2007 NEW EPOCH NEWS,
Telework News, Electronic Revolution, Future-Shock, News Blog, Friday, 21 May 2010 E-Wars, IPR,
BIG-BROTHER, ORWELLIAN, P2P, MOBILE-PHONES, HOME-OFFICES, INTERNET LAW,
ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIETY.
NEW EPOCH NEWS – THE SECOND EPOCH
How the Information Society
is progressing
21 May 2010
Contribute by e-mail to: noel@noelhodson.com
The first era, including
the past ten thousand years of written history, has been characterized by tribal
politics and the acquisition and maintaining of wealth by force – essentially a
system of gang-warfare. It is a physical and psychological fact that using our
brains is the most energy consuming activity we undertake. To avoid thinking we
cleave to ‘isms – the lazy person’s what-to-think-guide. Nevertheless, over
thousands of years, in rebellion against prescribed and proscribed thought, enough
people have used their brains innovatively for developed nations to now be able
to claim that “We have worked hard to abolish work – and have succeeded.”
In industrialised
nations, due to generations of hard work, valour and sacrifice and, recently,
the Electronic Revolution - the Knowledge Economy - there is overproduction of
most consumer goods and services. Real wealth and the products of the Real
Economy are flooding developed countries. The world has never before produced
so much real wealth. But the traditional, tribal, Money Economy mechanisms, used
to count, account and to share wealth fairly, are inadequate. The Real Economy,
over millennia, has been and is maintained by the efforts of the majority of
the population while the Money Economy, the legal paper which represents real
wealth, is 75% owned by just 4% - some of whom have contributed little to the
commonwealth. Despite sweeping, historic, social revolutions to diminish the
plagues and powers of aristocrats, aristocracy has resurfaced with a vengeance,
this time rooted in
The 3 economies, Real, Monetary and Knowledge are badly out of
alignment, out of sync and disjointed. The Electronic Revolution will bring a
new, fairer, more open reality.
Though we would all rather drown in Global Warming floods than
cooperate with each other - humankind is on the threshold of the era of intelligent-cooperation.
This second phase, era or epoch is characterised by the Electronic Revolution,
automated production, free-information, constant, instant global communications
and, most revolutionary of all, by individuals thinking for themselves. It is
bringing global social responsibility and radical changes; for example, it is
probable that voting for and empowering charismatic individuals – gang leaders
in politics and business - to decide our futures, will soon be replaced by
voting on issues – democratically, well informed, electronic-voting on
everything from household waste, to health care, to car production, to travel
systems, to global warming, to taxation, to wealth distribution, to whether we
should replicate the deadly 1918 “Spanish” flu virus, or go to war, or help the
sick and the poor.
NEW EPOCH NEWS notes the key steps of progress and the resistances
to entering the second phase. We live in
interesting times.
Home to http://www.noelhodson.com
SW2000 Telework Studies – SW2000 Intelligent Transport
Telework Transport Environment Economics
LETTER TO OUR
LEADERS – MORE MESSING ABOUT WITH MONEY 2010
MESSING ABOUT WITH MONEY 22 FEB 2010
2010 - a pivotal year for mankind - climate-change,
internet-freedom, & global banking – 3 feb 2010
who will control the internet? – 3 feb 2010
how can the money-system and the real economy be
reconciled? – 3 feb 2010
will we drown? are the ice caps melting? – 3 feb 2010
think globally, act locally – 3 feb 2010
Stupid government abuse of the Information Society –
UPDATED 16 JULY 09
Bankers and banking – 10 JULY 09
Cyberspace can still stop Emails – SME’s & the
Internet - 9 JULY 2009.
Universal internet access - Power to the people – 6 May
2009.
Surveillance Crisis – Cyber War - 23 October 2008.
Financial Crisis – Part Two – 7 October 2008.
Financial Crisis – Saved from my radical self by judicious
editing – 18 September 2008.
Give us back our money!– Letter to The Guardian newspaper
- 15 September 2008
It’s those pesky kids again, stealing valuable works of
art - 25 July 08.
Mobile phones and cancer - 25 July 08.
Open letter to the Prime Minister. 16 July 08.
23 June 08 – Will the world’s thick-headed transport and
energy planners ever get it?
7 April 08 – Famous Journalist liquidated?
12 March 08 – Point and Counterpoint – Worried about the
“Credit Collapse” ?
19 February 08 – Capital repatriation flood begins with a
trickle.
11 February 08 – Offshore Exiles – Repatriate, Repatriate,
Repatriate.
11 February 08 – Kids on-line.
17 January 08 – Greenfield and Darwin.
11 October 07 – Breathless Big Brother/ Sister.
3 October 07 – Oxford Brooks & Big Bucks for Bus
Owners.
25 September 07 - Teleworkers – one-third of UK workforce.
25 September 07 – The MIT $100 laptop gets to market.
19 AUG 07 – GLOBAL FINANCE – OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
18 AUG 07 – PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF THE GLOBAL BANKS?
13 AUG 07 – FUNDAMENTAL REDSIGN OF TRANSPORT AND CARS
2 JUL 07 – TAX FORCE & POVERTY.
13 FEB 07 – E-DEMOCRACY WILL BE TONY BLAIR’S LEGACY
29 NOV 06 – THE SAID BUSINESS SCHOOL, OXFORD.
2 NOV 06 – THE SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY HAS ARRIVED IN THE UK
- OFFICIAL.
2 OCT 06 – MICROSOFT CHALLENGED.
11 AUG 06 – WIRED DEMOCRACY – AN HISTORIC PRECEDENT.
12 Jun 06 - British Sex on the Net – Time Magazine
9 MAR 06 – PESKY PIRATES THREATEN BLUE MOVIES.
24 FEB 06 – $80M CASH STOLEN FROM THE BANK OF ENGLAND.
24 FEB 06 – SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL – PORNOGRAPHY FOR THE
NANO-TECH GENERATION.
3 JAN 06 – US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES INTRUSIONS CRITICISED
3 JAN 06 – MIT DEVELOP STACKABLE CARS
3 JAN 06 – ENRON CASE THREATENS DIRECTORS WITH 25 YEARS.
7 DEC 05 – A diversion into Intelligent Design
4 NOV 05 – BIG BROTHER in the workplace – A backward step
4 NOV 05 – Microsoft invest in VOIP & “Live Office”
24 OCT 05 – Time is running out, maybe – The oil fuel
crisis
19 OCT 05 – GALILEO is Watching You
12 OCT 05 – Hands off our Internet!
10 OCT 05 – GOOGLE and free libraries.
7 OCT 05 – God guides George Bush.
7 OCT 05 – Youngsters make their own news
7 OCT 05 - $100 laptops run on LINUX.
23 SEPT 05 - Tracking Offshore Funds.
5 SEPT 05 - Hurricane Katrina. The Scrooge society.
26 AUG 05 - To google or not to google.
26 AUG 05 - Music files go legit’
31 JUL 05 - The Future – Accurate social and scientific
predictions
17 MAY 05 - Brain Tumours from cordless & mobile
phones debate continues
14 MAY 05 - US Supreme Court to Rule on film and music
controls
10 MAY 05 - Feature Films on Mobile Phones
24 APR 05 - Music Industry pur-sues schoolchildren
swappers
9 MAY 05 - Internet Pornography, Masturbation and
Self-Abuse
16 MAY 05 - Electronic Paper Screens
16 MAR 05 - 344 Million customers a month
16 FEB 05 - Nokia and Microsoft Make Music
16 FEB 05 - Who is listening? The Mafia or the Government?
13 FEB O5 - BT channels money to fraudsters
12 FEB 05 - More WEB Music Downloads
3 FEB 05 - Spammers mock the US laws
20 JAN 05 - VOD – PVR – DVD’s – NTL – BBC – ETAL
20 JAN 05 - Super Fast Broadband
7 JAN 05 - Cell-phones change body’s cells and genes
The transport letter the Guardian dared not publish –
Tuesday 21st December 2004.
Pirating films – Wednesday 15th December 2004.
Round-up – Thursday 25th November 2004.
SPAM fried by court – Monday 8th November 2004.
Banks overdose on spam phishing scams– Monday 8th
November 2004.
WorldCom directors in Court – Monday 8th
November 2004.
Pirate Movies – The big players start a war – Thursday 28th
October 2004.
Drowning in Ignorance – Friday 22nd October
2004
EPICUS – Embryonic E-Democracy & Money Laundering –
Friday 22nd October 2004
NEW
EPOCH NEWS: ARCHIVES FEB04-DEC04 AUG03-FEB04
JUN02-AUG03
LETTER TO OUR LEADERS – MORE MESSING
ABOUT WITH MONEY 2010
Dear Nick Clegg,
SHAKING UP DEMOCRACY & FIXING GLOBAL FINANCE
I posted this letter to you at
Best wishes
Noel HODSON
16 Brookside
************************************
FAO - Guardian newspaper , BBC Radio News, Time Magazine, Dean Baker - Center for Economic & Policy Research, Congressman Brad Sherman (by mail), Mary Schapiro Chair SEC, Shelia Bair, Chair FDIC, Elizabeth Warren, TARP (by mail), David Cameron PM, Nick Clegg MP, Rt Hon Andrew Smith MP; President Obama.
19 May 2010
Commodities, Currencies,
Derivatives - Open letter to
Time Magazine, The Guardian
newspaper (
It is now accepted by most intelligent economists that 90% of market trades are merely gambling and "have no intrinsic value for society". It may also be slowly dawning on economists and experts that 90% of the gross revenues of Wall Street, The City and other major financial centres, simply add to the costs of the commodities we all must consume; they are vast siphons of wealth from the pockets of ordinary citizens - feeding insatiable tapeworms embedded in the guts of the Real-Economy.
Recommendations:
1) DELIVERY: The simple solution
to incontinent gambling on public markets is to make all margin/on-credit
trading illegal and insist upon delivery, settlement and stock holding for
a reasonable time. For example; in the
2) OFFSHORE TRILLIONS: All debtor nations, led by the US, could pay off all their deficits if the tsunami of $13 trillion "private" capital that sweeps the world looking for another quick-buck, causing property and other bubbles wherever it strikes land, were to be repatriated and taxed in the country of origin. For example; seek the views of the 88.9% of Greeks who are increasingly angry about poor Greeks being saddled with their nation's deficits, while the international super-rich play poker with their currency. Form teams of specialist tax-investigators and offer them 10% of all funds and taxes repatriated.
