Do politicians ever learn anything?

I was never a great fan of Tony Blair.

On European issues he could sound reasonably intelligent, but on most everything else he seemed to be nothing more than a clone of the Tory Party leaders that he had replaced in 1997.

He was fond of debt-driven economies in both the public and private sector, and never seemed too concerned about fixing the issues affecting people at the bottom end of the financial scale - indeed his drive for full employment seemed to include a penchant for forcing people to accept low wage jobs which would never allow the individual to develop the possibility to live an independent life.

His worst mistake though without question was his decision to help Bush invade Iraq. You would have given him credit for understanding that the terrorists were in Afghanistan, not Iraq, and stepping up involvement there.

Mistaking a megolomaniac Arab nationalist dictator, running a secular state, for a Muslim fundamentalist sympathiser though was extraordinarily naive.

You would have thought that he would have learned from what happened in Iraq that there was a difference betwen Sunni and Shia Islam - one that has caused a rift in the Muslim world in the same way the Protestant/Catholic schism split the Christian world for generations.

You would also have expected that he would have had the intelligence to learn that Al-Qaeda is a strictly Sunni movement. Islamofascist? No question, but the Shia were another lower level of individuals to be separated into a separate box to be demeaned or even eradicated.

And you would have thought that he understood that Iran is the home of Shia Islam, not Sunni Islam. You would have expected him to realise that Iran has enormous problems itself with Al-Qaeda elements in the country, who would be no allies of Ahmedinajad and the Mullahs?

And you would also expected him to realise that wars do not always liberate people. Like a revolution often creates a counter-revolution, so war often simply embitters a people invaded, who then start a "counter-war".

Of course if you spend your whole time listening to what the belligerent anti-Arab (however moderate) Israeli government is saying, then most of these facts will pass over your head.

So Blair's recent statement about Iran being (I cannot recall the exact words) a viper's nest of terrorists, is provocative in the extreme and probably has "made in Tel-Aviv" written all over it.

It is though also in keeping with the thinking of the American Republican Party (whose ideology seems much closer to his than that of the Democrats, who you would have thought were his natural allies).

It is in many respects (if Iraq is anything to go by) a call to war - on the discredited Pre-emptive Strike Principle (upper-case for emphasis NB).

Let us clarify this. There may well be terrorists in Iran - the Basij are diabolical law enforcers and the epitome of brutality, and Iran does undoubtedly encourage acts of violence in other parts of the world. But the terrorists in Iran are not, and will never be, part of Al-Qaeda. You are as likely to see Ian Paisley become Pope as you are to see Iran ally itself with that version of Sunni extremism.

After the botch-up in Iraq, all the phoney claims that preceded the invasion, and the resulting chaos following the invasion, you would have thought that Blair would have learned.

Instead he just continues down the same ignominious path that he followed in 2003.

Provoke, invent, invade.

He seems unfortunately to have learned very little. Hopefully his Labour Party colleagues will realise the mistakes that he made. Maybe even the Tories will hold off involvement when their GOP allies win power in 2013 and think that it is good politics to have a foreign war to distract the population.

And while many of us would like to see an end of the Shia Islamofascist regime in Teheran, invasion by a foreign power hardly seems the way to bring it about.

Impressions of Eastern Europe after the Cold War - Part 2

I am limited by copyright at this point.

Really I would have liked to repeat the item that I wrote on Helium.com called "Eastern Germany 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall", which looks at one aspect of the post Cold War East, this time looking particularly at Eastern Germany and the impact of the fall of the Wall.

As Helium has the copyright for my article, however, I will merely place the link here (you have to copy it into your browser - believe me it is worth the effort!). It will also give the reader the chance to see my other Helium stuff (and that of a load of other, often excellent, writers):

http://www.helium.com/items/1963263-eastern-germany-20-years-after-fall-berlin-wall

I will happily dedicate the article in particular to two people with whom I worked in Munich in the mid-90s - Jörg (from Magdeburg) and Gundula (from Chemnitz). I hope that life is still being good to them.

