No experience necessary

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The End of Wall Street's Boom
To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

Even though Mandelson looks increasingly like he's been embalmed...

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New Labour: it’s not dead yet
New Labour, like Old Labour, wants to look out for our welfare ‘from cradle to grave’, but now in a strictly authoritarian manner on the assumption that experts are more capable of managing our lives than we are. So we are advised, vetted, banned, ordered and cajoled on everything from smoking, eating and drinking to how we dispose of our waste and where we drive our cars...

None of that will change. Even the new economic plans are simply the result of technocratic debate amongst government insiders and their advisers. New Labour - indeed, the entire political class - remains fundamentally suspicious of the opinions and behaviour of ordinary people...While the economy goes down the drain, the rest of us remain passive spectators.

Alastair Darling, in a pale pastiche of John Maynard Keynes, might want to create a few jobs to prop up the economy. But the obituary writers for New Labour will remain unemployed for the foreseeable future.

And always let your conscience be your guide...

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Spotting a sociopath
Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at your condition.

They just don't get it, do they? #2,549

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The piece is worth a read but it was the comment exchange (below) which made me smile.

“Deep Linking” Under Fire by Newspaper Danish Publishers
Blogging journalists in Denmark are up in arms over a renewed effort by Danish newspaper publishers to stop websites like Google News from linking to individual articles rather than a newspaper's homepage.  Regardless of what is considered normal practice around the world, the Danish Association of Newspaper Publishers insist they only want homepage links, so they can better control the user experience. (They even want email links to send readers to the homepage! - MrP)


Via Donald Strachan


Carry-On - Carry-Out

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Social workers sacked over 'sick' image of paedophile Gary Glitter carrying a child in a shopping bag
An investigation was launched after an employee alerted bosses to the appalling image, which shows the convicted paedophile holding a plastic bag with a superimposed child's head popping out of the top. Staff had circulated the email on the office network, where it spread within hours.
Of course, the image was not so appalling that it prevented The Mail from publishing a 470 x 670 px photo with a little black strap across the child's eyes.

What a shower of shits and hypocrites.


Band of Brothers

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John Hallmann: Why America Feels Like it's Been Ruled by a Foreign Occupier
The wave of emotion that has erupted with the election of Barack Obama reminds me of the Allied victory in France in WWII. After a long foreign occupation in which foreign German interests occupied the agenda of France, French governance would once again be representing the concerns of it's populace.

That hope seems to pervade America after it's long neocons occupation. Here are a few of the parallels that I see...