3) ON THE RECORD: Require all financial companies, including Madoff, Enron & Parmalat, to file a daily balance sheet and trading account in a prescribed format. Funny-money bookkeeping would stand-out and alert enquiries. All the accumulated balance sheets, categorised, would act as a set of barometers for the health of the money-economy. Jail crooked auditors and credit-assessors.
4) BUCK TRADITION: Historically, it has been the absolute right of the already rich to screw the unwashed, godless, persistently and deservedly poor and to steal their meagre savings and homes, about every twelve years or so. Some national politicians may even have been persuaded to tacitly sell out their entire countries by - say - pushing up base-rates to unprecedented highs for seven years, enabling foreign depositors to double their bank balances, risk-free, without getting out of bed in the mornings; Or, for example, by declaring bloody wars to stimulate immense, unaudited flows of tax-dollars ("only little people pay taxes") through opaque channels to feed even fatter tapeworms, and thus deplete the home economy. On retirement such compliant politicians might be pleased and very, very surprised to find their own off-shore, tax-free Trusts flooded with donated dollars - simply for being such nice, lucky, sun-tanned guys. Break these 17th Century social traditions, with a five year post-office cooling off period and severe penalties for such revolving-door deals - to be assumed guilty till proven innocent if the politician's national pension is supplemented by strangely generous gifts and receipts.
The World and the next generations are watching and relying on you.
Yours truly
MESSING ABOUT WITH MONEY 22 FEB 2010
22
FEB 2010 Time Magazine
In saying that Japan,
India and China owe their economic success to following the American
model, away from big government, Michael Schuman (Essay, TIME, March 1
2010) is blindsided to the long-termism of Asia - planning and
investing for generations ahead - compared to the short termism
of our "free" market model, which is now so extreme that 90% of transactions look
less than one minute ahead. Addicted gamblers, who use our
vital markets as casinos, have wrecked the money system several
times. All margin trading should be banned and all investments should be
for a minimum of six months, fully paid for and delivered. I think the
Noel Hodson
************************
3 Dec 09 Guardian Newspaper
Bankers argue that bonuses are critical to retaining "investment" bankers. These specialists, most natural mathematicians who be-dazzle and baffle their colleagues, make and lose vast amounts by gambling, second by second, on futures, commodities, currencies, shares and indices. They use our normal bank assets, such as savings accounts, as stakes. Their activities have been deemed to have "no social or economic value". In fact, such speculation drives up global prices, distorts reality and periodically collapses the world's money-economy; economists cannot yet count their total 2008/09 losses. The bonuses are often siphoned to tax havens. Gambling is as addictive as drugs and alcohol; like most addicts, these gamblers will do anything to sustain their habit. We should bless Mr Darling for finding a trigger to have them all emigrate, taking their unique skills as far away as possible.
2010 - a pivotal year for mankind - climate-change,
internet-freedom, & global banking – 3 feb 2010
This year will witness strenuous
battles for control of our climate policies, our money and our internet. These
3 vital elements, among others, are under savage and determined attack as the
electronic-revolution disturbs and discomfits the primitive, established habits
of the intelligent ape. So far, mankind has applied apelike tribal and gang
rules, often violent, to take everything and anything we desired, regardless of
consequences. Now we, the self-acclaimed
pinnacle of God’s creation, are being obliged to grow-up and, as President
Obama quoted in his inauguration speech, “It is time to put away childish
things”. No overindulged, overweight, greedy,
thoughtless, selfish, narcissistic, physically powerful teenager wants to be
initiated into becoming a responsible adult human-being. I believe this year, 2010, is a pivotal year
for us. Will we try to do ‘Business as Usual’, or will we move into the era of
intelligent-co-operation? Thanks to the internet and the world-wide-web and
Wikipedia, we all have the required information and we all can see the global
picture – if we choose to look. Three
further quotes to take time to reflect on, “An Elder is one who pre-considers
the consequences of actions for the next seven generations” and, “We hate to
have to think – thinking uses more energy than any other human activity.” And, from
another
In an era of almost limitless
automated, mechanised, computerised productive capacity; the wealthiest
Real-Economy ever, we must learn to share, to cooperate …or else. We live in
interesting times. I think 2010 will be a memorable, historic year for mankind.
Below – is news of the three
elements, as we enter the New Year.
who will control the internet? – 3 feb
2010
From Oxford Institute for the
Internet - OII
18
January 2010
I
would like to draw your attention to a Policy Briefing written by our Visiting
Associate Tony Wales, former General Counsel of AOL International, responsible
for the company's worldwide legal affairs outside the
***********************************
To OII. Thanks for your thorough briefing on the Digital Economy Bill.
If Lord Mandelson and the music and film industry do succeed in their
crazed, world-domination objective of obliging ISPs to spy and report on all 2
billion Internet users, allegedly to stop a few children and impoverished
adults swapping products, which the distributors lack the competence to
protect; will OII then steer its followers to the new alternative internet
routes and hardware peripherals, which will spring-up, free from government,
business and advertisers supervision?
PS - Unauthorised copying
or sharing of my website and texts in whole or in part will be reported to the Peter
Mandelson IPR Revolving-Door Media Trust (Bahamas) Inc. and result in
Oxford University losing all internet-connections, paying large fines and
having its officers imprisoned.
LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN:
Comic Swaps & Copyright 23
NOV 09 - As a boy, did Lord Peter Mandelson never swap his Dandy for a Beano,
his Superman for a gob-stopper, or show his Titbits to a
pal? Did swapping wreck the publishing industry? Now he wants to
track and criminalise 2 billion internet users, who may or may not copy and
pass on content. The simple remedy for the music, film and Murdoch news
providers is to get off the net; withdraw their precious content. Or should
millions of internet users retaliate by suing all media companies for
their use of plagiarised and copied content? This is a Pandora's box
that Peter should not open - unless, of course, he is being
guided by the hand of God. -
***************************************************
19 Nov 09
Email to: Mr Rupert Murdoch.
CHARGING FOR ON-LINE CONTENT
Part of my business is forecasting the future of the Internet. I also advise businesses on novel solutions. If you use this information, please pay me a reasonable, commensurate fee - or - publicise my novels; see the address-block below.
1) I pay an annual subscription to New Scientist. They post me a weekly magazine and give me full access to an excellent website. This business model should work for The Times and other quality or specialist newspapers.
2) VIP FILTERS - As the
Internet grows and adds other alphabets, many, including Sir Tim
Berners-Lee, are designing "intuitive" search engines.
They recognise there is a pressing need for VIP-FILTERS to narrow search
results down to the top 100, rather than e.g. "Email Rupert Murdoch -
2,560,000 results". News Corp does not have to wait for the new
technology. Your teams/or machines can review and feed VIP DATA to
subscribers by web-searching, archiving popular, intelligent information, and
interposing a NEWSCORP search engine, which becomes the first search the
(VIP) subscribers try. This turns today's media business model on its
head. You copy free information off the web, repackage it, vet it and
sell it on high-cost subscription to elite customers in particular niche
markets, in specialist languages if needed (including the arts,
sports, finance etc).
Subscription Sales: Yes, you have to invest in a sales campaign - but you have an edge via your media businesses - and via existing niche-group viewers and readers.
2a) VIP-MOBILE hand held screens. I am reasonably sure there is also an existing market for ultra-high quality, Sony-book-reader-size, mobile hand held screens with good sound and picture quality (good enough for e.g. Opera (n.b. The Met now broadcasts live) - Ballet - Snooker - Football etc). Allied to the quality data from VIP FILTERS, owning such a mobile phone would be a high level status symbol. The technology parts exist but you need a 15 year old nerd to pull it together for you. NEWSCORP-VIP-MOBILE would quickly be the top-end mobile-phone-internet-search of choice in many diverse niche-markets - say, £100 a month subscription. From there it would spread downwards.
Almost daily, I search for
reliable statistics and calculators - make a STATS-VIP-FILTER for me.
Yours sincerely -
***************************************
how can the money-system and the real
economy be reconciled? – 3 feb 2010
26 January 2010 To
"The standard Taylor Rule would have recommended that the Fed raise the rate to a range of 7 percent to 8 percent through the first three quarters of 2008, “a policy decision that probably would not have garnered much support among monetary specialists,” Bernanke said. A variation of the rule used by the Fed focused on anticipated rates of inflation, not actual rates, he said. "
Dear Mr Lanman - Stealing from the poor to give to the rich,
via the Base Rate, was most effective under Margaret Thatcher 1979-1989, when
And move to higher ground. – Regards
-
****************************************************
PUBLISHED IN THE GUARDIAN
NEWSPAPER -
3 Dec 09
Bankers argue that bonuses
are critical to retaining "investment" bankers.
These specialists, most natural mathematicians who be-dazzle and
baffle their colleagues, make and lose vast amounts by gambling,
second by second, on futures, commodities, currencies, shares and
indices. They use our normal bank assets, such as savings accounts, as
stakes. Their activities have been deemed to have "no social or
economic value". In fact, such speculation drives up global prices,
distorts reality and periodically collapses the world's money-economy;
economists cannot yet count their total 2008/09 losses. The bonuses are
often siphoned to tax havens. Gambling is as addictive as drugs and
alcohol; like most addicts, these gamblers will do anything to sustain their
habit. We should bless Mr Darling for finding a trigger to have them
all emigrate, taking their unique skills as far away as possible.
-
**************************************
LETTER TO THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
NEWSPAPER -
17 November 2009
Sir - Defenders of City
bankers, including I fear, parts of your 17 November editorial, and
several readers' Letters, seem to be blindsided to the trampling herds of
elephants in the room. The City lost so many billions of clients', savers'
& pensioners' money in 2008/2009 that our cleverest economists
cannot yet give a total, other than that globally to date
$14 Trillion ($14,000,000,000,000) of tax dollars has been transfused
into the system. The population, saddled with decades of new national
debt, is justifiably enraged and would gladly throw
the culprits to the dogs - not pay them to stay in office.
