"Crazy Cow Attacks Farmer"

Emailed in by Sackerson from Iceland Review:

"I thought my days were numbered,” stated María Jóhannsdóttir, cattle farmer at the farm Kúskerpi in Skagafjörður, North Iceland, after being attacked by a cow, which was about to calve, RÚV reports…

“I walked to her and then she started mooing loudly and threw me to the floor. She stepped on me and banged her head against me and held me there for about ten minutes while I tried to stand up,” María recounted.

Finally, María got to her feet, sore and in pain. “I was able to lean against a rail which is a meter up on a concrete wall, and I could hang on to it. She kept going and I was so overcome and exhausted that I thought my days were numbered, right there.” María held on to the rail for another ten minutes while the cow kept attacking and even bit her. She finally managed to get out of the stall.

“I was completely finished, and I had fainted there, where we feed the cows. I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t. Then my grandchild arrived… and asked if something was wrong. I told her to get help, to tell grandpa I was hurt.”

María was transported by ambulance to Akureyri. She considers herself lucky not to be seriously injured. No bones are broken, but she’s bruised all over. The cow has been calm since it calved. María reports that in her 33 years as a cattle farmer, such a thing has never occurred to her, although cows are known to act aggressively when they are close to calving, especially if they’re outdoors.

“No, I’ve never encountered such incredible wickedness, but then, again, the stable is brand new, and maybe the stable disturbed her, or these new surroundings,” María suggested.

Ideas for blog posts

Here are a few things which I've scribbled down on bits of paper over the past few days which I vaguely intended to 'blog about at the time but never really got round to it. So as an aide memoire for the future:

1. The normally prudish Sun newspaper showed a Page Three girl who was wearing invisible underwear as advertised by Bar Refaeli.

2. Porn shops in Westminster won a refund/reduction of hefty licensing fees from the council, because they contravened EU Directive 2006/123/EC, which seems like quite a sensible directive on the face of it. All of this raises a lot of interesting questions (economic, legal, sovereignty etc). How do we square Article 12 with licensing of taxi drivers, for example?

3. Supposed right-wing Tory John Redwood musing about how nice it would be if we could go back to the lower tax rates we had when the Chancellor was... Gordon Brown (top rate income tax 10% lower, National Insurance 2% lower, VAT was 2.5% lower etc).

4. The UK is not absolutely useless at everything: shock Britain exports more vehicles than it imports for first time since 1976

5. It appears that they are going to make people criminally liable for death and injuries caused by their dogs, something which I have long advocated.

6. Tory government is close to achieving its pre-election pledge of getting construction of new housing in England down to less than 100,000 a year for the second year running. With the rain stopping play during April and all the Olympic and Jubilee ructions, I'm sure they'll get it down to five figures for the next year. Hoorah! The Hallowed Green Belt is Preserved For Future Generations! But not to build homes on, obviously - just think, instead of having a house with a rental value of £10,000 a year, we could be growing £100's worth of potatoes or something.

7. Queues at Heathrow. FFS. When you think how much human effort and ingenuity it takes to run global air travel: the aeroplanes, the technology, the staffing rotas, coping with the weather, air traffic control, difficult passengers, getting people's luggage on the right aeroplane, killing as few passengers as possible, guarding against terrorist attacks etc, it is amazing how well it works, really. And the UK government can't even organise a few dozen people to sit in booths, open passports, check the face, hold it face down on a scanner and mutter "Enjoy your stay" while chewing gum.

8. I explained recently why the building society funding model, where a company's assets are matched £ for £ with customer/owner deposits instead of shares is a vastly superior way of running a business than having share capital. So instead of a shareholder being paid dividends at the whim of directors; investing in a company by buying shares from an existing shareholder and realising his investment by selling his shares to a third party; a depositor invests directly in the business and withdraws money from the business.

It occurred to me today that this model is also used by Unit Trusts: a UT's net assets are always funded £ for £ by unit holders' funds: you invest in a UT by paying in money, which is invested on your behalf (in shares in other companies, but that is not important), all the income and gains of the UT are credited pro rata to unit holders as they go along, and if you want your money back, you withdraw it from the UT itself, and to the extent that withdrawals are not matched with new subscriptions, the UT just sells some of the underlying assets. So the model does work in real life, it's nothing new or unusual.

9. While looking for something else, I stumbled across a couple of instances of Austin Mitchell MP saying sensible things about Council Tax, e.g. here and here. And about London.

