond Jubilee Medal BOX to over £50. Huh? Unless they're hoping to pass a cheap medal copy off as a real one to one of the idiots willing to pay £150 for a real one (which is a s2 Fraud Act 2006 offence, at the very least), I just can't imagine why they are parting with so much dosh.

As a comparison, a Silver Jubilee medal, far fewer of which were produced, is generally available for somewhere in the £120 to £200 range. The cheaper ones tend to be the Canadian version. The common-as-muck* "Battle of Golden Jubilee" gong usually fetches around £40 - £50, with box and the little bit of card from the Mint that sellers usually describe as a "certificate". This is a mere tenner or so more than a copy medal.

Disclaimer - I'm not getting worked up about the medals being flogged on eBay, unlike the Torygraph or the Scum, just incredulous at what some people are willing to pay.

* As in "even I have one".

Update: As of 6th May, there is a medal up for sale for £500 and another for £350. Boxes alone seem to be making less - a mere £21 or so.

To the person interested

No, "Surreptitious Evil" does not post on Arrse.

Whether the user behind the nym does, using another nym, is a different matter ...

Dumb BBC Question

Can you stop teenagers looking at online porn?

 Err, no. It's not a "dilemma". Dilemmas have to have (at least) two rational options. If one of them is silly, no matter how unattractive, then it is merely superficial. Next, please.

Oh, sorry, you wanted a little more relevant comment? The fact that you weren't allowed to be sold porn mags (or cigarettes) until you were whatever-age-it-was back in ancient days (16 for the fags) didn't stop teenagers getting hold of them. Magazines and evil-cancer-sticks are easier to control than digital pictures.

You couldn't even attempt it without placing hideous restrictions on those of us who are legally allowed (although uxorially disapproved) to see porn. So just don't.

I'm embarrassed

That this man is my MP. The original interview then here & here.

You'd have thought the judo would have taught him a little self-control ...

There's nothing British ...

This:

They are just trying to scupper another person's opportunity for debate, which is very uncivilised and very un-British.

Bit like the fucking BNP, really. Uncivilised and very un-British.

Oh, and Ken?

The far right want to destroy our democracy and stand for the elimination of our basic rights.

Firstly, the BNP are a racist, statist hard-left party. As you should well know. As a racist*, statist hard-left mayoral candidate.

Secondly, nothing the BNP, the EDL or Combat 18 could do, hell even the SWP and the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah together could do, that would do more to "eliminate our basic rights" than your beloved Labour Party has done. Egregious fuckwit.

---

* Yes, Jews are a race, legally and probably realistically, and Ken hates them.

Naughty, naughty little bank

And all the rest of the security holes that having fancy indexing turned on allows one. You know who you are ...

Kirchner - logic fail.

I'm the head of state, not a thug.

Why is there an assumption that these are even linked, never mind opposites?

MSM Good, Bloggers Bad

You know how the vast amount of money poured in to the professionals of the Main Stream Media means that they are so much more accurate than mere bloggers? As demonstrated by the BBC News website:

The actual story isn't too bad, but the headline is just, well, mind-boggling.

It pays to shop around

A "you've been looking at" ad from Amazon (actually, I'm looking to get a pair of B&W P5, but ...), we have:

Wow, they're pricy, I thought. I wonder what they're selling for else-where ...

Ah, from the manufacturer:

$40 to £2000. Quite some mark up ...

Saturday amusement - if macroeconomics were particle physics

The FT's Alphaville. I particularly liked this quote:

To mitigate the imbalance, BERN could be forced to accumulate ever more euro-denominated Schrodinger assets (maybe worth something, maybe not — all depends on whether the observer is Italian) onto its own account.

I think the problem is deeper than that - it isn't that PIIGS bonds are Schrodinger assets (there is no quantum superposition state), it's that they seem to be Majorana fermions. If you get lots of them together and they don't move around fast enough, they start mutually annhilating. So if the market becomes illiquid ...

Read the lot.

Mind boggling

For various reasons (okay, well, organisational penury), I've been haunting the pages of Ebay, mostly buying up bits of kit for work. Firewalls I don't know how to program, packetshapers I know go wrong regularly, that sort of thing.

But I've been amazed at the prices people are willing to pay for some stuff - more than it costs new, in many cases.

But I've just be staggered to see a 1oz palladium coin on sale for about £15,000. I had no idea what palladium was worth (although I did know it was on the pricey side) but Google is my friend and you can buy a 1oz ingot online for about $670, so on the order of £400. So that's, what, roughly 40 times the bullion value. For a not very attractive picture.

But is this a low issue coin thing? Well, okay, maybe. So I checked on the Royal Mint site. You've got the Queen's Diamond Jubilee platinum £5 coin - 94g of platinum for £6,400. Now platinum is about $1630 a troy ounce at the moment (slightly cheaper than gold, which surprised me - but the world has changed since I last worried about precious metal prices) - which works out, for a commemorative coin of only 250 issued, at a mark up of about 110%. Which seems rather more sensible. And you do get a nice box to keep it in.

