pinkpapers

© 1991 William Franklin

The appeal lodged with the European Court under Protocol No. 7 to the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, ETS 117, which entered into force four days before Guy Fawkes Day in November 1988 argues that the granting of the original Shoot To Kill Order was illegal and disproportionate.

The substantive grounds for this appeal are that the bluebird could have been removed from the Endangered Species Register whenever such removal suited the Government’s fancy. Assassination was thus a violation of the bluebird’s rights as argued by Mr Peter Singer in the case of Regina vs. Jeremy Fisher and upheld by Her Majesty’s House of Lords on the advice of counsel for the League Against Cruel Sports

In the appeal, the counsel for the plaintiff also raised a number of concerns with regard to the judge’s summing up. These centred on the allegation of incitement and the failure of the judge to direct the jury appropriately on the legal nature of ornithological oratory.

The appeal also cites deficiencies and inaccuracies in the judge’s presentation of the arguments concerning the diminished responsibility of the bluebird at the time of learning the alleged defamatory statements and at the time of their alleged delivery.

Furthermore the relevant sections of the law against incitement is only available in French and the bluebird, as a native speaker of a low-class patois spoken in the Dallas-Fort Worth regions of Texasland, could not reasonably be expected to be aware of any prohibition relating to the alleged defamatory sounds.

Phonetically the two principal sounds can be described as ‘ge-ta-ro-pe’ and han-g-theba-stards. Initially the emphasis would be placed on ‘ro-pe’ and ‘han-g’. However after the third or fourth consecutive utterance, the bird sometimes shifted emphasis from ‘han-g’ to ‘theba-stards’. Notwithstanding, any similarity to sounds bearing any defamatory meaning is purely coincidental.

On the advice of legal counsel, citing the Broadcasting Act of 1992, we are issuing the following incorrect statements, (one of which is intentionally misleading):

The bluebird was not dead but resting at the time of the original appeal application.
The alleged accidental discharge of an electromagnetic pulse is hearsay.
The alleged presence of cats in the vicinity at the time of the bluebird’s demise is hearsay.
Lloyd George knew very few fathers intimately which was not the case with mothers.
Hearsay and anecdotal evidence are deemed to be threats to national security.

In the light of the above, the alleged Shoot to Kill Order is not relevant to the case.

Facts that Not a Lot of People Know

The probability that ten thousand random economists can all be wrong in at least one thousand different ways has been estimated at 101.239%.

There is no truth in the rumour that Her Majesty’s Stationery Office has been moved to Brussels. The majority of the three thousand titles published by HMSO each year are, however, not made up in this country. A spokesperson for Eurostat was heard to mumble off the record that there were advantages to all the statistics being wrong in the same way.

My father is unlikely to have known Lloyd George. And despite the persistent rumours circulating around the offices of Lloyds Register, no written evidence has come to light suggesting that Lloyd George knew my father. Besides, the old goat would have preferred my mother.

John Bull is eleven thousand years old and came ashore off the last Troy ferry. Ridicule, he claims, is a deadlier weapon than abuse, particularly when set to music. John Bull has heard a few good ones in his time as some of his best friends were economists. How they suffered for their art.

 

Pink Ribbons on Grey Bunker by William Shepherd

 

Facts that Not a Lot of People Understand

Britons now own £ 221 billion of foreign shares and have another £ 47 billion in overseas banks plus a further £ 140 billion invested abroad directly. The UK is now the second largest nation for investing abroad.

In 1989 the visible trade deficit was £ 23.8 billion. Invisible exports paid for £ 4.7 billion of that and capital transfers into Britain by overseas investors accounted for a further net £ 4 billion.

In the 1989 Pink Book a mysterious balancing item of £ 15.1 billion appears. The previous year showed this at £ 8.14 billion with the 1987 item at £ 3.71 billion. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson explained that this figure largely represented exports which, for some reason, had not been included on the manifest.

Lloyds’ underwriting earnings fell from £ 678 million in 1988 to £ 196 million in 1989, while the rest of the insurance underwriting business had a setback from £ 593 million to £ 364 million.

Stockbrokers’ overseas commissions edged back to £ 880 million but remains below their peak, even though the lawyers have leaped ahead to contribute £ 350 million.

The Daily Telegraph of London Docklands made the following comment in its issue of 23^rd August 1990: ‘Perhaps the transfer of assets abroad reflects investors’ fears that Mr Major’s party may not be governing Britain for much longer.’

 

 

William Franklin does not write for The Economist, nor does he conduct interviews for The Spectator. Neither Geoffrey Archer nor Beatrix Potter are known to have been influenced by William Shepherd. Daniel Foe and Johnny Swift are dead. No one is being sought over the death of Cock Robin.

William Franklin was involved with William Shepherd’s only book The Rise & Fall of the Swedish Green Party (1982-1998), as he was sitting across the table writing Blue Moonwaves of Green Houses at the time. Bioth manuscripts were written halfway through the period, in 1990, so suffer, as all real predictions will, from error. Half of each is right and the other half is wrong. Future readers will have to sort that out among themselves. They are recommended under the bedclothes reading for teenagers in Uppsala, Baghdad, Bombay, Muscatine, Tallinn, Hong Kong, Krakow and the Isle of Dogs.

Once members of the Under-the-Bedclothes Club (UBCC) have figured out the right half and corrected the false records perpetrated by the wrong half, they might care…or not…to send details of their revisions on a postcard to 6 Stour Street in Canterbury. They will probably be able to do so.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that it is most unlikely that there will be a forwarding address for their postcards so they will end up in the County Incinerator. But then fifty years hence none of today’s storage devices will be readable. Decoding gadgets will be obsolete and then vanish into landfill sites.

Review copies are available free to good hackers from the Glastonbury Manuscript Library of Academic Inn Books as soon as the internet can provide adequate digital distribution. Alternatively, send a cheque for $250…adjusted for inflation, usury and exchange…if you wish to have a flutter on shares in the profits from one of the following titles:

Birmingham as Number One (1986)

Let The People Sing (1990)

The Protocols of the Elders of The Cinque Ports (1992)

The Tale of The Ancient Mariner (1996)

Franklin & Shepherd were last seen in South America with a bluebird on one of their shoulders. It was the start of a beautiful friendship. Application for a Shoot to Kill Order (STKO) has been refused on the grounds that the Norwegian Blue was either already dead or an endangered species (beautiful plumage). You may lodge an appeal with the European Court of Animal Rights. But you should be prepared to wait five decades for enabling legislation to pass through the European Parliament and a further three decades to clear the backlog.

In the event of the timely or untimely death or disappearance of Franklin & Shepherd, sealed instructions will be opened by their human rights lawyer and secret plans activated. You don’t know where the aforementioned lawyer lives.