Postscript (December 3rd, 2021): Since I wrote this item, Helium has gone out of business, so I am afraid the article no longer exists. I have my own personal copy of the article if anyone is interested.

Impressions of Eastern Europe after the Cold War - Part 1

It was one of those stories doing the rounds a few years ago.

Teenage girls in Russia were asked what career they wanted to follow when they left school. Top of the list when all the results were counted?

Prostitution. A guaranteed income, and more money than doing anything else.

OK forget the moral aspects involved, and argue with the logic. Being a prostitute sounds like a rotten life for most involved, if not downright dangerous, but the lure of the money involved was another thing entirely. Well, let's face it, financially it beats working at McDonalds by a long way, right?

I recall noting the other day that things do not seem to have changed much. Russia apparently has overtaken the United States as the major producer of pornography. Sex still sells apparently, and there are still plenty of young Russian women lining up take advantage of the (dubious) opportunities. Pornography also seems something that may be a bit safer than prostitution - there is not much chance of finding yourself alone in a lurid room with a dubious individual bent on sadistic violence.

There is though the warning here that came from the former French porn star (and if I am not mistaken, current anti-porn crusader), Raphaella Andersen, that she saw rehearsals for some of these Eastern European women who were asked to carry out some extremely painful acts to prove their sexuality and prove that they were suitable performers in such movies.

The spread of "sexual openness" was one of those areas that followed the end of the Cold War across Eastern Europe.

I remember being in Prague with two friends in 1995, and discovering that prostitution was widespread and that "live shows" (the sort of thing that was now on its last legs in Hamburg for example) were common-place. I recall emerging from a bar where they sold wonderful beer at a price that you could not have imagined in the West, and seeing a young attractive blonde who had more leg than skirt and was obviously plying her trade. One of my friends made a joke about her in his broad Glaswegian accent, but that was about as far as we would go.

In Budapest the following year, it appeared that when dusk started to fall, the vice industry would take over in a way that made Prague seem really quite tame. Curiosity drove me into a bar eventually - the price tab in Germany would put you off immediately, but Eastern Europe was still only learning how to rip people off in a big way, so what might seem a frightening price for a beer for a Hungarian was a pretty standard price in a Biergarten in Munich.

The girl that I met in that place epitomsed the sad state that had hit the people of that city. She was 24, married, had two kids, and was one of those attractive brunettes that you do not forget in a hurry. I bought her a relatively affordable drink, kept the subject away from the obvious, and tried to get her to talk about her life, as well as her broken English would allow (no slipping off into German, she spoke none).

It was her first night (probably as well - I hope that she didn't stay there for a second night). She loved her husband and her kids; no, she did not want to be unfaithful to him; yes, she understood what she had to do if the customer wanted usw ....

Why? Her husband had lost his job, unemployment had become rife across the country (over 20%, sounds like they had brought in Margaret Thatcher to advise on employment policy), the cost of living (after the end of Communist style price fixing) was rising inexorably, and what jobs were on offer made McDonalds-style wages seem almost generous! So what choice was there? And was I now ready to go to the hotel, as her drink was running out?

You're married, you love your kids and your husband and you want .... Sorry, no.

If she had learned to lie and told me that she was single? Still no, but with a bit less rancour on my part.

I do not know whether Eastern Europe has emerged more into the economic mainstream now, and whether the exploitative sex industry is still quite as omnipresent across the whole area (it obviously is still significant in Russia - see above), but is this what people in Easten Europe really wanted when the Wall and the Iron Curtain, and all the barbed wire fencing that went with it, came down?

This was a better life? Is it better now for the mass of the people (OK the Stasi and equivalents have gone, but ....), so that this is not needed?

More on the economic issues in part two of this discussion.