More Stupidity About the Falklands

But, this time, the guilty party is a Brit. Simon Jenkins, on Comment is Fatuous:

When on 20 March Endurance was ordered from Port Stanley to South Georgia, it was too late, removing the one deterrent to an Argentine landing and leaving the Falklands exposed to attack.

Exactly, Sir, what sort of deterrent do you believe an underarmed (fitted for but not with 2 x 20mm at the time, iirc) naval icebreaker, albeit with a few marines on board, would have been? Against an invasion force of a submarine, a Type 42 destroyer, a corvette and amphbious assault ship with several full marine companies and armoured vehicles? In your extensive military experience?

And then this:

Lombardo's cobbled-together invasion took place on 2 April, leaving Thatcher initially stunned and humiliated. Though bloodless ...

The family of Argentinian Lieutenant-Commander Pedro Giachino, as well as those of the three Argentinian casualities of the South Georgia invasion, might disagree with you. As well as the small number wounded in the initial attacks. Mostly bloodless, I'll grant. But that's supposed to be the difference between mere hyperbole and professional journalism, wouldn't you say?

Some Falklands photos:

San Carlos Water, below a typical Falklands sky

1982 War Memorial, Port Stanley seafront

Argentinian Military Cemetary, north of Darwin. Note both the gravestones: this is just wrong.

Dear Argentina

My dearest Christina,

While we understand the depth of feeling in your country about the status of the Falkland Islands, and your need to distract your population from your (and your husband's) appalling economic record, we do think that you might have gone a little to far, or as the youth say "might have jumped the shark", with your recent suggestion that Argentina take over the civilian airbridge to the islands.

May I remind you that you are currently attempting to enforce a de facto blockade of the Islands and are attempting to start a trade war?

And you want us to give you control over the flights in to and out? Because we know that it isn't commercial viable for there to be two airlines. Simply not enough people.

Do you think we are fucking nuts?

Yours sincerely,

Britain.

PS and BTW, we recognise all the participants as veterans. Yet you don't. If I may quote:

They say that back on the mainland their worst enemies were not the British, but their own superior officers.  They starved, humiliated, and even tortured their charges.  One common form of punishment involved tying a naked soldier to stakes on the ground and leaving him at the mercy of the Patagonian cold for days.

Sort your own camp out before whining about us.

Various Musings

Leading on from the Rangers thing - and in the debris of yet another Scotland valiant defeat in rugby - Scotland are ranked 15 in the world at cricket (out of 105 ranked coutnries) - even more of a minority sport in Alba. Comparitively better than we are at, guess what? Yes, football.

When, just when, did Scottish Labour have Wee Jimmy Krankie elected as their leader?

Rangers - the inverse snobs start to swarm

Oh dear. You might note that I'm slightly grumpy this morning.

Amid the general gloating about the problems inflicted, by themselves and no-one else, on one of the poles of Scottish bigotry, we have to go to, where else?, Comment is Free, to find support. From the "executive editor of the Daily Mail in Scotland" no less. Who was probably awared that he would have been laughed permanently out of his own paper if he'd dared to be such a pillock there.

So who gets blamed for Rangers being a bunch of thugs organised by criminals? Oh, well, that powerhouse of Scottish society. Who? Masons? The labour party? The Society of Advocates? No, apparently, it is rugby supporters.

Many of them will follow Scotland's international rugby team, an outfit so bad that among the 10 or so countries which take this minority of minority sports seriously we arurrently 11th.

Okay, yes, Scotland are 11th out of the 93 ranked countries in the IRB. But, as any true Scot will tell you, Scottish international teams are, unfortunately, seriously crap. Except at curling and, that popular game in the Gorbals, elephant polo. In fact, in that opium of the masses, soccer, Scotland are currently doing rather worse, languishing even, at 48th out of 208. Behind such exalted footballing nations as Algeria, Armenia and Iran.

For many families in the west of Scotland's most socially deprived and disadvantaged housing estates, Rangers FC provides the glue that keeps their sense of pride and dignity intact. Society has taken away everything else in their lives; their jobs, their futures, their purpose, their health, their self-respect and their liberation.

Goodness, gracious me. A veritable social service this lot provides. I wonder if some condescending local rag, perhaps the Daily Mail, would like to give them new hope?

Horrid mind-worm of the day

Glam-metal bureaucrats

From a thought sequence about Trevor Phillips and the "motley crew" of the Equalities Commission.

Morality versus Reality

There is an annoying tendency - amongst the left pretty much everywhere and amongst the right in the USA - to try to conflate their morality with some vision of reality. Morality is the way you thinks things should work, reality is the way they actually do.

So attempts to describe the way thinks do work - our vain attempts as humans to peer into the darkness of reality - are essentially amoral (whether they are correct or incorrect.) What's more, they say nothing about the moral views of the person concerned. As an engineer with an obscure speciality, often dealing with the law, and an amateur physicist and economic critic, I come across this confusion quite often.
If a client came to me and said that one of their staff had been arrested for the possession (on company equipment) of "extreme pornography" contrary to section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, it is bugger all use to the client me whittering on about this being an appallingly illiberal piece of legislation brought in by an authoritarian government driven, as ever, by their PR strategy, as a result of a single issue campaigner.

Instead, and obviously, I'd advise them to find a lawyer and point them both at the possession defences in ss 64, 65 & 66, and to the limitations of vicarious liability.

