Cicero's Songs

Times are tough in the world. The banking collapse has brought serious problems in the global flows of money, while the huge growth in Asia has put serious pressure on the price of commodities and energy, especially oil. Global food prices have been rising sharply as the result of several extreme weather events. Indeed this spike in food prices has clearly been a factor in the North African Arab revolt. Even still it is a bit disappointing seeing the English Language press being so down-beat about the events in Libya. Instead of being inspired by the determination of the Libyan people to rid themselves of their vile dictator, there are endless articles about the "terror" of the expats and the fact that the oil price has been rising as a result. Frankly a short term oil spike is a price well worth paying in order to get the Libyan people free from their bondage, and anyway, foreigners do not seem to have been the target of either side. It is not the expats who have been target...

Another small hiatus from blogging, the result of a fairly intensive travel schedule. This week, it was five different European countries, and as I write I am in the Swiss commercial capital of Zürich. It has been some time since I was last here, but I note the renewed infrastructure investment: the spiffy new trams and the general air of prosperity that seems to be the birthright of the Swiss. Alas that can not be said of London. From touchdown at the grubby and disorganized terminal 3 at Heathrow, until departure via the cramped London City airport, the sense is one of half measures and false economies. As I took the DLR out to City Airport I met by chance and old University friend who now works on Crossrail. Crossrail is a long overdue cross-London rail link. Yet he reports the considerable difficulties that this critical project is still facing. The money will run out before a quarter of the project is underway. Yet this rail link, which has been talked about for more than sixty ye...

After the fall of the regimes of Tunisia and Egypt and the protests across the Arab world, the Jasmine revolution now seems set to claim the scalp of the brutal and absurd Libyan leader, Gaddafi. What a joy it might have been to know that British hostility to this evil and tyrannical figure had been unrelenting. After all, we have suffered much at his hands: support for terrorist attacks against us, including vigorous funding of the IRA. Whatever the actual truth of the Lockerbie bomb, the fact remains that a Scottish court convicted a Libyan state official of the crime. Gaddafi has long been an enemy of the UK. So why did Tony Blair cut a deal with this monster? American critics suggest that pressure from BP persuaded the former Labour PM that a deal would be much in the interests of the British economy. As the UK prepares to evacuate its citizens from Libya, many working for BP, such a deal seems a lot less useful than it seemed at the time. As the long banned Green-Black-Red flag no...

There has been much crowing amongst the Anti-Euro brigade in the UK over the past year. The structural problems of the single currency were said to be terminal, and there was much self-congratulation that the UK had managed to avoid such troubles by maintaining the independence of the Pound. Now, however, the swagger has gone out of the Euro sceptics. The reason is not hard to find: British economic performance and monetary management on almost any conceivable measure has turned out far worse than our real comparable states in Europe. For all the gloating over the travails of Greece, Ireland or Iberia, the fact is that Germany, France and even Italy have weathered the economic down turn far better than the UK. In Britain our inflation rate is peaking above 4%, and the direction of travel would be the same, even without the increase in VAT. Meanwhile unemployment is also rising strongly. Despite the recovery on manufacturing, the evaporation of large parts of the British banking system...

At the time of the release of Ali Abdelbaset Al-Magrahi, there was considerable anger. Those who believed in the verdict of the court were outraged. others, like myself, were angry because the release ensured that evidence that might have been used in his appeal of his conviction would not be presented in open court. As a result, the conviction of one man acting alone- which seems at best implausible- will now continue to stand. However, at the time I was prepared to defend the British government, since the release on compassionate grounds had both the force of the legal system as well as a certain natural justice. Now, we have discovered that the Labour government did everything in its political power to ensure the release- going so far as to coach Al-Magrahi's supporters- including the odious Gaddafi- as to how to pitch their legal campaign. Almost every assurance that was given by the Labour Ministers of the day was totally dishonest. It is frankly despicable. A contemptuous re...

There has been some discussion on politicalbetting.com over the past few days about the differences between the political culture of the Nordic countries and that of the UK. Contributors were highlighting the higher levels of education in the region versus the vituperation that is the norm in the British political discourse. It is customary at this point to make some kind of self critical comment about the destructiveness of the highly personal and adversarial politics in the UK. However I don't entirely feel that this is justified. The fact is that the high seriousness of the debate in, for example, Estonia can be rather wearisome. Only at election results time do politicians seem to let their hair down- and the sight of bottles of strong drink on the election programs is a sign that some home truths may be spoken. There are honourable exceptions, politicians who cultivate a slightly controversial or jokey image, but in general politics is a ponderous, serious, even cumbersome ...

