virtualeconomics

Once in a lifetime opportunity to rob the public purse

Yesterday, Charles Arthur was talking about the demise of local newspapers in some communities and how the rapid disappearance of proper investigative journalism at the local level makes councils unaccountable to local populations.

Let's say it's true. What would we see to validate this hypothesis? Well...if local councils really become unaccountable when local papers cease to investigate them, I'd expect to see a big increase in the value of positions of financial authority at local government level. Those positions will suddenly become a lot more valuable if no-one is watching the purse-strings all that carefully, so more candidates will want them and those candidates will spend more to win them. 

It's possible that what we have here is a rather lovely natural experiment. If a newspaper closes down in a town, what impact does that have on the apparent attractiveness of local government positions in that town? How many more candidates, and how much do they spend on their campaign (especially, possibly, the new candidates)? Measure that, and you can measure the value to accountable democracy that the newspaper used to deliver. Scott Karp said we should measure where the ad dollars go in Seattle now the PI has gone online-only. I think we should measure where the campaign dollars go. Then we'll know what the watchdog of Seattle democracy was worth.  

Update: couldn't find this earlier but then I, err, tried harder and did...writing in Slate three years ago Tim Harford proposed a rough measure of corruption (in US politics) - what % of the budget up for grabs are lobbyists willing to spend to influence it? He reckoned then that the answer was about 0.1%. If after the closure of a local paper we can see a significant change in the % of local government budgets that candidates are willing to spend to get into power, or local interest groups are willing to spend to get influence, perhaps we can say that local government has become that much more corrupt. 

Barbara Streisand time

Apparently Charlie Brooker Richard Herring (some confusion here over Twitter feeds on my part, thanks to those who pointed it out) is being threatened with legal action for criticising his bank on his blog. The standard response to this is for as many people as possible to republish the content that has occasioned the spurious threat, of course, so here's my contribution. If you have a blog I encourage you to do the same, not only this time but any time you see someone being threatened in this way. It's easy, if you can afford lawyers, to assume that you can use them to thwart free speech that happens to criticise you. Happily it's even easier, given that everyone can afford a blog, to demolish this fantasy.

I received a letter from Mr X (name removed for legal reasons)r at the Friendly bank (name changed for legal reasons) today, keeping me up to date with interest rate cuts. It's very nice of X to write to me personally to let me know about this, but that's the kind of bank I have my money in - one with the personal touch. X has even signed the letter himself - the signature looks a bit faint and weird, almost like it's just a photocopy, but I am sure that's just because X was tired after having to have typed up so many letters (I estimate that the Friendly probably has more than a thousand customers) and then sign them all himself. Good on you Mr X, you are my hero. It's a shame you didn't hand write the whole letter as more cynical people than me might be able to accuse you of just sending out the same letter to all your customers, but I know you wouldn't do that. And it can't be possible as the letter is addressed to me "Dear Mr Herring". How many Mr Herrings can the Friendly have on their books. I only know of one other for sure. So at best they could only have printed this letter out twice, which wouldn't have saved much time. Take that cynics.

Anyway, the letter begins "Dear Mr Herring" (nice personal touch, but respectful to me - not Dear Rich)

"The Bank of England has recently announced a 0.5% decrease in the base rate." Brilliant! How nice of X to tell me about this. I don't really keep up with the financial news and hadn't spotted this. Other banks might have thought of just taking their chances and hope that no one would notice this move, and they'd just get to keep all the money they made out of it. But Mr X wouldn't allow that. He's a man of principle and he wanted his customers to hear this terrific news. His fatcat, bonus eating bosses must rue the day they employed a maverick like Mr X, but we, the customers, love him. He is ON OUR SIDE. Take that you bonus eaters. And stop eating money. People need it more than ever right now. I think you've misunderstood the term Credit Crunch.

At this point I was dancing in my kitchen. Times are hard and 0.5% off my mortgage interest repayments would make all the difference to me right now. But the letter continues...

"However,"- Oooo I don't like that however. Why is there a however there?, "we will be holding your Friendly Offset flexible mortgae rate at its current level." Why Mr X? Please tell me why? You've got a half a per cent off of your interest rate. You'd better have a bloody good reason for not passing it on to me. I know you must Mr X, I'm not doubting you. You are Mr X. You stand up to the Fat Cats. You want the best for the ordinary Joe. Why has this happened Mr X?

