Cardboard Spaceship

Geneva as the New Hedgistan?

What with living in Geneva and all, this particular piece of news about all the hedgies moving out of London into Geneva to escape the twin evils of taxes and regulation*, means that we will be over-run potentially by a load of rich Anglophones, who will put up the price of housing, already damn near impossible to find, and fill up the schools. Still, I suppose with the collapse of the private banks they might just about come out neutral. 

I sometimes joke to Mrs Spaceship about selling the house (which we bought as a ruin at the bottom of the local market) and moving to New Zealand.  Might be time to make a serious think about it. 

*AKA as playing an appropriate role in the society you live in, and being honest and accountable.

Cute....

As the news is so universally depressing at the moment, I thought that I would post something to cheer us all up.  Here is a very small pig called William, and his friend Charles, who is an enormous rabbit.  Show this to any friends who take psychoactive recreational chemicals. 

Found at the Daily Telegraph... 

Because I haven't been blogging for reasons I just posted about (all good ones...) I have not not commented on the state of the world for a bit.  The headliner for a UK person was the Darling budget in the middle of last week.  Depending on the interpretation that you put on it, the borrowing for next year could reach 220 billion.  Not only that the deficits being talked about depend on forecasts of growth that seem wildly optimistic.   (According to the IMF amongst others.)  Basically he has condemned a generation of UK citizens to massive debt, taxes, and declining public services.  Well done indeed sir...

Then there is the contentious issue of top tax rate.  While I think that it is reasonable that top tax rates are higher in a recession, even if the base cause is previous mismanagement, the issue is that the top earners tend to be mobile by habit and inclination, and have no issue moving to another more favourable location, so the actual amount of money raised may be pretty minimal.  (Oh joy, more rich people making the Geneva housing market and schools availability difficult.)

And to cap the economic joy, the IMF has stated that they think that the total eventual losses on the banking and financial markets will be around four trillion, which is sort of all the money in the world and bit more as far as I can tell. 

Which raises a very good question:  where is all this money going to come from?  Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph, who along with Willem Buiter is one of my daily must-reads had a very interesting commentary on the matter.  Who gets it in the shorts?  Poor countries and Eastern Europe for the most part.   Also, we got to play at Wiemar republic at some point when there is a gilts strike, and the governments have to hyper-inflate to manage the debts. 

It's just as well most people are economically not very sophisticated, otherwise we would be seeing some real problems. 

God Birthday

Been quiet on the blogging front for the past week or so, as we had a lot of Real Life stuff going on, and also just enjoying a very sudden burst of Spring. 

The main event was the continuation of the Smallest Space Cadet of them All's tenth birthday.  This was held with his Godparent's, and also Dagran, my father in Law, who is visiting us at the moment. ("Dagran" being the best fist that the SSCOTA could make of "Grandad" at the time.)

Here are a couple of pictures of the long Sunday lunch that we had.  First, a very most excellent birthday layer cake that his God Mother made, delicious, and completely calorie-free...

Here is Dagran at the table.

And here the God parents and friends out for a small stroll to aid digestion. 

Lovely time had by all, and everyone was sad it was Sunday and that we would have to all go back to school the next day. 

Pirate Bay

I have not written yet about the verdict in the Pirate Bay case in Sweden.  The founders and owners have been found guilty of the facilitation of distribution of copyrighted material.  Of course, the first thing that they have done is appealed, so they are not in prison, and the site is still running.  So, not much has changed on that basis then.  But what is more worrisome is that this could be a precedent for the damaging of the free flow information on the internet.  Take Google, for example.  Here is a custom search page that someone created.  If anyone can explain the difference between this, and the currently supposed to be infringing Pirate Bay, please do so.  

(Technically speaking Google does not provide trackers, is the real answer.)

Now, I am not encouraging anyone to go and download illegal torrents, not least of all because you really have idea what is in the download, and having that kind of faith in the good nature of others is not "safe computing".  However, as I often say, trying to make digital files non-copyable and non-distributable seems to be like trying to make water not wet.  Expensive and futile. 

A Very Unscientific Survey

As I have undoubtedly said before, Mrs Spaceship is a resting psychiatrist, having decided about three or four years ago that talking to mad people all day was getting her down, not to mention having her patients to deal with. 

Since then, our house has become a kind of community drop in centre for the worried of the district, with the proviso that instead of them giving us money, we give them white wine.  Now, I'm fine with that, because basically we're a sociable couple, and we like being part of the community.  

There is also another side to it, which is the ability to know what kind of stress is in the system at any given time in a way that you might not in a more distant relationship.  People come to you when they have problems, and the number of people at anyone time, let's you understand how stressed the whole world is.