I was pleased to see that Andrew Mitchell- the UK International Development Secretary- has increased the aid that the UK will be giving to Somaliland . As I have noted in previous blogs, Somaliland deserves success in its quest for international recognition, and I believe that the UK should be leading the way so that its former colony can at last take its place as a fully recognised member of the international community. As the impact of Piracy in neighbouring Puntland increases , it is more important than ever that the UK gives its support to the government in Hergeisa- and the visit by Andrew Mitchell is an extremely positive sign. Somaliland is a force for stability amid the wreckage of the former Somalia, and as the situation continues to be so unstable across the horn of Africa, giving both practical and -just as important- moral support to the freely elected government of Somaliland is a most welcome step. As an old colleague of Andrew's from my days at Lazard, I am pleased...

Estonia is often described as a "City State". It is not really true, after all -territorially- the country is quite large, about the size of Belgium or Denmark. Yet given that half of the 1.3 million population lives in Harju County- the area in and around the capital, Tallinn- it is clear that the country is quite urban and quite concentrated. Yet, away from Tallinn, there are only four cities over 70,000 people, so the rest is small towns, villages, farms and forests. Yet what we mean by a City is now being challenged by the staggering urbanisation taking place in China. There is now a proposal to link four or five already quite large cities around the Pearl River delta in Guangdong Province into a huge "mega-city" of nearly 50 million people . As in so many things, China is emerging as a pioneer. Urbanisation has been identified as something that provides net benefits to city dwellers, yet I for one can help feeling a little nervous about what this headlong dash...

I don' think it is too cynical to say that many, if not most, politicians sometimes misrepresent themselves. They try to deny things which they know may be true and they try to make their ideas or policies sound like more than they are. Spin and hype are the stock-in-trade of the political huckster. So far, so unsurprising. Recently, however, it has become clear that many politicians are not merely twisting the facts, they are actually totally ignorant of the facts. Over the past few weeks I have heard politicians suggest that the deficit and the the national debt are the same thing- the suggestion was that a fall in the deficit also leads to a fall in debt is a pretty fundamental error (of course a fall in the deficit only reduces the speed at which the debt is still rising). I have heard politicians saying that the deficit was 150 million (err... that should be roughly 150 billion ) and that this represented 6% of GDP. Since the GDP of the UK is roughly a trillion that is untrue...

As the potential Arab revolt rumbles on further, the events of last week in Russia have been forgotten by the media already. The "24 hour news agenda" by definition is not good at analysis or understanding. Yet the impact of the bomb at Domodedovo is still reverberating across the Russian body politic. It was a brutal and disgusting crime- and the bloody death toll and horrible injuries that the suicide bomber wreaked upon the innocent can only be condemned by any decent individual. There are no reasons and no excuses for the people responsible. Alas, that the failures of the Russian power structures have allowed the emergence of this kind of Al-Qaida inspired evil. As Wiki-Leaks revealed, the US assessment of Russia is that it is now entirely in the hands of contending, largely criminal, elites. A convenient simplification would be to say that power is divided up between different Mafia families, who have different interests in different industrial sectors and in different...

The History of Egypt over the last century has seen two major revolutions: one in 1919, which dispatched the British as direct overlords, and one in 1952 which dispatched the monarchy. When I heard that the flag of 1919 was being waved in Egypt again, I began to realise that the prospects for the Mubarak government are not looking good. They are being very foolish to arrest Mohamed El- Barradei - he may be the only way that the regime can escape with its life. Once the bazaars are pulsating with this much anger, it could be that the regime does not merely pass away, but totally disintegrates, and the breakdown of order in a country as important as Egypt is no small thing. The regime may think that be switching off the Internet and e-mail that it can prevent a revolution - this is surely folly: few revolutions in the past had such tools, but they were still successful. Egypt's revolution could still be determinedly non hi-tech and it might yet be completely successful, with today...

Politicalbetting.com this week pointed out that the succession of Ed Balls to the position of Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer marks the final triumph of the SpAd - the political special advisor. Now virtually all of the key positions on the front benches of both the Government and the Opposition are filled with professional politicians- who know no other life outside of politics. In fact the political clique is even narrower than you might think, since in order to obtain the unpaid jobs at the foot of the political ladder, there is a minimum degree of wealth required. It is not an accident then, that so many of the political leaders of Britain come from a privately educated background. The political class- in Peter Oborne's memorable phrase - is also a narrow social elite. "The Establishment", in the shape of the public schools, has recovered a level of control over politics that would have been regarded as unthinkable just a couple of decades ago. Not just in politi...

The UK's CPI annual inflation rate rose to 3.7% in December 2010. The RPI- which includes mortgage payments- rose to 4.8%. The Bank of England continues to hold the Bank rate at a record low of 0.5%, while issuing over £200 billion of reserves to pay for asset purchases. The banking system is being bailed out by a negative interest rate of close to 4%. Yet to pay for this the United Kingdom has created record public sector deficits. According to the ONS, at the end of November 2010 total public debt- not counting the interventions to recapitalise the banking system- was £863.1 billion, or to put that into context, 58% of GDP. The current cost of those additional interventions is not small. It is currently estimated to be about another £850 billion, and although it is highly unlikely that the eventual total cost will be more than 10% of this number, for the present it is a sum that still requires to be financed for the next several years. Total UK public sector debt is therefor...