It's all right, he's going to tell me and I bet it's a great reason.

"We have based this decision on a wide range of factors," - Of course they have. And now he will tell me all the factors and it will make sense. - "including changes in the mortgage market overall."

That is shamefully the only reason Mr X gives. And to be honest that factor doesn't really mean anything. What are the other factors? Why hasn't he told me about them. I used to trust Mr X, but I think there's a chance that he has sold out and far from standing up to the Fat Cats he is metaphorically speaking giving them bowls full of cream and then sucking their tiny cat dicks and then letting them bum him with their tiny cat dicks. (Obviously he isn't really doing that. It's a metaphor. The FatCats are not really cats after all) What happened to you Mr X? When did you lose sight of your vision of a world of financial parity and fairness? Why don't you just admit that the "wide range of factors" is in fact just on factor. The factor being that the Friendly bank just really want to make loads of money and though the base rate cuts are being made to try and help the economy and all the people in these difficult times, you've decided it would be better if all the money saved just stayed in the bank. At least be honest about it Mr X. If you're going to write to us to let us know about the cut, at least have the balls to say you're not cutting the interest rate because you want the money. Or don't write to us at all. But to write to us just to rub your (metaphorically) Fat Cat semen smeared face and bleeding, Fat Cat cock ravaged anus in our faces is rudeness in the extreme.

I think Mr X should be called to account for all of this and, if necessary, executed in a similar way to the only person who I can think of who is worse than him, Saddam Hussein.

Helpfully though Mr X does say "If you have any questions about your Offset Flexible Mortgage or is we can help you with anything else please give us a call. We're here 8.30am-7.30pm Monday to Friday and 9.00am-12.30pm on Saturdays."

So the gauntlet has been laid down. I do have many questions, as I am sure you do. Well if you want them answered then why not ring 0845 xxxxxxx (number removed for legal reasons) and ask for Mr X and then ask him to explain himself and what the wide range of factors are and why he has sold out and let his customers down (don't mention the Fat Cat bumming stuff - that would be rude and he's probably trying to forget about it). Do insist that you will only talk to Mr X about this and that you're prepared to hold on the line until he becomes available.

Let's not let Mr X off the hook here. There are people above him responsible for these decisions. But he should have stood up to him. We need to shoot the messenger in this case and reignite the fire in his belly that he once had. If he realises that what he has done is wrong, then maybe he will once again stand up to the Fat Cats, pull their tiny dicks out of his arse, throw their cream over their fat, furry faces, pull their bonuses out of their gullets and throw them out of the window so they shower down on the people below and let the stupid bankers know how angry we all are with them and how we're not going to take it any more!

Unless they pass on the 0.5% cut, in which case it's business as usual.

Please do ring Mr X. I am sure he'd love to hear from you. Let me know how you get on.

My favourite things in Venice

Just returned from a long weekend in Venice. By a wide margin the best new thing I encountered was the art of Ludovico de Luigi, a Venetian painter/sculptor apparently classified a "svedutist" (I would simply say surrealist, or per Gil Bruvel visionary). It was also good to get another look at Magritte's Empire of Light (the only really good piece in the Peggy Guggenheim collection, which I visited in search of Max Ernst; odd that Peggy Guggenheim could have been married to Ernst yet collect relatively weak examples of his work, there was nothing there in the same league as his Eye of Silence or Europe After the Rain). Both the small room in the Doge's palace containing the majority of Hieronymus Bosch's significant output and Rodin's Thinker simply lying around on a staircase in a minor museum that I only really visited to admire the building itself were pleasant surprises. Seafood in Venice was unsurprisingly excellent, especially Osteria di Santa Marina, though the sushi I had (at Mirai) was only passable by London standards (see eg Cafe Japan in Golder's Green); I was unmoved by the endless parade of carnival masks in the shop windows, but I found the apparent convention of numbering all the buildings in the city sequentially from one to about six thousand inexplicably charming; I'm always surprised by the high quality of Italian wine (about which I know next to nothing so consistently assume, erroneously, that I won't particularly like); and while there I happened to read The Blade Itself, a xmas present from my dear friend Adam, which is the best book I've read so far this year and recommend to fans of Robin Hobb, George R R or China Mieville.