Currently, chez Timmy, there is much discussion about the Laffer curve. There is a rabid insistance from the left that there is no such thing as a maximimally raising tax level. Yet, mathematically, this is trite. If you raise no tax at 0% tax (anything time 0 is 0), governments raise tax (yup, yes, and I had a loud argument with HMRC's "helpline" auto-responder yesterday) and that if people were taxed at 100% they wouldn't bother earning (this is possibly the one area of doubt), then basic maths (and differential calculus - thanks to Dave Gillies) mean that there are one or more maxima. And, on or more of these will be an absolute maximum. That's reality, not morality.

Now, the maths doesn't tell you much. It doesn't tell you where the maxima may be found or the shape of the curve. Nor does it enter in to political discussions about whether we should indeed be trying to raise as much tax as possible or just enough to pay for government. Or how much government that should be. Or the relative efficiencies and consequences of different tax types - production, consumption, income, flat or progressive. Just that if you keep raising any tax (or the overall tax burden) eventually you will get to a point where your revenue declines.

Moralities differ - and that difference should be permitted in a liberal society. I like a drink, Muslims believe alcohol to be haram. No problem - I'm not going to force them to have a drink and, provided all I get is a disapproving glance and am banned from drinking when I enter (the profoundly illiberal) Saudi, its something that I can live with. Ditto pork, homosexuality, drugs, the poor - we all have different opinions on what the correct moral actions should be. However, none of that valuable difference entitles us to different realities.

Security Geek Pills

'Nuff said.

Ugly man halts ugly building because of ugly wind farm?

I'm not sure I'm happy about supporting Alex Salmond in anything he does and I'm not the greatest fan of wind farms but ...

"more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history"

Look, it's just a golf course. We've got hundreds of the buggers. And this ain't the Crystal Palace ...

Image via the Evening Times.

1. Golfers should be looking where the ball goes, you know.

2. Having Prestwick round the corner hasn't noticeably dimmed the demand for golf at Royal Troon.

3. It's the damn Germans who make the wind turbines, not the Chinese.

4. You're no angel - you're building on an SSSI.

Dear Argentina,

The maximum range of the Trident D-5 rocket carried in the Vanguard class submarines is, according to Wikipedia, over 7,000 miles. Which is somewhat more than the distance between Plymouth and Buenos Aires.

Why would we need one to be anywhere near the Falklands?

Note: Yes, I know that the boats are based in Faslane not Devonport ...

Strange Priorities

Or probably not.

Unilad - unfunny joke - definitely; offensive - certainly seems to have been; should have been banned? I don't think so. Result - spaffed all over the Guardian. Well, okay, they're somewhat more "right on" than I am.

10 year old deaf girl is kept as a slave and sexually abused for nearly a decade. Unfunny, offensive and, guess what? Actually illegal in a significant number of ways. So, what do we get from the "Manchester Guardian"?

Your search - Ilyat Ashar site:guardian.co.uk - did not match any documents. 

I did try another few searches as well - the wife's name, even "false imprisonment manchester" - nothing relevant. The most recent article returned on the Gruniad's own search engine for the last search was this.

Nothing from Polly (well, she wouldn't unless the accused were Tory councillors, would she), nothing from Jane Martinson, nothing from any of the legion of feminist ranters. I think they are seriously fucked up. And I don't mean that in a nice way. Update: The Guardian posted this article at 17:00 on Mon 13th. From "a senior news writer", not from any of the legion of the overpaid opinionated.

All my own work

But posted somewhere else. I retain it here for reasons of simple ego.

The world is not 'fair'. Reality owes you nothing. It is mere childishness to think otherwise and wilful ignorance to demand that others act according to your delusions.

Actually, having thought about it, "Reality owes you nothing except death" would have been even better.

Fools on the loose

Freemen on the Land. What can you do with them. Hunting with hounds has been outlawed, we can't just 'hang'em from the yardarm' anymore and the stocks have been banned as "too good for them". Oh dear.

I mean, just what does this mean:

All words/whirreds(null) that follow/fall low(null) shall be of common/calm man use only and where “spellings”/ “sounds”/ “mal-intents” are null and void ab initio, ad infinitum, nunc pro tunc;

Go on? Apart from the simple gibberish, the author clearly misunderstands the words "null" and "void" in the legal context. Which is strange. Because this purports to be a legal document.

Okay, and they don't like "Unam Sanctum",  Boniface VIII's attempt to claim the moral high (hog?) ground back from Dante. Great. I don't like it either. Mind you, neither did Phillip (IV) King of France. Having rad it, he then had Boniface's palace assaulted, the Pope captured and humiliated, to the extent that Boniface dies just over a month later. Oh, and it had nothing to do with the "Holy Roman Emperor" - it was a battle of ideas between the Papacy and the Kings of France and, to a lesser extent, England. Anyway, ever heard of this wee thing that happened in the 16th and 17th centuries? Generally called "the Reformation". And, what about the Enlightenment?

"Lawful rebellion" in accordance with Article 61? Find the barons and make your complaint for redress. Go on ... Then get the 25 to meet and swear to them. Please. It will occupy your time ...