Two Faced

William Franklin once worked for the man who caused great consternation among bird lovers by adopting the kingfisher as his company’s corporate logo. Two weeks later he quit his job…Sir Geoffrey not Mr William. It must have been something he said…Mr William not Sir Geoffrey. But a splendid ornithological specimen nonetheless.

Mr Shepherd must rank as the youngest professor of finance in the history of our proliferating global commerce faculties (PGCF) but, unlike his endoctored fellows, this meant that he knew the most important thing of all, namely that he didn’t know very much. This may be why he did not stick it out for long and disappeared back into the savannah from whence he came, mumbling words of wisdom like prostitution, getarope and hang the bastards.

William Shepherd has been sighted recently in the Baltic Bioregion, on the shores of an ancient Anglo-Norman lake they call La Manche; on the western landfall of the mighty North Atlantic Ocean in the vicinity of the Charles River; and somewhere up the Orinoco with a bluebird on his shoulder. He prefers village cricket to professional football and has never bid for Gary Lineker or Paul Gascoigne.

In the event of his timely or untimely death or disappearance in Shangri-la or the Rubber Rose Ranch in Dakota, Shepherd Manuscripts will flood the Shepherd Manuscript market. That wouldn’t do at all, would it? The only safe martyr is a living one. Meanwhile any half competent hacker under the age of thirty can get a look-see at the manuscripts free of charge at the Glastonbury Manuscript Library of Academic Inn Books.

William Shepherd had the amazing good fortune to get himself plucked from his suburban nest at the tender age of eleven plus and immediately presented by the citizens of the London County Council for a boarding school education in the County of Sussex. Upon completion of his Sussex formative years he was charged never to forget the great benefits that he had received and to enable others to enjoy the same advantage. He reckons he owes the good citizens of London a few.

 

There is design in the William Franklin universe. And Monty Python notwithstanding, there is a glimmer of intelligent life down here on earth. Suppression may be nine parts of the law, but the Force of Law will more than meet its match when it finally runs up against the Law of Force. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. What is good for the goose is probably joy unbounded for the gander.

Now I wouldn’t want to be the one to put too fine a point on it, but how is that little birdhouse in your soul? And lest you think some Manchurian Giants might have gotten to me and addled my brain, let me hasten to add that my brother braves the chalk face in Manchester’s inner city each day…and this paragraph is riddled with blue meanings.

Another thing you might like to know is that the interaction of all numbers other than nine creates the wave phenomenon of the self-invertible, self-inside-outable, octave increasing and decreasing pulsatively, four-foldedly & tetrahedrally and…it’s all there in Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics I and II. There’s more. Entropy is not random but is always one negative tetrahedron; happiness is a warm gun; and no reasonable person would expect to find the wellspring of reality in the geometry of thinking. So be unreasonable. Go for the high odds and the top improbables. Less competition.

Proverbial Talks are mere bees in the bonnet so reach for the sky and throw down your weapons. We paid for them with our taxes so start talking turkey instead of goose. And take the golden egg if it turns you on, while we claim back all that time you stole from us with your usuries and your labour companies and your enclosings and your clearances. We are tired of having our musical world greyed over your battalions of Blue Meanies.

 

© 1991 William Franklin

Bet you can’t guess how much money I’ve got in my bank account? I’ll tell you. £ 4 700. It’s not here of course. It’s overseas. Nudge, nudge, gnomes, Nazi gold, know what I mean, wink, wink, nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse. But that’s only a tenth of it. Shares. South Sea Bubblies. Funny paper. £ 22 100 in foreign shares. At market value, that is. My accountant told me.

“What market?” say I. “We live from day to day. And nobody buys on a Black Monday?”

“That’s as maybe,” says he, “but don’t rock the boat or you might topple the deck chairs and then where will you be with your £ 14 000 of direct investments?”

“Take your point,” say I. “With Davy Jones. Take your point.”

Pretty good eh? £ 40 800 stuffed away under foreign mattresses. And safe as houses, I’m told, with lots of crinkly little bits of paper with pink ribbons around them to prove it.

“Prove what?” say I to my lawyer.

“Why, prove we can send gunboats anywhere we want, seize any property we want from Johnny Foreigner, and do it whenever we want. As proof goes, that takes some beating. Real property comes from the barrel of a gun. That’s the power of the Force of Law.”

“Sounds more like the Law of Force, if you ask me.”

“And that is why nobody ever does.”

“Point taken,” say I “point taken.”

Well it’s no laughing matter, is it? That all adds up to £ 40 800. Enough to open a bank. Why, there must be upward of half a million pounds worth of promises to pay that I could spin out of that little lot. Anyone need to borrow a million? Usual debt and usury terms and conditions. Just sign here and pledge a couple of a million pounds worth of money and shares and real property into my safe keeping. No problem.

What about the Third World? They’ve got forests and sun and people and things. Or Iowa even. How about the Arabs with all that oil of theirs? Oh, other people have tried it already. Shame. How did it go? Well, if you say so. So we forget banking eh? Too risky. Are you sure we can afford to be so cavalier about this.? At fifteen percent that’s a nice steady income of £ 7 000 a year. Over the next fifty years that’ll do me very nicely, thank you. We can get all this without a bank and all that credit and multiplier nonsense? Jolly-dee I’m all for that. Real hard currency. Cash on the nail. A third of a million. Not a million of course. But who’s greedy? Call my bank manager and tell him I have got a third of a million in collateral and what’s he going to do about it? Hope you’ve got your figures right.

Everybody’s doing it, are they? Well if you say so. Brands is the latest wheeze. And then there’s that lark with roads and railways and land and property prices. Lies, damn lies, statistics and income predictions. Who wants geometric progressions when there are the powers that can be raised to the third and fourth degree?

Anyway what is it? What are you here for? Why do you always come to me with your problems? What about the current account? A trade deficit? You can’t be serious? Not even an incompetent nincompoop like you could manage that. The whole point is that nothing costs me anything. Nature does the cooking and all those automated Third World factories do the making. That’s what the International Market is all about. I thought you knew that. One dollar; one vote, and we decide who gets the dollars.

So we buy it ready made from the Third World, mark it up a bit…well yes sometimes quite a lot. Yes it could be as high as ten or twenty times. Oh do shut up! We ship the goods one way…and the paperwork some other way. Free trading is the expression, that’s right. Smuggling is what Third World countries like Colombia do and it’s not at all the same thing. Enough. Stop keep interrupting.

What problem? Selling? Well yes of course, but who in their right mind tries to sell to people who don’t have any money? Besides that’s what the banks are there for. To get the balance right. On the one hand they have to carry on with the excellent job they’ve been doing with their maldistribution of money. And on the other hand, they’ve got to make sure there’s money around to purchase all the junk we’ve got to sell them. No sales; no profits. Simple as that. Now what? What do you mean? It’s not quite that simple. Is that all you can ever say? Well if I don’t buy from the Third World where the hell do I buy from?