-
********************************
LETTERS TO THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER
-
The Toxic Homeless - 13 NOV 09 -
UN Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik (...America's housing shame - 13 Nov 09) met with
dispossessed LA families, representing the feckless, reckless poor, who
Wall St. and The City claim wrecked the global system by defaulting on
loan-shark contracts and triggering toxic debt; so far needing $14
trillion tax-dollars to patch it up. $14 trillion would pay-off 56
million $250,000 mortgages - half the homes in
27 OCT 09 - Please deliver
this heavily capitalised, expletive message, via Letters, to City
pundit David Buik, of BGC Partners, who complains about proposed
Tory limitations on bonuses (Osborne angers City with plan to curb
cash bonuses - Guardian 27 Oct 09). He says "... (Osborne) is far too
rigid if he wants
Hey, David !
Wake Up ! do we have to hit you with
a brick! The City of
**********************************
will we drown? are the ice caps
melting? – 3 feb 2010
(Un)Settled
Science - Hole in the AGWzone Layer!
by
James P. Hogan
January
14, 2010
Dear
James Hogan,
I
have followed the climate-change and extreme-weather debate for more than 10
years - and I do recall the many scares you refer to; such as the numerous
terminal threats to mankind (scientifically) analyzed in the 1960's in The
Doomsday Book by Financial Times science journalist Gordon Ratray-Taylor.
It
seems to me that the present Who-Dunnit squabble is a science-village gossip
diversion from the main questions - Are the Ice-Caps Melting? …And… Can we Slow
the Process?
The
weather fluctuations, including unusual cold spells, were predicted at a
meeting I attended about 12 years ago at the Climate Change Study Unit,
I
don't think it matters a tinker's cuss whether or not it is anthropogenic -
what matters, if the ice is melting - as seen on TV - is, can we fix it.
In
the meantime - read my novel, Over the Rainbow, move to higher ground and move
your money on-shore.
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/novels-table-15FEB07.htm
Thanks
for an interesting paper.
******************************
To The
8 Dec 09
Three climate-change economic myths need correcting:
(1) We can't tackle the additional work: The UK could work 133B hours a year, we actually work 37B hours. There is 72% spare capacity to tackle the crisis.
(2) It will cost the world economy a lot: On the contrary it will create useful work, economic activity and extra wealth around the globe. What we really mean is "I might have to change my income-stream and leisure activities".
(2) Who dun' it? Mankind or Nature? : It does not matter a tinker's cuss who or what caused it. Are the ice caps and glaciers melting? Will it cause disruption, deaths and chaos? Can we fix it?
*********************************************
think globally, act locally – 3 feb
2010
Sebastian Johnson, Oxford Strategic Partnership, c/o Oxford City Council, Oxford Town
Hall, St Aldates, Oxford OX1 1BX
21 Jan 2010
Dear Mr Johnson,
One of my colleagues has brought the OSP to my attention. I have looked through the 2008-12 aims, which are worthy and ambitious.
Twenty-five years ago, we
corresponded with Lord Weinstock at GEC, for a year or so, discussing
integrated interlinking transport for
On my local, Headington,
transport front, you may like to consider adding for discussion the attached
idea for the
NB – The £33M cost of the underpass would
be recovered in 2 years from saving the time and fuel of commuters.
The JR-Road Tunnel
1 Dec 09
As winter gridlock
freezes traffic on the
Local firm, SW2000 Intelligent Transport, claims that delays to the 10,000 vehicle movements a day, in and out of the JR, costs the JR staff, ambulances and visitors 15 minutes and an extra litre of fuel a day; 10,000 gallons a week; an extra 19 million gallons of toxic exhaust a week; losing £25,000 in productive time every work-day. Add the other non-JR road users and this traffic congestion costs the community £18 million a year in time & fuel; plus the impact of toxic exhaust gases, which endanger health and increase global-warming.
The JR should build its own road tunnel link to the ring-road; that is what ring-roads are for. Oxford's traffic planners could be inspired by Switzerland's visionary 35 mile long, 150 mph, double rail tunnel under the Alps, being built this year to banish freight vehicles from Swiss roads; and by the dozens of long tunnels on the Italian Autostradas; or, nearer to home: by the 249 miles of Victorian tunnels built for the London Tube; by the prize winning 31 miles Channel Tunnel built 250 feet deep beneath the sea; and by the 2,300 metres, air-side-road-tunnel (ART) built in one-year under Heathrow, in 2008.
To bore a 1/3rd mile - 550 metres - traffic tunnel, from the Ring Road to the JR car-parks will cost about £33 million; which is less than two years of the costs imposed on the travellers and the besieged residents of Marston and Headington. The tunnel would be a low-cost, hugely valuable, permanent investment.
The JR-Tunnel can readily be built with modern boring machines, as used at Heathrow, in less than a year.
The long-term value, for ambulance crews, for sick patients, for JR staff and visitors, of having rapid, direct access - and of reducing daily traffic jams for the whole community - is incalculable.
END
Stupid government abuse of the
Information Society – UPDATED 16 JULY 09
16 July 09
Popular, successful
*****************************************
14 July 09
To: Counsellor Jiang Fan
(Commerce), Chinese Embassy, LONDON
Dear Counsellor,
Electronic Surveillance
Over the past 3 months, I have
read media and science reports saying that computers, telephones and other
communication electronics, which are made in
Yours truly, Noel HODSON
*************************************
Bankers and banking – 10 JULY 09
Letter to the Guardian - 8 July 09
Alistair Darling and the Treasury are not addressing three monstrous and dangerous faults in the system (This mortgage can damage your wealth - Treasury's bank reforms propose risk alerts - Guardian 7 July 09). First, casino banking must be confined as it was, to individual crazed gamblers risking their own money, not shareholders', depositors' and taxpayers' money. Banks should invest not gamble, with a minimum holding period of, say, six months between shares and commodities transactions. Second, some credit card and personal loans charges rack up to 50%. Loan sharking should be capped at 10% above Base Rate, subject to long prison sentences and fines. Third, it is alarming for UK savers and the City of London's reputation that while the US authorities send Bernard Madoff to prison for 150 years, for losing £31 billion of savers' funds, the UK sends the ennobled Sir Fred Goodwin, held to be responsible for losing £28 billion of RBS savers' funds, to Monte Carlo to enjoy a tax free pension of £450,000 a year for the next 40 years.
Cyberspace can still stop Emails – SME’s & the Internet - 9
JULY 2009.
'cristina.matinez@ec.europa.eu'; 'gerald.santucci@ec.europa.eu.'
This email couldn’t get through to the European
Commission.
3rd email send - maybe the internet will work this time.
2nd email send - Cristina Matinez seems to be off-line.
Would Mr Santucci's PA please
forward this note to the authors of the draft paper on SME's:
20090708-fines-position-paper-draft2
- Public Consultation
9 JULY 09
20090708-fines-position-paper-draft2 - Public Consultation
Dear Ms Matinez,
I advised UK SME's on finances for 25 years; promoted Teleworking for 12-14 years; launched the first teleworked business-expansion-service (BES) franchise in Europe (Morton Hodson & Co Ltd) and I am currently promoting a CO2 saving, alternative, freight transport infrastructure, "Foodtubes".
I have the above draft paper and recommend further thought might be given by the authors to:
1) AUTO-COMPLIANCE - If launching a new small enterprise today, little has changed in 30 years. SME's realistically, continually complain about the cost of "red tape" or compliance with regulations. The Internet could carry out all compliance, registration and reporting tasks, transaction by transaction, and enable all SME's to automatically set aside taxes etc.
I proposed such an automated one-book-entry system in 1990, called The Electric Cheque Book. It would save significant amounts of productive time and large direct financial costs. It would provide highly accurate statistics on all SME business activity. What was difficult with 1990 's technology, could now easily be done.
2) CONFIDENTIALITY - "Forget
Privacy - Privacy is Dead" - said the first President Bush (Senior) about
the launch of the Internet and the WWW. However, today's SME's do need to
know that the Advanced Telecommunications they are being encouraged to use
are private and confidential. Last month, the Chinese government insisted that
computer manufacturers build in tracking, spying and
reporting hardware and software - and this month the
3) VIRTUAL CURRENCY - A large percentage of SME's trade is done with other SME's. The Internet needs to provide a currency that enables such business-to-business trades. Given the present banking chaos and the complexity of bank loans and financing, such a virtual currency will eventually lead to a new banking system and the creation of a global business currency; this should be the "Business-Euro" and it should exclude all previous bad financial practices, cartels, greed, loan-sharking, casino gamblers, etc. The costs of operating such a virtual money system would be a fraction of traditional banking costs.
4) RE-DEFINE PROFITS & LOSSES - In the long term and in contrast to paragraph 2 above; the Internet does open all doors to and provides previously well guarded secret knowledge about capital ownership, trading margins, business models, pay structures and executive rewards. It is inevitable that such information will become accessible to all. The EC should create a socially-responsible new definition of Profits and Losses for pension, taxes, environmental, employment, wealth-sharing and all other purposes. The presently applied legal definitions as expressed and used by governments, tax-collectors, accountants, auditors and lawyers, come to us from the 18th Century based on 18th Century politics and philosophies. It is high time the definitions, the accepted protocols, were updated for the global Internet era, taking into account social responsibility and eliminating the exploitation of human and scarce resources.
Please circulate this note to all relevant persons.
With regards
Noel Hodson
Universal internet access - Power to the people – 6 May 2009.
It seems that the Information Society
is thriving and has not yet been diminished by censorship - So far so good. But we should be alert to the numerous
threats from would-be censors of every shape, size, hue, religion, political
belief, greed and insanity; and we should be rapidly developing internet
protocols and delivery technologies that will protect everyone’s right to share
and use the network.
In the year of 2008 (taken from a
New Scientist article 2 May 2009)
210,000,000,000 (210B) emails per
day were sent.
78% of Emails were spam.
Google searches 1 trillion web
pages. (1,000,000,000,000)
ALL USERS – number approx 1.58B via
computers (mostly fixed telephone)
Plus 1B via mobile
phones
Japan 94,000,000 internet users -74% of pop.
92% of the population in
Internet growth is 50% per annum.
On-line advertising spending - $65,000,000,000 ($65B) globally.
Danger of Hi-jacking: The use of Non-Latin alphabets,
including Chinese, Arabic, and Cyrillic could divide the internet if such
alphabets lead to the creation of national or regional website directories
which are not accessible to the central ICANN directory – and thus would not be
searchable by existing methods. This
could enable regional government control.
POWER & ENERGY – Bobbie
Johnson writing from San Francisco for The Guardian – 4th May 2009 -
tells us that a single Google search uses as much energy as driving a car one
mile (really?) and that US data centres used 61 billion kilowatts of power in
2006 (what does that convert to in litres of diesel?), enough to supply the
whole of the UK’s power for 2 months and/or 1.5% of electricity used in the
USA. Google has invested $2.3B into infrastructure in 2008 (presumably to
supply electric power and use less of it). And Microsoft engineers are also on
the case. However, my opinion is that the energy used sending an email is a
tiny, tiny fraction of delivering a physical letter – and that internet searches
and data preservation use a minuscule fraction of the equivalent physical
libraries and physical searches of libraries.
Maybe we should mothball libraries and give access only over the
internet – to save the planet.
Historic, momentous, epoch changing, world turning, inspiring,
uplifting, hopeful… Words fail us - 5 November 2008.
Senator Barack
Obama today is President-Elect of the
Whatever happens tomorrow; this
extraordinary, transforming event truly announces the second epoch.
It is so unexpected that
Microsoft’s spell checker doesn’t recognise his name.
Surveillance Crisis – Cyber War - 23 October 2008.
The
Most computer savvy people are
convinced that all communications are already being recorded; in the
THE FUTURE: So the “proposed” laws will merely ratify the existing status quo. How
will angry and younger people react to such total surveillance? They will wage cyber-war. The seeds of civil
disobedience are already evident. The inescapable computer law of ‘Rubbish in –
Rubbish out’ will sabotage the governments’ best efforts to track everyone all
the time. The integrity and value of the data relies on accurate identity and
location. Hoodies, youngsters on the streets, hide their heads from CCTV
cameras – the next stage will be masks. Petty
crooks clone or steal credit-cards and financial identities, use and discard
them. There is a lively internet trade in cloned number plates to disguise
vehicles; the favourite numbers belong to politicians, judges and celebrities.
Free and pay-for software, which hides computer internet identities, abounds on
the internet; some of it may even work. People buy, borrow or steal other’s
mobile phones, use and discard them. There is probably software that hides
telephone number identities – or if not, there soon will be. Traffic cameras
photograph license plates (cloned) and drivers’ faces; (masked drivers). To
overcome these deceptions, government will have all vehicles carry embedded
chips; all music and film downloads will be reported by embedded chips. The
kids will re-program the chips or simply dig them out and throw them away.
Clever kids will dispose of all spy-ware in their cars and computers – or steal
or swap other people’s machines. The ubiquitous CCTV cameras are vulnerable to
crude physical attack and as they are put on taller poles and buildings, the
kids will find ways to disrupt the cameras with electrical signals – or
catapults. Gangs of otherwise compliant citizens will flood systems with false
data. Otherwise law abiding citizens
will habitually give erroneous information when form filling.
As the Nazi Party proved beyond
doubt; when the State oppresses people relentlessly, the terrible irresistible
government pressure and force eventually confronts, or perhaps it creates, the utterly
indestructible diamond intelligence and spirit of the oppressed – and it is the
State machine that is ultimately smashed.
The pity is that much of the data
being gathered for benevolent purposes is of great value to society, but
revolutionary cyber warriors will not discriminate. Will governments learn to act intelligently?
Financial Crisis – Part Two – 7 October 2008.
On the day that the town sized
population of Iceland (250,000 souls) nationalise a bank and are financially ranked
willy-nilly alongside China and America by hysterical journalists; markets
continue to crash, pundits to pontificate, bankers to grieve, global politicians
to dither and super-rich city executives to fearfully hide their ill-gotten
gains. Mr Richard Fuld, CEO of wrecked bankers, Lehman Brothers, with only a slight
and modest hesitation, yesterday told
This crisis is an Information Society issue. We cannot
properly communicate and trade globally in milliseconds if spivs, gangsters, loan-sharks,
bribed officials and bent accountants and lawyers install themselves at key
points in the system like parasitical tape-worms, deliberately spread Disinformation and, under the
obscurantist cover of gobbledegook numbers, they fiddle the books, create false
back-to-back transactions and siphon off billions and trillions of the people’s
common-wealth – without being taxed.
It is worth repeating, to counter
the many hired PR, media, Wall Street and City lackeys who parrot-fashion report
otherwise - This crisis is NOT CAUSED BY
US MORTGAGE DEFAULTERS. If missed monthly home loan payments were the basis
of it all, billionaires President Bush and Senator John McCain would have
stepped up like good citizens, put their hands in their own very deep, well
lined Trust Fund pockets and personally made up the arrears of the poorest in
society, to save the world from meltdown – perhaps with a little help from the
US Treasury. A few million dollars a
month, supporting home owners in difficulties, would have made the underlying
assets strong and non-toxic. The root
cause is actually the 28 years of Regan/Thatcher economics, monetarism and
unrestrained manic gambling, feeding gargantuan amounts tax-free to the rich
while freezing pay and support for the poor – and fiddling the books to hide
the damage being done to gouged corporate balance-sheets. It should all be clawed back.
Western governments, unthinkingly
anxious about escalating credit card and mortgage consumerism (by the poor),
saw in the alleged sub-prime crisis an opportunity to screw and make an example
of some of them; young first-home families and poor late-home buyers, all with
large mortgages, via the loan-sharking, boiled frog syndrome; frightening them
into prudence and frugality with a property crash and homelessness; without
having to hike up base rates and thus stoke up inflation, as Thatcher did to
crash the UK economy and create 4 million unemployed. In disseminating for a
year the frightening rumours that homes would plummet in value, the governments
did not realise what destructive demons their fanciful middle-class doom
mongering would unleash.
If only they had properly audited
their own nations’ transactions and verified them with global comparisons. The
world must learn to count accurately. This fundamental neglect has not been due
to lack of computing power. Money is nothing more than a reliable book-keeping
system. It has been badly abused and is no longer an accurate account.
How can the Information Society
fix the global system that is bust?
1) Nationalise ALL financial
institutions – world-wide.
2) Properly audit and publish all
corporate and national balance sheets; eventually include all businesses.
3) Publish all the balance-sheets
every day and explain trans-border variances and sinister siphons. Cap fat-cat
salaries.
4) Create a
single-global-currency and oblige everyone to convert all their assets.
5) During the conversion process
– confiscate and repatriate all proceeds of crime, fraud and tax-evasion.
6) During the conversion process
– recoup all “City Bonuses” of the past 25 years and examine their legality.
7) Create a global Domesday Book
of all significant assets and who owns them. Start with Land, mapped onto
GOOGLE E
8) Convict and punish all
fraudsters – whoever their friends are.
9) Banish all speculators from all
vital markets – energy, money, water, food, homes, air, metals, shares etc.
10) Record all the above on
computers and publish daily on the web.
11) Reform all political systems
as E-Democracies – voting on issues, not for leaders or Parties.
12) Introduce a global minimum
wage of $10 an hour; sufficient to support a modest home loan.
These actions are radical; but
lesser interventions and structures will not suffice.
Financial Crisis – Saved from my radical self by judicious editing
– 18 September 2008.
THIS IS WHAT I WROTE:
17 Sept 08 – Excuses, Excuses, Excuses - The continuing, if not escalating, USA and UK financial crisis is repeatedly punctuated in the media by failed brokers & bankers and their press-officers blaming it all on the fall in property prices. But it is illogical that the booming real-economy should wreak havoc in the money-economy. The reality is that massive amounts of our cash have been siphoned off - much of it via tax-havens - to enable global gambling in impenetrable derivatives, beyond the understanding of senior executives, by unsupervised crack-heads; which has so confused the regulators, auditors and the corporate world that few, if any, understand the banks' Balance Sheets and have lost all track of the relationships between the real-economy and the money-economy. The alleged property "crash" is a tiny percentage of housing stock being auctioned off. 95% of property is not in forced sale and it retains its (real) value to the owners & tenants. And when traditional banking returns, in a month or so, property, land, factories, machines and other real assets in the real world, used and needed by real people, will still be the banks' main securities for loans. It is the banks' loss of liquidity through once illegal gambling that has depleted mortgage funds, halted property transactions and driven up food, oil and other commodity prices. The real-economy, where real-work is done, is fine. It is the money-economy that needs fixing - and it is a primary duty of government to fix it. We cannot leave our currency in incompetent hands. I suggest the wholesale nationalisation of all City interests, to stabilise currencies, and the immediate repatriation to their source-nations of all off-shore assets - calculated by the OECD to be $10 to $13 trillion. That will more than repair all the deficits.
THIS IS WHAT
THEY PRINTED – MAYBE IT IS AN IMPROVEMENT:
Risk, recklessness and financial stability. The Guardian, Thursday September 18 2008
The continuing, if not escalating, US and UK financial crisis is repeatedly
punctuated in the media by failed brokers and bankers blaming it all on the
fall in property prices (Banks: the contagion spreads, September 17). But it is
illogical that the booming real economy should wreak havoc in the money
economy. The reality is that massive amounts of our cash have been siphoned off
- much of it via tax havens - to enable global gambling in impenetrable
derivatives; which has so confused the regulators, auditors and the corporate
world that few, if any, understand the banks' balance sheets, and have lost all
track of the relationships between the real economy and the money economy.
The alleged property "crash" is a tiny percentage of housing
stock being auctioned off; 95% of property is not in forced sale and it retains
its (real) value to the owners and tenants. And when traditional banking
returns, property, land, factories and other real assets in the real world will
still be the banks' main securities for loans.
The real economy is fine. It is the money economy that needs fixing - and
it is the duty of governments to fix it.
