From 'Not A Sheep': In 2003 [Trevor Phillips] wrote an article where he said "from Rome, through Constantinople to Venice and London, our (European) nations have a history of peacefully absorbing huge, diverse movements of people, driven by war, famine and persecution; and there is no history of long-term ethnic segregation of the kind one … Continue reading We have the statistics. Why not consult them?
Banditry
From Alex - yup, I think I agree with every word of this. Also, please, please, please sack the walking corpse...
Via the Grauniad blog, this is quite fun - the Great Bear redone to illustrate Shakespeare characters...
People have been blethering on about the 'moral hazard' created by government deposit insurance for banks. Unfortunately, they're idiots. Deposit insurance *does not* encourage financial institutions' shareholders to invest in risky assets, because it doesn't prevent the shares from losing all their value when the risky assets go tits-up and the company goes bust. Since … Continue reading Northern Rock and moral hazard
What kind of loony keeps more than £35k in savings accounts with a single bank? NB if you're reading this and you have more than £35k in savings accounts with a single bank, you should immediately transfer the balance over £35k to a different bank. There is no sane reason not to do this, and … Continue reading On that whole Northern Rock thing
#1: I'm the top hit on Google Hong Kong for "senior accounting partner glamorous life". Hurrah! (note: I'm not a senior accounting partner, despite my glamorous life). #2: a right-wing nutcase (with the amusing trait of pretending not to be right-wing, which is easier to do if you oppose extra-judicial punishment beatings) is trying to … Continue reading Two exciting data points
Ignore the pointless new wi-fi iPhone-with-no-phone device (although it'll serve as a good badge of 'who is a tosser'). The truly excellent news is that a 160gb iPod is soon to be available. I reckon that'll last me at least another year of music... Unrelatedly, I've got another Sharpener piece up about the Tube strike … Continue reading 160? We like
What do you do when someone who you think, but aren't sure, was the older brother of your classmate at primary school (who you haven't seen in 15 years) gets horribly murdered in a gangland shooting? Asking on Friends Reunited seems rather inappropriate - indeed, given the utter lack of relevance to my actual life, … Continue reading New social dilemmas of our time #232
...nonetheless, I'm delighted to hear that Boeing's oh-so-clever, oh-so-globalised, not-like-those-silly-Europeans approach to developing the 787 has run into trouble. Hopefully the damn thing will never fly...
Accounting isn't a topic of wide general interest. Nonetheless, accounting professor Prem Sikka's CIF piece on the International Accounting Standards Board is one of the more bizarre and surreal things that I've ever read. The point of International Accounting Standards is to ensure comparability of accounts of companies that report their financial results in different … Continue reading In which the ‘exciting content’ meter hits a new low