10. UK banks not completely dishonourable: shock RBS repays £163bn emergency loans

11. BobE emailed me this fine piece of Home-Owner-Ist drivel from guess which paper:

Regardless of where you are on the income scale, nobody could ever call your decision to buy a house irresponsible – whatever happens, you need somewhere to live, and swingeing rents usually represent far worse value. For low-earning households to have avoided mortgage debts, they would have had to actively decide to stick with renting; that is, to pay the same, for a worse property that they'd never have any equity in, just on the off-chance that, as a result of a possible downturn, they might be dragged down by the debt. What a bizarre thing to expect of people, when you're preaching a can-do, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, aspirational Tory attitude.

12. Jorge emailed to ask whether I thought Iceland should adopt the Candian dollar, I can't say I have a view on that one way or another.

13. Finally, is it just me or do Natalia Vodianova's legs look completely out of scale (in a bad way) in this photo from today's Evening Standard?

Kerry Katona on top form!

From The Soaraway Sun:

FUMING Kerry Katona has backed Stacey Solomon smoking while pregnant... The ex-Atomic Kitten and Iceland ads star refused to accept the cigs could have harmed an unborn baby. She said: "Let's be honest, Stacey's smoking Silk Cut — it's not even a real cigarette."

... Kerry, who is also a former Mum of the Year, said her own doctor had done the same thing. She said at London's swanky Tric Awards: "I got the same stick Stacey got. I smoked during pregnancy, two to three a day. My doctor said, 'If it's stressing you out don't panic, because smoking isn't as harmful as stress'."

Why depositors are powerless and why bank bail outs make things worse.

Two related issues came up at post-film discussion yesterday where people's thinking appears to be a bit confused, so for the benefit of anybody who's interested:
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1. There is a theory that if a lot of depositors ganged up and all withdrew their money from a bank on a particular day, then if more than ten per cent of deposits were withdrawn, they could bring the bank to its knees (in which case depositors would demand, what? Higher interest rates on their savings?), see e.g. Cantona's Cashpoint Revolution.

Most people ignored Cantona, but what if they hadn't? Well, it would have been a good old fashioned bank run like on Northern Rock, and the government would have just stepped in and lent the bank(s) the spare cash.

Remember that people would have to withdraw their savings in cash (merely taking it from one bank account and putting it in another achieves very little), and a bank note is just an interest free loan that you are making to the government (it is your financial asset and the government's financial liability).

Therefore the government can easily provide loans to banks which are equal to the cash withdrawn. Before the depositors' strike we have this position:

Banks -> owe £ billions to - > people with cash in the bank

And afterwards, we end up with the following:

Banks -> owe £ billions to -> government -> owes £ billions to -> people with 'cash under the mattress'.

If people are too worried about being burgled, they will put their saving in the safest place possible, i.e. the government-run National Savings & Investments, which makes the picture even clearer.
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2. Why don't savers demand higher interest rates? Well, they do, I suppose, but the banks aren't offering them and that is the end of that. It is a cartel which has most successfully managed to widen its profit margins after the downturn, because the banks know (or have good reason to believe) that if they can't get enough money from savers or bond investors, they can borrow it cheaply from the government (and they have done, in spades).

I mean, why would a retailer bother paying a supplier £100 per unit if the government were offering them for £50 each?
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3. As I tried explaining before, the politicians claim that they are bailing out the banks to 'protect savers' money' which is hokum, of course.

The analogy I used was a bit left field, so let's assume that Farepak is a bank and they have managed to lose four-fifths of their savers' money, or £400 per saver.

Now, let's assume that the government had previously enacted a law saying that Xmas club savings accounts were guaranteed by the government/taxpayer, and Farepak went *pop*. Does it make more sense for the government to:

a) Give the savers directly the £400 they lost (or whatever higher or lower amount an individual saver lost) and have done with it (chasing Farepak and its directors for any shortfall), or

b) Give or lend all that money to Farepak on the condition that they fulfil their pledges and promise to play nicely in future?

I'd submit that (a) makes more sense but in most cases, governments around the world have chosen (b). Very few governments allowed banks to collapse and agreed to pay some compensation to savers (method (a), which worked a treat for Iceland) and other countries who are a bit more clued up (and not in cahoots with bankers) have asked their banks to sort themselves out via debt-for-equity swaps (Denmark, and rather bizarrely, Northern Rock in the UK after three years' wrangling), but these examples are few and far between.