"The Dummies Guide to Freedom" - err, they don't get this, do they ...

And what about this pretentious bollocks:

Let it be known by all concerned, interested and affected parties that I, the Freeman known as Michael-John of Bernicia (the Grantor-Trustee), have been entrusted with the Soul Mission of founding the Universal Community of Self-Realisation, for the highest benefit of the emancipation, upliftment and self-realisation of Mankind,

Fuck me. That could almost have come from the founding directive of "Comment is Facile" ...

Why do apparently intelligent people get caught up in this utter drivel? Interestingly, quite a lot of them appear to be just that wee bit older than me. I might just have to blame LSD.

An apposite comparison?

I'm not a strong believer in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. I'm a professional skeptic and cynic about authority. Tamsin Edwards has a new post up, were I would probably be categorised as a "lukewarmer". But the methods used to force the debate, especially the "you're not a published climate scientist so you can't comment" really grate, especially when:

1. They are never applied to CAGW supporters such as Monbiot (journalist and polemic) or Gore (professional hereditary politician and some-time journalist).
2. People are commenting within their field of expertise - be it statistics, economics, computer modelling or atmospheric physics.
3. The CAGW gurus seem to spend a lot of time and effort making sure that climate scientists with diverging opinions don't get published.

But, there we go. That seems to be the way this particular niche in science goes at them moment. Until, Luboš Motl (a theoretical physicist, not a climate scientist) came up with a fairly telling analogy:

Climate alarmism and astrology

However, I want to make one more important point. The specialization may be a good thing but too specialized disciplines run a much higher risk that they could be totally wrong: the whole discipline could be based on a misconception. What do I mean?

What I mean is that the comment "We're just like the heart surgeons and you shouldn't ask anyone else" may also be exploited by the astrologers, if I pick a specific example of a discipline that is almost generally accepted as a pseudoscience.

An astrologer could tell you: "I am the only expert in astrology. I have been doing horoscopes for 40 years and earned millions of dollars by doing so. The astronomers and biologists who wrote an article that disagreed with me aren't really certified experts in astrology. You should better listen to astrologers when they're talking about the impact of planets and about the horoscopes; everyone else is a layman."

And I really think he has a very valid point. I'm not saying that climate science is as wrong as astrology, that (all) climate scientists are as mendacious as astrologers. But the "how dare you disagree" point is debunked. Astrology was considered valid for far longer than real science has been ...

Éoin Clarke: Outrageously Stupid

Now, I know that's not news but he's outdone himself this time with "A call to establish an International Banking Crimes Tribunal". Being a lefty, of course, crimes include facilitating legal voluntary payments between consenting adults:

Worse still, UK banks took payments from families in poverty for FarePak Christmas Hampers even though they knew they were calling in the debts of that company before Christmas and that families would be left stranded

things they simply aren't guilty of:

Moreover, our banks have flogged cash machines to racketeers who charged customers £1.50 per withdrawal.

{Note to the socialist or terminally dim (but I'm channelling Mr Clemens again ...): Diebold and NCR may indeed be evil but, regardless, they're not banks!}

and uses the example of the ICC (120 States Parties not including, as well as the USA, the two most populous nations in the world - China and India) as:

the entire world

But then he outdoes himself with a "perfect Ritchie":

The powers of the court are for others to discuss but the concept that a court would be able to apply unlimited fines and recommend bankers for trial seems a good starting point.

Civilised places, you utter statist filth, generally award punishments after the trial.

I suppose a war of words is better ...

It's a while since I've had a bit of a rant about the Falklands. Still, the Argentinians seem to be making up for my lack ...

"Do you even know what moral means," replied a Malvinas hardliner. "If you regret that we left the English with 31 ships out of combat then you never had any sense of morality."

Goodness - 31 ships "out of combat" - damaged beyond combat use, perhaps? Well, if you count a couple with the odd cannon shell hole and Onyx running aground, I count that they damaged 21. What about:

Argentines are saddened that Prince William "will arrive on our soil in the uniform of a conquistador, and not with the wisdom of a statesman who works for peace and dialogue between nations," the country's foreign ministry said.

Hmm, bit effing late. Never mind 1982, what about the offers to take the discussions to the Hague between 1947 and 1955? Who was it who said "No, desgraciado extranjeros sucios" then? Hint, the Brits probably didn't speak Spanish ... Note: Edited for spilung

In which your blogger relocates

I really don't know why I was doing it last night but I ended up googling this nym. I which I discovered that I lived in Australia. Canberra to be precise.

This came as a slight surprise both to me and to Mrs SE. While, as a committed libertarian and a professional cynic, I have no problem with the Antipodeans labelling their seat of government "evil", politicians tend not to be particularly "surreptitious" about anything - even expenses fraud. But, no, Hotfrog darling, out by a mere 10,000 miles or so.

Surely not even "Wee Eck"?

Could be that daft? This must be simple insanity or a throwaway political jibe from Peter Hitchens (I'm not a common enough reader of his column or, frankly, his paper to have a prejudged opinon):

Paradoxically, Scotland might bring Berlin time to England – by negotiating its own Scottish time zone north of the border. 

