Bradford and the Credit Crunch…

….check out this article posted on the BBCs homepage about kids in Bradford West.

Scandalous.

This existed before the credit crunch. And will exist when its all blown over.

Someone said a lot of years ago that we would always have the poor with us.

We seem to have taken it as an instruction.

Gordon Brown promises to halve child pverty by 2010. Shame on you Gordon. Halving it is 50% too little.

Tim Ocsko

Apple Crumble and the Credit Crunch.

We had apple crumble for pudding tonight. Gorgeous. One of my lovely daughters made it. Perhaps a little too much sugar – but hey! She knows I have a sweet tooth.

The apples were windfalls and payment for digging a hole this afternoon. Seriously! A pal of mine has serious garden drainage problems and I suggested that we needed to see the soil topography. So I dug the hole and got paid with a big basket of apples. Most of them would have laid and rotted. A fair trade for an hour or so of work.

By 8.15am tomorrow unless there is a major {miraculous?} turnaround in world economics – there may be many more of us earning our wages on a daily basis. Be in no doubt tomorrow {Tuesday 30th Sepetmber} will be horrific in market terms. And that means hardship somehwere down the line for you and me.

The ouch in all of this is that generally as yet only the poor bankers have been feeling the pain. But mark my words when some of our big household companies stop receiving daily credit, more doom and gloom will follow – and it won’t be limited to the Banking Sector. George Soros said a week ago that another big bank would go – I agree but what he didn’t go on to say was that US and UK Household companies – retailers and manufacturers alike will follow suit in the next few weeks. Watch this space.

It is difficult to believe but without some much more radical action we will encounter a depression akin to the 1930s. When inter bank lending issues hit the Far East in the early 1990s the Japanese government slashed interest rates and printed money. Sadly, and although I am not saying that would we work, the legacy of the 80s in both the UK and US in terms of our governements’ blind attachment to economic ideology means that we will allow our problems to worsen before we wake up to the reality that the trinity of Friedman – Thatcher – Reagan has failed us. Real people will feel real pain whilst government plays with its abacus and argues over the colour of the beads.

Sadly….it will get even worse {and here’s me an optimist}. A further round of pension scandals will follow and hit the headlines once we have finished picking over the carcass of the banks. New York Stock Exchange lost 8% today and tomorrow the London Stock Exchange will follow suit. That’s our pensions….sorry assuming you still have one after the last market cock up. My dad worked into his 70s through choice – I will probably…. through need.

Not pretty.

Time for three things.

1. Some radical measures. Personally I would encourage huge public works programmes. Lets get people back to work on fair wages for all.

2. Some redistribution and regulation to stop it getting so out of kilter again. We have a geart opportunity here to regulate sensibly – not FSA pseudo regulation – real regulation that assesses business performance and business models.

3. Some personal assessment of what matters – whether we have made life too complicated, been taught to expect too much, grown greedy. A welcome return to a sense of perspective. A simple way.

The market doesn’t work. People do. The market is a place not a value or a credo. It is people who matter.

My apples came about because the seasons moved on – and they were ready to eat. The Credit Crunch is just another element in this new season. Something which we all cultivated though admittedly only a few planted. We can choose what happens in this new season with the fruit which we are now being served – do something with it or let it rot.

Persoanlly I vote for Apple Crumble.

Tim Ocsko

Credit Crunch

Do they really take us for fools?

The US and UK taxpayer will bail out the banks and more specifically some of the reckless greedy naive Harvard graduates who have got us into this mess.

Nationalisations in the UK – with the latest being Bradford & Bingley. £700 billion bail outs in the US. And even with this – be clear there are more banks to go. Its the staff I feel sorry for – more of that tomorrow

Two thoughts keep nagging me.

1. So what if the banks collapse? Will the world really stop spinning? I don’t know but does anyone? The BBC keep telling me that the collapse of the banks will herald Armageddon. But will it? Will the underprivileged in our society be anymore underprivileged. Possibly. I do wonder though if the most pain will be felt by thee stout middle classes – no school fees, no third holiday, reduced incomes from the buy  to lets?

2. Pan forward two years. Go on imagine it. Where will the current CEOs of our major banks including those that have gone to the wall? Dare I say it? Go on then – I bet you they are all, bar one or two, still running global companies still earning huge incomes …just getting their bonuses paid in different ways. Lets see.

I am not convinced by our Governments responses. too many of them end up advising banks so it feels like there is a eensy weensy bit of self interest here. Personally, I think I would rather see the US Government spend more on healthcare, foreign aid and new schools. And in the old UK I would much rather see us fix our energy problems – more wind and wave power.

An old guy I used to work with used to sagely say’ Them with money will always have money, them without wont’. Perhaps the credit crunch is the opportunity we have been waiting for – an opportunity that seems to come only once in a while – an opportunity to redress some of our longstanding imbalances, to redress the power of those who misguidedly gamble with all our futures, to lay some foundations for a better tomorrow.

Perhaps our credit crunch could actually turn out to be a Jubilee!

Tim Ocsko

Will the real….

I saw him again today. More than once. Doing things I once would never have done.

Today I went for a stroll with my wife. Not a walk. A lover’s stroll. It was a shockingly gorgeous day today. literally breathtaking. Like my wife. We strolled. I would have swapped nothing for those moments, or even their memory. Nothing.

Things are getting put right and without me needing to strive.

I feel the angst of many of the things which I reported here under, Troubled – dying away. Yes, there are still issues to fix but I am circling them ready to deal with them rather than they dictating terms to me.

I spoke to my mum. She is a rock.

Is this the road to contentment? Is that my next stop?

Tim Ocsko

PS I have written another two stories. I feel more coming.

PPS Today was SO the best day of my life…. I think I will cry.

Stories From The Street…

….I will keep this brief.

I have never read a book before, before it was published – when it was still raw and forming. Before today that is.

Today I read the launch book for “Stories from the Street”.

Its simply brilliant.

Brilliantly written by 30 or so very ordinary yet very extraordinary people.

Brilliantly edited – it fits together so well.

Brilliantly conceived.

I can’t believe I have had a little part in it and soon, November 22nd 2008 it will be available to buy.

It’s an awesome collection of short stories told with painful candour and intimacy.

It is a book which will change how you think about certain things.

Wow!

Tim Ocsko