Living with an atheist

The item below I wrote for Helium.com, and then realised that it was off the subject. I thought that it was worth publishing anyway somewhere - even if runs away a bit from my normal approach on this blog. It is like so much in the advertising media with the "nuclear family" usw. There is no particular individual involved here, but the points are valid - if not personally relevant.


As you are drinking your morning coffee, staring through tired eyes across the room and wondering aloud: "God knows how I am going to get through the day", back he comes with his whizz-bang humour:
"No, he doesn't, but I know you will, you always do".

He is at once frighteningly blunt, carefully subtle, and, in his own gently humorous but intellectual fashion, infuriatingly charming. That is why you married him. It could not have been for his belief system.

Could it?

He has always been honest with you, about his life, what he believes, what he thinks, what he wants .... In many ways he is just another guy. A guy with a driven intellectual streak who does not listen to blarney, who will only be persuaded when he can see things with his own eyes, and does not understand the need for what strikes him as phoney or unreal.

But in most respects, he is just a normal guy. He is no anarchist, he believes that the civil law is there to serve a purpose and is happy to see wrongdoers put away rather than walking the streets looking for trouble. And he has been absolutely great at getting the kids to understand science, and explaining to them the logic of how things work in reality - or at least his sense of reality. Their grades in science tell you though that he may well be getting through, somehow!

Of course there are those atheists out there sticking up nasty aggressive billboards on the highway, decrying religious beliefs with venomous jeering, and being totally intolerant towards anyone who believes anything.

But when he feels that it is necessary, he will point out quietly that they are the exceptions in the atheist community (if such a community exists), similar to the fundamentalists who exist in all religious communities. You tolerate his opinions, he will tolerate yours, even if occasionally he will make jokes about it that you find, well slightly distasteful.

So when you are going to church on Sunday and the kids don't want to come, or are ill, he will take care of them and look after them and make sure they are usefully occupied. He loves them as much as he loves you - remember that.

And he gives you space to do what you want to do, and believe what you want to believe. He married you, remember, in spite of your beliefs. You must have had something that really appeals to him. If neither of you get into the bully pulpit and start preaching - which will only intensify any intellectual differences between you - the relationship works remarkably well. You think that spirituality has something to do with it, all well and good. He thinks that logic and reason play an important role, all well and good.

Occasionally you will go over the same ground, discuss the issues, raise the key points, emphasise the differences between you. Fine - as long as you want to keep it within reason, keep the tone serious but unaggressive, and know that you have to drop the subject if it ever becomes fractious. Eventually what purpose does emphasising the differences in a relationship serve?

And how long have you been together now? You must want similar, if not the same, things. You must have some chemistry that works. You must have learned to accept and tolerate each other's opinions by now? Right? So it is possible both to be true to your belief system and not to rock the boat. The more one partner tries to impose, the more the relationship will stumble and cracks will appear. But it is fanaticism that is the problem, not the belief (or the lack of belief) system.

And really would you have got this far if you had married a fanatic - of any description?

Answer to a Christian to justify atheism, and to explain why we need civil, not religious, law

This is an updated, corrected version of an answer that I gave to a Christian on MyLot.com who was questioning how I could be so certain that there was no God, and why we needed Civil Law - which he/she saw as imperfect. I wrote the original far too quickly, so the grammar was not always correct. Hopefully all problems in that area are now resolved. The arguments are complex, but hopefully clear.

Yes, it is IMHO really logical, scientifically, to dismiss the idea of God.

I accept that the universe is infinite, something was always there, but simply to describe it as the invention of one (humanoid - always in "the father", "created in his own image" usw and not as an invisible force NB, who always has thoughts, emotions - including revenge, check out some various bits in the Old Testament - that are all human reactions) "individual" is grotesquely naive though (IMHO again).

"In fact we now know that we don't know most things" I am told.

That may be true.