Surely anybody who has paid any attention to the debate that there is a strong even-causal link, not just correlational, between how far north you live in the country and your opinions on whether we should adopt Central European Time. Heathen southerners, like Rebecca Harris MP (51.5°N) who sponsored the Private Members' Bill (and clearly doesn't understand the meaning of the word "conservative") are significantly for, as opposed to, for example, Dr Elidh Whiteford MP (57.5°N),against. Although a special note of thanks must go to Christopher Chope OBE MP (at a mere 50.7°N), no matter the reasons for or the substance of his objections.

Retaking the Political Compass

As I do, intermittently, I've had another go at the "Political Compass" test. Today, I appear to be marginally more right-wing and a bit more libertarian than previously.

My Political Views
I am a center-right social libertarian
Right: 1.53, Libertarian: 4.92

Or, 1.75 & 4.67, on a slightly different version.

Pretty much the same areas, pretty consistent with before.

And another lovely comment.

Via "Delta Bravo Sierra":

I am busy fighting giants all day while Odin sips mead in valhalla. I am the 99%!

Lovely comment

From a some-time collaborator, Henry Crun:

The OED defines chutzpah as "See Labour Party in Opposition post May 2010."

Is Google Ads Broken?

Well, damaged, anyway.

I've been reading about the great Ed'n'Ed versus the unions bust-up. On CiF. Because if you want to find out what the delusional end of the socialist co-operative are thinking it's either there or Tax Research UK.

Anyway ...

I keep getting:

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Marines: State of Mind

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I'm struggling to think of a less Bootneck Officer clique than the watermelons and crusties who hang around on CiF?

Sherlock gets it wrong.

I'm not going to indulge myself in the whole litany of errors in military and computing matters that inflicted "Hound of the Baskervilles" last night. My family had to sit through my muttering and you deserve better.

Just two though, both regarding the irritating Major Barrymore (and not about his being an irritating martinet - not making Lt Col does take some people like that):

• WTF is this beard thing? He's in the Army not the Royal Navy (and is neither a Drum Major in a Scottish Regiment nor a Pioneer Sergeant.) That you have some people wearing scruffy beards whilst on patrol in Afghanistan is one thing but it doesn't translate to smart beards in the UK. But that's the producers not Sherlock himself.
• The medals in the picture of him and his dad. Sherlock decrees it is mid-1980s and that the father has a DSO. Complete bollocks, of course. The Dad is wearing the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, instituted in 1993 (and not awarded until 1995), a General Service Medal with one bar and the Gulf War (1990 / 91) medal. And he doesn't have the South Atlantic Medal that the "Falklands veteran" he is declared to be would wear (this would be to the left or right of the GSM, depending on when he earned them, all campaign medals having the same precedence therefore being warn in order of award.)

I know, pointless pedantry. But given that the whole drive behind the character is pedantic attention to detail ...

Do Ministers Ever Learn Anything From Their Departments?

Well, it seems not.

Dennis McShane, expenses cheat (but not {yet} proven crook), bully, suspended Labour MP and former "Fifth Columnist on behalf of the EU in the British Government" thinks that the Countess of Wessex should sell some jewellery she was given by the Bahraini Royal Family and use the money to "benefit victims of the civil unrest."

So, there are a few problems with this.

Firstly, it is unclear whether these are HRH Sophie's to sell or part of the Royal Collection.

Secondly, these are official gifts. You either refuse them when offered, or you keep them. An international diplomatic version of that hideous sweater your aunt knitted for you that you can only bring yourself to wear when she visits and you can't throw out because, ugly though it is, you care more about her feelings than very occassionally looking like a bit of a prat. Ed notes: Although, with official gifts, you might be able to return them if you've either broken the rules or there is a significant problem. Sort of like Mugabe and Ceaucescu having their honorary knighthoods annulled.

Lastly, we have a member of the socialist internationale insisting the British Royal Family should interfere in the politics of another state? That's a fantastic turn-around from the usual insistance that they keep their unelected opinions out of our politics.

BBC - journalistic accuracy

Apparently, George Galloway was "Dundee's leader" in 1980. He was Vice-Chair of Dundee Labour Party and might have become a councillor (at his second attempt) on 1 May 1980. However, the Lord Provost was Jim Gowans and Galloway didn't even become the Party Chair ("Secretary Organiser?) until 1981. And the proposal for twinning came from then-Councillor Colin Rennie.

Well done the MSM.

WPP let down by their clients ...

var gEbBAd = new Object(); gEbBAd.AClickUrl = "http://t.mookie1.com/t/v1/clk?migAgencyId=394&migSource=mmind&migTrackDataExt=[%tp_AdID%];[%tp_PlacementID%]&migRandom=[ebRandom]&migTrackFmtExt=ad;pl"; gEbBAd.playRS = new Object(); gEbBAd.playRS.strAUrl = "http://t.mookie1.com/t/v1/imp?migAgencyId=394&migSource=mmind&migTrackDataExt=[%tp_AdID%];[%tp_PlacementID%]&migRandom=[ebRandom]&migTrackFmtExt=ad;pl";

And which major news magazine does this come from? And why doesn't their privacy policy mention WPP (it does mention a web-specific ad agency and Google Analytics!)