Noel Hodson
Oxford
Give us back our money!– Letter to The Guardian newspaper - 15
September 2008
Lehman Brother's bankruptcy filing and the massive tax-payer bail-outs for Merrill Lynch and insurance giant AIG, indicate a subterranean fault line of foolhardy transactions over several decades, which will cause frightful after-shocks in the money-economy (Banking crisis - Guardian 15 Sept 08). It is a primary duty of government to maintain stable currencies as "a means of account and a medium of exchange" which accurately represent what we value in the real-economy; which is more productive, automated, flexible and reliable than at any time in history. The real-economy has never been healthier. In fixing the money-economy and wealth distribution, government must (1) rid the global system of addicted gamblers - margin and "derivatives" speculators - particularly from money-markets, food-markets, energy-markets, carbon-trading and other vital supply chains, and (2) must claw-back all overpayments made to executives in the last two-decades - which Polly Toynbee's timely new book defines as 'Unjust Rewards' - including all tax-haven accounts. The rationale for repatriating these assets (OECD calculate $10-$13 trillion) to their source communities is that much of it has been siphoned off, by stealth or brass-necked greed, by controllers of large and small companies, which are now insolvent or collapsing in value. In UK Company Law - and in the US as Conrad Black learned - such massively disproportionate self-awarded dividends, salaries and bonuses constitute criminal frauds against the creditors and shareholders of depreciated firms; and also in fact defraud all the employees and ordinary citizens who trusted them. These two measures, affirmed by new and existing laws, would repair the cash deficits, discourage executive theft and give us back monetary stability.
Noel Hodson
16
Brookside
It’s those pesky kids again, stealing valuable works of art - 25
July 08.
The media is full of the news that all the major UK ISPs are collaborating with “The Music Industry” to spy on kids and punish them, their parents, their families and their friends for swapping music tracks on-line. This, for example, is from Time Magazine today:
If the voluntary (
That
So what will be the consequences? Firstly the music swappers will do it
off-line, away from the prying eyes of governments and media corporate
executives and their lawyers. Secondly the swappers will adopt, adapt or create
identity scrambling software to baffle the ISPs’ filters. Thirdly the
youngsters or adult internet freedom fighters will set up their own outlaw ISPs,
beyond the reach of the authorities. Fourthly rebellious musicians will flout
the spying systems, change their business-models and issue new swappable music.
How soon? Well kids are very quick and there will be fortunes to be made – so
the rebellion will start today and make an impact this year.
The established ISPs will of
course make conciliatory noises and claim they are being forced (by law?) into
spying on their customers; and they will hope to make a fraction of a penny for
every royalty they help to collect from licit downloads. But ultimately and quite
soon the ISPs will lose the confidence of large numbers of their other
customers – who will fear that they too are being spied on by ISPs who have
sold out to high pressure sales operations.
Nuke the Spooks!
Mobile phones and cancer - 25 July 08.
Time Magazine ran this story
today, which follows up the fears raised by earlier research spanning several
years that cell phones (and cordless phones) might cause cancer of the brain. It
is an issue of public importance that ought to be resolved by a major
government sponsored study.
(
Open letter to the Prime Minister. 16 July 08.
Dear Prime Minister,
For a man with great power, the
vision to see that the ice-caps are melting (Guardian 16th July 08) and
with little to lose electorally, you are being extraordinarily timid about
tackling
1) Lead - do not wait to follow
others - in creating all the energy
2) Lead - do not wait to follow
3) Lead - do not wait to react to crises - in controlling food supplies and prices. The banks, the City, Enron, Parmalat and Wall St etc. etc. etc. have proved that private enterprise cannot be responsible for the essentials of life such as water, energy, money, land, houses and food. The coming era will urgently need massive re-nationalisation for a long period to protect the essentials of life from Thatcher's cavalier, cavorting, chortling "free-marketeers". Food is far too important to leave to laise-faire, cum-day-go-day, magical-market commercialism - a hungry public becomes a very dangerous mob.
4) Lead - not wait until
after other OECD countries do it - in immediately nationalising the
collapsing money system. As even the
And, you might
enjoy making these changes. All other problems, like your MP's
John-Lewis-List and getting Aunty Nellie's hip treated 1.03%
sooner, can be delegated to minions. Drop all ambitions to be
"popular", focus on statesmanship, make your place in history,
rebuild
Noel Hodson (Mr)
Coordinator, FOODTUBES
"THE TRANSPORT INTERNET - REALLY FAST FOOD"
Runner-up - 2008
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/foodtubes-project-team.htm
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/NCH18NOV07LewisMediaGroupV8.pps
SW2000 Intelligent Transport
16 Brookside,
Tel +44 (0) 1865 760994
website http://www.noelhodson.com
The present and future of Global-Warming - read:
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/novels-table-15FEB07.htm
23 June 08 – Will the world’s thick-headed transport and energy planners
ever get it?
For an InterCity train with 150
passengers, it would be greener to stop the train and give every passenger a
Rolls Royce to continue their journey. Why?
Because a UK InterCity train, the great-iron-horse-that-crosses-the-prairies,
weighs 475 tonnes, before any passengers get on it, which is 3.14 tonnes per
passenger. A Rolls Royce weighs a mere 2.5 tonnes and its engine and rolling
efficiency is far better than the steel on steel slipping and friction of
trains. Tarmac the railways! When will
traffic planners understand the inescapable schoolroom physics of energy,
weight and friction – and insist on MWV (Minimum Weight Vehicles) principles in
all transport designs – including those damn great, diesel spewing, often empty
buses which block urban streets. Doh!
Before our planners are
re-educated in minimum energy Gulags, US and NASA scientist James Hansen may
achieve his wishes reported in today’s Guardian of (1) putting all oil
executives on trial for killing the planet and (b) having America completely
wired to enable green energy to be fed into the national grid – regardless of
who makes it or where the generators are. Is the
On the IT and ACTs front – little
new stuff is happening – other than national and local authorities inevitably
abusing the existing technologies by spying on their citizens. I think the IT
world is in for a period of navel gazing before the next generation of really private,
personal PCs, telephones and fast-internet products are created by the
upcoming, ever more spied-upon teenage generation. Every bedroom, bathroom and WC should be
officially monitored for illicit activities and self-abuse; after all, if you
have nothing to be ashamed of you can have no objections – …And sleep with your
hands outside the sheets!
For heavens’ sake - Nuke the
Spooks.
7 April 08 – Famous Journalist liquidated?
Dear Letters Editors - I was
hoping to post this comment/essay in your
If not - where is it?
SEARCH:
"Larry Elliot" Monday April 7 2008 - We're in a winter of discontent again - but this time big finance is the villain. Page 28 Comment&Debate.
********************
7 April 08 - Economies in Crisis
The global economy is not in crisis. In fact, the global, real economy has never produced more goods and food, more efficiently, more automatically, with so little human labour, in our entire history. We have never been wealthier. Once we stop people burning things for energy (coal, oil, gas, trees, crops, cooking oils, sugar, uranium rods etc) and harness the almost limitless energy from the sun, geothermal and tidal energy - supplemented by our western overweight kids on treadmills - the world will be fine.
What is wrong is that the Money-Economy is out of step, out of alignment with the real economy, and has been hi-jacked by myopic, greedy, aggressive, neurotic, power crazed, IQ challenged, compulsive gamblers; gambling with our money - our sweat and toil. Money is "a means of account - and a medium of exchange". It exists to make it easier for us to swap the real-goods and services we create and to be a handy record of who owes what to whom. It is a paper trail that should be impeccably reliable (or gold, silver, cowry shells or whatever else we decide to ac-count with. To protect the bits of paper we have legitimately collected, friendly bankers offer us their safes and vaults. That is the money-economy. The City exists to keep accurate track of the paper and to be a focus for collective investment into major social enterprises.
But, many of the bankers and their friends, relatives, fans, admirers, copyists, main board directors, dependents unto the fifth generation and tribes of compromised auditors, brokers, debt-raters, loan sharks, lawyers, judges, politicians and book-keepers have been cooking the books in ever more imaginative ways and found that dipping their fat, sticky fingers into the global tills and raking out handfuls of money at an ever faster rate, is not only not challenged as criminal behaviour, but is applauded and awarded by the vast majority of the political system and the media. If you have defrauded your neighbours and work-mates and half-inched a thousand times more loot per hour than they are awarded in a week - you are deemed to be a hero. A little less obviously than grasping wads of money, our politicians and top civil servants guide their careers and policies towards the revolving doors held open for them years before their early retirements. Every unearned, unwarranted shilling that these sociopaths grab is an inflationary act and, worst of all, their ill-gotten gains impoverish, demean and insult the vast majority of patient citizens who work for a reasonable reward. The unstoppable money siphon from the average, poor and starving to the already wealthy, super-rich and grossly over-rewarded - has to be stopped; globally.
So, it is the money-economy, not the real economy that is broken and needs to be fixed.
How? (1) Retrospectively cap executive rewards with a 98% tax band, back to Thatcher's last stand. (2) The present money-system is broken, so introduce a new system that bans speculators and gamblers by ensuring minimum time holdings of real stocks and commodities, and remove all obfuscation - make it simple - and register all business transactions daily for public record (a good laptop should cope - or maybe a few laptops). (3) Without warning, introduce a world currency, EURODOLLARYUEN, and oblige everyone to convert their wealth, on record - or lose it. Repatriate all offshore, tax haven assets to the countries where the real-economy created them and ensure they are properly taxed or are confiscated. This will pay off most global deficits. (4) Introduce capital distribution mechanisms such as BIRTHRIGHT to share the wealth base fairly and a minimum wage to provide a decent family living for a 40 hour week (not less than £10 an hour). This will abolish poverty. (5) Consign the present incumbents to lunatic asylums equipped for their eternal pleasure with super-casinos, where they can play to their hearts content with old money.
Or - the solution at a stroke - abolish money. Read my book AD 2516 to see how that will work.
In the meantime - Move to Higher Ground.
Noel HODSON
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/novels-table-15FEB07.htm
12 March 08 – Point and Counterpoint – Worried about the “Credit
Collapse” ?
Subject: The Credit Collapse of 2008
The Credit
Collapse of 2008
by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.
The Credit Collapse of 2008 has begun.
The place is every home, business and government.
The time is now.
The credit collapse is not just an ordinary recession that repeats itself with each new business cycle of the 21st century. Nor is it the Great Depression returning to haunt us from the depths of the 1930s.
The credit collapse is a sudden surge in debt defaults by borrowers ... and an equally sudden disappearance of new loans by lenders.
It's an unprecedented surge in home foreclosures ... and an equally unprecedented cutback in new home mortgages.
It's causing unexpected corporate bankruptcies ... plus equally unexpected demands by banks to put up more collateral.
It's threatening to sink businesses, paralyze local governments and gut the investment portfolios of millions of Americans.
It's even starting
to sabotage the best laid plans of government — neutralizing the Fed's interest
rate cuts ... pre-empting Congress' economic stimulus plan ... and threatening
to strip
And I'm not the only one who sees this.