Obviously, the government doesn't guarantee your money if it's with a Xmas club and you might not agree with the law guaranteeing your money up to £85,000 if it's in a bank, that's a separate issue.
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4. So there we have it. There is precious little we can do because the government will thwart us at every turn, using our money to do so.

And the underlying reason why 'they' have us by the short and curlies is because they know and we know that the only way to keep house prices at double their true value is by continually pumping in money via the banking system, so while we curse and swear at bankers and their bonuses, this is about as much use as Catholics complaining about priests abusing children.

Until we abandon this thinking that high house prices make us richer, there will always be bankers and politicians ready to exploit this for personal gain, and as long as there are Catholics who believe in their church as an institution, there will be people who abuse that trust, end of.

"UK concern over EU plan for new migrant benefit rights"

This particular downside of EU membership, i.e. that Johnny Foreigner is entitled to turn up in the UK demand a council house and sign on the dole, has been a latent problem for a decade (and I've been mumbling about it ever since I did EU law on my LLB course), but is now coming to the fore. Heck knows why the EU want to extend this to EEA members like Iceland and Norway (who are not in the EU).

As regular readers may know, I am thoroughly in favour of 'Universal Benefits', but one caveat has always been that it's for UK-resident British Citizens only; Johnny Foreigner is only entitled once he has lived here legally and supported himself financial for five or ten years [or whatever] and has qualified for a British passport under the usual rules.

How to deal with British citizens who live abroad, especially with regard to old age pensions, is a thorny - but separate - issue.

Iceland shows how it's done

Ireland is showing us exactly how not to do it. It's instructive to compare that with Iceland (the country, not the supermarket), who were/are in a similar mess following the bursting of the credit bubble. They made the best of a bad job and:

a) Resisted the siren calls (i.e. blunt threats) of the EU.

b) Told the bond holders in Icelandic banks to get stuffed. Very briefly, they ranked ordinary depositors ahead of bond holders, so the little people got their money back and bond holders got very little. That includes a lot of UK local councils, so that's our money we're losing, but hey; we can take all the stupid local council finance guys to court for misuse of public funds, but short of invading, there's not much we can do about the con artists in Iceland; that's up to the Icelandic government to sort out.

The article also mentions that "creditors took control of Straumur, the fourth-largest Icelandic bank", which is another way of describing a debt-for-equity swap, and is the normal way of dealing with these situations.

"Cows to power data centres"

This isn't a 'cow attack' story as such, but interesting/terrifying* nonetheless. After a few paragraphs of eco-wibble, the best bit is at the end:

Power and cooling for data centres has evolved into a major environmental and cost issue for many companies, as more and more data is collected and held. Other green ideas include making use of sustainable energy sources like wind or waves, or locating them in colder places for natural cooling**.

* Delete according to personal prejudices. Those bovines are smarter than they look: once we're all hooked up to cow-power, who's to say that they won't just go on hunger strike and bring the world grinding to a halt?

** UPDATE: Anti Citizen One links to an article of January 2010 titled Iceland Gets Major Data Center Project.

More EU-Ashcloud fun

I live and learn. When I wrote this post I assumed that the EU already controlled air traffic, albeit indirectly via Eurocontrol (which is not an EU institution).

Whether they do or don't, they've now got a brilliant excuse to go on the safe side and do it directly, as the BBC explains:

Flights over Europe were banned for six days last month because of fears of the effect of volcanic ash on plane engines. The decision to lift the restrictions followed safety tests that showed the engines could cope in areas of low density ash.

The fresh disruption comes as European Union transport ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss ways to improve air traffic management in the wake of last month's events. Last week a spokeswoman for EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said that had there been more co-ordination at EU level, air traffic could have resumed up to three days earlier.

Nice work! First, get Eurocontrol to ban flights for far longer than was absolutely necessary, and then announce to the world in general that had the EU been in charge, the ban would have been lifted much sooner, ergo, the EU should be in charge. Never let a crisis go to waste.

Simples.

More Volcano Fun

From The Metro:

So Iceland goes bankrupt and then manages to set the island on fire. It's got 'insurance scam' written all over it. Jenni, London SW2.

If one more person [tells] me a volcano joke, I'm going to erupt. Niall Finn, Sheffield.

And, last but not least...

Andrew Wilkinson takes issue with people who moan about the noise of aircraft flying over their houses, saying they had a choice when they moved there (Metro, Wed). I agree but when I moved I didn't imagine the volume of aircraft would increase so hugely.

Also, I can't sympathise with those stranded people who used a form of transport that many believe will lead to more frequent volcanic eruptions.