But we know a lot more than we did even 150 years ago at the time of Darwin, who was an agnostic not an atheist incidentally. The more we learn, the more the scientific analysis holds up. The process is nowhere near complete. The more we learn, though, the less and less likelihood there is of some divine humanoid creature being out there planning to take revenge upon the non-believers, or holding "sinners" to account.

As for all the Christian myths, which were recorded only "a few years after they occurred" - inaccurate anyway, as most sympathetic historians put the period at 10-20 years - I can have a message passed round a room by 20 people and it will change by the time it finishes, so given even five years of people, who want to make something fantastic sound reasonable, passing a message round, the reporting is unlikely to be that close a reflection of the actual events.

Then there is the obvious question, if this matter holds up, as to why Christianity is true and but at the same time Islam, Buddhism (my wife is a devout Buddhist incidentally - so I pick up quite a bit of information on Buddhist belief and rituals), Judaism, Hinduism, Greek Mythology, Norse Mythology usw are all phoney, though they too were all written down after the event? Islam appeared 500 years after Christianity, so by that logic could it not be the true word?

Which would land us all with Sharia Law, which is of course preferable to civil law???? Spare me!

The point though with civil law is that it is inclusive of EVERYONE, not just the believers. It is democratic, not dictatorial. It allows for difference of opinion without criminalising people who differ on all but very serious issues. Certain rules to have to apply. "Thou shalt not kill" may well be religious law. As civil law, criminalising murder makes just as much sense. People need an ordered society in which they can live safely and well.

It is not perfect? Of course it is not. Why is there all the political debate out there about what should be allowed and not? If I told you I think that unemployment was a nightmare for anyone who has suffered it, so maybe we should pass a law jailing an employer for firing people? Obviously not, but I still think that for many people - myself among them - unemployment (like its blood brother, poverty) is both a cancer and a human tragedy.

But if we believe what was ALLEGEDLY said 2000 or 1500 or 2400 or 4000 or 1800 years ago - when they could not even understand how a light bulb might have worked - by some "teacher" (choose your belief system) all these problems will be resolved???? And it makes more sense than all the scientific discoveries that have been made since in the light of more and more facts being available to us?

If you want to believe that, fine - as long as you do not try and impose it upon me! For me though, no - I will stick with my commitment to science, and for that matter to the scientific notion that I am mortal and when my brain and heart give out, the rest of me will expire and nothing will remain.

Sensible, logical thinking. For me, at least! And for the record, I nearly died in hospital three years ago. No angels, no devils, just perfect peace for two days (followed incidentally by grotesque pain - which makes the thought of such sleep very appealing, even now!).

We have emancipated ourselves, we have moved on, we have learned - if we have wanted to. Not always wisely (any sensible species would never allow the current levels of overpopulation, for example), and we still have much to learn. Scientific fact though is interesting in that it is already there, but much of it has not yet been discovered. The future will give us so much more information, technology will advance and mankind could benefit greatly if it wants to learn how to use it wisely.

I have no intention of trying to convert other people - they have the right to believe as they see fit, no matter how illogical their beliefs may be. But in this area at least I am convinced, for myself and for nobody else, that I am right, and no ancient myths wherever they come from will persuade me otherwise.

21 and past it, or when money is not enough

It is a story with international ramifications, though probably only people in Germany and Brazil will take notice.

In the past week the German media has been full of the story of Breno, a Brazilian football (soccer, if you must) player on the books of Bayern München.

He has been referred to in the media as Bayern "Star", Breno, but he is hardly that. He could have been a star player, he might still have become one, but in fact he is what he has been all his time here - a reserve player with unfulfilled potential.

He arrived for a massive sum of money at the age of 18, with the reputation already of a player with immense skill, and in the right organisation, who knows what he might become.

The problems of bringing in someone scarcely past adolescence who speaks not a word of the language are all too clear. And the problems also of having a reputation and having also to compete for playing time with older players who know the culture, only served to make things worse.