I buy biscuits from Bern? You accountants really have no grasp of business. I sell biscuits to Bern. You must be joking. Who authorised that? Well you can tell those clowns what they can do with their directives. And I don’t need you to tell me what free trade is all about.

We do? Both ways. Goodness me. That’s not bad at all. Coals to Newcastle. Has a good ring about it. But what about the bloody miners? Investing in nuclear power are they? Who told you that? How times have changed. None of that in my day. Down ‘t pit. Work for bloody bread. Bunch of freeloading softies. Don’t know what it is to do a good day’s work. We’ll see just how long they last, working hard over a three-hour lunch like I do, negotiating their fingers to the bone over the Scottish salmon, and then putting in the blackmail alongside the profiteroles.

Better strike that last bit, even though it’s all in Jeffrey Archer. No wonder she sees him as very much the last among equals. Fancy writing a book in which she loses the last election. Not quite the rules of the game according to Machiavelli.

What did you say? The Swedes? What about them? Lovely girls. We ship trees to Sweden? Sweden owns banana plantations in South America. How many bloody bananas can a few million people eat in a year? Got to fill up the holds after offloading the cars, huh? Makes sense. Anyway, whatever. Fix it! Just make sure not to mix the Colombian coal the street kids dig up with the cut flowers their mothers pick ‘n ship before dropping off the twig with pesticide poisoning. The next thing we know we’ll be distilling waragi in the back of unsold Volvo estates while eating humble pie and snorting cocaine at Wimbledon.

I don’t believe you said that. Only dumb economists believe in free markets. I’m a businessman. I’d trust my lawyers and my financial advisers before putting my trust in the market. The only sound market is a rigged market. Remember that and you won’t go far wrong. The trick is to make sure you’re on the side that’s doing the rigging. Nice job we did with that Alan Bond. Lent him the money to buy the pictures we were auctioning. Prices of those Van Gogh’s and Monets in our vaults just shot up. Pity the silly bugger went down under. But at least he had the decency to delay it until corporate balance sheets had been re-jigged so our loans started performing again.

So I have a trade deficit. £ 2 380. That’s peanuts. No problem. The £ 7 000 from all that foreign investment will take care of that. What do you mean it was only £ 870? Bloody crooks. Which bunch of pirates took the rest? It’s outrageous. I’ll get the law onto them. Come on, out with it. Who looted the rest? You haven’t been paying tax or giving money to charity or anything else damn stupid like that, have you?

How could it be worse than that?  £ 40 800 invested with a bunch of pesky foreigners and all I get is a lousy yield of two percent. What could be worse than that? Yes, yes, speculated. But don’t try to change the subject. Everything? What do you mean everything? You mean to tell me that this lousy rotten two percent includes everything that came in from abroad? The Bed & Breakfast for those Swedes; the money they paid me for letting them drive on my insurance; even the money they gave me for details about my tomato seed experiments?

You must be kidding. Tourism, insurance, banking and other services accounted for £ 470 of that. So that leaves me with £ 400 from my £ 40 800 of under the mattress holdings. You’re fired, the pair of you. And on the way out, if you see that Swiss chef, tell him that he’s fired too. And feel free to kick the cat. I’ll be having her put down anyway.

I didn’t catch that. You’re telling me that the £ 400 wasn’t even a return. Then what the hell was it? Speak up man! And it won’t help you doing a Uriah Heap routine and mumbling into your goatee. It was the capital transfers from overseas investors? Call it what you like, it’s daylight robbery whichever which way. Thank the good lord that the Swedes came through with some seed money or I’d really be left in the lurch.

Well out with it. Don’t just stand there. Where’s it all gone? Tell me what the devil’s been going on around here. And take that lame expression off your face. Nothing looks more ridiculous with a pin-striped suit. And none of your humbug. Keep it simple and keep it brief. Where did all the money go?

What? This can’t be real. There you are regular as clockwork, last day of every month, paying yourself all those fancy salaries with my hard-earned money, and then for the rest of the time you go strutting about, whip in hand, crying blue murder and extracting blood if all those silly numbers of yours aren’t properly collected. Then at the end of the month you spend millions of microseconds and millions more of my money spinning them all around in some mighty laundering machine that looks more like a tumble dryer every time I look at  it.

Finally after all that, after all the thousands and thousands of columns, and after all the hundreds and hundreds of absurd little pink ribbons stuffed away in your dusty little corner cupboards, all you can say is you don’t know. Let me have a look. Good one Cyril. You had me going there for a moment. Accountant’s joke I suppose. Get a fix on it eh? The Wheatsheaf in Purley? April of Seventy Five? Saloon Bar? Friday might? Spurs at home to Arsenal?

No problem. Any fool can see that. There you go. That number’s the same as that one. Everything adds up. It all agrees. So let me see now. Let’s have a look at the spending side. Here we are. There it is. There’s the big one. £ 1 510. Bet you were hoping I wouldn’t spot that one, weren’t you. Well, I’m not so new to this game that I can’t tell my debits from my credits.

So come on now. Out with it. What’s the big one? There’s my trade deficit of £ 2 380. And next door is my two percent of a return-which-is-not-a-return for £ 870, and there in between is the £ 1 510 that you’re going to tell me all about? What’s it say now? Who’s got the original? Staff not like it used to be? Never would have put up a smudged copy to the boss in my day. I’d stay up all night and retype it if I had to. Ah that’s better. Balancing item £ 1 510. So just what the devil does that mean?

Yes, yes, yes. So you’ve already told me you didn’t know. But you mean to tell me that when something doesn’t add up you accountants just throw in a line for the difference and call it Balancing Item? I’d have a little more respect for you if you had the guts to call it Bloody Great Big Cock-Up Number. Perhaps I should employ you for ten seconds at the end of each month to send off a little sheet of paper to my bank manager. Dear Sir, herewith enclosed one balancing item for £ 246.84p to cover my overdraft. Balancing item, my giddy aunt. What is it?

Yes, you told me. But I thought you were joking. I know you told me that you didn’t know. But nobody in their right mind really believes that somebody in charge of the church funds can watch over their disappearance without having some small inkling of who and whom, how and where, and why and whatever they might have gone. No, this can’t be serious. It must be one of those stiff upper lip oh-ho-ho-oh so funny very English Carlton Club rags. My balancing items earned me twice as much from nothing as my investments earned me at their lousy two percent. No I can’t take it anymore. Meeting adjourned. From now on invest in balancing item bonds. Bibs. Very appropriate.