C Tritton, London W4

The old ones are...

From The Metro:

I was going to tell a joke about volcanoes, but do you think it's best to wait until the dust settles?

KL, Lanarkshire

What would you do if you were he?

Much to the dismay of some Guardian readers, Michael O'Leary is refusing to stump up compensation for hotels, steaks and San Miguels for stranded Ryanair passengers. The EU regulations couldn't be clearer about the fact he should cough up though. They also provide that:

"The sanctions laid down by Member States for infringements of this Regulation shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive."

'Equalityforall' over on CIF seems to think so too:

"If they refuse to comply with pertinent legislation, their license should be revoked. I hope the EU bankrupts them and their boss should be jailed."

Well, Mr O'Leary has challenged the Irish regulators to do just that, hasn't he? Then let's hope they've implemented a more "effective" sanction than the UK has. If the Civil Aviation Authority have a crack over here, the maxiumum fine Ryanair can expect is a very "dissuasive" £5,000. The Guardian quotes O'Leary as saying: "...why exactly are the airlines expected to be reimbursing people's hotels, meals and everything else when the governments are the ones who made a balls of this?"

Quite.

Eyeful o' yokel

Fun Online Polls: Planning, Iceland, The Prince of Darkness

A big thank you to everybody who took part in last week's poll. 86% thought that we'd end up richer "If we allowed more housing, roads, railways, factories and power stations to be built in the UK.", as against 14% who thought we'd end up poorer. Sadly, those 14% probably represent a vast majority of UK voters. Ah well.

I was going to do a Fun Online Poll on whether we should declare war on Iceland, but Ross beat me to it, so please cast your vote over at his.

Following the Hoon/Hewitt shenanigins, Mandy was back on Newsnight this evening, which prompts this week's poll question: "Who is the real Prince Of Darkness?". Candidates are Ozzy Osbourne and Peter Mandelson.

Cast your vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Iceland & democracy

This whole "Iceland reneging on its promise to refund UK and Dutch governments for the money it refunded its own savers" story seems to have split opinions somewhat:

John B sums up the facts neatly (as ever, you can seldom fault him for factual inaccuracy) and concludes: "If that’s democracy, screw it."

Witterings links to this via this and concludes: "Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work? Politicians say yes, people say no - people win. Simples."

To be fair, the missing bit is that UK taxpayers didn't have a say in the UK government's decision to bail out these frankly reckless 'savers' in the first place, but hey. To my mind the fight is between these savers and Icelandic banks; there was no overriding need for governments or taxpayers to get involved in the first place. The people in charge of local councils' investment policies who risked taxpayers' money in this way ought to be sued for negligence or misuse of public funds or something.

Outsmarted and outgunned

Christina Speight emailed round an article from EUObserver headed Concern over Iceland EU bid as public support tanks.

I pointed that although I could see why Iceland might need a navy, I couldn't understand the public's sudden enthusiasm for tanks.

A couple of hours later, I received her reply: "To put the fish in of course!"

D'oh!

Separated at birth*?

Keir Hardie, Scottish socialist, and Geer Haarde, Icelandic PM until a couple of weeks ago:


* Not literally at birth, obviously, as they were born ninety-five years apart. But just look at the wonky left eyebrow ...

"Ukraine granted $16.5bn IMF loan"

That's £215.64 for each Ukrainian.

And whence does the IMF get its money? From its members of course; the G7 countries chip in 44.47% of the total.

The UK's quota is 4.86%, so that means that the UK taxpayer has now unwittingly lent Iceland and Ukraine* half a billion quid. These loans are presumably the first of many, I expect to see far more of this over the next few months.

Query: how can we become wealthier by lending each other money via an unaccountable supra-national non-commercial bank? Thanks but no thanks. AFAIAC the IMF is yet another of these self-serving bureaucracies that England ought to leave.

* Which sadly dropped the 'The' when it left the Soviet Union.

On Iceland

AFIAA, Obnoxio was the first to pick up the story about our gummint using anti-terror legislation against Icelandic banks, which has now gone mainstream.

Be that as it may, and whatever the mechanics, this illustrates the basic principle that I outlined back in February:

"if unfriendly foreign governments (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia) invest in your country, then they haven't got you over a barrel: you've got them over a barrel."

To cut a long story, Icelandic banks were taking deposits from UK citizens and councils, lending them to Icelandic buy-out groups, who in turn used the money to buy up The High Street. All we are doing now is unravelling that process.