Yesterday's New York Times reports ...
that the government's usual fiscal and monetary policy tools are failing ...
that this failure is raising questions about what more the Fed can do, and ...
that its actions so far have done little to counter sinking housing prices, the falling stock market and disappearing jobs.
"The Fed's main weapons against a downturn," says The Times, "are ill-suited to a crisis that stems from collapsing confidence about credit quality."
Meanwhile, economist Edward Yardeni, formerly still holding to the theory that the economy was OK, has now reversed course. Ditto for economists at JPMorgan Chase and Lehman Brothers.
They don't yet call it the Credit Collapse of 2008, as I do. But they see it just the same — and they are beginning to recognize how serious its consequences really are.
What they may not
yet recognize is that the Credit Collapse of 2008 could attack everyone and
everything that depends on debt, including, ultimately, the
And it's moving fast!
Just in the past three months, we've seen the Credit Collapse of 2008 drive a dagger into the markets for prime home mortgages, commercial mortgages, business loans, student loans, credit cards and municipal bonds.
We've seen the credit collapse rip apart little-known-but-important "structured" securities — Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS), Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs), Auction Rate Securities (ARS), Credit Default Swaps (CDS), Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) and Variable Interest Entities (VIEs).
And just last week,
to the shock of federal authorities, the credit collapse struck bonds issued by
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Although not backed by the full faith and credit of
the
The New York Times puts it this way: "If investors lose confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have become the only major remaining source of mortgage financing in recent months, Fed officials fear that homes sales and housing prices could plunge further and foreclosures could climb even higher than they already have."
Plus, there's still another, unspoken fear:
If the Credit
Collapse of 2008 can slam into the market for government-sponsored bonds, could
it not do the same to government agency bonds like Ginnie Maes, which are
backed by the full faith and credit of the
Further, if the Credit Collapse of 2008 can hit agency bonds, then, at some point, could it even bring down long-term U.S. Treasury bonds?
Fed officials are afraid to give an answer. They're even afraid to ask the question. But on Friday of last week, March 7 ...
They Could Wait No
Longer.
They Were Frightened.
And They Panicked.
In a desperate attempt to avert a full-scale collapse of credit markets, the Federal Reserve declared it would offer ...
An unprecedented $100 billion in long-term loans, accepting virtually any kind of debt instruments as collateral — including bad paper that's at the core of the credit collapse.
An equally unprecedented $100 billion in short-term loans, accepting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds as collateral.
Plus, as much additional funding as needed to ease the pain for the next victims of the credit collapse, whomever those may be.
That's a heck of lot of new paper money flooding into the banking system — especially considering that it stems from economic weakness, not strength ... and that it comes in the form of devalued paper, not wealth.
*************************
10 Mar 08
Thanks for the interesting paper
by Martin D Weiss, where he extrapolates from recent and past news to
forecast near and far future economic outcomes. Overall he sees
governments losing control of money - in its broadest sense as a "medium
of exchange and a means of account" - as has happened in
My view is that world treasurers / chancellors know what they are doing - and matters are not out of control.
However, I believe that the 4 economic continents, Land Labour Capital & Information, are badly out of sync and that the money economy is operated on 17th century principles and no longer properly reflects (as the major "means of account" or the world's bookkeeping system) the Real 21st Century economy. The very much automated and computerised Real Economy has been built over thousands of years of effort, cooperation, invention and war/defence by all the population and our ancestors - and yet through rapacious and good old aristocratic crooked instincts, is increasingly "owned" by a tiny minority (e.g. in the USA by about 3% of the population) and the Legal system has been hi-jacked to affirm this perverse warping of the money system (means of account).
So for very different reasons from Martin Weiss, I see a turbulent time ahead for the world's economy as it adjusts to having the most efficient and extraordinarily wealthy Real Economy - mostly and increasingly being generated by robots - alongside the sociopathic resurgence of the insatiable greed of aristocracy; such as the French, the Russians and many republics violently rebelled against in the past 200 years.
So I agree that "we live in interesting times ". But the aligning of the 4 continents and the corrections of ownership in a fair and reasonable and intelligently cooperating society need not involve primitive bloodshed, destruction and guillotines - this time. There are clear signs that cooperation between nations (OECD Paris - NATO, UN, etc etc etc etc) and treasuries within nations are moving strongly towards curbing aristocracy and towards fair wealth distribution. These trends are being propelled by our new global knowledge and the Information Society through crises that demand global cooperation - such as Global Warming, Oil shortages, Water wars, Food crises, Banking crises etc.
To deal with these in an intelligent way - (1) I think a world currency will emerge (in some senses we already have a world currency via computer translations of trading) (2) That offshore capital (maybe $10 trillion) will be repatriated by a sudden issue of one-currency, requiring all existing assets to be re-valued in the new money (3) That the 80% or so of gambling in the money, stocks and commodity markets will be outlawed - and steady prices will become the norm (4) That massive re-distribution programmes will share out the world's wealth in a fair way.
The more accurate Martin Weiss's Cassandra forecasts are - the more rapidly will world governments bring forward the changes towards a single-global-money-unit (the EURO-DOLLAR-YEN). A basic requirement for the stability to prevent chaos or the world plunging back to a barter economy is a stable society and economy where the Real (houses, food, clothes) is valued over the gamblers' insane, unstable, anxious, neurotic Unreality.
Noel
Noel Hodson (Mr)
Coordinator,
FOODTUBES
"THE
TRANSPORT INTERNET - REALLY FAST FOOD"
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/feb08foodtubes-croydon-v5.ppt
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/foodtubes-project-team.htm
19 February 08 – Capital repatriation flood begins with a trickle.
It seems that the
first to blink are the Germans. A headline in The Guardian newspaper, Tuesday
19th February 2008, reads “Tax swindle
police raid companies across
There is between $7 Trillion (TIME) and $13 Trillion (OECD) out there for repatriation – so the Germans have just started the tap trickling. Let us all hope that our governments don’t leave it too late.
11 February 08 – Offshore Exiles – Repatriate, Repatriate,
Repatriate.
As we forecast some
years ago vis-à-vis the ENRON, Parmalat and similar massive accounting frauds
and thefts by sociopathic, insatiably greedy criminals, an infamous list which
may come to include the recent possibly back-to-back $7 billion “losses” from
Societe Generale, the Information
Society is enabling governments and all interested persons to accurately track
wealth, earnings and taxes – and “they” the newly informed, habitually defrauded
majority are starting to react angrily while the new aristocracy gather their
shock-and-awe troops to strike back. Examples include the UK’s Sunday Times 10
Feb 08, spitting tacks with headlines such as “Non-dom raid will lead to
capital exodus”, as the UK and many other OECD countries close the net around
wealthy families who opt to remain stateless – and tax-free – on the capital
and earnings they or their ancestors have creamed-off from the sweat and
sacrifices of their neighbours and communities where the wealth was created.
TIME magazine February 18th 2008 reports that $7 trillion dollars in
offshore assets is held in private banking centres around the world; $1.82
trillion in Switzerland, $1.57 trillion in “others”, $970 billion in the Isle
of Man, Channel Isles & Dublin, $900 billion in Luxembourg, $870 billion in
The Caribbean and Panama, $320 billion in Singapore and $270 billion in Hong
Kong. This is half of the OECD & Christian Aid estimate of $14 trillion but
either amount would clear all the budget deficits of every OECD country – and
feed all the world’s starving poor. The
super-rich are being lured from one tax-haven to the next as rules change –
11 February 08 – Kids on-line.
Another long
forecast emergence of the Information Society is gathering pace. School
laptops, originally designed for third world communities and based in LINUX and
other freeware systems, are being adopted by schools in developed countries and
distributed to all school-children. Next year they will also have Microsoft
software. Who knows – this subversive movement may enable the kids to track who
is fiddling the accounts and where all the money goes, before they start
working and saving. We should never have taught them to read – never mind
count.
17 January 08 – Greenfield and Darwin
Students and
schoolchildren who copy large chunks from the www for their assignments and
homework – may be signalling a practical demonstration of Prof. Susan
Greenfield’s theory that personal computers and the information society are
driving a rapid evolutionary change in humans. Prof Greenfield believes that
the memory of computers, “the C-Drive”, and the world-wide-web, the largest
library ever – and fully accessible, are being subsumed into our being,
supplanting the age old need for memory by rote. What the plagiarising pupils
may be really saying is – “its all out there on the web – what we need to do is
to use it, not to memorise it”. This
evolution, it is conjectured, includes growing larger areas of the brain that
control the texting speed of thumbs. What would
11 October 07 – Breathless
Big Brother/ Sister.
Email to
BBC Radio 4,
(Editor - The proposed laws
would presumably be enforced by satellite and computer tracking of the novice
drivers.)
3
October 07 – Oxford Brooks
At least
one major shareholder in these privileged, privatised bus companies has
bought a castle in
LETTER TO THE OXFORD TIMES -
Brookes has forecourt space - its
buses should pull off the road, as should all buses. Bus passengers should
pre-purchase tickets. Or put clippies on the buses. Better still, run a
free hop-on-off single bus service along
...And to pre-empt the inevitable shower of green insults and assaults - I rarely travel by car and for 15 years I have actively promoted the reduction of business journeys.
Noel Hodson (Mr)
25 September 07 - Teleworkers – one-third of UK
Pollsters YouGov UK, commissioned by Zurich Insurance,
questioned 1,000 UK workers and found that a third telework at least “16 hours a month” at home – and that more of
the workforce foresee that they will telework in the coming year. The
25 September 07 – The MIT
$100 laptop gets to market.
Good news – The new wind-up/solar powered, low energy laptop
designed for children in the emerging world is being offered for sale in the
17 September 07 – “IF WE
DON’T PAY WORLD-CLASS SALARIES, THEY WILL TAKE THEIR SKILLS ABROAD!” SHOCK –
HORROR!
*********************
This is the week that the 5th largest
The
***************
Guardian
Letters – 17 Sept 07
On the
6pm news, I have just heard the sensible decision by the Chancellor to fully
guarantee Northern Rock's depositors' savings. The announcement is being
accompanied by hysterical accusations that Gordon Brown has presided over
an incontinent borrowings decade and unnecessary house price boom.