In three years he has hardly had a regular place ever, and has played rarely. Too expensive to play in the reserve team (which is fundamentally amateur), the frustrations of not getting a game grew to be enormous. Which was exacerbated by a series of injuries that might eventually end his career prematurely.

One thing added to another (and in three years here he has never learned German, which means that there are enormous communication difficulties), finally he needed to have psychological treatment. Whether a Portuguese speaking specialist was available is an interesting question. Finally the fuse broke, and he set fire (allegedly - the case is still sub judice) to the 1 million + Euro valued villa he owned in Munich, destroying everything (including his passport) in the process.

Following which he is being held in jail, and will not be released until the full legal proceedings have been completed. He is apparently a "flight risk".

Now quite where a young man who only speaks Portuguese, who has no passport left and who would be well-enough known for the Brazilian Embassy for them to refuse to issue any replacement, would fly to is an interesting question.

Interesting though is the question - if he had been simply an 18-year-old immigrant with no money who had come to work on a building-site or in a hotel kitchen, would he have been allowed to spend three years here not learning the language, or developing psychological problems which would lead to an act of wanton vandalism?

He had money, he had people to help and support him, he had people who had faith in his ability - Bayern's top executives have issued a series of statements of support today, as have his team mates.

Something, somewhere does not ring true here - the inconsistencies running through the story open up a whole series of unanswered and seemingly unanswerable questions. The point remains though that while lack of money causes many people (including myself) to face challenges that seem impossible to surmount, possession of it in abundance still leaves substantial issues that are seemingly impossible to resolve.

Small Change

I was reading up again yesterday about Levi Bellfield.

Levi who? One of those names that ought to be known, but somehow has fallen beneath the radar while the story at which he is at the centre constantly bubbles in our ears.

So for the uninitiated - Levi Bellfield was the gruesome piece of scum who actually murdered Milly Dowler. And others, though she was by some way the youngest of them.

Well as the people who know me will realise, I am opposed to the death penalty. I am though for life meaning life. In the case of Mr Bellfield, I would be perfectly happy for him to share a cell with Damien Fowkes for the rest of what could turn out to be a fairly short remaining existence.

Meanwhile, apparently Rupert Murdoch (the great Australian patriot who swapped his passport for a fist-full of American Dollars) has apparently reached an agreement to pay the Dowlers 2 million Pounds, with a further million going to charity.

For the Dowlers I would imagine that any sum of money would be inadequate for the grievious loss that they suffered. Money in this circumstance could never be a compensation.

And of course the Murdoch press did not kill Milly Dowler. They just exploited her disappearance in the most incredibly foul manner possible to sell a few extra newspapers .....

I personally think that this generous offer to charity should be seen for what it is. For me personally (worried as I am as to how I am going to be able to pay the rent at the end of this month), it would be very much appreciated.

But for the Murdoch empire though it can be summed up as .... "small change". They will hardly notice it, it can be quickly earned and lost in a day on the NYSE, and it is basically just a gesture. IMHO a very inadequate gesture!

What could a charity do with a million? It would solve nothing long-term. Nor would the payment be seen as any real compensation for the sheer nastiness involved in this whole business. The amounts in both cases are far too small.

The sum should rather be a BILLION! News Corp would notice that and would learn in the future to be more circumspect in how it goes about its nasty business.

Meanwhile that sort of money could make a real difference to research into all sorts of nasty diseases that affect children who would be the same age as Milly was at the time of her death. Leukaemia, cerebral palsy, you name it. I read of one case last year where a child's bones were growing inwardly and strangling him/her (sorry I cannot, inexcusably, remember the child's gender).

This way from the evil of the past few months and the dreadful events surrounding Levi Bellfield, some real good would come.

And News Corp and the Murdoch family might have done some real good - for once!

Suicide - a justification

Assume you are alone or almost in this world.

There is a disconnect to the rest of the world that you cannot bridge.