RIP Tony Sale

I've met the man, an infectious enthusiast and an exceptional engineer.

Delightful Innocence!

Here:

Richard Handl said that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorised possession of nuclear material.

Handl, 31, said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.

Only later did he realise it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police.

"The world is not only stranger than you imagine, it is stranger than you can imagine." (Ed notes: Attributed variously to Eddington, Haldane, Clarke etc, in its more usual 'universe' version.)

Easy BBC Questions

Can celebrities expect privacy?

Or, more specifically:

But how much privacy can, and should, celebrities - who make their living in the public eye - expect?

And the answer is simple - within the limits of the law.

So, clearly, phone hacking is illegal - a s1 offence under CMA90, at least - we'll agree that both the statute and the case law around RIPA s1 offences is less clear (particularly about what "in the course of its transmission" means). And CMA s1 offences can now attract 2 years inside - which would probably calm the fevered brows of the Murdoch-bashing mob.

We might disagree about how much HRA98 Article 8 should be usable to protect public figures (and we'll certainly disagree about who is a 'public figure') from the consequences of having acts committed in public places being publicised. We'll disagree more, or less, about acts committed in private - whether it is long lenses, kiss and tell (or, wonderfully in this week's Private Eye's cartoon - "shag and brag") or planting an "investigative" reporter in a position of actual or presumed confidential access.

We might campaign - on the same or different sides - for changes in such law.

But, it is simple - the law is the law - for the Prime Minister, Hugh Grant and Milly Dowler. Sympathy may vary but that's why we have judges, not libertarian bloggers, to preside over cases.

BBC questions to which we know the answer.

Can religious teachings prove evolution to be true?

Quite simple really. No.

That's it.

Religious teachings, not that I think that "Journal of Creation" or "Creation Research Society Quarterly" count as either, cannot "prove" or "disprove" anything.

Some of the methods used by idiots to produce their verbiage can be used, if the method itself is falsifiable, to show (even to prove) that the verbiage is inconsistent. But that one explanation is wrong doesn't mean that a contradictory explanation is correct. Lamarck might have been right - neither an evolutionary nor a creationist explanation. He wasn't, of course but that doesn't change to point of scientific principle.

Lefties, "Sarcasm" and Poe's Law

Sorry for the absence. Work is the curse of the blogging classes.

Anyway, I was commenting over at Tim's old gaff. Anyway, there is an un-reconstructed leftie polluting that place who calls himself "Arnald". Anyway, he made some wild protestation (completely misunderstanding reality) and, when called on it, declared that what he had written was "sarcasm".

Now, we are talking economics there - so you have to be a very bright leftie (which isn't anywhere near being a "liberal American") to actually get the point of it - economics is a set of approximations we use to describe and try to understand human behaviour - applied sociology as it were. It isn't a description of how we would like to run a perfect moral society. Which is where the "People's Princess" and Richard Murphy go horribly wrong. You can change the laws to (try to) mold people's behaviour, drink driving for example - but the (not particularly precriptive) laws we use to estimate the wider aspects of behaviour aren't amenable to fiat change.

So we come to a fairly simply Poe's law derivative. Is there any way that you can tell, in a leftie pronouncement on economics, whether they are being either sarcastic or serious but mistaken?

Added: And, to cap it all, the "Most Ignorant Man in Norfolk", declares that his stupidity is actually "tongue in cheek" and then repeatedly describes it as "irony". H/t to Christie.

I'm actually appalled!

Firstly by a column from, unsurprisingly, the New Statesman (and it's not by the "People's Princess). However, our correspondent states:

The true covenant between the military and its government is that it will serve it loyally, without fear or favour. If necessary, it will march and fight and die for policies or causes that it does not necessarily understand or support. Theirs is not to reason why.

This is wrong¹ - an appalling misunderstanding in fact - in two very different ways. He is talking about military discipline, enshrined in law since the Naval Articles of War were first published in 1653, which is not not "the military covenant". The military convenant is, in addition to pay, what the government or the nation gives us back in return for, amongst other things, s12 and s15 of the Armed Forces Act 2006. It is our "right" to be treated fairly and humanely by our own hierarchy (who don't actually have to obey the Geneva or Hague conventions when dealing with us.)

Secondly, and Nuremberg and modern "Law of Armed Conflict" (LOAC) training makes it clear - it is ever soldier's responsibility to question the legality of their orders. Just because an elected politician gives them, rather than a military superior, makes no change to the validity of that questioning.

Then, I came across this "interesting" comment on Jack of Kent's blog:

David McIntosh said...

I wonder what an American serviceman's contract says about reporting war crimes committed by fellow servicemen: "Accidental death by friendly fire," a la Pat Tillman? And for leaking war crimes by fellow servicemen that the military itself won't prosecute: "52 years in jail," a la Bradley Manning? Will you find out for us, Jack?

For a start, neither American nor British serviceman have employment contracts - surprisingly to us, few American workers do. Hence some of their confusing practices such as "faire at will" (which has a interestingly different military meaning). The test for leakers, or many other breaches of militray regulations is, as a matter of US federal law (the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in this case) whether:

such conduct being prejudicial to good order and discipline in the armed forces and being of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.

