Before Digital Britain can arrive, the old analogue powers are going to have to be placated or assured they will be able to keep their traditional share of the money pie. Top-slicing the BBC’s license fee seems to be one of the chosen methods for struggling broadcasters and publishers. More independent and proactive media business people will have had other ideas.
Obviously, would-be prime minister’s have a key role in facilitating this sort of thing.
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Today I am launching The Devil’s Guide to iT. Old Nick, the Antichrist, is employing me to help offer a business advice service for anyone who uses computers, systems technology and IT in their mortal lives. The service, which is fronted by the evil littleIT offers a huge range of guidance, tips, tricks and expert technology advice on all aspects of using, buying, selling, making and running the rather hellish IT.
Much of the Devil’s knowledge is free to anyone who visits Hell and you will find these little helpers in the Outer Circles of Hades. Other more valuable secrets are only available to those visitors who cross his palm with a subscription which will allow them to enter the Inner Circles.
Every subscriber belonging to the Devil gets weekly expert advice and business intelligence which is published every Wicked Wednesday. This contains content from IT’s 666 reasons to buy the Devil’s Guide and the forthcoming jargon buster.
I’ll be blogging about the Devil’s doings as and when I supply content to the poor, tortured souls who register and subscribe. Of course, the Devil’s Little helpers hope it will be a useful service which allow us a longer living too.
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Later today it is quite possible the Bank of England will choose to invent a lot of money again. This is to help supply ‘liquidity’ or, credit to the UK’s national economy. The process is called Quantitative Easing – and you can read the BoE’s explanation of what they are doing here. The amounts of money they are prepared to ‘print’ (metaphor) or, create with a computer may be as much as £50Bn.
< – Hang on, there’s a fun bit coming – >
The UK has already spent £175Bn doing this since March of 2009 as the full effects of the banking and financial crash became apparent.
The whys and wherefores of these processes are apparently, complex, but they do all stem from our history and from one story in particular. It is a tale about a Scottish adventurer called John Law and his time in France at the start of the 1700s. A very clever Canadian filmmaker called Richard Condie made a film about Law’s story in 1978. I think it is still great now and I recommend you spend (geddit) ten minutes of your day watching and listening to the story about the man who invented paper money for us all.
Updated at 12.30pm: The Bank has announced it will extend the process of quantitative easing by another £25Bn. Larry Elliott of The Guardian has the story here.
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The Guardian is running a live blog on the market reaction to the government’ second bank bailout here.
Updated 15.25: The FT analyses what has happened to the Royal bank of Scotland, formerly the world’s biggest bank, here. The most interesting point is the almost complete (and effective) nationalisation of the institution in the thirteen months since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
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We will continue to lead the world out of recession by sackingthousands of bank staff – and giving some more of their money to the people who are making the redundancies on our behalf.
Tomorrow we will talk about how the parliamentary wage system prevents our elected representatives from being properly rewarded for their hard work after Sir Christopher Kelly makes his report.
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister are due to announce a second ‘bail-out’ of the part-nationalised banks this week. The Daily Telegraph has the story here.
The following quote is lifted from the Telegraph’s story.
The Chancellor has agreed to spend about £25 billion buying more shares in Royal Bank of Scotland and £5.5 billion on new shares in Lloyds Banking Group.
The men who will control (in theory) the spending of this public money are Sir David Cooksey and Robin Budenberg (link to pdf download.) Both work for UKFI (UK Financial Investments,) the holding organisation set up by the government after the first credit crunch of September 2008. The sole shareholder for UKFI is HM Treasury (ie.the government.) You can see which current bank debts and liabilities the government currently owns at UKFI’s site here.
The archive cartoon below is from the early part of 2009.
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A recent commission on the continuing mission in Afghanistan. These two links from the BBC and The Times on today’s attack on the UN (United Nations) are depressing. The attack reminds me of the 2003 bomb blast in Iraq which destroyed the UN HQ at the Canal Hotel. That attack killed Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the Special Representative and 22 others there. The UN withdrew from Iraq shortly afterwards.
Updated 29th October 2009: Boston’s Big Picture have some photographs from the government military operation on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border here.
