Blog
23 may 2010, blackpool
I'm not sure the name will resonate to many outside the uk, but the place is as much a part of my childhood as the lettering that runs through the rock whose distinctive but teeth-rotting characteristics are those of this once-thriving seaside playground. We used to drive up every single year in september to see "the lights", back when it was the only place that strung flashing colours along its "golden mile". It was somehow a highlight of the year to sit for hours in traffic watching humpty dumpty repeatedly fall off a wall. My parents had a wonderful trick: knowing the time the lights were turned on, they hurried me and my sister down a side street and we took it in annual turns to push a button in a wall, and then rush back, with unbridled joy to see the illuminated result. Quick to imitate the eiffel tower and to somehow always have the biggest funfair in the world, blackpool had a niche - but "breezy and bracing beaches" were never going to compete with spanish sun and sand once the northern classes got their hands on them, and so for decades now blackpool has given itself up to marauding hen and stag parties. Our one recent visit as a family was a "never again" day. Now though, the town has received some state money, some inspired leadership and, yesterday, an invaluable ticket to hundreds of thousands of visitors who would never go without the town's small team amazingly breaking into the football big time. Like when manchester first hosted the major party conferences, bringing glitterati hordes who had their eyes opened anew when forced to visit the place for the first time in 20 years, so the premiership presents a massive opportunity for piscine noire sur mer. Let's hope they grab it with both hands as probably their last chance to be bold, tear down the old edifices and build something much better and more sustainable.
19 may 2010, back, for a moment
Just back from two days in brussels, the first time in two years work has taken me off the island, which, given I have a somewhat key strategic role in a supposedly major european city, already tells a tale. It was an excellent trip, making new colleagues in new areas of interest, and meeting old colleagues-turned-friends. I spoke some french, wore my eu badge with pride, talked about the eurogroup and learned tremendous amounts about how what I was doing some years ago analysing the drafting of the lisbon agenda, translates on the ground to programmes that cities like mine are trying to draw funding from to realise the goals of lisbon, now renamed europe 2020. On balance, I love my new role, but there are certainly aspects of my old one I sorely miss, not least the international element and the idealism of working for a common goal. I did rather feel amongst my own kind and found myself leaving in a rather reflective mood. Fired up though, and eager to spread the knowledge and reap the rewards - for manchester and for europe !
15 may 2010, an oasis hoves into view
Life a little heavy and fraught at the moment, not least financially; so strange we're about to go off on holiday. My brother's living in tel aviv for a while, and we very much wanted to see him, so long ago decided to take advantage of cheap flights, and now will just have to grit our teeth and enjoy it. Can't wait. I love the city, and expecting the brother to babysit a little, so we can do lots of bauhaus tours, beachside coffee shops and friends-without-kids visits. Also planning to visit ein gedi and show the family the absolute wonders of the negev desert I haven't seen since teenagehood. It now comes, I'm told, with a pool and spa centre on the kibbutz...
11 may 2010, a giant leap forward ?
Wow, despite my optibutsceptism, we may over the weekend have moved a significant step forward towards ever closer union, in the euro area at least. The ecb has traded one of its prized stances, with unprecedented disagreement from a key member of the governing council (the german axel weber). "Sterilisation" might be a way to square the circle, but that all depends on the quantum in play. There is no denying that a rubicon has been crossed. So what was given in return ? That part of the fine print remains under close discussion, and pending announcements from portugal and spain about swingeing cuts will not hide the need for a change from the usual routine of a good commission proposal dying the death of a thousand cuts from the various member states as it makes its way towards becoming enforceable. The options to be brought forward, which include commission examination of national budgets before they are passed and the withholding of eu funding from countries in excessive deficit procedure, are biting - but how likely are they to be adopted ? Let's see what the ecb got for its (our) money...
8 may 2010, ignore now, pay later; later has arrived
The lessons of most events are often known long before, but never acted on. So it is with greece, the lesson being that monetary union without deeper fiscal co-ordination is ultimately unsustainable. This doesn't mean that the euro area is going to collapse, but rather that you cannot avoid closer co-operation on the fiscal side - meaning tax and spend. Will the new euro area "peer review" of budgets be a significant step in that direction ? Unlikely: although this in-house "imf article 4" mechanism may be valuable, it won't be enforceable and the commission already does something similar. The real action being taken is more of a "euro area v. the markets" type, with ideas for an eu rating agency being fastracked and the development of an emergency standing (crisis) fund, possibly by expanding the reach of the existing balance of payments facility. Pressure is also being applied to the ecb to copy the fed and bank of england and start dabbling in quantitive easing, which they will stoutly resist. The ever-excellent bruegel are talking of some before-the-act debt restructuring agreement. As well as the lesson being there before though, so is the remedy. The stability and growth pact was minted more than a decade ago. What is needed is not to reinvent the wheel, but to put the rubber on the road and make those difficult but timely course corrections as they arise, rather than junking the system because it hurts a bit and then searching for a new one when the consequences of that come home to roost.