What d’yer mean you have been? And for several years? Well good. Excellent. Carry on the good work. Why do I need to know? I’ve just adjourned the meeting. Well done. Good effort. Yes, yes, I’m proud to know that my investment in balancing items have doubled over the past year. And good, good, excellent, jolly well done boys. And that was a doubling on the year before? Clearly we are going from strength to strength. But let me see the numbers.

Yes how right you are. There they are smudged again. You don’t do this deliberately, do you? Balancing item: £ 371 in 1987, £ 814 in 198; and £ 1 510 last year in 1989. Tremendous growth rate. Is this all your doing Cyril? Onward and upward, eh what? How about next year? Have you got a figure I can release at the shareholders’ meeting next week? Touch and go with trade deficit, is it? Well, pays to be a little cautious with the projections. Uncertain future. Fragile business climate. Greenhouse effect and all that.

Might be a question, though. So tell me what happens when the BI goes ahead of the TD? Are we in some sort of economic meltdown mode? Or do we find ourselves up against some kind of financial sound barrier? Are the laws of work, wealth and happiness reversed when we pass through to the other side? Do our liquid balance sheets suddenly become just so much hot air? You don’t know. No I didn’t really think you would.

No, no, there’s no need to get our merchant banking friends to look into that. The truth of the matter is that neither you nor they can really be expected to understand the seriousness of the question. Clerks will be clerks and the gnomes have had their day. No, no, nothing. Just mumbling. Transcribe it if you will. Yes, yes, if you like. Just one of those Rose and Crown moments that come to us all. But add in parentheses, brackets to you, as beloved by the bards and troubadours of yore.

But I become much too self-indulgent. Tell me about yourself. Family well Cyril? Children doing fine? Tracey still working hard at the Windsor Polo Club? Good. Good. How does the year look from the stockbroker belt? Lawyers ahead year on year are they? Leaps and bounds? Done well since they started getting rid of oaths. Honour among thieves gives a whole new meaning to the word. Which word? Both of them. Public courts overrun with private disputes? Excellent. Get the public to pay. That’s what they’re for.

How about the finance boys? Setback in the underwriting business eh? Not surprised. Always thought that was a risky business. Wheeling and dealing with all those unpredictable balancing items. Not so easy to keep up appearances. It’s taken ‘em centuries building that façade of finance of theirs. Respectability. Nobility. Incorruptibility. Important part of the façade all that pillar of the community stuff. Life is a stage and we are the coachmen. Who’s mixing metaphors? Merely making it fit for purpose. My purpose.

Anyway get off your butts and look into it. I’m sure the PR boys can figure out a way to corner short-term Treasury BI Bonds? Well of course they don’t exist. That’s why it’s called financial engineering. The Severn Bridge wasn’t there before someone designed it and someone else built it? But remember, there’s no market like a rigged market. No market I know. So get some hackers in to give us a few trapdoors for trading out of the back office. Report on my desk by the end of the month. No, this month.

What’s the latest news about the stock broking scene? Holding up? Still plenty of big bangs? Was that what you said? No? Come again. Some tapping on the line. Probably the competition. That sounded quite swell. Oh I like that. Has a splendid ring to it. Edging back up. Floats me away to the Swiss Alps. The valleys far below, blue sky up above. The magnificence of the snow covered mountain peaks. Yes a fine turn of phrase. Cost me a bob or two though. Canterbury Wordsmiths. Write all my speeches. And they’re really good with the jokes. Probably got a book of them. We should buy them, set ‘em up in house or in Hong Kong or Bermuda, double the prices to cover the bank loans and sell their services to Johnny Foreigner. Make sure you get the rights to the jokes.

What about the copyright laws? Of course we believe in them. How silly can you get? What would we do without them? Laws are there to help us. How can we pursue power and property if we can’t strap patents and copyrights to everything that moves? Enclosures and clearances, monopolies and price cartels. That’s the modern way. And not so modern now I think about it. The way of commerce. Always has been. Fence off the commons, rein in the personal possessions and get the public purse to pay for our private property. In a nut shell, that’s what we capitalists do. But let’s get back to the point. Why did you call me? I called you? Bank balances and balancing items? I thought we were through with all that. You have your orders. Go to it.

Right. Here’s my understanding of what you’ve been telling me. I trust you have a one-page summary. Correct me if I’m wrong, and don’t interrupt. Capital transfers running at £ 400 a year and down from £ 700 last year. Invisibles down from £ 1 250 in 1986 to £ 610 in 1988 and £ 470 last year. That’s my idea of a bloody shambles. But no doubt this translates into your best Mandarin English as ‘a disappointing trend in recent years.’

However it won’t do for the shareholders. How about something like ‘performance continues in line with our major industrial competitors.’ Is it true? Who cares? Make it true. Prepare a fact sheet for the meeting. Invisibles continued to outperform the economies of East Germany, Monrovia and the Seychelles. That should be good for an extra fifteen seconds on the standing ovation. Hope you’ve got a good man looking after that. Clare? Who’s she? Has she done any like this before? Does the Labour conferences eh? Nobody writes critical essays after a Nuremburg Rally, although knowing the extent of their unbalanced items didn’t seem to help the Nazis when they got caught between the American push and the Russian shove. Now I thought you agreed not to interrupt.

Enough of the chit-chat. Get out there and start kicking arse. Tell everybody to do something about this fiasco. It’s not good enough. Heads will roll. Bonuses will be cut. You ask me what fiasco. How the devil should I know? That’s your department. That’s what I pay you for. My job’s to give you the mood. So make that ‘savage cuts’.

Get those toffs out of their leather armchairs at the Carlton Club and tell them to come up with some mergers and acquisitions for next year. We’re going to need some off balance sheet shenanigans. Brands, good will, arbitrary market valuations, stock write-offs, that sort of thing. Just make sure that any firm that gets the slide rule treatment uses our accountants. Sweet talk goes only so far and then the pension funds get restless. We can buy them off with some Ponzi dividends this year but they’ll be baying for my blood next year if you boys don’t come up with something.

Yes of course I’m getting upset. There’s a lot to get upset about. And stop repeating that ridiculous Caribbean mantra. If there were no problem, our eggs would not be drenched in salmonella, our cheese would not be choking on listeria and our butchers would not be flogging everybody joints of mad cow sirloin and legs of Chernobyl irradiated lamb. Nor would you be turning up late at the office several times a month because you’re spending more time with the local constabulary than you spend at the office. Your Ferrari’s been stolen from outside your West London townhouse, your cottage in the Cotswolds has been burgled; your wife was mugged coming out of Harrods. It’s one thing after the other with you. So ‘don’t worry’ is one thing. But ‘no problems’ is something else again. You get paid so I don’t worry. But don’t think for a moment that this means no problems.

What do you mean ‘read your lips’? You have me a turnaround in the past two years? Turnarounds are good. Share prices love turnarounds. Fools them every time. But you have to set them up ahead of time. Figures? What figures? In 1987 we invested £ 330 here at home. Good word that ‘investment’. Removes any sense of speculation or desperation. Suggests something for nothing.

