The bank steps in

Yesterday the Bank of England stepped into the financial market and put their foot down by limiting mortgage borrowing to four times salary. Yes it had been rumoured but was not expected. So why now?

The banks says we need a fire-break around mortgages to stop 'reasonable' behaviour becoming risky or 'irresponsible'. How does the bank see the countries recovery today as they currently control £350 billion of gilts?

They say we have seen the fastest job creation period in written history, that is quite a statement. What it does not show is that half the people with new jobs are doing 20 hours a week instead of 40 hours a week and that the average hourly rate has dropped recently. So has the bank taken this into consideration?

They also say that three quarters of debt has a floating rate, in other words they will be affected by rate rises in future, but one of the most popular questions is, “When will rates rise”.

Yesterday the bank reiterated that when the country gets back to full employment, rates will start to rise slowly. Do they mean when everyone has a 20 hour job or when everyone has a 40 hour job?

It is expected that rates will probably rise by a quarter percent at a time until 2.5% is reached and that will be approximately in 2017. Considering savers have been screwed since 2008, is this really good enough?

Has Labour reacted correctly?

Labour's thesis is that Cameron hired Coulson in spite of those warnings because he was desperate to get closer to the Murdoch Empire. The party is certainly right that Cameron was desperate: the Conservatives were not particularly worth joining in 2007 and so there would not have been an endless queue of former senior tabloid journalists desperate to join the team. Cameron is also a great believer in his gut instinct on people: he believes his convictions about those he meets are right, and he felt a good connection with Coulson. He sharpened up the Conservative brand and was instrumental in saving them from yet another existential crisis.

Those who dislike the Prime Minister already think he has terrible judgement, but are waiting to exact their own judgement on him until after the general election. As for whether Labour can make this electorally damaging for the Conservative party depends on whether the Miliband machine is running smoothly or whether it still has gremlins in the tank, as it did when the Labour leader managed to upset almost everyone by posing with the Sun and then apologising for doing so. The last few weeks have proven that quite a few people at the top of politics really shouldn't trust their guts so much.

Labour runs the risk of making sure the public loses the remaining confidence it has in politicians as a whole. You cannot selectively trash politicians when you use a hypocritical argument and the people know this. So if Harman, Prescott and others, back in 2007 knew that Coulson and the News of the World was phone hacking, what did them as member of the Government of the day do about it?

Miliband needs to be careful that his sanctimony doesn't get the better of him today, for Labour have serious questions to answer too. Cameron's judgement was poor but so is Milibands.

We need some statesmanship and leadership from our politicians, the public are tiring of this mindless petty points scoring which masquerades as 'policy'.

Leveson revisited

Have you forgotten about the who-ha caused by the Leveson enquiry, I am sure some people haven't and as it strikes at the very heart of what free speech in the country is about, I haven't.

Rebekah Brooks has been cleared of all four charges against her, her husband Charlie Brooks was cleared of perverting the course of justice, her assistant Cheryl Carter was cleared of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and News International's director of security Mark Hanna was cleared of perverting the course of justice. Stuart Kuttner, former managing editor, was cleared of being part of a conspiracy.

However, Andy Coulson has been found guilty on one count of conspiracy to hack phones.

Within minutes of the verdict being announced, David Cameron made a public apology in Downing Street about employing Andy Coulson back in 2011.

Current season

We are in a very sporty mood at the moment, the world cup in Brazil, don't mention England, cricket at Lords with Sri Lanka, and don't mention England and Wimbledon which hopefully will be dominated by Andy Murray again, a Scot.

The FA has quickly doused calls for Roy Hodgson to be sacked as manager and maybe that is for the best. England need to stick with their young players and let them mature.

Part of the reason England failed to win the first Test at Lord's was unquestionably the lack of a spinner. Peter Moores, the England coach, recognises the shortcoming. “We are going to have to identify our next spinner, there's no doubt about that,” he said. “All sides need the option of a front-line spinner to be able to play in all conditions.”

Murray has not won a tournament since his Wimbledon victory last July, with back surgery in September proving to be the biggest interruption in his career to date. The Scot is buoyed by an impressive record on grass, and especially at the All England Club, where he has reached the final for the last two years and the semi-finals for the last five. 

Interest is predictably high as Murray prepares to become the first British man to return to the All England Club as champion since 1936, with Fred Perry and why do we always harp so far back, oh that's right because they are the facts!

Mortality

I awoke this morning to find myself standing outside my house in the garden! This was particularly strange as I remember going to bed and not getting up or leaving the house, and yet there I was standing in the damp grass. I decided to return indoors only to find that the door was locked! I then realised that instead of green, the grass was grey, in fact everything was grey, I appeared to have woken up colour blind. Luckily the bathroom window was ajar and I would have been able to reach over to open the main window, except that when I looked down, the white bones of my forearm leading to the bones of my wrist and eventually the joints of four fingers and a thumb took me by surprise, I took a step back, became very cold and woke up...

I just thought I would share that with you this Friday :)

Iraq politics

Is prime minister al-Maliki the right man for the job?

There are three main factions in Iraq:

Kurds 17%
Shias 61%
Sunnis 22%

According to the al-Maliki government there is a Sunni deputy prime minister, a Sunni head of the military and nearly half the local governors are Sunni, so they dispute the allegations of ignoring the Sunni population.

Critics blame al-Maliki and his Shia-dominated government for the worsening sectarian division in Iraq.

The US is now suggesting that they will offer stronger military action, in the form of air strikes if the current government stands down. Are they right to do this?

The al-Maliki government was voted in by the majority of the voters in the Iraq election in 2009, yet again a vision of democracy seems to be overturned by force. We in the west keep enforcing our views on the Middle East, but when they try to adopt our procedures, we do not seem to give them enough time to adapt.

Perhaps an enquiry into why an Iraqi army containing 300,000 are not willing to stand against a rebel force with less than 10,000 men should produce answers while meetings with Kurds, Shia & Sunni continue to take place so that they have a strategy to follow when the violence ends.

Hot Spots!

The Middle East and Arab states are not the only hot spot in the world. While the strife in Iraq

 spills over from Syria, trouble in Nigeria continues to escalate.

Nigeria came to our attention when 200 school girls were abducted in a single event last month.

 This came as a shock; however, the greater shock has been the Nigerian government's lack of

 response to the problem. At the beginning various conflicting reports came out, but after time it

 was clear that the Nigerian government were not in a position to do anything about the situation

 in northern Nigeria.

During this time and since on a nearly daily basis local Nigerians have died in terrorist attacks

 run by Boko Haram, yet another unknown until recently terrorist group. Like a lot of today's

 terrorists the organization seeks to establish a "pure" Islamic state ruled by sharia, putting an

 end to what it deems Westernisation. The Boko Haram leadership has international connections

 to Al-Qaeda via Al-Shabab, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa.


p.s.

When a politician says "the situation in Saudi Arabia is very complex", this is a synonym for we

 sell arms to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia supply arms to ISIS...