Noel Hodson (Mr)
Coordinator, FOODTUBES
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/foodtubes-project-team.htm
17th September – to BBC News:
The Northern Rock crisis arises from the
familiar mistake of the bank lending long term (20 to 30 year mortgages) and
borrowing short term from other banks.
What is extraordinary is that the blithely
enthusiastic CEO, Mr Applegarth, last year took £1.3 million in pay and this
year (2007) is scheduled to take £3 million - with the support of the executive
and non-executive directors. Did none of them, including Sir Derek Wanless,
recognise the business risks?
Best advice to all savers and share investors
is never, never, ever invest in any company, of any sort, where the executives
have siphoned off or arranged their own retirement millions - and so lost the
motivation to work for a living. The exceptions being innovative, workaholic
tycoons like Gates, Branson, Sugar etc.
Noel HODSON
**************
17 Sept
07 – Guardian Economics Editor
Dear Larry Elliot,
Do I understand from your recent articles correctly? - That bankers world-wide have been buying packaged mortgage debts for tens and hundreds of millions of pounds, without knowing what's in the packages? Should any of them keep their jobs? Is any banker really that incompetent?
I read yesterday (Sunday Times) there are 690,000 US defaulters (If that's accurate - it is 7 times larger than earlier estimates - but lets say $200,000 loans, X 7% interest X 690,000 = $805 million a month of repayments) . They are highly unlikely to be 100% write-offs as people cling onto their abodes - lets say 50% write offs = $402 million a month. This is hardly enough to bring the global system to its knees. It is equivalent to about 80,000 people losing their jobs and going on benefits. Surely the OECD world deals with that every other day - without a blip.
Are we being conned into a cash-crisis - by the City or by Government or both? Is this a cunning ruse to carve house-financing away from the Bank Base Rate?
I will read your columns with interest.
Noel Hodson
*************
14
September 07 – to The Guardian journalists –
FYI - These are the directors the public are bailing out ...Did they get their Maths O level?
Northern
Rock plc
Annual
Report and Accounts 2006
Recommendations
from 2007 for director's incentives, made by the Remuneration
Ms N Pease (check out the paid, non-exec directors below)
Mr N A H Fenwick,
Sir Ian Gibson
Mr M J Queen
Miss R A Radcliffe
Sir Derek Wanless
Executive Directors
1)
Internationally competitive basic salaries (compared to the 8 largest
2007 basic pay:
A J Applegarth £760,000 (2006 total package £1,364,000)
D F Baker £530,000
K M Currie £415,000
D A Jones £415,000
A M Kuipers £415,000
and 15 other directors from £90 to £250,000
PLUS
2) 200% Short term bonus e.g. Applegarth £1,520,000
3) 200% (of after-tax bonus) Share issue e.g. £912,000
4) A long term incentive plan £???
5) Must retain 50% of any vested share awards (not sell half their shares up to 100% of salary).
6) Plus pension - 2/3rds of Final Salary, at 60. If died, 4 X salary as a lump sum + 50% pension to spouse.
PLUS substantial accumulated share options.
Non-Exec Directors
Chair £315,000
Senior £72,000
Basic £45,000
+ additional fees for e.g. committee work.
Dr M W Ridley
N A H Fenwick
Sir Ian Gibson
N Pease
M J Queen
R A Radcliffe
Sir George Russell
Sir Derek Wanless.
Noel Hodson
16 Brookside
OXFORD OX3 7PJ,
email noel@noelhodson.com
+44(0)1865 760994 Fax - phone in advance
website www.noelhodson.com
***************
Liam Halligan's report and his article (Can
we count on the Old Lady to get it right? Sunday Telegraph, September 9 2007),
tell us that the executives of major
19 AUG 07 – GLOBAL FINANCE –
OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
Three of the letters, below, reflect that the most important
element which urgently needs reforming to make a better world is the control
and redistribution of wealth. The
Real-Economy, the Money-Economy and the Knowledge Economy are badly out of
alignment. The jigsaw of What we make, What we know and Who owns it, is
fractured. The August 07 global banking crisis is being manufactured on the
back of a few thousand poor Americans struggling to pay overpriced mortgages on
their homes. Wall Street’s reaction is being broadcast in the vacation
“silly-season” by irresponsible city-players who would celebrate financial
chaos as “opportunities” for gambling with the lives of honest citizens. The so
called crisis pretends that the mortgage defaults have been sold-on in such
complex ways that are now untraceable and unknowable. In the computer-age, when
we can guide Mars explorers and track tens of millions of cars on the roads
from space satellites – we know this supposed miasma of financial ignorance is
complete bullshit. It really is time
that these incompetent, greedy, overpaid, IQ challanged spivs, scam artists and
compulsive gamblers “working” in the global financial system were evicted – and
banking and investment put on a proper footing.
Perhaps we should consult the Chinese on appropriate treatment of
financial crimes against the public interest.
Then, as the ice-caps are melting, we can tackle global-warming with investments into massive infrastructure changes.
18 AUG 07 – PUBLIC OWNERSHIP
OF THE GLOBAL BANKS?
LETTER
PUBLISHED IN THE GUARDIAN -
Today's
(17 AUG 07) Guardian headline and Larry Elliot's scary analysis of the
(possible) $54 billion deficit on $1,300 billion of
Noel
Hodson
18 AUG 07 – LEARN TO COUNT.
LETTERS TO TIME
Magazine:
Barbara Kiviat's authoritative account (TIME Aug 27th, 07) of the local and global impact of sub-prime mortgage defaults, worries me in that supposedly high IQ and informed global financial managers are bewildered, in this computer age, about which banks are carrying what amounts of the sub-prime defaults. Are these city people so incompetent that they cannot track a few tens of thousands of loans and repayment schedules - however thinly sliced across laid-off bets. It is even more worrying that they panic about, say, 100,000 impoverished borrows, defaulting on, say, $20,000 a year interest or a mere $2 billion, being capable of crashing the US or the global system. Are these guys kidding us - or should they all be replaced now by people who can count and make lists? Perhaps the global stock markets and banks should be taken into public ownership if the private sector can't handle the jobs they are immensely highly paid to do.
Noel Hodson (Mr)
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 8:14 PM
To:
Subject: Re: US Aristocrats
The half
percent fall in average US family incomes which you report (Why Voters (and
Politicians) Are Anxious SEPTEMBER 18, 2006) works out at $25 billion dollars,
which is a very small part of executives' annual bonuses. It seems that the
Noel Hodson
16 Brookside
email
noel@noelhodson.com
+44(0)1865 760994
Fax - phone in advance
website
www.noelhodson.com
(US Labour force 143M, unemployed 4.7%, leaves 136M x wages$36,622=$5 trillion x 0.5%=$25billion).
13 AUG 07 – FUNDAMENTAL
REDSIGN OF TRANSPORT AND CARS
UNPUBLISHED LETTER
The
Guardian headline today (Revealed: cover-up plan on energy target) and Lynsey
Hanley's comments, promoting public above car transport, address
problems that require massive changes - not timid tinkering. Transport is
the second largest cause of air pollution and our biggest import cost, but
failing to force people to walk, cycle and take buses is no use. The
Noel Hodson (Mr)
2 JUL 07 – TAX FORCE &
POVERTY.
UNPUBLISHED
LETTER – THE COMPUTER SOCIETY KNOWS WHERE THE OFFSHORE-FUNDS ARE. WHY DOESN’T
GOVERNMENT COLLECT THE TAXES.
The G2
article "Who'd be an oligarch?" (Guardian 2 July 07), with the Sunday
Observer's "Tax evasion taskforce to probe
Noel Hodson
13 FEB 07 – E-DEMOCRACY WILL BE TONY BLAIR’S LEGACY
I have not been taking a long vacation
since the last News entry back in 2006; there simply has been no momentous New
Epoch news to put on record. Until, that is, one million
Why is this
petition, which the government has immediately said it will ignore, important?
Because the mechanism enabling the vote is a website built by the government –
and it is being used to vote on issues, not to vote for or against elected representatives.
Note this date. E-Democracy is momentous. It will transform society as much as
or more than the printing press did. The
day of the infallible leader, voted in as a personality and supposed to have an
answer for everything, is almost over. In the near future the policy power
handed to leaders by the people will be withdrawn – and the people will vote
issue by issue. It is scary; it liberates Caliban; it empowers mass-hysteria,
the lowest common denominator, crowd stupidity, panic, misinformation, bigotry,
bias and etc. But it is inevitable and will have to be managed – through, as
Tony Blair promised at the beginning of his long reign – education, education
and education.
On the same
theme, also in February, an angry lunatic sent several letter bombs to
addresses connected to traffic surveillance and road-cameras, chief among them
being the offices of CAPITA, a computer bureaucracy that administers CCTV for
London Congestion charging and handles similar automated government strictures
and penalties. This alarming, terrorist type news, of a criminal
indiscriminately injuring post-room
clerks, was met with a thunderous silence from most commentators and the
general public. The police considered arresting 23.5 million licensed, CCTV,
Parking Gestapo and Speed-Camera harassed, drivers as prime suspects but
realised that as
As a footnote –
the instincts of the majority of
29 NOV 06 – THE SAID BUSINESS SCHOOL ,
OXFORD
I reproduce the whole Guardian headline
article below, not because it is likely to be a significant event for the
Information Society, but from self-indulgent nostalgia and sad-self-justification
for the years 1980 to 1993, which I spent leading an excellent team of
developers and award winning architects in competitions to develop 20
brown-land acres at Oxford Station. In those stirring Thatcher and Jonathan Aitken
years of “A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” and British Innovation, the
old, unused coal yards at Oxford Station were owned by the British Rail
Property Board, which invited ideas and bids three times between 1980 and 1993.
At great expense we entered each competition in good faith and each time won it
and made the highest bid for the land with our £80 million plan to build The Oxford
Research Science Park with masses of Social Housing. Astonishingly, each time
we won, the Chairman of the Property Board then refused to deal with us. Being
paranoid, after experiencing 13 years of extraordinary obfuscation and a major
personal “City” financial attack, I began to suspect, slowly, very slowly, too
slowly, that all was not what it seemed. (Read my life story The Haunting of a
Favourite Son, ISBN 1-4137-0791-2). The site was subsequently developed, on our
winning ground-plan, but cheaply and nastily with bad housing and the most
unintelligent, gridlocked traffic system in Europe, as the
…And maybe, airing these lessons on
how to get things done in the
BAE secret millions linked to arms broker
Swiss bank accounts traced as row over Eurofighter contract
escalates
David Leigh and Rob Evans - Wednesday November 29, 2006 The Guardian
Secret payments of millions of pounds from
Mr Said refused last night to speak about the
allegations. But the discovery presents the biggest potential breakthrough yet achieved
in the Serious Fraud Office's three year investigation into allegations that
illegal commissions may have been paid to Saudi royals by BAE Systems.