You’ve got something else for me? Don’t see it. Nothing good about £ 1 100 leaving the country in 1988 and…good grief...are you out of your tiny minds? £ 3 700 invested overseas in foreign shares. How am I supposed to sell that to the board? A couple more years of this and the only numbers left in the country will be the accumulated trade deficit and the balancing items. So what are you saying? I am watching your lips. The Germans? What do they have to do with anything?

Do stop clicking your heels and throwing your arm out in that ridiculous fashion like Hitler flying off to the Land of Oz along with his house and dog and Eva Braun’s red slippers. There is no comparison with Nazi Germany. They were looters and destroyers, not producers and creators. They took any property that wasn’t nailed down…and as far as the Jews were concerned that as well. The Nazis went around pillaging. Gold, art, you name it. We aren’t looters, we are stewards. We preserve western culture and the world’s heritage and we do it unselfishly as custodians, the competent receivers, of the common wealth of the people. Great Masters are safe in our vaults.

Banks? What about the banks? What do we care if the banks fail? The Japanese are holding all the silly paper this year. No doubt it will be the Chinese and the Indians the year after that. Too big to crash, that’s us…and Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) if we do. In other words we’ll bring the rest of the bastards down with us. We’ve tried to cover all bases. We’ve got all the real property with our electricity and water shares, our tolls and duties, our rents and taxes, and will be going for the food makers and purveyors soon enough.

Bread and circuses has always been a good formula for totalitarian states. As long as the sheriffs and the prison guards are properly looked after, we’ll do very nicely thank you out of the end of World War III. And you know what I always say. It takes the Tories to win our wars but you need the Socialists to clear up the mess. Still no harm done in slipping as much as we can out of the country.

One more thing. These speculations you’re looking after. Where exactly have you placed them? Yes, yes, I realise that. But what exactly are the Swiss doing with them? It is my business. The idea of a blind trust is to blind outsiders, not to keep me out of the picture. But if you insist let me say this. There is a limit to the number of Van Goghs and Monets that’ll fit into an Argentinean bunker. So I suggest you stroll across to Lincoln Inn Fields and ask any honourable friends you chance across lounging in their chambers if they know how many pink ribbons it takes to make a cast iron case.

One final thing. I forgot to introduce myself. John Bull’s the name. Red and white are my colours. They’ve added a few noughts. Seven or ten to be precise. But it doesn’t matter much as more get added in the fullness of time, and this gets fuller and fuller as the exponentials start to bite.

You can read all about me in The Pink Book, published at great expense each year by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. The accountants like to call it the annual analysis of the balance of payments for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but we won’t be fooled. We know that it’s just another pink ribbon wrapped around the same old grey bunker mentality. It has very little to do with the real world, and especially with our little corner of it, here in Our Land of Cats and Rivers.

My goodness! Look at the time. Anyone for tennis? I need a partner for the Iraqi Ambassador. Mr Blair? You look like you have a bluebird on your shoulder. I lost mine in a tragic accident but that’s another story and can’t be mentioned for legal reasons. Meanwhile, to be getting on with, here are some Pink Factoids I prepared earlier. Be happy! No worries! Think ‘bluebird on your shoulder.’

 

 

© 1990 William Franklin

‘One arm of the European Commission gives a little bit of money to protect the environment, while another arm dishes out vast amounts to destroy it.’ Well said, Mr Ian Prestt, our Director General of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

All the birds of the air

Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing

When they heard the bell toll

For poor Cock Robin.

But while on the subject of the people’s personal anatomy, perhaps we should start talking about eyes as well. For irritating as that moat may be in the European Commission’s eye, I would humbly suggest that it is but a splinter when compared with those sturdy beams of oak which cast so great a shadow across the beaming countenance of our noble warrior-in-chief, the very model of a modern director-general.

For tumbling through our 650 000 suburban letter boxes, alongside our 650 000 copies of the Summer 1990 issue of Birds Magazine were 650 000…and many times over…little requests that these 650 000 bird-loving suburban dwellers in this sceptered isle of ours should send off millions of little pieces of paper on this or that cleverly conspired scheme to save and protect Cock Robin, Jack Daw, Maggie Pie, Red Shank, Kitty Wake and one hundred and one other Eurobirds. This Isle of Rivers not enough now. Eurobirds need EuroCampaigns financed by EuroCorruption and its EuroTills.

Who kill’d Cock Robin?

I said the sparrow

With my bow and arrow

I kill’d Cock Robin.

Take for instance the proposal to invest savings with the Cooperative Bank. The bank gets your savings, you get good interest and the RSPB gets ten quid and a half percent interest. Everybody wins. You must have been born yesterday, if you believe that.

But let me give you another example: Bellamy’s Woodland Appeal. This is the standard American style charity racketeering or charioteering as the alternative economists will come to call it. Over there it’s backed up by telethons on public broadcasting television stations and the most nauseating glitz and sleaze that even Hollywood can deliver.

Here’s the deal. You give what’s left of any money you may have earned after paying income tax, poll tax, value added tax, sales and customs duties, rent or mortgage interest tax, and a few other things besides, and give it to nice happy smiling Mr Bellamy. Mr Bellamy doesn’t spend a penny of it of course. He invests it and the woodlands are saved by the power of the interest. Well, there are a few born every minute.

Why’s it a racket? I’ll tell you. Get out your calculator and remember what your nice smiling Mr Ian Prestt, CBE, told you about the EEC (and that is not Ethnicity, Ecology and Community or it wouldn’t be necessary for me to write this). Give a little on your public side. Dish out vast amounts on your private side.

Who saw him die?

I said the Fly

With my little eye

I saw him die.

The first thing you have to know is that a bank is not like a savings club or the local village cricket club or anything like that, although they spend a lot of money to make you think they are. Indeed they are not even like a building society, but we don’t need to go into that.

The Village Cricket Club Secretary might take your annual subscription, put it into something that pays ten percent interest, build up a healthy sum in its piggy bank and then spend that ten percent on painting the sight screen every year. If there were no inflation, even the ladies committee would commend the treasurer on his thrift, prudence and sound financial management.

And just a touch of financial bravado and, much to the horror of the ladies committee, he might even be so bold as to propose a scheme whereby the wicketkeeper, who everybody knows is loaded, the number eight bat, and the slow left-arm bowler…loaded unfortunately with something other than money after every match…put some money into the club kitty, and as a gesture of solidarity with the sight screen that they were responsible for dirtying, demand no interest of the club in return. Now the sight screen gets to be mended at the end of each season too.

Who caught the blood?

I, said the Fish

With my little dish

I caught the blood.

