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Err, right.

We can, in fact, now expect more extreme reactions because it is now far from clear that the USA and Israel are going to win the conflicts they have started in Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere simultaneously. The economic impacts are already severe, and when people in the USA realise that their energy costs are going to rise significantly, the backlash is going to be extreme, particularly given Trump’s promise not to engage in more overseas conflicts.

So it is not just the risk of major financial meltdown that is now worrying me, although that is very real. What worries me at least as much is the possibility that these extremists, when cornered and when at risk of being shown up as the illegal international facilitators of war crimes, will react even more severely and release yet more mayhem, including through the use of nuclear weapons, a possibility that cannot now be ruled out.

Apparently Trump’s going to drop an A Bomb on The Hague so they cannot indict him.

Sigh

There is one thing that we do know now. This is that the exceptional profits that oil companies made in 2022 will recur. I sincerely hope that somebody has a plan to increase the tax rate on them to deal with this. The case for a windfall tax is going to be overwhelming. We need such a tax, and we need it now. There can be no justification for private sector gain at this moment at cost to the people of the world from enormous economic disruption.

If the price goes up then we’d like people to invest in going and making some more. Taxing away the profits of the price going up reduces that incentive to produce more and so lower the price.

Sigh.

They were doing this then?

The NHS is pausing new referrals for masculinising or feminising hormone treatment for 16 and 17-year-olds after an in-depth review found there was insufficient evidence to support its continued use.

Prescriptions for hormones had been available in England for under-18s with a diagnosis of gender incongruence or dysphoria who met certain criteria.

Thought we were told that no treatments of kiddies did happen? Or is that statement now inoperative?

Somehow kiddies being treated into growing – or losing – the tits they’re too young to take a photo of just doesn’t seem like not treating kiddies. You know?

Twats

The human point of view is presented mostly on an aural level, through the use of voiceover. Laid over Ascension’s unique landscape, conversations with geological experts muse on the relationship between humans and nature. Unfortunately, many of these discussions lean towards the philosophical and speculative, offering little historical and practical insight into the pitfalls of terraforming. None of the interviewees are from the global south, which is also problematic, considering the primarily imperialist impulse behind the desire to reshape and conquer this so-called uncharted territory.

Ascension Island was terra nullius when Europeans discovered it. So what the Global South has to do with it?

Whingeing Wimmins

The performing arts industry in the UK is “inhospitable to parents” and falling far behind other industries in supporting women who have children, according to research.

The report, titled “the Motherhood penalty”, criticises the industry for failing to consider how it might adapt to better accommodate parents, with the result that many, in particular women, drop out.

Its author, Jennifer Tuckett, a playwright, said: “Caring responsibilities were one of the major issues affecting women’s careers in the arts.

“We were shocked to find problems like schedules being sent out the night before and the impact this has on parents, and we would urge both arts organisations and policymakers to look at new models which support both women and men to achieve success in the workplace and at home.”

All plays, musicals, live performances, now to be between 1 pm and 3 pm to allow the mothers among ther performers to do the school pick up. Hey, equality’s the paramount virtue, right?

So, that rugby then, eh?

Didn’t Scotland do well? And Italy…..and I would imagine some of the old English war horses are seeing that pasture, being put out to, coming closer.

I don’t watch the matches these days. Not excited enough to then work out how to use the modern TV and get access.

But, an impression of a change from 20, 30 years back. The biggest change – to me – is that the second and third rank teams now have people who can kick. As that’s worth a considerable number of points – penalties, conversions – this matters hugely. Think back to when we wondered at Bergamasco trying – and the surprise when he managed it. Now that second line of teams all have perfectly competent kickers.

My assumption is that it’s the professional game, possibly most important being the French leagues. 30 years back the fly half (or fullback, whatever) of Italy, or Romania, Georgia, would be playing their club rugby at about our standard of second or even third division. Now they’re in that French first and hugely, wholly, competitive league. Along with kicking coaches and all the rest.

Not a theory I’m wholly wedded to but one I’m willing to put forward. The modern game has allowed many more international teams access to a decent kicker.

Well, yes and no

Ebisawa, the government said, conspired to sell uranium and plutonium to a DEA agent posing as an Iranian “general” in charge of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Asked whether the uranium was enriched above 5% because the Iranian government needed it for nuclear weapons, Ebisawa said: “I think so and hope so.” He later forwarded an email in the name of a mining company offering 50 tons of uranium U3O8 concentrate powder known as “yellowcake” for $6,850,000.

Ebisawa provided photographs of samples, alongside a Geiger counter measuring radiation, and promised the “general’ that the “plutonium” that would be even “better” and more “powerful” for Iran’s use. Prosecutors said the nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar who had been mining uranium in the country.

Samples of the nuclear materials were obtained and a US lab found they contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that “the isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons-grade.

Conspiring to sell yellowcake is deffo naughty. You’ve got to have a licence to do so – I did at one time, never used it – but it’s also very different from selling bomb material. By definition yellopwcake is not enriched. It’s the first stage of getting from uranium ore to uranium. The enrichment stage requires a $10 billion (circa) plant which is something that varied naughties, other than governments, tend not to have.

Containing thorium is irrelevant. Lots of things contain thorium and it’s useless for bombs anyway. Plutonium, well. My guess – and I think I looked at this some years back, this case – is likely to be a milligramme or two. It is possible – not legally perhaps, but possible – to get it as samples. And anything above that size indicates that it came from reactor recycling, it’s just not a naturally occurring element (well, maybe that natural reactor in West Africa did produce it).

Significant – anything more than a handful of grammes – of plutonium is a vast, vast, red flag. Thorium is a nothing and yellowcake is naughty but pretty trivial. You can still get 20 years for trying to deal it without a licence of course.

In terms of actual danger from what this guy was trying to trade – assuming it wasn’t all just a con anyway – the answer is about zero. Still a crime but, you know.

Until a few years back it was easy enough to buy lbs (not tonnes, but lbs at least) of yellowcake in the US. Second hand and retail. It was used as a glaze on pottery up into the 1970s and a number of US high schools had some lying around at the back of a cupboard. No, really. 50lb sacks and so on.

My read on this – note, mine – is that this is deffo a bad guy and, legally, trying to sell yellowcake, yep that’s a crime. But the ability of this guy to contribute anything to a bomb programme is zero.

So, err, why would they claim that?

Last month, the African Union adopted a motion put forward by Ghana to label slavery and colonialism as crimes against humanity.

Issa mystery, eh?

This month, the motion will be tabled at the United Nations, with demands made for redress.

Oh, that’s why. Ho Hum.

Isn’t it lovely what he can misunderstand?

Blackrock’s private credit fund is limiting withdrawals to 5% of holdings. About which the Elyan Solanum tells us:

If BlackRock is suffering cash flow constraints, there are signs of:

Market panic
A flight to safety
Stress on credit lines for one of the biggest financial institutions in the world.
If any of these are true, markets are melting down much faster than I expected.

This is serious. Monday morning is going to be scary. Hold your breath.

Aaaaand, no.

We know what a bank run is. It’s when people demand their deposits back. The problem with a bank run is that banks borrow short and lend long. So, the deposits can be called at sight. But the loans they finance cannot be – so, the bank goes bust (note that this can happen proves Spud wrong on banking, but…..)

So, we then have a standard observation in the market. If you’re a fund – which is not banking, note – then you need to be careful about redemption. You can have a closed end fund – when someone asks for their money back they don’t get it. They, instead, sell their shares to someone else. They get the market price and that’s that. You can have an open ended fund. In that, someone asks for their money back then the fund liquidates (they’ll have a cash margin, obvs, but imagine that is exceeded) a bit and pays them out.

OK. So when should you use which model? If the fund is investing in something liquid then you can be open ended. Like ETFs are. You can sell Shell, or BP, just as much as anyone tries to sell shares in a oil majors ETF can sell their shares. You’ve no liquidity imbalance. But if you’re investing in something illiquid then you don’t want to do that – you should be closed ended. And, yes, there are examples of people using an open ended fund when they should have been closed – several commercial property funds come to mind – who then go bust because of the liquidity mismatch. To a great extent this is what went wrong with Neil Woodford. People wanted out of an open ended fund, he sold the liquid stocks to pay them, more wanted out and he was only left with the illiquids and private investments and having to sell those in a hurry means he got raped on the price.

This is all well known and understood. So, the Blackrock private credit fund says you can have 5% of your money back at any one time. Because we’re investing it in sorta illiquidy private credit. That’s the deal at the start.

From which Spud declares that the economy is about to fall apart.

If there anything that he actually knows about?

Axel Springer for the Telegraph, eh?

Hmm.

Axel Springer’s offer raises fewer questions, but will also need government approval before being confirmed. Its £575m bid is a cash offer. The media giant, which already owns Politico, Business Insider and the German mass-market newspaper Bild, does not own other major UK-centred media assets.

It’s a number of years since I even saw a Business Insider piece let alone saw them break some interesting story or must read piece. Bild, on the other hand, can be great fun. So, which side of the company will run the Telegraph?