Which is an interesting test - is leaking creditworthy or discreditable? That begs a per-case answer. Which is, as far as I am aware, what the justice system exists to provide. That, in the manning case at least, the information was classified therefore there is an additional and corollary charge with strict liability, doesn't make the credit test less fascinating.

It also outlines a dreadful delusion common amongst the "chattering classes" - that everything that goes wrong, and certainly every criminal act, in a war is a "war crime". They aren't.  Friendly fire deaths are dreadful - possibly even a tragedy. But neither Pat Tillman's death nor the pathetic cover-up are "war crimes" - according to any of the evidence I have seen. The death may well just have been a dreaful mistake in the fog of war - the cover-up may have actually been an offence "being of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces" - but it is still not a war crime.

Harrowing that the Apache video is - I certainly think the commentary recorded was objectionable - there is considerable dispute as to whether even the second shoot was wrong (as a matter of LOAC - clearly killing kids is morally a bad thing) never mind a "war crime". The van was not marked with any of the protected symbols for health workers. I'm afraid that "shit happens" in fire-fights and when your enemy does not wear any clearly identifying symbols and insists on fighting in populated areas, the risk to civilians is higher. Not nice but, unfortunately, unavoidable. And not every civilian death is a crime. And not every criminal civilian death is a "war crime".

1. Ed notes: There is room for a perfectly valid discussion as to whether the coalition's desire to enshrine the Military Covenant in statute law is either sensible in principle or, in practice, they are going about it the right way. Personally, I think the former is doubtful and, as far as the latter goes, this is so clearly a piece of political theatre that we don't need to even consider the correctness of the drafting or the underlying intent - we can dismiss it all, out of hand, as flim-flam and start looking for the chicanery this misdirection is intended to hide.

Where I agree with Al Qeada

Come-on, I've agreed with Terry (Kelly, not Taliban) in the past!

In their lauding of bin-Laden, they say,

Men and heroes only should be confronted in the battlefields but at the end, that’s God’s fate.

While I agree with the statement and the sentiment, what a bunch of fucking hypocrites for saying it!

The Twin Towers, the US and Danish Embassies, the Bali bombs, London 7/7, the car bombing of civilian markets in Iraq and Afghanistan - none of those (and that's a very slim selection from the multitude of their atrocities) were on a battlefield. Unless you take this "Dar al Harb" business literally. In which case, Osama was on a battlefield.

PS - just thought of an appropriate addendum to their statement "but murdering lunatics are fair game regardless."

Scottish Vote Compass

From here:

Seems reasonable. Nearly as right as the tories, more liberal than the liberals.

Edited to add - I disagreed with the Tories on every single law and order question. Quite often at the other extreme. And on the Afghan one. Otherwise, I was generally just much less certain of myself. Slightly surprised about how much my answers concurred with Limp-Dumb policy. But that bunch of spineless back-stabbing weasels are never going to implement anything, any way.

Err, "Duh!"

Japan is to decommission four stricken reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, the operator says.

This wouldn't have anything to do with the seawater they were using for emergency coolant? Stainless steel actually being corroded by such? And these idiots are paid to research their stories.

Brown's Mobile Hacked?

Nice little earner for somebody if it was - please, having to re-hack the replacement every time the heffalump used it to 'express his displeasure'?

Having problems with this, too

I've been posting a few comments, mostly about email discovery, on James Doleman's excellent Sheridan Trial blog. And I've been getting quite a lot of "414 Request: URI too large to process" responses. It's caused a few issues - nothing serious.

So, this morning, I put up a comment - get an error, and then try to log on to this gmail account.

We've detected evil things happening. Please jump through some fiery hoops to verify ...

Okay - what? Enter my country and my mobile number and I get an unlock code SMS'd to me. Which gets me in to the email (and the blogger account had been locked too.)

Who is this protecting? If I was an evil hacker, spammer or other assorted nefarious toe-rag who had gained illegitimate access to this account, I'm still there and all Google now have is an SMSable number (and I'd have used a free or hacked VOIP account in an irrelevant country to get the code.) Clearly, it doesn't protect the "real" Surreptitious Evil, either.

So, we have a bit of security protocol, triggered by something (quite possibly the stream of 414s) that doesn't appear, at first or second glance, to do anything constructive. I'll have a bit more of a think about it, I suppose.

I'm having problems understanding this ...

Okay, so there's a "news story":

US 'wants Wikileaks Twitter data'

An Icelandic MP says US officials have subpoenaed personal details from Twitter relating to her activities with the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

Birgitta Jonsdottir says the US Department of Justice also asked Twitter for all of her tweets since November 2009.

Now, what "personal information" does Twitter hold about you? The only thing I can think of that isn't generally publicly displayed is the list of Twitterers you follow?

Anyway, she puts up lots more information on her blog!

Your Tweets are public anyway - so a list of them is hardly fundamentally damaging? It all seems like pointless posturing from the Yanks and a knee-jerk response from her. Oh, well ...