Have I lost you? Try harder, because this is exactly why the banks get away with their looting operation. The village cricket club borrows a thousand from Godfrey, five hundred from Big Ian, and one hundred from Little John. At ten percent a year, that’s cash in the treasurer’s leather glove of £150 at the end of the season to mend the sight screen. But it was worth it for that straight drive of Big Ian’s, although with a few less whiskers blowing across his faced, our Godfrey might have dived the side the ball went, and then we’d have saved ourselves a bob or two.

Pardon madam, £160 you said. Excellent. You are clearly trying hard enough. Was that worrying you too? It should have been. You see the trouble was the ladies committee. Or to be rather more specific, the chairwoman of the committee, Margaret Evans. Mrs Evans, if you please. She refused to allow her husband to risk his money with the village cricket club, and insisted that he bought shares in Pergamon Press instead. Professional Football was apparently a better investment than Village Cricket.

Who’ll make his shroud?

I, said the Beetle

With my little needle

I’ll make his shroud.

Goodness me, no. Nobody would do a thing like that. But the ladies did have a point. The kitchen was getting on a bit, and, well, to cut a long story short, the other £10 is going into something the men call a sinking fund, and the ladies call the sink fund. They’re both right, of course. We also have reports of Margaret and Godfrey out shopping together, but we cannot be sure that there was a connection. And it is as may be. £150 in the leather glove. £10 in the velvet.

Now back to banks. And from there just a short walk across the fields, over the stile, through a barbed wire fence, and past the public footpath sign lying in the ditch, to the woodlands and Mr Bellamy.

Listen carefully now. This is what the banks have spent four hundred years working very hard not to tell anybody…and this is why they will react with horror and demand the resignation of Rob Hume for printing this little message to his 650 000 RSPB members. George Carey will give you a job, Rob. So don’t get intimidated. Angels can fly as well as perch on pins, you know.

Who’ll dig his grave?

I, said the Owl

With my spade and trowel

I’ll dig his grave.

Give a bank a thousand pounds. The bank gives you a hundred pounds a year and then passes the money on to somebody else who gives the bank one hundred and twenty pounds a year. This gives the bank twenty pounds to play with…the difference between £120 and £100. The bank keeps ten pounds for director bonuses, shareholder dividends and the like, gives that nice Miss Perry five pounds for smiling sweetly at you, and uses the other five pounds prudently to build a marble palace in Docklands.

You’ve got to be kidding. No, Margaret. And again I have to say, no Penelope. That is not what happens. And I do not mean the repayments that I have left out of the story.

Banks are regulated by the peoples democratically elected parliament. And the PDEP has been fooled, just like you Penelope, into buying into the grand banker baloney that:

‘…not every customer wants her money back at the same time’.

This is true…until it becomes untrue and there is a run on the bank. At this point, they shut their doors and beat it as fast as they can across the county line. Indeed the bankers will claim documentary evidence that only one person in twenty every wants their money back in normal times…normal times being of course those times when there are never more than one in twenty people coming to get their money back. Hence the authoritative claim that:

‘…therefore we can safely make promises to pay twenty thousand pounds.’

This is something rather less than true. Indeed it is so very less than true that 325 000 teapots have just poured 325 000 pots of tea onto 325 000 white tablecloths all over the length and breadth of this sceptered isle. Let’s start again.

Who’ll be the parson?

I, said the Rook

With my little book

I’ll be the parson.

‘No you can’t!’ says the PDEP. ‘Twenty is out of the question. Ten thousand is the most you can spend. Any more and it’s imprudent.’

‘Stuff ‘n nonsense,’ say the money boys. Anything less than twenty and we can be criticised by our shareholders for not maximising their returns. They can run us out of town. But we are willing to compromise. So let’s make it 18. When we get a thousand pounds, we can put out eighteen thousand at interest.’

‘Too much by half…if not more. You must cover risk of default. You might not get the money back and you have to have some leeway for uncertain times when twice as many people come for their money than choose to do so in normal times. We can go to twelve thousand…on condition that you up the Tory Party overdraft by a thousand. No, strike that out. What a giveaway. I never said that.’

‘Fifteen!’

‘Twelve!’

’Fourteen!’

‘Twelve and a quarter’

‘Thirteen!’

‘Twelve and a half!’

‘Done!

Welcome to the real world, Penelope. Now you know everything about Capital Adequacy Ratios. The PDEP has just agreed with the boys from the city on a CAR on a count of eight…and doubtless for all perpetuity. For every pound deposited in a licensed commercial bank, twelve and a half pounds can be put out at interest with the legal sanction of parliament as representative of the people.

Some of the better-off bank boys will get to keep their profits by siphoning them off to tax havens like the City of London or the British Virgin Islands. And if they make their exchanges sound like a public institution with names like the Corporation of the Bank of England, the PDEP will waive their taxes too.

It’s rather like betting on the horses or spread betting and shorting the shares of good companies. Your profits come tax-free. The people who understand any of this call this fractional banking…and you now know more about it than most economists and nearly all politicians.

Who’ll be the clerk?

I, said the Lark

If it is not in the dark

I’ll be the clerk

My late Aunt Mabel has always voted Tory, so as executor of her will, I thought it right and proper to take the bank boys along to the club for a drink to celebrate our new partnership arrangements. No Penelope. Not the one in the parish of St Thomas where the sinking funds lurk and skulk. The other one, close by St John’s that goes under the name of St James…although St Judas might be more apt.

Wake up Ethel! Nobody said it would be easy. Do try to stay awake! How else will you keep up? If you can discipline yourself to sit, as quiet as a mouse, as the sun goes up and the dawn chorus breaks into song, then you can hold your concentration until we get to the end.

No Penelope. But a good guess. Mr Evans is a solicitor. Big Ian? An accountant, yes indeed! But enough of hints. Thinking time again. So are you sitting comfortably? Then pencils poised. Yellow legal pads at the ready. Subject? Why Banks? And How to Regulate them?

Who’ll carry him to the grave?

I, said the Kite

If it is not in the night

I’ll carry him to the grave

Don’t panic! Just joking. We won’t be uncovering that. Let’s save it for a rainy day and some future round of negotiations between the PDEP and the money boys. For the time being, we will steer clear of such thorny questions as what constitutes a bank deposit, which assets are real assets and how to invent markets to price all the wares in the window.

However most important of all is to learn the ancient art of delusion. It is best that most of the people most of the time have no idea about the risks you know, the risks you don’t know, and the cunning plans to make sure that the bankers never own any of them. Instead let’s return to the happy, smiling Mr Prestt at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and nice Mr Bellamy with his soft white beard and his Woodlands Appeal

You give £100 to Mr Bellamy and he gets a few guineas to spend on saving the woodlands. You only forego the interest. That’s the deal…but one with unintended consequences. Can you guess what they are Penelope? Well done Margaret. You were very close. Your money has been whisked away into a world of multipliers and accelerators…small powerful devices invented by economists to prove anything that their paymasters ask of them.