Oh, right

The Duchess of Sussex has cut ties with Netflix and will take “complete control” of her domestic brand selling jams, wine and flower sprinkles.

The correct reading of this is that Netflix has dumped her. Obviously.

For as read it’s saying that she allowed Netflix to spend all the investment money but now it’s running she’s going to cut them out of the profits. And obviously someone as glowingly wondrous as The Mekon would never do something like that.

It’s all from a lost world, isn’t it?

In August they played their first gig at the Cavern Club (minus McCartney, who was away at a Scout camp in the Peak District). Ivan Vaughan began the set on tea-chest bass, but when he left to finish his homework Garry took his place. The club’s jazz-loving owner Alan Sytner sent a note to them on stage telling them to “Cut out the bloody rock”, but got short shrift.

The following month it was back to school for Garry – in the Remove at Liverpool Institute alongside McCartney, who had been held back after failing his Latin O-level, and Neil Aspinall, who would become one of the Fab Fours’ right-hand men and the head of Apple Corps.

Homework, scout camp, Latin O levels……

There was always a certain suspicion, no?

Gerry Adams was identified by Sir John Major as a member of the IRA’s army council, according to US files seen by The Telegraph.
In a diplomatic cable, the then prime minister is reported to have said that Mr Adams was on the council, which directed the activities of the paramilitary group. Another memo also identifies Mr Adams as a senior IRA commander.

Which did lead to the Greatest Tweet Of All Time.

Adams put up some whinge about how long it takes to go around turning all the Christmas lights off. To get the response “Surely you know someone who can set a timer?”

So who will be running the U Boats this time?

The British government should be stockpiling food, according to a leading expert on food policy, as it is not prepared for climate shocks or wars that could cause the population to starve.

Prof Tim Lang of City St George’s, University of London said the UK produced far less food than it needed to feed itself, and as a small island that relied on a few large companies to feed its giant population, it was particularly vulnerable to shocks.

Was on a radio show with Lang once. His ability to be wrong in service of gaining publicity for Tim Lang is unmatched. The Spud of food policy.

Lang’s report for the National Preparedness Commission, published last year, found that the UK’s food system is extremely vulnerable to attack due to its concentration with a few large companies.

It found that the 12,284 supermarkets around the UK are “fed” by just 131 distribution centres.

These were a “sitting duck” for drone or cyber-attacks by malign states, he said: “The nine big retailers account for 94.5% of all retail food. That’s nine companies, using just 131 distribution centres. In drone war, that’s a sitting duck.”

See?

Oh Aye?

An increasingly acrimonious spat between Hungary and Ukraine has escalated further, as Budapest impounded two Ukrainian armoured bank vehicles carrying millions of euros of hard cash as well as bars of gold.

Hungary’s national tax and customs administration said it had opened a money-laundering investigation over the shipment, which it said was made up of $40m and €35m in cash, as well as 9kg of gold. It said one of those arrested was “a former Ukrainian intelligence service general”.

Umm

Oschadbank, Ukraine’s state savings bank, said its staff were transporting cash and gold between between Austria and Ukraine in a “routine trip”, carried out by land because of restrictions on air travel in Ukraine.

And, well, it’s true. People do, wholly legitimately, ship cash and gold around. The cash you can buy at an exchange kiosk must come from somewhere after all. But, you know

Now this, this, this is a strategic insight!

Thirdly, there is a very real risk that Israel and the USA will lose this war, as will the UK, as a result of its collateral involvement. Iran has been preparing for war for a very long period of time. It has a very large stockpile of admittedly low-grade missiles available to it, plus an enormous capacity to manufacture drones. Israeli and Western defence forces have not reacted in the way that the precedent in Ukraine should have suggested to be necessary, which is to create cheap anti-drone defence mechanisms. The consequence is that Israel and the USA are much more likely to run out of weapons than Iran is, leaving Iran with the potential capability of controlling this region militarily, which is just about the last thing that anyone would wish, given the nature of the regime in that country and its apparent indifference to imposing suffering through loss of human life.

It’s an intersting question.

UK must double down on renewables as wars drive up energy costs, experts say
Fossil fuel price surge after US-Israeli attacks on Iran prompts calls to end dependence on ‘volatile’ energy source

Should we have cheaper but volatile or more expensive and less volatile?

It’s possible to make philosophic arguments for both or either. Myself I think I’d prefer cheaper yet volatile. I also think most people would if only the choie were explained to them in this manner. Which, of course, it never is.