You cannot pay your way in the world, and economic viability is one of the passwords in this world to having a reasonable life. You get turned down for every suitable job there is, you are far too shy to make a living as a self-employed person, and as talented as you are in many directions, getting recognition seems to become almost more and more impossible as the days go by. And you refuse point blank to put yourself into debt.

You are a sexually frustrated male heterosexual and there is no solution to that problem available or ever likely to be available.

You are an atheist, you are fully aware that there is no life to follow this, and this life seems totally worthless. (And spare me any religious crap - it will be immediately kicked into the spam box as worthless superstition).

The world is grotesquely overpopulated anyway - one of the reasons why poverty and unemployment are rife is that there are simply too many people, and not enough jobs or income on this planet to go round. So one individual would not be missed.

You have fought every battle there is to fight and seemingly lost all the important ones - despite all your efforts to be positive.

So why is suicide not an acceptable solution????

Too many scroungers?

The problem with the Western world, I have read many times, is that there are too many people out there milking the system.

They don't want to work, they just want to freeload while others provide the means for them to do so.

It is not limited to one country or to the usually conservative commentators or politicians within them. The former FDP leader in Germany, Guido Westerwelle, rightly pointed out that the wealth has to be created by someone (who is arguing with that?), before he started laying into the loafers and scroungers usw.

The point is though - to get people off what the Americans call "welfare" two things are absolutely necessary.

1. The work has to be there!
2. The work has to pay sufficiently well to allow people to live without state handouts (which, I would add, are nothing like as generous as some people would have you believe!)!

I cannot unfortunately quote the stats from Europe, though I know for a fact that there are dozens of IT specialists out of work in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, and trying to get a job in that area (particularly if you are an older worker like myself) is like trying to find a crocodile beneath the Polar ice cap.

But from the US - a couple of related figures.

Case 1 - for every job vacancy there are five people unemployed.
Case 2 - most of the jobs being created are flipping burgers.

In case 1, do you take someone who is not working and doesn't want to - and give them priority over people who do want to work? If there are more jobs available than people unemployed, then you can attack the welfare problem. If it is the other way round, which is the usual story, as far as I am concerned getting the industrious, the intelligent, the dedicated back into the workplace is the priority. The loafers and deadbeats would only foul up the environment anyway.

In case 2 - I have go on for seemingly ever about the "McDonalds economy", but the point remains relevant!

How do you come close to paying all the necessary bills (accommodation, heating and other utility bills, food usw) on the junk wages for the junk jobs paid by the junk food companies? Or on the money that you get stacking supermarket shelves? As a second income, or a starter job for a 16-year-old with no qualifications - OK.

For someone with a degree, 20+ years experience in high-powered intellectual environments and the ability to get by in four languages like myself (as an example)? Forget it. You cannot live, you cannot save, you cannot even hope to get any job satisfaction. Such work is just about as pointless as it gets for a large percentage of the unemployed! As a first income, it is simply no-go!

What is also scary is that with the removal of jobs to China and India at the current rate the already ludicrously high rate of unemployment of people over 50 (twice that of people under 50 - another often conveniently forgotten stat) will increase.

So whereas in the past you took a not particularly well-paid job when you were 20-odd in the knowledge that later in life your experience would pay off ..... These days you better earn quickly and have built your pile of retirement cash by the time you are 45, as after that, given current employer attitudes, you will become virtually retired anyway, like it or not (and I don't!).

And if you haven't (and how exactly would you expect to do it anyway? You're supposed to be earning less than used to be the case, otherwise how do you compete with the Chinese and the joke money they pay!) ....

But then of course you will be written off as just another scrounger, won't you????

Really voting FOR something?

Quiz question.

Name a country in the world where the government is really popular and people would vote them back again any time soon.

Everywhere in the world at the moment the desire seems simply to get rid of whoever's in charge. Voting "the other lot" back into power follows, but is that what people really want? Just negative voting? Or expecting the change will bring something that will really be better?