Who’ll carry the link?

I, said the Linnet

I’ll fetch it in a minute

I’ll carry the link.

You are not going to like this. Suspension of your disbelief may even be warranted. Mr Bellamy covers his salary. That’s the good news. But the bad news is the cost to the rest of us. This beggars belief. But follow the money and you’ll see how it works. For every pound that finds its way into Mr Bellamy’s good cause an estimated one hundred and fifty pounds are likely to be shovelled off by the fractional banking system into expanding Mr Big’s factory farms and buying shares in your less-than-friendly neighbourhood Agribusiness Farm Amalgamation Incorporation (AFAI).

Not to make too fine a point of it. AFAI run straight from Main Street down to Maggie’s Farm to knock down Mr Bellamy, plough over his newly built countryside hedgerow and rip out every sacred grade from kingdom past to kingdom come.

So Mr Prestt, you see the problem. It’s pretty much the same problem that confronted poor Cock Robin. And it’s a problem that set all the birds in the air a-sighing and a-sobbing. Persuade one of your dutiful flock to give one pound to one of these RSPB money schemes of yours and you give a hundred and fifty pounds to the criminals who will oppose it. Talk about killing the goose. You’re smashing its golden egg, and then cooking an omelette for your worst enemy.

Who’ll be the chief mourner?

I, said the Dove

For I mourn for my love

I’ll be chief mourner.

Well, don’t look at me. Get Godfrey to make himself useful. Start where Karl Marx believed wealth originates…on the factory floor. It’s Friday. Payday. Follow the money. That’s right. Into the wage packet. Off to the pub. Then home and across the dining room table into the wife’s handbag. Keep your eye on it. Return early Monday morning and follow her to the bank. No blinking. Stay with her purse. It’s not quite as much as it was at the start of the weekend. But it has reached its first weigh station and is about to move on into the mad vortex of the money power’s international casino.

Keep your eyes on the money, transmuted upon its close encounter with the bank from paper money into digital book entry money. Quick. There it goes. Spinning out into Slater Walker. Goodness that was fast! Up goes the share price. Back it comes again. Round and round it goes. Faster and faster. Onward and Upward. Watch the backdoor. See it? Off to the bottomless pits of the nuclear establishment and up, up and away into the coffers of their advertising agencies and public relations firms.

Are you watching the basement door? Keep those eyes skimmed. Over to our biggest blue-chip companies. Spin, twirl, flip and twist. Then out to its fertiliser division. Across to the pesticide boys. In and out of The Eagle. Chicago for half a pound of tuppenny rice. Back across the pond to Frankfurt. Paris. Spin. Moscow. Twirl. Zurich. Flip and twist. Keep watching. Whoops! What happened there? Right there in County Armagh? Round and round it goes, collecting two hundred pounds each time it passes go. Province to republic to province to republic. Nice little earner. Drat lost it! But you did very well Godfrey. Must be all that keeping wicket. Aha Madge’s carrots, you say.

Now, what the dickens? Get after him Penelope. Little John looks dangerous. Down boy! Violence is not the answer. Made where? Maid Marion. Sorry I misheard you. Which Robin? Cock or hood? Margaret, you’d best get the lot of ‘em back, before they do themselves a mischief.

Who’ll sing a psalm?

I, said the Thrush

As I sit in a bush

I’ll sing a psalm

I agree with you, Ethel. It’s not really anybody’s fault. They know not what they do. They are mere minions…pawns in the Great Game that may not speak its name. They are just bureaucrats doing their job. Not theirs to question why. Theirs just to do and die…early from retirement and the hopeless emptiness of a life unfulfilled.

Yes sir! No sir! Three bags full sir! One for the master, one for the dame, and none for the little boy crying in the lane. Thank you for the nice gold watch, sir. And it’s a lovely tie clip. My children will be pleased. They always buy me a tie for Christmas. Anything to be of service, sir! Your wish is my command, sir! I like orders, sir. Can I have some more, please, pretty please, sir. Help me get through my retirement, you understand, sir. Deathday coming up apace. Birthday fading into the mists of time. So this is Christmas. Oh what have I done. Another year older. A new one just begun. Happy Christmas. Life is Over. Now Mr Prestt, what were you saying? Let me paraphrase:

‘One arm of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is being given little bits of money to protect the birds while another arm is giving orders for vast amounts of credit to be dished out to destroy them.’

My goodness, one moment it’s a beam of wood. The next moment it’s a beam of light. Before Penelope can say “Robin Hood” and “Merry Men” it’s a green twinkle in a Sherwood Forest glade. Cock Robin has risen from the dead. Where there was once just one rather large beam in Mr Prestt’s beady eye, why lo there are now 1 300 000 little beams in 1 300 000 happy smiling eyes.

So thank you Mr Presst for moving the sight screen. Now we are no longer blinded by the dislight of the dim bankmen, which oozes forth when the gloom of ignorance cloaks our village greens, we can at last see the spin the money power is putting on the ball.

Who’ll toll the bell?

I, said the Bull

Because I can pull

So, Cock Robin, farewell!

Ian, careful with the willow. Aim for the sight screen and not for silly mid-off. Mind that pigeon perched on the umpire. Look out it’s their googly. Didn’t you learn anything from the last time you played them? Ooh! Painful! Too high to be leg before wicket but enough for pain to stop play. Not that way. Probably best if we hand you over to the ladies. They’ll look after you. Next time keep your eye on the ball.

Is tea ready? Such a pretty sight. Still life with crumpet. “Done to a tee, Ma’am, if I might pun so.” It’s your new kitchen, is it? Quite a sinking fund, eh what? Sunk all your funds into it, did you? Happening all over the village? Grand! Splendid! Excellent! Even the Pergamon shares? Goodness! Still, as we all know, once Margaret gets her mind set on something, there’s no holding her. Powerful woman. Put her down, Godfrey. Godfrey! There are women and children present. Make yourself useful. Go and check how Ian’s getting on.

 

 

© 1989 William Franklin

Once upon a time Sara was reading a report entitled National Policies and Agricultural Trade: Country Study Sweden (1979-1986). On her lap was a Financial Times article with the headline OECD report criticises Sweden's farm policy. Hold tight! Here comes the Big FT.

'Swedish agricultural policy in recent years has imposed costs on other countries while contributing to a slow-down in Sweden's economic growth, according to a critical report published yesterday by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.'

Now I just love that 'Paris-based' touch rather reminds me of the time a hundred years ago when no theatre manager anywhere in Europe could put on a new play unless he billed it 'adapted from the French'.