Update

Okay, they are asking for, from 1 Nov 2009:

A

1. subscriber names, user names, screen names, (sic) or other identities;

2. mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, e-mail addresses, and other contact information;

3. connection records, or records of session times and durations;

4. length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized;

5. telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address; and

6. means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) and billing records;

B

1. records of user activity for any connections made to or from the Account, including the date, time, length, and method of connections, data transfer volume, user name, and source and destination Internet Protocol address(es);

2. non-content information associated with the contents of any communication or file stored by or for the account(s), such as the source and destination email addresses and IP addresses;

3. correspondence and notes of records related to the account(s)

Amazing - either this is just a standard "subpeona the ISP" template that has been rolled out, not recognising that Twitter are neither an ISP nor an email service, or, if they have thought about it, Tracy McCormick (or possibly her wingwoman, Vivian) really don't grok Twitter.

I still don't get this. The only thing that might be useful in there, given that Twitter is free, are the IP addresses which they might then cross reference with data from other services. And I'll bet Twitter doesn't keep those for very long.

Some meditations on the Assange saga

1. Of course the US Government are out to get him. With Joe Lieberman accusing him of treason (well, actually, Fox News's Jenna Lee did. Lieberman just didn't try to run away), Palin calls for him to be assassinated (Ed notes: just how well is the US hunt for ObL going at the moment? Hmm!, Peter King publicly calls him a terrorist. Yeh. 
• Wikileaks made the US government look stupid. Governments hate that.
• Wikileaks may have actually committed some form of crime in the USA. I'm not a 1st Amendment (Ed: or, frankly, any sort of) lawyer.
• Assange is, quite deliberately, the public face of Wikileaks.  
• Of course he isn't a traitor. He isn't and has never been a US citizen. The Aussies might have their own ideas on the matter, of course :)
• If this is some conspiracy to get him to Sweden to then have him rendered to the USA, somebody hasn't read the Extradition Act 2003. Much easier to get him from us.
• Somebody, probably Bradley Manning (who has apparently confessed), has committed a number of crimes under US civil and military law. I hope they think it was worth it.
2. I don't thing it is particularly relevant whether the allegations against Assange are for "rape rape" (Ed notes: and isn't the fact that we use that a horrid reflection on society's attitudes?) or "sexual assault" or some sexual misconduct that might not be a crime in the UK or (in some states in) the USA but is in Sweden. This sort of allegation is, prima facie, is worthy of comprehensive investigation and, given the Swedish legal system and the "he said, she said" nature of most sex-crimes, extradition for that investigation. 
• Although the fervour with which it is being pursued is probably fuelled by Assange's 'celebrity'. 
• Although for some crimes, especially private and hard to prove ones such as this, it is reasonable (ab)use of state power to target high-profile offenders, "pour encourage les autres".
• I would note that s75(2)(d) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 would make (at least) one of the allegations formally "rape" in the UK. And I'm aware of the allegations of force in another event - that would be a (2)(a) or (b) statutory non-consent. Interestingly, note that (a) and (b) apply to series of events - but (d) does not. So having consensual sex before falling asleep and committing a sex act on the sleeping partner is an imprisonment for life case in the UK.
• I would also note that s76(2)(a) applies - "the defendant intentionally deceived the complainant as to the nature or purpose of the relevant act" may well cover the 'broken condom' issue.
• The concept that you have a legal right to insist that a sex partner has an STD test seems reasonable given the dangers and the mores of this modern world of ours. Especially an overtly promiscuous partner.
3. The two ladies talked and then went to the police. Well, yes. This is the rational argument for releasing the names of accused sex offenders - most are not one-time criminals. 
• Although "He did that - to you? As well? Bastard!" may have played some part.
• Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
4. The US government seems to have been criminally negligent in allowing the initial release of the information.
• When you get information from the spooks but you are not a spook yourself, they do "source protection". That means that you remove all the names and, often, other identifying details such as exact dates. Or more complex stuff if it is technically derived rather than human source info. Of course, Manning was a spook ... 
• It could be written to a CD-RW? This is just piss-poor security if it was on SIPRNet; if it was on JWICS, it was unconscionable. Many much lower-grade systems - financial, UK Gov etc - have this sort of thing effectively controlled.  
5. Claims that Assange would not get a fair day in a Swedish court need to be evidenced. Sweden might be a more difficult jurisdiction for rape defendants than others (just look at the results in some Sharia jurisdictions) But as long as his treatment is as fair as it would be for any other person accused of the same crimes, this seems entirely reasonable to me.
• Any American court may be a different matter.
• And the bail / no-bail thing puzzles me. But I've never been involved in those sorts of discussions.
6. What Assange has done - good or bad - doesn't really reflect on what Wikileaks does or has done.
• Unless, of course, he turns out to be in the pay of the CIA, the SVR, the DI (which may explain some of the stranger conspiracy theories) or the RPF. In which case, all bets are off.
  
7. The Americans want to use some ancient law to prosecute Assange. Well, okay, the Espionage Act 1917 hasn't been written in the modern, cuddly internet age - but it was written when the US had just entered in to a (rather significant) war. And, frankly, most of the slightly older British Official Secrets Act 1911 is still in force.

Truism of the Day

What needs overhaul is an insane government network for classified information that permits a disturbed 22-year-old army private to have access to his government's most sensitive international dealings.

Rupert Cornwell in the Independent. H/t to Charles Crawford.