The latter is really an interesting concept? The question follows "Who and How?".

Except for the really committed, things will not seem better - I will tell you that now. There is an increasing sense of Domesday scenario where the lives of all but a few will deteriorate for a generation. Whoever you elect.

The system is broken. The political system is failing most people around the world. The economic system has only benefitted the rich and powerful for a quarter of a century now, and all the phoney offerings are disappearing between the Scylla and Charybdis of imminent poverty and unrelievable debt.

Anyone who believes otherwise belongs to the rich and powerful, or is being delusional.

Today they had the city elections in Berlin. The FDP with their neoliberal economic nonsense (the same rubbish Thatcher imposed on the UK in the 1980s with the ridiculous levels of poverty and unemployment, oh, and personal debt - see also the GOP in the USA) were reduced to 1.9% of the vote. They were replaced in the Berlin city legislature by the Pirate Party, who want total freedom of information - and for the rest most of their agenda sounds like the FDP, you wonder why people were fooled by them. Excuse me if their economic thinking is a bit less Neanderthal, but from what I have heard, it isn't.

Germany is still stuck with the FDP as part of the government coalition, but apart from their constant demands for tax deductions with money that doesn't exist (all they will do is raise the government deficit massively), their voice is less and less obvious.

People voted for them in large numbers on promises on tax cuts which were never available. If they had the gumption, they would quit the coalition.

That though could lead to political oblivion. I would say that they won't be missed, but the likelihood is that the ideas would merely be adopted elsewhere, as unworkable as they are.

You might want to vote for those ideas as a delusional alternative. The fact remains, in the real world that is what they remain. Voting for something means voting for something positive that will work for the benefit of everyone - the chances of that happening again in my lifetime is about as likely as an increase in the number of tigers living in the wild on this planet over the next 50 years - as close to zero percent as it gets!

Gambling by any other name

Yesterday a trader in the City of London was arrested.

It probably was related, but not confirmed by the police, to a case of $2 billion being lost in a trade by the investment banking division of the Swiss bank UBS.

This is not the first case of huge sums of money being lost like this - see the French trader, Jérôme Kerviel at Société Générale in 2008, or the British trader, Nick Leeson, at the resultantly defunct Barings Bank in Singapore in 1995. Among others.

The point was raised though on a discussion on Yahoo yesterday which appears relevant.

Why is what these guys are doing illegal? Traders are supposed to take risks on markets, options usw going up and down. It goes with the territory. If the market always went up, we would all be doing it. The fact that the market/option usw might go down is part of the risk.

The companies know this very well. If people lose money in their name, they should also be aware of this. It is part of the game. It is a refined method of picking horses at a race track. Occasionally you pick winners, you make money, occasionally you lose your shirt.

In the stock markets round the world, there are more winners than in a horse race of course. And you can even win if you gamble on the market going down.

"Gamble" though is the appropriate word. Your judgement may be faulty, the market does not follow your instinct, you lose your company's (and hence its investors') money. So where is this illegal?

If you lose a couple of hundred US$, does anyone care that much? If you lose $2 billion someone suddenly wakes up and notices though?

But the thinking is surely the same - you can lose, that goes with the risk, so why does the amount involved affect the legality of the action? It makes no sense!

On the race track, there is something called laying off - which prevents bookmakers from losing so much money. The finance markets have something called hedging. Now this sounds really clever. You bet on something, you lose, but the hedge repays the loss .... well sort of. So why doesn't the hedger lose his money? Why doesn't he become the source of checks in illegality? Here we appear to have an "everyone wins, nobody loses, so if you don't play you're a mug" type thinking.

It surely cannot work like this. If something loses, there has to be a loser somewhere, doesn't there?

There are a few points connected with the above. One - if like Nick Leeson you take an action to hide the fact that you lost, that is illegal - which is why he ended up in jail. Though from what I can gather, he wasn't the only one hiding his losses like that - it just happened that he was the one found out! In a big way.

