HUBBLE - BUBBLE - TOIL & TROUBLE ...

[Michael Grove]

OUR MASTERS TALK ABOUT  TRANSPARENCY ...

BUT when trouble strikes they still resort to secrecy

"The public must be wondering if there is  anyone  in the  British

Establishment who isn’t involved in a cover-up or conspiracy or 

some other serious misconduct" - says Sue Cameron in today's Telegraph  

"The police are suspected of fitting up a member of the Government, our top

civil servant says there could be a gigantic conspiracy or a small one but either

way it’s better to “let the matter rest” - journalists stand accused of phone

hacking, NHS "managers" are guilty of putting corporate self-interest and cost

control ahead of patients - MPs are under a cloud for their expenses and

bankers have been fiddling the Libor rate.

"Welcome to Bent Britain"

and as Allison Pearson writes in the same edition of the Telegraph -

WHY is nobody being punished for this disaster ? 

Presumably because NONE of the so-called elite masters of our society

has any intention whatsoever to assume responsibility for their

actions or accountability for the consequences of their TOP-down

policy controls - whether it be to do with politics, the armed forces,

the police, health, education, social services or local government -

despite the fact that they are being handsomely paid for the task. 

"IT IS often those individuals who lead these institutions that are

responsible for structuring them for corruption, so both individuals and

institutions themselves must be blamed, banned, and restructured."

"Under Ed Miliband, Labour has disowned the Blair reforms and rejects anything that weakens the power of the public sector elite for whom it now speaks. This is understandable, given that the unions are the reason Miliband is leader and provide a staggering 82 per cent of his party’s funding. Miliband is now soaring above the Tories in the polls. But sooner or later he must lay out his own agenda — and the ways in which he proposes a restoration of union power and the public sector elite.

To be against the market is to favour its alternative: a ruling class.

This explains Miliband’s deafening silence on policy. His ‘predistribution’ plan, which is supposed to encourage markets towards fairer distribution, will only create a new matrix of social, business and official relations.

He will be saying (at the next election) ‘Trust me’ at a time when voters mistrust everyone. It is an odd thought, but the Conservatives are now the natural party of reform. And at the worst possible time, Labour is becoming the party of the Establishment."

                         - Bonfire of the Establishment- The Spectator magazine

as Sue Cameron goes on to say in her article -

"Whatever happened to integrity, principle & the public service ethic ?

Where DID the leadership class go wrong ?

AND what can they do to start winning back public trust ?

The answers will vary from one sector to another

but there seem to be some common factors.

ONE is the ( I would say TOTAL ) disconnect between

those at the TOP and the people on the front line."

.

[Michael Grove]

Proposals for internal checks and balances at financial services companies to prevent a repeat of the rogue trading and Libor-fixing scandals will be unveiled today, in a move welcomed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Bank of England.

The Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors (CIIA) has launched a document for consultation that aims to provide a benchmark against which boards and regulators could assess companies’ internal audit systems.

The Barclays Bank group will shut down its controversial tax advisory business as part of a strategy review that will outline where Barclays will focus in the future and how it will operate under new chief executive Antony Jenkins.

“The old ways weren’t the right way to behave,” Mr Jenkins will say. “Nor did they deliver the right results – for banks themselves – or for wider society."

“There must be a new approach for a new era of banking.”

[Michael Grove]

IF you want a good reputation - just BE HONEST - restoring a good reputation

is harder than it seems - as a host of companies are finally coming to realise.

Those who think they can improve a company’s reputation without imposing higher values are confusing form with substance. Aggressive rebuttals are not a substitute for integrity. Steve Marshall, who became Railtrack’s chief executive soon after the Hatfield rail crash, which killed four people in 2000, concluded: “The fundamental truth, which you discover only when you have gone through the fires of hell, is that your reputation will always mirror the absolute reality of what you are.”

[Michael Grove]

Banks must do more to regain public trust, including more radical reform to the way they run their businesses, according to Mark Carney, the incoming Governor of the Bank of England.

So when your governments tell you how valuable our banking system is, and how important our financial services sector is, don’t believe them. Most of it is as valuable to our lives and as energetically parasitic as a Flu virus. For sure, we need old-fashioned banks who help us move money around, and take care of our savings. Possibly we need insurance companies to help us deal with life’s risks. Maybe there is even some sense in having companies which manage investments – if that process can be removed from the paper-casino it currently lives in and revert to supporting companies to buy plant and equipment, or cover their trading cycles. But a City of London filled with financial institutions generating huge fantasy debts which we, our children and our grandchildren are supposed to pay back?  They’re not worth the paper they’re NOT written on.

BUT - WHAT IF Nassim Taleb's "Black Swans" were engineered by a group of men -

living together in society today - as a result of information asymmetry ?

" When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society - they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it "

                                                                                                                Frederik Bostiak

Governments should be afraid of their PEOPLES -

and the PEOPLE should not be afraid of voting into

power - GOVERNMENTS

                                    - of the PEOPLE

                                                 - by the PEOPLE

                                                               - for the PEOPLE

 

[Michael Grove]

Bearing in mind the fact that the only CROSS-PARTY MP's invited to conclude the latest version of  Press Regulation - were those in favour of control of the press - what happened to the concept of "representative democracy", let alone Swiss-style "direct democracy", by allowing at least one MP to attend - that represented an alternative view of the people.

IT would appear that EVEN so-called "representative democracy" IS DEAD in the UK and it would seem rapidly becoming the case in the Eurozone influenced European Union.

From the ONLY man that I still TRUST in British Politics today - Alistair Darling -

Cyprus is doing "everything you should not do" after the tiny country decided to seize around 6.75 per cent from smaller deposits and almost 10 per cent from larger ones.

The country is currently deciding whether to make richer savers pay a bigger proportion of the bill but Mr Darling said the whole idea of taking money from ordinary savers is dangerous.

He said EU should not be letting Cyprus "blow apart" the principle of protecting deposits under €100,000, as people will start pulling their cash out of banks if they fear this elsewhere.

"It seems to me to make it more likely that if you’re a saver in Spain or Italy, if you have a sniff of the EU or the IMF coming your way you’ll take your money out and you’ll get a run on the bank," he told BBC Radio Four's Today programme.

"So what they’re doing is everything you should NOT DO when you’re trying to solve a problem like this."

GOVERMENTS  should  very  definitely

BE afraid of  the reactions of their PEOPLES -

and the PEOPLE should not be afraid of voting into

power - GOVERNMENTS

                                    - of the PEOPLE

                                                 - by the PEOPLE

                                                               - for the PEOPLE

 

[Michael Grove]

THE most important lesson that I learnt at Borehamwood Grammar School - was that which was delivered to me by my English Literature teacher call Mr. Wilkinson. When discussing the concept of critical analysis & appraisal, I said that there were obviously two directly opposed categories of criticism - constructive & destructive - to which he replied never ever apologise for offering constructive criticism - while all those around you perceive ALL criticism to be destructive.

Reality is not just the bad; it is also the good.

The mind requires an awareness of both in order to work at its best.

 

For one who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends,

but for one who has failed to do so, his/her very mind will be the greatest enemy.

- as Carl Jung so rightly stated -

THE most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.

When one considers the actions of our "masters of the globe" - I invariably amuse

myself by thinking about Leonardo da Vinci's take on them, which was that they were -

"as wise as the wind they fart from their arses"