I don't lose too much sleep over the sordid and trashy life of Katie Price. I do think she is an appalling example to youngsters who may wish to ape her expensive "glamorous" lifestyle. Yet now, I am utterly sick of seeing endless stories from "friends of" and "sources close to" on the subject of the latest car crash in her life- in this case the end of yet another of her marriages, just a few months after the vulgar wedding- recorded, naturally, in the gossip sheets and scandal rags after payment of a large fee for the pictures. However it is not so much her own staggeringly immature and nasty behaviour that disgusts me, but the willingness of the press to regurgitate her press releases on subjects that should be totally private. Katie Price has one overwhelming talent: she attracts huge attention from a certain section of media. The vulgar, immoral, trashy, callous media. As another round of "he said/she said" goes around, I am reminded o...

There has been an awful lot of political cant offered up as argument concerning bankers bonuses. The high rates of pay in the City of London and on Wall Street are so far ahead of the average that politicians are more or less required to be critical, bearing in mind that the average voter earns so many times less than the average banker. Nevertheless, as a banker myself, I think that the compensation offered to bankers is no longer linked to performance- it is a simple lottery. Once upon a time, bankers were entrepreneurs. Partners in their firms, they were prepared to risk their own capital and to back their judgement with their own money. Later, banks became joint stock companies, and the image of the sober-sided, respectable and responsible bank manager of the mid-20th century marked out banks as stable, prudent and safe. Of course, even for commercial banks this was not strictly true, and bankers risk models- focussed on bell curves and other fictitious ideas rarely achieved the re...

One of the prime reasons that Iain Dale gave up blogging was, he stated, "I hate the backbiting that goes along with it. I hate the character assassination that is permanently present" I am afraid that the symptoms that Iain rails against are part of a larger and more serious disease that is poisoning the whole of British politics. The fact is that it is increasingly impossible to conduct any political discussion without violent accusations of bad faith, treachery or greed. The "politics of envy" has morphed into some kind of twisted "envy of politics". It is shown in a violent hostility towards anyone who expresses an opinion. The latest example is a hate campaign against Billy Bragg , the singer and left wing political activist. I read Billy Bragg's book, The Progressive Patriot and although I did not agree with all of it, it struck me as a sincere attempt to express a personal view of the English radical tradition. It is a thoughtful and rather ch...

The turning of the year, and indeed the decade, was more than usually symbolic here in Tallinn. 2011 marks Tallinn's turn, together with the Finnish city of Turku, as the European Capital of Culture. Given the relatively small size of the city- just 450,000- even in normal times Tallinn is a very culturally rich place to be: several international film festivals, a large amount of theatre, a wide variety of music, street performance, open air concerts and so on. This, coupled with a number of high quality museums ensures that there is always something to see and do. Tallinn may be relatively small, but it is a capital city- and it feels like it too. The events of 2011 so far seem quite low key, but I am certainly looking forward to the opening of the refurbished maritime museum in the former seaplane port- with the vast concrete hanger providing new indoor exhibition space. Yet it is not just the promise of a culturally rich year that makes 2011 a special year for Estonia. The fin...

A Happy Holiday to all our readers.

After my comments yesterday about the determined attack on the Liberal Democrats coming from the right just as much as from the left, the scale of the moral rot at the Daily Telegraph becomes a little more shocking every day. After the theft of confidential information which exploded the MPs expenses scandal- which was illegal, but where prosecution was not undertaken, because the story was deemed to be in the public interest- the Telegraph got two of its associates to pose as constituents in order to gain private comments from Vince Cable about the coalition. It now appears that the newspaper then tried to suppress the most incendiary comments- about Rupert Murdoch- because the views that Dr. Cable was expressing were in the commercial interests of the Barclay brothers- the secretive tax exile proprietors of... the Daily Telegraph . OK, so Robert Peston then leaked the real story, but it seems pretty clear that the Telegraph should be facing some very real questions about their own...

The Daily Telegraph, as a right wing Conservative newspaper, has shown no loyalty to the coalition. Their columnists, from Simon Heffer , to the increasingly foam flecked Ambrose Evans Pritchard preach a gospel of right wing cant that is definitely at odds with the more forgiving ethos of Coalition politics. The fact is that as much as in the Labour Party, there are many Conservatives who are bitterly opposed to the idea of political partnership- so it is no surprise that the Telegraph launched a sting against Vince Cable. He fell into the trap- foolishly- and has paid the severe political price of public humiliation. However the question is cui bono ? As the opinion polls show a slight but widening lead for the YES vote in the AV referendum next year, I fear that there will be ever further dirty tricks played against the liberal Democrats in order to derail the process and even destroy the coalition itself. Unless the Lib Dems can get PR for a newly elected Lords and at least AV f...