Details from the accounts would help to
establish whether money was channelled to members of the Saudi ruling clan, and
the amounts involved. The development comes amid threats from the company and
its chief executive, Mike Turner, that the SFO's ongoing inquiry threatens to damage
the
The
company wants the SFO to abandon the investigation before the Saudis pull out
of the deal for a new fleet of 72 Eurofighter Typhoons.
Speculation
over the progress of the inquiry led to a dip in the company's share price
earlier this week.
But
the SFO appears determined to focus on the accounts and their links to
68-year-old Mr Said. A billionaire in his own right, he is a friend of Peter
Mandelson and has been a donor to the Conservative party. A tax-resident in
Though
he is not regarded himself as a target of the inquiry - BAE acknowledges that
the inquiry is aimed at the company - Mr Said has been a business manager for
the sons of Saudi crown prince Sultan.
He
has previously conceded that he has been an intermediary on Saudi arms deals
struck over 20 years. He is credited with playing a key role in launching the
Al-Yamamah deal in 1985, which has brought £43bn of revenue to BAE and has been
the focus of the SFO inquiry.
Mr
Said has always denied receiving commissions from BAE.
Legal
sources say the SFO is likely to want to inspect his accounts to see if they
show whether BAE payments were passed to members of the Saudi royal family, and
when. Officers have been looking at whether any payments were made after 2002,
when they were outlawed.
According
to City sources, Mr Said's link to the investigation emerged after official
notification to the arms broker by the Swiss authorities that access was being
sought to bank accounts of a company registered anonymously in
Both
the Swiss legal authorities in
Swiss
authorities said yesterday: "The office of the attorney general of
A
series of British newspapers were briefed that the latest Saudi contract to buy
Eurofighters was in danger and that the SFO should "put up or shut
up".
The
MoD, which is negotiating the deal to sell Eurofighters, remained silent.
The
only person with the power to halt joint SFO-MoD police inquiries is the
attorney general, Lord Goldsmith. But
Lord
Goldsmith has been scrupulous in not bringing political pressure to bear on
investigators,
BAE
said: "BAE Systems is not obstructing the investigation and continues to
fully co-operate with the SFO." Their spokesman said: "We will not be
commenting on any point of substance. This cannot be taken as any kind of
admission."
From a kebab shop to
Billionaire Wafic Said straddles worlds of Saudi royals and
Westminster
David Leigh and Rob Evans - Wednesday
November 29, 2006 The Guardian
Wafic
Said is one of
At
the age of 30, it was not obvious that he would later live such a gilded life.
Born in
It
was there the son of an eye surgeon made connections that were to transform his
life. He became friends with two young Saudi princes: Bandar and Khalid. A
charming man, he was - within a few years - organising their financial affairs,
making investments and looking after their property.
By
the 1980s, he was persona grata with the Saudi royal family including the
princes' father, Sultan, defence minister then but now Crown Prince. Wafic Said
was well-placed to manage the Saudi way of doing business. He is credited with
helping the regime buy British in 1985 in the biggest arms deal in history,
known as Al-Yamamah.
Wafic
Said's role as a fixer was initially secret. Nowadays, he admits he was an
adviser on the deal, but has always denied receiving millions in commissions.
He has said : "I did not receive any commissions from the Al-Yamamah
programme and nor am I an agent for British Aerospace. Due to my contacts in
It
has been alleged that Mr Said employed Mark Thatcher as an unofficial back
channel. Mr Thatcher has consistently denied allegations he received up to £12m
as part of the Al-Yamamah deal. But Mr Said certainly had entry to Mrs
Thatcher's circle, donating an estimated £500,000 to the Tory party.
After
Labour came to power, the 68-year-old became a confidant of Peter Mandelson.
Their introduction is reported to have been made by Charles Powell and his
wife, Carla. Mr Said had met Powell, now Lord Powell, in the mid-1980s during
the arms deal, when he was Mrs Thatcher's chief foreign affairs adviser. The
peer is close to the Syrian financier, who made him chairman of one of his
companies. Lord Powell is also on BAE's payroll as an adviser.
Lord
Powell is the brother of Tony Blair's chief of staff at No 10, Jonathan Powell.
Contacted in
Married
to an Englishwoman, Rosemary, with two children, Wafic Said now has houses in
Mayfair,
He
runs a charitable foundation these days. He gave £250,000 to the victims of the
July 7 bombings, and £20m to set up the
2 NOV 06 – THE SURVEILLANCE
SOCIETY HAS ARRIVED IN THE UK
The
If global warming does not get us
first, as last week’s Stern Report predicts it will, and if Bird Flu’ does not
wipe us out, what will all this surveillance do for society?
After some decades of data errors,
gross privacy intrusions by the morbid, stupid and credulous key-hole monitors;
after violent reactions by the spied upon, and increasing power being handed to
the gossips and self-righteous who want to spy on (and curb) their neighbours’
lives and bodily functions; the majority will eventually react and banish the underlying
concept of “sin” which drives and legitimises the spying. This revolution will
end the religious guilt that has sustained armies of clerics for millennia. It
will be led by society’s celebrities and leaders, who will crack under the strain
of having spy-cams inserted in every orifice and up their lavatory pans. “Yes!
Even the Queen wipes her bottom. We are all equally human.” All trivial
‘offences’ will be seen as normal, acceptable, human behaviour, within the
bounds of acceptable life-risks – and will be struck from the statute books.
Sane traffic, travel laws and moral laws will emerge which will include the liberalisation
of all our small self-indulgences. But, to bring about this state of relative
sanity and reality there will be an horrific period of finger-pointing-hysteria
and ‘we-know-best’ restraints – based on the primitive god-inspired-village-elders
codes. There will be spied upon people ostracised from society with or without
reason. There will be people incarcerated due to errors in the data. Third
nipples will at last be discovered under armpits and glittering eyed zealots
will punish the ungodly. There will be people whose credit, livelihoods and
futures will be ruined. It will be as terrible as and worse than George Orwell
predicted – but eventually the healthy majority will take control away from the
deluded and sickly curious – and the world will, eventually, be a better and
economically more just place for the flood of useful information which remains
in circulation. We are about to witness the end of illogical rules, which are
currently enshrined or assumed in society’s moral and religious codes – and the
beginning of international Intelligent Cooperation based on accurate facts. But
it will be hell getting there.
2 OCT 06 – MICROSOFT CHALLENGED.
The Guardian reports that monster
food supermarket chain TESCO, with 1,300 stores, has announced its own software
packages, Ability Office, to compete with Microsoft Office and other programmes
such as Virus protectors and photo-editing. TESCO is starting a price war with
prices as low as £20 sterling, compared to £300 sterling for an equivalent
M/Soft package. The software is written by Formjet,
2 OCT 06 – "LET THEM EAT
CAKE". & HEARD THIS WEEK AT A DINNER-PART Y …"IT IS THE NATURAL ORDER THAT 5% WILL ALWAYS OWN 90% OF
THE WORLD"
This month, Marie Antoinette is
being renovated. The archetypal example of uncaring, greedy, vapid French
aristocracy who married Louis XIV when she was 14 years old, did not, it is now
claimed, ever utter the infamous words "Let them eat cake" or even
brioche. She was the victim of a bunch of English criminals who set her up for
blackmail by printing pamphlets accusing her of everything from starving the
poor to incest - and far worse. The blackmail worked and the French court paid
up in exchange for all the pamphlets. But a zealous bureaucrat archived some at
the Bastille and when it was stormed by the revolutionaries the pamphlets were
found - it was decided to believe the lies - and tens of thousands were
printed. And the rest is history.
But - the curse of aristocracy did
not end with the guillotining of a few thousand French and Russian landowners.
Boardroom privateers have learned the secrets of how to raid the treasuries -
regardless of company results - and, more important to them, of
aristocratic-counting. "One for You - One for Me" What a nice man. "One for You - Two
for Me" Its OK I suppose
"One for you - Ten for Me" Golly
- but managers are really hard to recruit aren't they? "One for You -
A Thousand for Me" …Well he's such a
rich man; I'd better kow-tow to this and work harder. "One for You -
Ten Thousand for Me" …Heavens. God
must favour this man. I'd better bow down at his feet. He must be a superman.
The Guardian newspaper reports that
(mostly male) directors have awarded themselves 28% increases this year and
take an average of 100 times the standard pay package. Gosh they must be good.
In the
11 AUG 06 – WIRED DEMOCRACY
– AN HISTORIC PRECEDENT.
While the nation reels under the
“greatest terrorist threat ever” requiring passengers to dump their hand
luggage and all and any liquids before boarding their planes (we await publication
of the evidence of this threat with interest), Big Brother may unintentionally
be ushering in the political era of direct people power – and be hastening the
end of voting individual political representatives into power. The Guardian 11th
August 2006 reports that the UK Premium Rates Services watchdog, ICSTIS, is
taking seriously complaints from 2,700 TV viewers that they telephoned the low-brow,
crass, reality, Channel 4, TV programme ‘Big Brother’ in response to
invitations to vote for/against residents of the Big Brother house; only to
have their majority votes ignored and their democratic decisions reversed by
the TV producers. The voting is via high premium rate telephone lines and as
the advertised service seems to have been abused, ICSTIS is considering a $5
million fine by way of refunds to the voters. What a precedent.
I predict that this event, allowed just 100 words in the media, will be hugely more important for the world than the terrorist scare – which is dominating the media, which is devoting about half their time and broadcasting to the bomb in baby-milk news.
12 Jun 06 -
British Sex on the Net – Time Magazine
These statistics support the findings in Brett Kahr’s report, below.
Pornography on the Net – 9th May 05, which is also a survey
from the
|
TIME MAGAZINE 12th June 2006 published more of
their enigmatic stats: |
|||||||