Then the guy yesterday may well have forgotten to hedge his bet. But why is making the bet legal, but then of you forget to hedge it, why does it become illegal? Because someone might lose?

And then there is the question of supervision (why doesn't someone stop it happening? Answer everything happens so quickly, there simply isn't time, apparently (so why is that then still illegal?)).

And the companies driving the transactions are often so greedy for quick profits, they drive their employees (the traders) to take enormous risks - this was Jérôme Kerviel's contention, though it did not stand up in court.

The fact remains, it appears to many of us that the question of legality in this whole business covers a very shady area. It appears that if you profit, then what you have done is perfectly OK, but if you lose, you should be locked up for fraud.

If it is not the way that it works, then we need a much clearer explanation as to how it does.

So whom do you believe?

Times are bad and there are no signs of improvement on the horizon.

People have been living as if they all had tons of available money from credit companies and never paid off the bills.

Everybody (private businesses, governments, the man and woman in the street) is in hock to the eyeballs, and the debts keep piling up.

Then one day the proverbial faeces hit the proverbial fan, and like it or not you cannot live like that any more.

Governments start talking about austerity, businesses close in record numbers, and private individuals find the threat of homelessness and misery to be arriving sooner rather than later.

So whom do you believe - the people who tell you that you have to tighten your belts and be sensible and live within your means, or the people who keep uttering "Crisis, what crisis?"?

Or neither of them?

Questions for Perry and the other Republican candidates

Will you invade Iran?

And if the United States is broke, how will you be able to afford it?

And if Iraq was more difficult than expected what would you expect the Iranians to be like on their home turf which is three times the size, and they have three times the population?

And if your answer is "no", are you being honest? If your name is Ron Paul, then I will believe you, but as for the others ....

And finally a quiz question. Name the last American Republican President who did not attack someone else's country without being asked (and without being asked does not mean being asked to do so by Israel!).

If you're not for us ....

You're against us. That is a line you hear occasionally.

Particularly fond of this line of thinking are American conservative regimes, and, needless to say, Israel.

Skip the Americans for now (I want to have an intelligent discussion), look at the Israeli take on this.

I have no objections to Israel existing, but their attitude to the Palestinians (you either do it our way, or we will bomb the Hades out of you, and while we are at at it we will blockade Gaza), and the very limited willingness to negotiate, I will not accept.

By the logic given above, that puts me in the camp of the Sunni Islamofascists of Hamas, or the Shia Islamofascists of Hezbollah. I can disprove any such support by eating a bacon sandwich (to which I am occasionally partial) and drinking a glass of Warsteiner or Hassenröder Premium Pils - as I am prone to do occasionally.

I remain neutral on the issue. Like many Europeans. The solution needs negotiation, though personally I think that Israel should either go back to the 1967 borders (they seized the land on the West Bank by force and colonised it in the name of some 3000 year old myth - sorry, in my world you don't get away with that), or accept a one (democratic) state solution.

Everyone living in the area - Gaza, Israel (as is) and the West Bank - would be in one country, with everyone living there voting in democratic elections.

The latter offers intriguing possibilities - Likud and Hamas would be the two biggest parties, and they would have to learn to talk to each other. Reasonably.

A fascinating thought - but if you check out Northern Ireland where the Loyalist DUP and the Nationalist party, Sinn Fein, are the biggest parties, it is maybe not so ridiculous.

The one thing that has to end is all the hostilities, whether from the Islamofascist militias or the Israeli force of occupation.

If there is one thing that I am for (well actually two) - the words "peace" and "reason" come to mind. If there is something that I am against, it is the continued use of violence to enforce a solution.

As things stand I am neither for the state of Israel as stands, nor Hamas, nor Hezbollah.

I am for reason, peace, and a just solution to the problem for all sides. And the prospect of peace (and hopefully prosperity) for all in the region.