3 may 2010, not so green shoots
I have a wonderful thing: a garden. A househunting must-have, deluded as we still were that about the manchester climate that these wonderful green spaces are calm, healthy bits of verdant nature on your doorstep. I also have a problem: a garden. It's not that I'm lazy or incapable of planting some potatoes and mowing the lawn (though that may be true), it's that I don't particularly enjoy it, and it's not what I choose to do with my precious time. Three gardeners have passed by, but all say the same thing: back-to-back, mate, can't take on any more work. This leaves me with two contradictory thoughts. Firstly, why aren't these guys upping their rates (as the demand is there) and employing an apprentice or three so they can get more done ? Secondly, how great that there's still a bit of the economy where loyalty and locality reign and it's not all about profits, margins and squeezing value from basic service provision. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, as I don't want a gardeners-are-us national franchise putting these community stalwarts out of business - but here is untapped value in the heald green economy that all would prosper from, albeit some more than others. Most of all though, I'd love a little tlc to be sprinkled around my few square metres of green so when that one day's sunshine turns up mid-august I can enjoy it to the full in my own backyard...
1 may 2010, workers of the...
My understanding of today reflects my life progress. At first, through a happy upbringing in manchester, it was meaningless, the first monday in may being an unexceptional, and pragmatic, bank holiday. In oxford, I discovered may morning, when students jump drunk into the river and party towards a champagne breakfast at 6am, when a full-on church choir lets rip at 6am, followed by morris dancing and other such distinctly southern english things I was never exposed to (and never actually saw, as students traditionally go to bed, with each other, at that time). It is a delight of localism, hedonism, crass class and tradition. Venturing abroad, I discovered that 1 may for most is a fiercely socialist (red) day, and one of the few things that unites virtually the gloabe, english exceptionism and its acolytes apart. In hungary, I tagged along on marches and classless celebrations of all sorts. I guess I both like and don't this english non-internationalism, which is born of our weight in the world once. Before constant mass media assault, our culture (a highly successful export) was big enough to sustain itself. Good is the local resilience, colour and tradition, but it now risks falling into disuse, caricature and white aspic; bad is the scared solidarity that spawns a defining of identity through fear of others, both in the warm cuddly sense of the ersatz st george's day, and the more vicious racism and xenophobia, which was always present, but is rapidly becoming vastly more socially acceptable as the media becomes more democratic and representative. For my warmest greeting of the day then, I think I'll plump for taking out the "workers of the" and wish you "world, unite !".
28 april 2010, greek tragedy
Since 13 february, things have moved on, but not all that much. Sovereign debt is the new bank crisis, with the risk being they fall like dominos. This is not the last run we will see; britons especially should beware. For now though, the market's herding instincts are rounding on greece, where they should be, and portugal and spain, tenuously linked through the euro, where they shouldn't. For the latter countries, the onus is on them to introduce tight measures of the sort ireland did in good time. For greece, it is much too late. The euro has slipped, but the currency markets have not reacted much, and greece's plight would be infinitely worse without that protection. It would by now have seen not an advantageous devaluation but a catastrophic crash. Not least because although now "junk" (or "high yield" as it is euphemistically termed) greek bonds are still being accepted as collateral by the ecb. Surely though even the biggest haircut (i.e. providing less than apparent value to take account of risk) cannot much longer disguise this as a significant subsidy affecting the credibility of the ecb's whole collateral framework. It is still in the balance whether a big-enough package can stave off a full-scale debt restructuring that would particularly hit euro area banks investors. This is caveat emptor v pass now, pay later. In truth, it surely must be pay now, whatever the cost - although the euro area would have been wiser to lay more off earlier on the imf - better to have greek riots aimed at washington than brussels.
24 april 2010, I agree with vince !
Whilst I'm not sure vince cable is quite the soothsayer claimed, he's right to finger the risk of a so-called "double-dip recession". All the risks to recovery are on the downside, and latest figures - rising inflation, rising unemployment, anaemic growth, lower trend growth - all point to longer term effects and a fragile economy still dependent on the crutches of massive and unsustainable public sector spend. The big question was always will we have lift off by the time the crutches go; the big question now is when the crutches will go. For all the bitter debate, that will not be at a time of government choosing. The global capital behind the bond market supplying us with endless cash agreed to suspend its disbelief until after the election. That's going to end soon afterwards. Brits bristle at the greek comparison, but whilst we're not so far down the road nor so ineptly incapable of generating the growth to bounce back, nor do we have the security of the eurozone to bounce up off which, for all that it limits devaluation options, is a plus for them, not a minus: they'd be in far worse straits without it - think iceland. For britain, the million dollar question is can we keep our achilles heel well-protected by projecting to the global capital we need a serious intent to slim expenditure and take the medicine without too much social unrest knocking us off course. All parties will be forced the same route. The real question for the british electorate is who is best able to keep a firm hand on the tiller.
18 april 2010, elinor, naked
I'm reading "juliet, naked", spurred on by a book club an enterprising soulster has started at work. Not too long ago I would have wretched at such a notion, but I used to devour fiction, and it's now been all but squeezed out of regularity, so I'm delighted to have it boxed back. I'm a third in, and its rather paul auster-esque - probably my best ficticious discovery of the last decade, brought to me by my other half (the book of illusions is my favourite). Bori, meanwhile, is knee-deep in her photography studies, and working on a piece about elinor carucci. The book (so far) hinges around someone sending an email to someone famous, and what transpires. Remarkably, last night, she wrote to elinor, and this morning she had to be virtually peeled off the ceiling with excitement when she got a reply. And what about those liberal democrats...