Perhaps we should sprinkle our reports with remarks like 'the Railways Sidings based Mr Hancock' or 'the Cloud Cuckoo Land based Economist'. But I make a mere quibble of their heart-felt desire that nobody should suspect that the Brussels EuroCrowd were behind it all. So let us get on with the show.

'The OECD says Sweden's policy of self-sufficiency in agricultural produce has had the effect of shutting out any significant imports of food commodities.'

My goodness, the brains they have down there in Paris. My eight-year old son says that one and one is two because after taking his big sister's apple and eating that along with his own, there are never any apples left to eat.

And to be serious for a moment, Mrs Jones, did you realise how anti-social you were being, allowing that apple tree to grow in your garden? Have you a licence for that tree Mrs Jones?

'It notes that the price regulation policy pursued in Sweden does not allow market signals to influence the orientation of agricultural production.'

Would you like that coming off the shelf with the red or the green side up? And of course this is much aggravated Mrs Jones when you allow little Willy to hop over your garden wall and disappear with those five windfalls tucked inside his jumper.

' "By not allowing international price signals to fully influence domestic production and consumption of food commodities, the pursuit of self-sufficiency has thus contributed to the distortions in international markets," the report says.'

So Mrs Jones, by refusing to give your apples to Mr Smith so that he can put them out for sale on his market stall in town, you are most selfishly robbing your fellow housewives of the low priced apples that only world-wide apple making and selling will provide. have you got to be over the top if you go for that one!

'It maintains that international markets have been forced to absorb surpluses resulting from Sweden overshooting its self-sufficiency target for livestock products and from its policy of producing cereals in excess of the domestic market requirement.'

So when little Willy carried home those five apples and got stomach ache after the first three, he was confounding his anti-social villainy when he kept his wits about him and conned Jimmy into letting him have his second best conker in return for the two apples that were left.

Worse than that, what a devastating effect Little Willy's behaviour had on poor Mr Smith. How can Joe be expected to make a living when he has to contend with such anti-social behaviour? No longer the bright and breezy:

“Twentypenceapiecemylovelyjustapoundforfourofthesebootifoolgoldendelicious",

But already by four o'clock the sad cry:

"foryoumadamaveryspecialpricejusttwopoundsfiftyforthisbigbagoftenlovelyfrenchgolendelicious".

But who ever said that life was either easy or fair?

'The organisation questions whether Sweden really needs to pursue a policy of self-sufficiency given the ample amounts of most for commodities available in the international markets.'

The judge wondered whether it was really necessary for little Willy to climb over the wall into Mrs Jones' garden for apples when there were two buses a week, which, for a mere fifty pee each way, would take him to the aforementioned Mr Joseph Z. Smith's also aforementioned market stall where he the accused one Willy Norris Jenkins could have bought as many apples as his little heart might have desired.

Now to report this matter accurately, we must mention that at this point in the proceedings Mrs Jones' sister Ada stood up in the public gallery and started chanting "What about the starving millions?" until she was finally evicted from the court by her niece’s husband Bill who had the misfortune to be on court duty that day.

And for those of you who like to keep up with your local folk-lore, it was at Sunday dinner the following week that the memorable line:

"boughtth'mapplesf'rtuppenceeach"

was first heard at The Smuggler's Rest down by the green. But we wander.

‘The policy of maintaining production in Sweden at such a high level…’

After the rumpus had died down, another incident ensued when the judge seemed to be criticising Mrs Jones’ gardener for allowing her apple tree to grow too many apples, a suggestion which caused Bill Jones to go very red in the face and move rapidly in the direction of the bench with his fists clenched and held up to his face in a manner which seemed to those present to be one of brandish.

But Jimmy dropped his best conker at that point and in diving to retrieve it, managed to get himself tangled up in Bill Jones’ legs, thereby bringing the whole unhappy event to a happy conclusion when the conker was finally discovered in Mr Jones’ helmet.

‘…in order to meet domestic demand.’

The implication of the judge’s remarks being of course that Mrs Jones and not Mr Jones who did the gardening was the one at fault since she was the one responsible for realising that a tree with lots of English Coxes on it was just too much for any red-blooded English lad to resist and that she was thus responsible for unreasonably provoking little Willy to trespass on her property and in so doing, destroy the economic stability of the free world as we know it.

‘…has “imposed costs on the Swedish economy that are likely to have slowed down the rate of economic growth,” the OECD report argues.’

Well, let’s thank the Lord it was a short report. So let’s be clear on this:

Ø Slowed down the Rate.

Ø The Swedish Economy.

Ø Imposed Costs.

Ø Economic Growth.

Oh dear! Oh Dear! But let us not be faint-hearted in the face of such megamumbojumbo. Let’s see if I have got it clear.

Because there were so many apples on the tree, there was no shortage of apples anymore. And because there were enough apples to go round, poor Joe Smith, who was traditionally very good at this, could not find any way to corner the market in apples, jack up the prices and force Mrs Jones to dip into her biscuit tin on the sideboard and reallocate her scarce monetary resources from savings to consumption.

‘How’s about that then! I can talk economic meganonsense with the best of them. Had no idea it was that easy. Whoops! Now I’ve gone a-mixing up my reports ‘n my opinions. That’ll upset the apple cart.’

Where was I? Right. Now we’re getting somewhere.

‘Wherever capitalism finds ‘plenty’ it seeks through legal means and political privilege, arbitrarily to manipulate the ‘plenty’ down to ‘scarcity’ so that demand and supply activities can be reinstated.’

Buckminster Fuller wrote that in Nine Chains to the Moon. And yes Penelope, I know it’s stating the ble**ing obvious. But some people are actually taken in by all this economic meganonsense. And well yes, it’s a little bit disrespectful, but yes it is those funny people with that grey fancy dress wot do it. And yes, those strips around their necks can be used for the dog. They are called ties and some people think it makes them look smart.

Yes, yes! I know that Bob taught his parrot to say ‘Get a rope!’ but you were also told not to repeat all those things that Uncle Bob says. His father was a Communist. And he was an army photographer in Korea and took pictures of things he refuses to talk about. So he is a little disturbed.

Now that’s enough. I shouldn’t have to tell you again. Anyway I think you will find that what Uncle Bob actually said was, “You can fool an awful lot of people an awful lot of the time. I’m quite sure he wouldn’t use words like that in front of a young lady. Besides, I’m quite sure he would also have said that you can’t do it for ever and that you should study your history books carefully and then you would see the truth in that.”

“What do you mean, you don’t do history. What is the world coming to? Put your light out before you go to sleep. And don’t read for too long. What is it you are reading? A book Uncle Bob gave you? Mark Twain? That’s all right then. A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur? That does sound grown up. Uncle Bob said what? The rebel’s Machiavelli? My goodness, these children! They grow up so fast these days. Not like in my day when we sneaked out after lights out to raid old Tom’s orchard for a term’s supply of apples.