Unscientific though this may be, all I can say is that the whole world is trembling like a shitting dog at the moment.  Not one of the myriad of adults who passed our doors over Easter, or who we talked to, seemed to have any great confidence in things, and some came out with stories that frankly shocked me.  (If any of my friends reading this are thinking "blimey, he's talking about me!" answer is "not so fast matey, everyone's at it.")

Now, for me, I have always been the naturally gloomy Northern Calvinist that my upbringing prepared me for, so I spend my whole life in a sunlit upland of delight that things turned out so well, but I am talking here about a lot of sunny and optimistic souls who always see the bright side.   Worrisome.

Buiter on Banking Once Again

Willem Buiter's blog has a very good summarisation of the current situation in banking and financial services.  He nails a good few issue about what will the banking market look like in the future? 

The short answer seems to be national, smaller, and duller.  Frankly, I could do with a bit of dull round here. 

Easter and all Who Sailed in Her

Well, what with my eyeballs having gone back to normal size, it is time to resume the bloggy goodness.  The other reason that I have not been updating much is that we have been having a time here in the Spaceship.  As it was the Easter hols, and as the kids are all on holidays, the Spaceship hosted the Hosein family from London, and so we have adult friends to talk to, and the Smallest Space Cadet of them All got two mates to play with for Easter, so that was very agreeable. 

We had a lot of guests over Easter, with a local family joining up for lunch on Saturday, with two adults, and another four kids.  Lots of noisy mayhem there. 

Then on the Sunday we did the Newlands family Easter Egg Hunt.  Given the rather firm aetheism of the Spaceship, we have to concentrate on this as being a traditional celebration of spring, and the forthcoming rising of the sap, and mass getting of the leg over on the part fo the plant and animal community.  It's the latter that bothers me, as it transpires that I did not have viral conjunctivitis, but allergic conjunctivitis, due to massive hay fever.  Still hurt like blazes, not helped by the fact that it's all to do with some other phylum's grubby sex life. 

Here are some selected highlights:

Girls running round on an electric Quad that we picked up in the local bric-a-brac super store for 90 Euros, probably some of the best money I have ever spent. 

Here are the boys practicing to become indolent hoodies later in life:

So, that was a huge success, and just in case you're wondering, it was Wim, the Most Intelligent Member of the Crew who won, because a good nose for eggs takes you far ahead of the crowd. 

Then we had another bunch of friends in for Monday lunch, so all in all we served up something like 95 people for meals over Easter.  Great fun, but does prevent you doing much else.

Later that week we went up to Verbier, to meet friends from Paris.  Verbier has had a brilliant year this year, as the snow conditions have been perfect.  Here is the SSCOTA on top of a huge hill of cleared snow at Medran, and as you can see, it is rather big. 

We had a very sociable time, and here we all are sitting at the pub at the bottom of the Rouge doing that elbow workout that is so often needed on a skiing holiday.  Not that we actually skiied at all. 

Our host is vivible in the picture in the Blue fleece.  He had just returned from a ten day mountain biking tour in Zambia, which seemed to consist of cycling 200 kilometres or so in a day, in the African wilderness, whilst trying desperately to avoid having to go the toilet.  He seems to have enjoyed it, although I personally would prefer to have thousands of native bearers carrying my entire household contents along behind me, like they used to in the good old days. 

Finally, this weekend has been the SSCOTA's birthday, when he has made it to double digits.  Well done, SSCOTA, and many happy returns.   Here is a picture of him with the cake.  Ahhhwwww....

Right that's enough of all this fluffy stuff, löet's get back to the real world. 

Blogging Light due to Bleeding Eyeballs

I have contracted viral conjunctivitis, which is exactly as much fun as getting a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, in fact indistinguishable for the most part.  As a result, I am not doing much blogging until the eyeballs go down enough in size to fit back into their sockets. 

All the world news is crap anyway.  Favourite quote of the day about this from Paul Krugman's blog.  He talks about Willem Buiter, another very interesting economist, and how Buiter manages to say dramatic things softly by using analogies like Winnie the Pooh.  He says of talking at the same conference:

"Not long ago Willem and I shared a stage in Athens. We weren’t that far apart on basics (the euro aside). But his image was dance of the seven veils; mine was Night of the Living Dead."

Very Wry. 

Bear Being Transported to Woods?

Found this magnificent picture on the unbeatable English Russia, a site that basically highlights the bizarre things that happen in Russian life.   It has many, many, great pictures, but I had to reproduce this one: