pumpkinstrokemarrow

I have not been on my Horton Lane circuit for a couple of weeks now, either clockwise or anti-clockwise, but I understand from a loud front page lead in our free newspaper that the Lane has become the venue for bikers, said to be tearing up and down the Lane at more than 100mph, threatening life & limb both of themselves and of others. One resident, who lives rather further away from the Lane that we do, reports that the peace and tranquillity of his back garden has been destroyed, a report which is going it a bit. It is true that we hear noisy cars, probably from Horton Lane, from time to time from our back garden, but it is not like living at Hounslow - where I remember once being quite startled by the size, height and frequency of aircraft landing over Hounslow Central tube station. Plenty of houses around too. But not noisy bikes.

Second point, calling anyone a resident is stretching things a bit. There is very little housing on the Lane proper, although there are indeed estates on both sides, accessed through access roads which terminate at the belowsaid roundabouts.

Third point, given that the Lane is between 2 and 3km long, has roundabouts at each end and four or five intermediate roundabouts (depending on how exactly you count the goings on at the Chessington Road junction), I would not have thought that it was terribly well suited to boy racers or bikers, although it is popular with clutches of cyclists, particularly at weekends and I have been known to cycle the Lane myself. My understanding was that, in the olden days anyway, bikers used to use the nearby A3. I remember being rather struck by one such explaining that when you are doing 100mph down the A3 it is rather like driving at a more sensible speed, but on the wrong side of the road, with all the traffic coming at you. Not a game for me.

Our local MP, Chris Grayling (Conservative), is reported to think that there is a big case for both installing a speed camera and a stronger police presence. A catch with the former might be that, all things considered, Horton Lane is not a particularly busy road and I do not suppose that a speed camera would pay for itself very quickly. What are we going to give up to pay for it? Curiously though, Horton Lane is much more important than Longmead Road in the Surrey Roads scheme of things, despite my guess that the latter carries a lot more traffic, a lot of it heavy traffic serving the industrial estate there. Councillor Stevens (Labour) also had a think, but did not come to any conclusion. He did not see an immediate case for anything in particular and thought that another meeting would be a good idea - which is, I guess, about where I am.

Readers may know that I own three pair of spectacles: short range, long range and dark. Most of the time this means that I need to switch between short and long either to go outside or to tune into Poirot. Now for some time I have been switching twice, the brain not seeming to be able to grasp that one needs to switch an odd number of times to achieve the desired effect. More recently, I have come close on several occasions to putting the desirable pair of spectacles on top of the undesirable pair, but stopping myself well before anybody was likely to notice. But today I actually managed it, to try and jam the desirable pair on top of the undesirable pair. Good thing that they are made out of plastic with soft edges.

Having finally got the right pair on, got down to perusing what 'The Times' had to say about the threatened strike of petrol tanker drivers. Most of the several pages of coverage was given over to chaos on forecourts, bizarre behaviour by motorists and to explaining what a terrible fist the government was making of the whole business. Which I found rather irritating: as far as I can recall, the last time this happened there was a lot of inconvenience. A small number of tanker drivers really can bring the country to its knees in fairly short order, despite the best efforts of the army and others. Short of declaring something close to martial law (the sort of thing they do near if not east of Suez) what on earth does 'The Times' want the government to do? There could easily have been and might still be a serious problem.

Amongst all this drivel, I did find a small number of factlets. First, the drivers earn around £45,000 a year, which a few seconds with Google and National Statistics say is a lot more than the median earnings of around £25,000 a year. Second, the drivers voted quite heavily to strike. Third, about seven haulage companies do most of the business. Clearly a case for getting some more. Fourth, forecourt capacity is not what is was. But no figures on either what it was or what it is or what the daily consumption is. And no analysis at all that I could find of why the drivers are striking. Are we to assume that all this talk of H&S is just a smokescreen covering the fact that they have got us over a barrel and want more money out of us? The drivers are just a tad jealous of all the big banker numbers being bandied around? Or is it just a stunt by their union to make trouble, the actual or claimed grievances of the drivers being more or less beside the point?

I do not see a right answer on pay. No easy answer to the person who says why does a junior nurse get £25,000 a year and a junior banker £250,000 a year. But it would be a lot easier if the ratio was nearer 1:2 than 1:10.

I wonder if economists build models which explain why, in a world of highly competitive free markets, the spread of earnings will spread? And be tolerated. The US seems to have got away for a long time with a huge spread - and with the guys at the bottom of the heap still voting Republican in droves. Is there linkage with their huge amount of crime & incarceration? Does the example of top of the range footballers tell us anything?

The jigsaurium complete with completed jigsaw. Note original art work peeping out from under the right hand edge of the jigsaw. From the long gone days when I used to decorate varnished white wood with India Ink and then varnish again.

My only complaint of Gibsons is the large hand obscuring the bottom left hand corner of the lid; a hand which as well as being ugly, obscures a small portion of the target picture. It might, after all, be exactly that part on which one was stuck.

DT having a bit of a rampage about the appalling state of health care in this country, including a front page piece yesterday about some scandal in a home for the demented. All a bit rich coming from a paper of the right. The scandal is all very sad, but until we are collectively willing to put a lot more money into provision for the demented such things are going to happen. However much the DT huffs and puffs. Caring for the demented is hard and skilled work, but work which is often badly paid and often left to the immigrants (whom we are apt to knock in other contexts) because not enough of our own are up for it. Numbers of the demented are no doubt growing apace while public provision for same is no doubt being squeezed - but how many of us are making proper provision against this eventuality? What price shares in private providers of dementia care? The growth industry of the first quarter of the 21st century? One can only suppose that this is where the sympathies of the DT really lie.

Part of my own provision, which also provides variation from a diet of Trollope and his kind, is a resumption of jigsaw activity, something which I have done from time to time in the past, generally on holidays or other festal occasions, and something which is said to be good at keeping the brain cells ticking over and the dementia at bay. So today I cracked open the mint condition jigsaw of 'On the Water', a large format, 500 piece jigsaw of a picture painted by one Gale Pitt, made into a handsome jigsaw by Gibsons and procured from a High Street charity shop a few weeks ago. The artiste does not seem to rate a Wikipedia entry, but she looks as if she is very successful, with this very jigsaw getting lots of hits with Google. Probably makes a lot more out of jigsaws than many a painter of arty pictures makes out of pictures, leaving aside the showmen like Hirst. And probably does better in cash terms than Millais who, at his peak in the second half of the nineteenth century, was making the then enormous sum of £40,000 a year. A lot more than Trollope was making out of his books at around the same time.

Anyway, this particular picture is very good for jigsaw and I imagine that it was painted with that in mind, with paint being far superior to photo anyway. A busy picture with lots going on, but with bold designs and with colours used in such a way that if you have one bit of a boat (or whatever) it is not to hard to spot the other bits from colour mix alone. Only I have made it slightly harder for myself by not using a big enough table and having all the unused pieces in the box, rather than spread out and sorted. This because the completed jigsaw at 27 by 19 inches will occupy most of the table which is available.

For harder jigsaws, where one cannot usually locate any given piece by inspection but where I do have a suitably large table, I use a variety of sorting techniques. Sometimes subject matter - sky, brick wall, water, whatever - sometimes colour.  And then, assuming that we are talking about regular jigsaws with each piece (other than an edge piece) roughly a square with either a hole or a prong on each of the four sides, there is only a fairly small number of shapes and it is possible to sort by shape. Then, when at least two sides of a vacant position are filled, one has a much reduced number of candidates to test, and one also has them to hand. This technique being useful for large expanses of rather bland sea or sky. A bit tedious but you do get there in the end. Most jigsaws are regular in this sense.

Perhaps I will start having jigathons with FIL - although he would probably object to the expense of getting two copies of the same jigsaw.

PS: hitherto I have found it hard to do jigsaws by anything other than natural light. Can't see to match the colours otherwise. But just presently I have the use of a small halogen powered table lamp which serves just as well as sunlight. So if you do your jigsaws indoors, get one!

Went onto the pavement outside the front of our house for the first time this morning, managing one house to the right and one house to the left before deciding that it was much safer in our back garden. Where I went so far as to do some very light gardening. To wit, picking up 19 dead leaves from the new daffodil bed with the litter picker. The only catch with this last being that the trigger is sometimes very hard to pull; the mechanism must catch with the leverage against one somehow. I am also pleased to report that the celandines are doing very well and we also have our first dandelion. Not a particularly impressive specimen but a dandelion flower nonetheless.

I used to visit the Purcell Room at the South Bank reasonably often, but have not been there now for ages, probably because their chamber music programme has been badly squeezed by other programmes: spoken word, dance, world music, experimental music and contemporary music. All that sort of thing. One wonders how the attempt to broaden the appeal of the South Bank is panning out - and one hopes that it has done more than kill off the audience it used to have without finding a new one. But, as it happens, today we were scheduled to go there and hear some Bach solo violin - and it would have been the first time I have heard any such live. Sadly, we decided that in the circumstances attendance would be foolhardy and I have had to settle for Mozart violin sonata in C, K296, on the hifi instead. But a respectable substitution.

Followed by a very warm afternoon in the garden. Anniversary clematis now shooting well. King cups starting in one of the ponds. Lots of violets, small but brilliantly coloured in the bright sun light. Some purple snake's head fritillaries, a late addition to the new daffodil bed looking well and the daffodils themselves looking well too; not at all bad for a first year - and a few barrow loads of compost have been spread behind the bed to help them on their way for next year, a spreading which resulted in much jumping around and sniffing on the part of the beagle puppy next door. There was clearly something in the compost which turned her on good and proper - but it was not worms because there were few if any of the red jobs with which proper compost is supposed to be full to be seen.

Following the post of 16th February, I can now report that I have been awarded the Ancient & English Order of the Bag (2nd class) and that I was invested with same a few days ago. Secrets of the craft prohibit my publishing a picture of the bag so that illustrated will have to stand in its place.

Or at least, it seems to have arrived in our garden. Yesterday I saw the first newt of the season surfacing in the deeper of our three small ponds. The celandines down the bottom are out, if not in full bloom. And this morning the leaf buds on the top of the hawthorn in the front garden and the flower buds on top of the camellia in the pot on the back patio are starting to burst.

And being spring, it is also time for a Budget. Given that this one will no doubt be focussed on the need for our country to make more stuff, being seventh or whatever in the league table of stuff not being anywhere near good enough any more, I shall give some quality time to the matter of whether UK Incorporated, given that a lot of the stuff which we used to make is now made in eastern Asia, ought to specialise in the supply of airports to Western Asia. There are clearly people out there who think that, as inhabitants of a small offshore island, we are well placed so to do. Zillions of aeroplanes can come in from over the seas and tear up the Bristol and Thames estuaries to land in airports in and around London, causing no more nuisance than the disturbance of  a few whooping swans. From where the discerning travellers can descend onto our shops and other tourist attractions, hopefully spending lots of money, before their onward journeys to wherever on our high speed rail links. Clearly an obvious way to generate a bit of growth.

I am reminded that the sometimes prescient George Orwell thought to rename our country 'Airstrip One' in '1984' more than half a century ago.

Having been treated to a run of TLS's not containing much of interest to me, a few weeks ago I thought to buy an LRB for a change, the LRB already noticed in fact on the 1st and 15th March, and did rather well, this issue containing about a dozen articles of 2-3 pages each, each loosely keyed to a book or two. And as luck would have it, over half the articles were of interest to me. So as well as articles about banks and Homer already mentioned, we had amongst other morsels the workings of our new supreme court, Prince Albert, and Russian politics. The only really odd piece was a couple of pages about whether some 15th century Florentine painter of whom I had not previously heard was a murderer. I completely failed to work up any interest in the matter.

Encouraged, bought another last week. Same format but did not do so well, despite rather depressing pieces about the Negev (where Israel seems to be tidying away the Bedouins who live there) and Syria. Not so much of interest at all. But there was compensation in the form of an advertisement for a deluxe, limited edition of 'The Chemistry of Tears' by Peter Carey. A very deluxe one for £295 and a not so deluxe one for £180. Plus a warning that if you order lots, your order might be scaled down. Now I am quite keen on books and am quite easily put off by what I regard as a bad bit of book production or design. But I have never been terribly keen on deluxe books, with those from the Folio Society not scoring very well at all, although to be fair to them they are not charging £200 a pop either.

So I was amused to see this advertisement for a fancy consumer product in what I have always thought of as a rather lefty magazine. Nothing wrong with lefties wanting nice things, but this particular sort of nice thing does not, to me anyway, fit very well. They should be putting arty photographs of the battles of the miners' strike on their walls, not arty books on their coffee tables.

The first public affair is an irritation. In that I read yesterday of an earl of retirement age, in possession of a reasonable chunk of our countryside (plus stately home), who was caught doing more than 100mph on the M27 in his sports car and who was not banned on the grounds that his stately home was not anywhere near a bus route. So the ban would constitute disproportionate punishment. The irritation arises from the fact that his standing, status and demeanour meant that he was able to charm the magistrate out of any banning disposition that he or she might have had. But what chance would a bog standard have if pulled up for the same offence? And if the earl really is possessed of rolling acres, why doesn't he sell a few to pay for taxis? Is it right that nice manners should be allowed to smooth over a reasonably serious offence?

The second is an amusement. The sight of the Guardian, the newspaper which is supposed to be above this sort of Daily Mail trivia and only concerns itself with important issues of the day, going on in excruciating detail for several days on end about the Cameron visit with the Obamas. Every last column inch has been dragged out of exactly how many humbugs Michelle shared with Samantha. Was it more or less than the sharing moments that were accorded to Cherie? Or perhaps, more to the point in these days of France being a bigger country than the UK, Carla?

The first private affair concerns my four feet stock of vinyl. Between two and three feet of this stock were inherited rather than purchased, and of that between two and three feet maybe one foot is choral. Of this choral I make some use of the Schubert songs but that is about it. The rest just sits there. But, very occasionally, I am moved to play a Bach cantata and I was so moved yesterday and played the one on the top of the box which I remembered from its rather memorable title of  'Geshwinde, ihr wirblenden winde' that I rather liked. So I sat down and enjoyed, thinking the while about the wonderful poise of Bach's church music. But then, I did what I never did before and consulted the crib at the bottom of the box and I discovered that the cantata was not church music at all, although to be fair a lot of the stuff in the box was. Rather it was entirely pagan in content, being about a musical contest between Phoebus and Pan. At least we did not get any flaying, the gruesome subject of many pictures of a similar tale. Perhaps the lesson, given that I rarely bother with the crib for Schubert's songs, is to keep it that way. Ignorance is bliss! But I know at least one person who disagrees; who thinks that knowing what a song is about is an important part of the experience.

The second was a different sort of learning experience, to wit the search capability of the current version of windows. This is a lot more powerful than it was, with the down side that I had never got the hang of using it. For example, I could not work out how to search for name of file rather than in content of file, which last seems to be the default. Partly for this reason, I got into the habit of keeping several copies of files, with each copy being filed under a different heading and this way I could usually get hold of a file I wanted. This morning I was moved to try a bit harder and started off by taking a look at the help. Which was not very helpful. But with a bit of poking about and with a bit of luck I rediscovered how to do a search on file name and I can now pull up a window containing the names of all the files with a certain sort of name. No further need to file multiple copies at all. Progress!

Following the Christmas screening of same and my post of 9th January I am now pleased to report that I have actually finished reading my first Dickens novel for a very long time, maybe since I was a child. After something of a pause around February, knocked off the last 10% of 'Great Expectations' over the last few days. Much more attractive on the kindle than on the telly; while the hero might be a bit of a wally at times he is not evil and does not do many bad things. Nothing like as nasty as the telly saw fit to make him - and for some reason I do not presently care for portrayals of nastiness, finding it all rather depressing: I can just about cope with the cardboard cut out variety which populates ITV3, but as for the stuff of ITV1 drama, no. But back on the kindle, I have now downloaded a selection, so perhaps over the coming weeks I will consume some Dickens in earnest.

In parallel, prompted by a report that one of our police forces is proposing to contract out some what is presently done by non-civilians to contractors, had a think about why I like public provision.

The phrase back in the days of Clause 4 was commanding heights. One wanted the commanding heights of the economy, if not national life in general, to be in the hands of the nation, rather than in the hands of of capitalists, as successful businessmen were known in those days. One wanted those heights directed to the wealth of the nation rather than to the wealth of the capitalists. And I know from my own modest experience that capitalists are very good at extracting profits out of public service contracts. They really care about it and put their heart and soul into that aspect of what they do - and they look to have done very well indeed out of the PFI contracts of the Brown & Blair era.

On the other hand, we should not forget that trade unionists used to be pretty good at fighting for their corner too, often without much regard for the health of the business that was providing the corner to fight for. And that  public sector operations can acquire a life of their own, without much regard for whatever it was they were set up for in the first place. The antics of the two public service outfits in the US which went in for building dams in a big way the middle years of the 20th century come back to mind (see October 10th and October 14th).

Another plank of the argument was natural monopolies. It does not make a lot of sense to have a lot of, for example, water companies competing to provide water in the same area. Awful lot of duplicated infrastructure and the ground underneath our roads and pavements might get rather crowded. And while one might argue that it does make a lot of sense to have a lot of, for example, schools companies competing to provide schools in the same areas, it is not very community full. I think there is a lot to be said for everybody going to the same neighbourhood school, everybody mixing it in together without regard to colour, race, income or anything else. We need the practise; there is plenty of segregation in later life but it would be good not to start out that way.

Which leads onto the plank that there is a raft of public services which should be provided in a reasonably uniform way across the country, free at the point of delivery (a feature which as well as being community full, reduces transaction costs). That this raft is big enough so that in the round, we all get a reasonable chunk of provision from what we put in. Things balance out. We might not use dustbins but we do use care workers.

And looking to law and order services there is clear conflict of interest. If I am in the business of providing prisons for profit, I will also be in the business of promoting the bang em all up line approach to justice. I often wonder whether our failure to modernise our laws about recreational drugs is a consequence of a version of this effect.

At a more techy level, performance measurement is very much the thing these days, being used both to drive performance in operations which have been left in public hands and those which have been contracted out. And something was needed with standards in public services being very mixed, as indeed they were in private services. But performance measurement is not yet a very mature art: far too much effort is poured into computing and meeting performance targets at the expense of into whatever it was that the measures were trying to measure. A related problem being the amount of effort which is poured into documenting the space between different parts of an operation, perhaps between the public and private providers. In the olden days you just went down to the stores and got a stapler. Now you go through some complicated rigmarole to request one from the provider of office services, probably not the same as the outfit for whom you work and a rigmarole which might easily cost more than the stapler. Hard to get the balance right here.

I think that this is enough for now. Leaving me in favour of public provision of core public services, more or less free at the point of delivery, with things like cars, iron and coal no longer being core and with perhaps some room for private service provision in the lower reaches. But I fear that collectively we are not prepared to pay the taxes needed to make this work.

PS: when you next have a moan about a form or leaflet from government, spare a thought for the terrors that come with lots of consumer durables, the things that come in dozens of languages at once and attempt to tell a lot of the story in a very small number of pictures.

Just getting off the train at Waterloo when I fell into conversation with a chap from Littlehampton. It turned out that he was going for a job in the London Television Centre hard by the National Theatre. It further turned out that the chap, of middle years, had never been to London before and had no idea how to get to the Centre although he did know what it looked like from his own telly, back at Littlehampton. He was also most impressed by the size of and bustle at Waterloo Station. As it happened I was headed more or less that way myself, so was able to put him on the right road. I explained to him on the way that there were plenty of other people about who did not travel much, citing the folk from darkest Norfolk who used to descend from their coaches onto Norwich for their annual Christmas shopping trip, never mind London. But I did not say that that was thirty years ago.

From there a brisk walk north east to the Market Café at Whitecross Street, ignoring the various stalls selling luncheon snacks from around the world, in favour of tea and a bacon sandwich from the caff. Good value it was too at just over £3.

From there a short hop into St. Luke's to hear Nicola Benedetti and her friends. Five pieces from Shostakovich for violins and piano taken from his music from films. Very light and graceful, not the sort of thing I associated with him at all. Followed by the only bit of chamber music known to have come from the pen of Mahler, a movement for a piano quartet. Interesting stuff, rather orchestral in flavour despite the modest number of instruments. Then for the main course we had Shostakovich's Piano Quintet, which has worn better for me than that from Dvořák. This last being something that made a huge impression on me when I first heard it, by accident, but which was a bit disappointing when I heard it last year (December 27th). But today's Quintet was nearly spot on, ably helped along by St. Luke's' excellent acoustics. Only nearly spot on because I thought there were some passages when the piano overdid it a bit, did not give enough space for the strings. Pleased to note in passing that the gushing from the Radio 3 people has been toned right down, at least as far as the live audience was concerned.

Wandered back through Holborn and Covent Garden and over Hungerford Bridge to Waterloo and along the way somewhere under or near Centrepoint I came across the latest incarnation of the 'Intrepid Fox', an establishment I last patronised when it was gothic in Wardour Street, an establishment which once refused to serve me because I was wearing a tie, despite the fact that the place was empty - apart from the barman and I - at the time. The difficulty was overcome by my removing the offending tie. On another occasion, an early evening near Christmans, the place was crowded and the doorman tried to stop us getting in firstly on grounds of our advanced ages and secondly on grounds of my wearing a duffel coat. He let us pass when I explained that we always had a drink for Christmas in the establishment.

Then, prompted by an article in the LRB, into Foyles to see if they had a book about the writings of Homer, which according the the article started life as dramatic entertainments at feasts and were roughly contemporary with parts of our own Bible. But for once in a while the usually excellent Foyles let me down. They did carry what looked like a full set of Loeb Classics, but had very little on classics or classical history more generally. So for once in a while, over the road into Blackwells (who have become quite far flung from their native Morseland. I learn from their web site that they have gobbled up the Heffers of my youth amongst other places). They did much better, and managed two of the right sort of books about Homer. One was pitched at the right level but was as much about Homer & Us as anything else while the other covered the right sort of ground but was far too strong for me. Not least because it was assumed one had quite a decent grasp of the sort of ancient Greek in which Homer was written down. So I passed. Maybe I will take a peek at Amazon.

Finally over Hungerford Bridge to be reminded that despite the huge outlay on Bullingdon's, the mayor has not seen fit to do anything about another bridge, illustrated, which I used to be rather fond of, walking it most mornings. For some reason it was truncated, closed and has remained closed, for what must be fifteen years or more now. It would have been nice if it could have been put back together as part of whatever it is they are doing in that part of Jubilee Gardens.

PS: does anyone know a rule for the use of apostrophe's in a word which already has one? Does either one negate the other? Do both score?

PPS: I think there must be some collusion in the publishing world. The LRB, having roused by interest in matters Homeric, passes the baton to the TLS, which reviews this week a small clutch of books on the very subject. But I pass again: either too pricey or too deep for me.

BH, being a little concerned for my health just presently, thought she would run her own series of tests. And being a lady they are not at all technical, quite simple in fact. Now our kitchen is so arranged that there are two cupboard doors under the sink, both opening from the centre, that is to say there is one hinge on the left and the other on the right. For many years the arrangement has been that cleaning gear resides on the right and the small grey bucket thoughtfully provided by Epsom & Ewell Borough Council to hold our kitchen waste, our very own waste transfer station (micro), resides on the left. So all she has to do is swap things around, stand back and watch the fun.

Which seems to be very various. There are periods when I consistently remember before I bend down to open a cupboard door that the waste bucket has been moved. There are rather more periods when I consistently fail to remember. Sometimes the hand gets most of the way to the left hand door and then stops: the facts that I do not have anything to do with cleaning and that I am rather averse to the various smells and pongs which cleaning chemicals seem to come with have eventually got far enough down the brain stem to inhibit already started motor action. A timing problem. But most of the time it seems to be more or less random; the brain has just given up on this one and is having a rest before trying to reset the relevant memory cells.

A rather different angle might be that she is waiting to see how long it is before I bring some order to the experiment, perhaps by keeping score or perhaps, more elaborately, by keeping a spreadsheet. Perhaps she has a bet on with one of the neighbours.

However, just presently I am worrying about something else. Is it fair to call someone a bully who does not know it? Does one have to have malice and intent to qualify as a bully? In slightly different contexts, priests and lawyers both would say that one does, although the lawyers do have the cop out of criminal negligence, which allows one to be sent to jail for a long period without one ever having intended to commit a crime. Not sure of the stance of priests on that one.

OED gives twenty four inches to various other meanings of bully, quite various and some with a positive rather than a negative tone. A relic on the positive side being the just about current phrase 'bully for you'. It gives maybe four inches to the sort of bully in question here (including the various derivatives in the four inches) without addressing either malice or intent. In fact the way it is written neither are necessary. One bullies if one behaves in an overbearing or intimidating manner and that is the end of it.

Which is, I suppose, fair enough if you are at the receiving end. And it is perhaps right to label a person who bullies as a bully. One does not stop the behaviour by being mealy mouthed about what one calls it. But I would still say that absence of malice and intent is mitigation. One might try to take the bully aside and explain things, after which if he or she persists the mitigation falls. Alternatively, he or she may never have realised the effect they were having on others. He or she might just have thought the victim a bit wet, but entirely happy to modify behaviour when everything was spelt out by the people from HR or social services or wherever.

Another swing around London Town yesterday afternoon. Warm with no wind - but still cold enough in the more enclosed galleries and walkways running along the south bank of the river around London Bridge so it will need to get a good deal warmer before it will be comfortable to eat outside in any of the many eateries with outside tables there. Ditto the balconies on the flats, despite their fancy price tags - with the one agent we asked suggesting that one might pick up a two bedroom flat in Bermondsey for a million or so. Roughly four times the price of Epsom; possibly worth it for those who are young, rich & beautiful and so better able than I to take advantage of all the other fashionable eateries which have sprung up in what used to be a reasonably dodgy part of the east end.

Along the way various points of interest. So inspected the interiors of both St. Vedast's and St. Mary-le-Bow, both more or less rebuilt after being more or less destroyed during the second world war. I much preferred St. Vedast's. St. Mary had not recaptured or at least not achieved the lightness I like in baroque. A heavy, cloying feel about the place; like a cake the goo on which is not quite right.

Came across a small container terminal just to the west of Cannon Street Station. This was a bit of a puzzle: why would there be a small container terminal in such a place? Puzzle very quickly resolved once home by Wikipedia: it seems that the thing is not a container terminal at all, rather a waste transfer station for all the refuse - oyster shells and champagne bottles - generated by all the bankers in the City of London. Does each bank have a container in its back yard into which the bankers chuck their stuff, with the smelly containers being hauled away by smelly bog standards to the waste transfer station on alternate Wednesdays?

Came across a very large butcher in New Change Passage. An extraordinary looking place, with most of the back of this very large shop being what appeared to be a glass fronted cold store containing large quantities of beef - lots of fore rib on the bone for those that are keen on that - and numbers of pigs. I found it all rather off-putting: I think I prefer my butchers to be more domestic in scale; not putting the large scale slaughter of dumb animals quite so much in one's face. A second downer was the fact that the place was part of the Oliver empire, Oliver being one of the many television personalities whom I find rather irritating. Given that there did not appear to be any customers at around 1500, what sort of trade does the place do? There might be plenty of people around who earn lots of dosh, but how many of them want to fight their way home through the rush hour with some ribs of beef tucked under their arm? Does the place serve all the restaurants round about? First thought was not: city restaurants would go to the specialist wholesalers. Perhaps the answer is to return in five years and see if the place is still there. Oddly enough there was a second butcher just up the road from this first one. Nothing like so grand looking, but perhaps a bit more practical with prices rather less than the double what one might pay in Manor Green Road that Oliver was charging. See http://www.jamieoliver.com/barbecoa/ for the full story.

South of the river, past all the flashy new-to-me buildings and piazzas at Tower Bridge, came across an inlet which could serve very well as the location for a costume drama, looking very Dickensian, despite the overhanging warehouse having been converted into flats. The illustration does not do it justice at all; you will have to go there yourself to get a proper grip on the atmosphere. Complete with ducks. The AZ says the thing is called St. Andrews Wharf, so not the entrance to some formerly serious dock that I had thought it might be.

Last stop was the replica of the Golden Hind. Not one of those originals where the repairs have more or less completely replaced the original - like the Victory at Portsmouth, just a straightforward replica. But not quite because there was a propeller and there were bulges strapped to the side just below the waterline, visible as the Hind is in a dry dock. The bulges were a bit like the sort of thing, I think ballast tanks is the technical term, you would have had on the sides of a second world war submarine (rather than a sixteenth century battleship (the very small size of which never ceases to amaze)) and presumably present here as a result of a visit by some health & safety enthusiasts at the time when the replica was due to sail around the world.

Cakes from the City branch Bea's of Bloomsbury (http://www.beasofbloomsbury.com/). Cakes which on this occasion took the form of very sugary & jammy doughnuts. Not the sort of thing that I would normally go for but mine was rather good.

Having missed the second concert by the Elias Quartet at Dorking (see February 5th for the first), got to the third and and last on Saturday. We had Mozart No. 18 (K464), Janáček No. 1 and Mendelssohn No. 2 (Op.13). So we finally get to hear the Kreutzer sonata noticed here from time to time (search for Kreutzer or see, for example June 20th 2010).

All three pieces did what I expected. The passion of Mozart was set in a calm and controlled setting. That of Mendelssohn was more lyrical and that of Janáček more anguished. Interestingly, my order of preference went forwards in time with earliest best while the BH order of preference, with her taste for the modern, went backwards in time with latest best. The leader introduced the Janáček by way of the Beethovnic and Tolstoyan antecedents, but giving the impression that the short story was a perfectly regular tale of adultery and murder, while I thought it a rather unpleasant piece of work. For a moment I was moved to stand up and tell her so, but luckily for all concerned the moment passed. She did better with the Mendelssohn, explaining that while this youthful work was a sort of tribute to the master and full of references to his work, this work was very much the composer's own. There might be references but there were no quotes. And true enough, the thing did remind one of the master, while being something else. A good thing, only catching us out by its drawing to a quiet close.

After the event, I tried to track down my copy of the short story, just in case BH wanted to take a peek, either because of or in spite of my panning. But my disapproval must have filtered through into the search algorithm because I was quite unable to find it last night. Had it been banished to the seldom used bookcase in FIL's room? Had I dumped it? But this morning I find it on the top shelf of the bookcase that is used. Which is all right and proper, because although I loaded 'War & Peace' and 'Anna Karenina' onto the Kindle, I had not bothered with all the other stuff and which should not, therefore, have been consigned to the Oxfam bucket at Kiln Lane.Which includes, as it happens, a number of those handy blue Oxford Classics of yesteryear, exparental stock.

During the event, we were not impressed by the staging. Not only have the flower arrangements been lost to economy, now the drapes to the staging have gone too. So we had a big extension to the stage, four by four panels sitting on substantial tube works, presumably for some other event. Then in front of that a much smaller and lower dais for the quartet to sit on, more four by four panels but sitting on slightly less substantial tube works. My point being that the tube works were on full view, rather than been decently draped. Slightly tacky looking. I don't think I would have been very impressed if I were the quartet.

Then this morning, moved to take another look at the Dorking Concertgoers on the Charity Commission web site, where I find that they have posted another set of accounts, this last one showing a profit rather than a loss. But the long term outlook remains a bit unsettled. Will they be able to sustain the formula of metropolitan music and suburban prices? I then got to thinking about how handy it was that I could look at the accounts of any charity in the land in this way. Before I give, check the people out. This sort of openness is good and probably encourages people to give. Being registered is also good as giving to a proper charity carries a feel good factor, provided, that is, one is not talking about the likes of Eton College, not my idea of a proper charity at all. Being registered also carries, I think, certain tax advantages. You can recover basic tax on donations through gift aid or something. Maybe there are VAT angles? I do remember not being too impressed to learn that Oxfam organise their shops in such a way as to minimise their tax bill. This is the behaviour of a for-profit outfit, for the Microsofts and Shells of this world; not for charities. All reflecting the steady erosion of the old fashioned idea of charity with older folks giving their money or their time in soft & decent ways, without the hustle & bustle of regular business. But perhaps it is for the best that charities should move with the times.

I was half way round the clockwise Horton Lane walk this morning when I saw what I would have taken for a buzzard had I been in the country. It looked bigger than a crow if smaller than a buzzard, with long wings with ends a bit pointed for a buzzard and with flight alternating between a lazy flapping and soaring. So probably a hawk of some sort, probably not a buzzard. RSPB identifier can do no better than suggest it might be a sparrowhawk.

Don't think the sighting was a product of the few glasses of Marsannay taken the evening previous, but I come back to that in a minute.

For a complex of reasons and despite the rather dull weather, we decided that yesterday afternoon was a good time to go and see how the spring bulbs were getting on at Hampton Court. Decided further to park in the station car park, rather than in the court itself, so that we got to Bridge Road for tea and cake, rather than the Tilt Yard - a perfectly decent and convenient place but not quite the same as a proper caff. So, found a car parking slot right next to a ticket machine. Climbed out of the car, all set to pay the flat fee of £5.50, to find that the machine never took card or note and was not taking coin. Unlike the machines in the Court which reliably take all three. I suppose the semi privatised Court can afford to throw taxpayers' money at fancy machines while the fully privatised railway is much more careful. Slightly irritated and looking around for another machine, when a lady just leaving presented me with her ticket. It would have been rude to refuse, so for once in a while I committed a minor crime.

Sneaked out of the car park, over the bridge and on into the wilderness where the daffodils were just starting and looking rather good. Very peaceful on this weekday afternoon (Friday) with very few people about. Just the ticket for slightly frayed nerves. Round the wilderness twice then along the east front and into the formal garden, where we partook of the symphony in green under the dull cloud. I have noticed before how the dull cloud seems to bring out the best in the green. The paler carp just about visible in the round pond. Rounded off the visit with a peek at one of the sunken gardens, the one with the squat topiary animals, which provided a surprising amount of colour with the beds full of pansies, daisies and polyanthus.

Back across the bridge and into Bridge Road, where we were not able to buy our Arbroath Smokies as the chap who sold them has moved, we were told to somewhere south of Guildford, so rather too far for the odd smoky. Nor were we able to buy a NYRB. Which was something of a surprise to me as I thought that a dinky shopping street like Bridge Road would be just the place for people who read that sort of thing, perhaps in one of the many cafés. Notwithstanding, the same informant told us that it was dinky enough that it rated a two page spread in the day's Evening Standard, something we were unable to confirm as the only Standard yielded by the station's litter bins was soiled with someone's leftover lunch.

But Lancelot's was alive and well. Didn't take one of his cigars, but did take a small piece of Montgomery cheddar (a little dry, but good) and a bottle of something called Marsannay, from Trapet Père & Fils, for around £25 - maybe twice what I am accustomed to paying in Sainsbury's or Waitrose. Very good it was too, quite unlike anything I have ever drunk before. Red, but only just opaque, unlike the red wine I usually drink. And while I could not describe the flavours or the palette, let alone the nose, I could, for once, see the point of the high flown language that sometimes appears in restaurant wine lists. All that stuff about a hint of whortleberry riding on the back of a fizzle of rosemary.

Closed with tea and cake at the bridge end of the road. Mine was a sort of Bakewell Tart, but a wedge from a round, rather than an individual tart. Icing a bit thick, but not bad.

On 28th September, amongst other occasions, I was moaning about the failure of the Tequila bottle to bloom. However, at some point after that I fed it a good dose of sunflower seeds, which does seem to have got it going at last.

Picture not good, but the seeds are now covered in a white woolly stuff and those up against the glass are looking suitably evil. Bottle generally fairly full of the white woolly stuff and we are getting some condensation. We have lift off. I wonder how long it will all last?

While on 8th March, I was moaning about weak articles in the Guardian. Not deterred, I read another, this time about the work of the boundary commission. It seems that late last year the coalition instructed the commission to have a go at our parliamentary constituencies, observing two rules. Rule 1: the number of constituencies must be cut from 550 to 500 (say). Rule 2: the voting population of each constituency must lie within 5% of the target figure of 75,000 (say). The trouble being that in order to follow these rules the commission has  come up with some rather odd constituencies, with some of them even being in more than once piece. First thought was that the members of the coalition, while bewailing the poor mathematical skills of the graduates of bog standard comprehensives, were not exhibiting all that many themselves.

Which I demonstrate by adding some more rules. Rule 3: all constituencies must lie entirely within a county. Rule 4: constituencies should be connected and convex. That is to say in just one piece and very roughly rectangular, square or round in shape. Which might get us into the realm of tiling problems: round constituencies would not add up to the whole. Rule 5: constituencies should follow natural boundaries. That is to say respect the facts on the ground. Whatever they might be. If there are tribes, let people vote in their tribes. Rule 6: the new constituencies should preserve the existing party balance. Rule 7: the constituencies should cover the land exactly once, with no overlaps or holes. This is not an idle rule; one might otherwise think to have constituencies organised by something other than area, perhaps by race. The Ottomans used, I think, to do something of the sort. And the Germans have their lists. All very alien.

We then have a set of rules which is incoherent: one cannot do all of these things at the same time. There has to be some compromise. So I think the way forward would be to ask some forward thinking retired statistician to devise some performance measures for the commission to apply to their proposed constituencies. Perhaps to write a constituency generating computer program with which to do some simulations. Test out millions of possible constituencies to see which comes out best.

Maybe I ought to write to the editor at the Guardian.

Or maybe I ought to do a bit of research into how they do congressional district boundaries in the US, where there is, I think, a rule about population. And where in the olden days the districts gradually acquired very bizarre shapes, giving rise to the term gerrymandering from the newt (aka salamander) like shape of some of the worst.

The last meal from the chicken of recent report was most successful so I feel the urge to share the recipe.

Take three ounces of red lentils, add two pints of water and bring to the boil. Take off the heat and leave to stand for a couple of hours. Then add two ounces of diced smoked gammon (low fat), two diced yellow peppers, three diced onions (small), two diced tomatoes (large) and a finely chopped clove of garlic. Bring back to the boil and simmer for an hour and a half. One needs to keep an eye on it and stir from time to time as, at the desired consistency, it has a tendency to catch and the flavour of burn is not good at all. About a quarter of an hour before the off, add eight ounces of coarsely chopped cooked chicken and three carrots, washed but not peeled and sliced very finely crosswise. The carrots should not be quite cooked through when served. The finished product has a nicely orange themed colour scheme and it all went down very well with white rice and pointy green cabbage.

Thoughts then turned to matters Bullingdon, prompted by an article in the Guardian. First thought was that, the fad having died away, my efforts to reach the four poles (see, for example, December 30th) have now been trashed by extensions. When the fad revives the work will all need to be done again. Will the south pole - bottom right of the illustration - survive? Will the new map including the extensions be as convenient to use as the one I have got presently?

Second thought was that the article in the Guardian was very weak. A full page article, one headline, two pictures (one large, one small), one advertisement and maybe twenty column inches of copy. There were some facts and figures about the scheme, but little proper discussion of whether the scheme was a good thing. One complaint that it was pretty feeble compared with the Paris version (without saying why) and another that Barclay's Bank were making a jolly good thing out of it and were not paying nearly enough for the privilege. But no real clues as to whether the taxpayer, be that the London taxpayer or taxpayers generally, were getting good value for their £100m plus, this appearing to be the bill for the first five years, net of sponsorship money.

Google suggests that the TFL budget, from where I presume this £100m comes, runs at around £8b a year. So the £100m over five years is quite a small proportion of the total. But what about all those subsidised bus rides which have been squeezed out in consequence? Fare cuts foregone? Worthy community project foregone? What about all those motorists irritated by the flocks of cyclists now swooping around the roads, particularly at junctions, often with little regard for other road users? Will there be a real debate between Ken and Boris about the whole thing as part of their election campaigns? If there was such a debate, would Ken claim that Boris has just screwed up what was his, Ken's, original good idea?

I wonder also how sophisticated the Mayor's budget making process is. Does it come anywhere near the budget process run by central government, with several hundred highly trained people fighting it out for three months or so every three years? Or however many years it is these days.

I personally have no idea whether the scheme is a good thing. I do know that I found it fun to use - but that is hardly a sufficient reason to stump up £100m.

After much humming and haaing, we decided that yesterday was a day for Dorking, a place which we used to visit reasonably regularly, say several times a year, but which I do not recall visiting, except for the purposes of concerts at Dorking Halls, for some years now.

Dorking being quite a long way, stopped off for elevenses at the Burford Bridge Hotel, which I believe was an independent until not so long ago but is now a branch of Mercure. But staff pleasant and helpful and the place boasts a pleasant elevenses lounge. If we did not already live where we do it would be a good Moleside - or perhaps Molegap - base for walking on the downs.

Then on to Dorking which turned out to be quite a lively place. OK so there was a dozen or more charity shops, and the shopping part of the town appeared to be shrinking a bit from its hey-day, but there were plenty of other shops, not many of them links of chains. It even boasted a telescope shop, a hunting & fishing shop and a clock shop, this last fancying itself enough to call itself a horlogerie. It was also a country town, so there were country people about, albeit rather outnumbered by green welly people, the prices in the estate agents very much reflecting the presence of these last. Would not have done for us though. Epsom door to London door, including a 20 minutes walk at both ends was around 90 minutes, while the same thing from Dorking would have been a good bit more and would probably have had to involve a car at the Dorking end. OK so one is in the country which has its points, but one is out comfortable range for retired days out in London. Epsom rules!

One of the points was the pubs. Having had a look around we settled on the 'Spotted Dog' for lunch which turned out to be a very old style pub. Had not been turned over by some chain. Still had junk piled up in the passage on the way to the gents. Still had what sounded like regular customers. Fire on the go. Decent pint of Courage bitter on the go, something one does not come across that much these days, now that Courage have not only pulled out of the pub trade but now only appear to exist as a brand within the Wells & Young's family, having done a stint within the Imperial Tobacco family. Pint rounded out by a chicken pie with veg.; nothing fancy but entirely reasonable on both palette and purse.

Ought also to mention a visit to the rather large church of St. Martin, apparently built in one go, the third on the site, in the mid 19th century. Presumably the second on the site had slipped into such dilapidation that it was not worth the refurb.; such was the poor state of provincial piety before the revival in the second half of the century. Imposing exterior and very large if not very holy interior; presumably far too large for its present congregation, but a considerable monument to the wealth of the town at the time nonetheless. There was also an illuminated red lamp hanging in the lady chapel, a practise which I seem to recall is a touch papist. That apart, a rather arts & crafts flavour with lots of stained glass and some interesting pictures made out of a stone version of marquetry, including one which seemed to involve a former resident called the Duchess of Marlborough. Had she been chucked out of Blenheim Palace for some dowagate misdemeanor or other? Furthermore, we have heard the Endellion Quartet perform in the place perhaps twice, during the refurbishment of Dorking Halls, quite a few years ago now - they are a bit too grand for Dorking these days - with one of the performances being slightly disturbed by fireworks outside.

Then this morning, time once again for a clockwise spin on the Horton Lane run. Where the only item of record was the sighting of two chaffinches in a hedge. Not something that I see very often at all.

PS: following the cod report of March 5th I can now report that the outturn on the chicken will be at least 11 meals. Even better than anticipated. Might even go to a few more, depending how strongly we tuck into lunch upcoming.

Yesterday to Trafalgar Square to see how the sunset did there. I am pleased to say that at around 1745 it was indeed very spectacular. Massive panorama of blue, grey and yellow clouds. And the square itself, together with the surrounding buildings, most impressive in the fading light. London not a massive tourist attraction for nothing. I wonder if the square's centrality & prominence irritate the French and Spanish losers of the battle in question, a battle which was certainly massively decisive, much more so in the long run than Napoleon's similarly stunning victory at Austerlitz? I certainly find the Parisian focus on the deeds of Napoleon rather tiresome - regarding him mainly as a blood thirsty tyrant, responsible for a few million excess deaths. I would guess that the French would be less relaxed than the Spanish on this score.

During the stroll through town while we waited for the sunset, took in the British Museum where we paid what was for me my first visit to the Enlightenment Room (ask google for 'enlightenment room british museum' to get the full story from the horse's mouth). A large rectangular room, fully up to the standard of a large stately home, lined with bookshelves at two levels - there was a narrow walkway running around the room, half way up the wall - and filled with exhibition cases. The books were a rum mix, mostly but by no means all old leather bound affairs. Mostly in English but with a fair bit of French. I did not notice anything else, German, Latin or Greek for example, but I dare say they were there, the educated in those days before English overwhelmed the world going in for languages. Lots of travel. Lots of history. Some four volume sets by bishops, presumably sermons.

But I think the idea was that, unlike the books, the things were supposed to be representative of the sort of things that a rich gentleman might acquire to stock his house with to provide entertainment for his house guests, this at a time before DVDs or CDs were available. And one had to be very rich to be able to run to one's own live entertainment. So there were a lot of old pots, presumably Greek. A case full of oil lamps, perhaps a bit younger than the pots. A miscellany of classical oddments. A miscellany of oddments from the colonial world. I learn, for example, that the cowrie shells which used to be used as currency in parts of Africa were quite small, maybe a centimetre in length and that you needed around 100 of them to buy grub for self, servant and horse for a day. Various scientific instruments, some contemporary some older. Various geological specimens. Various fossils with an honourable mention for that pioneering lady fossil hunter from Lyme Regis, Mary Anning. A small collection of stuffed birds.

All in all a first class entertainment, not too crowded and not spoiled by lots of people standing around listening to commentaries through leaky headphones. A meta museum if you will, in the sense that the point of the thing was not the things themselves, rather that they were the sort of thing that were collected during the Enlightenment. But if you wanted the things themselves, I think the exhibition galleries of the museum still do that: they have not all been destroyed in the drive for accessibility.

An example over the past few days of how the cost of one's meal confected and  consumed at home is only weakly correlated with its quality. I observe in passing that confected at home reduces the tendency to equate price with quality. Something that I do in the case of supermarket wine: if I pay £10 a bottle I tend to like the stuff, while if I pay £5 a bottle I tend to dislike it. A tendency which is much weaker if I am buying ingredients rather than finished product. And a tendency which is said to be strong in the case of luxury goods like chocolate and perfume. One wants to spend out on stuff of this sort, a want which reminds me of a chap who used to have himself rowed out into the middle of a lake where he would tear up lots of paper money and throw it in, returning home content & satisfied with the world. And consumed at home reduces the tendency to delight in conspicuous consumption. One can be conspicuous in private, but it is more fun with an audience. Something not quite right about glorying in the expense of a meal all by oneself. So we have eliminated two factors which tend to equate cost with quality.

On the other hand, I have had good reports of the Marks & Spencer dining out at home range. Good food and wine for two for not much at all. But they manage to make it sound and taste quite posh. Quite different psychic forces must be at work here.

So, getting back to business, on the first day we had some line caught loin of cod originating from the north east Atlantic but actually bought from Waitrose. We had it baked and served with mashed potato and crinkly cabbage. Very nice it was too, but the fish cost around £15, out of which we got the one meal for the three of us.

Whereas on the second day we had a giant chicken, also from Waitrose as it happened. So far we have had three hot meals out of it and will probably get six more: three cold and three as some kind of stew or soup, this last possibly involving red lentils. But the chicken cost a mere £5, so without bothering with the modest cost of labour, fuel and vegetables, the chicken costs one ninth as much per portion as the cod. But I find it very hard to say that the cod was worth the extra. It made a change as we have not had it for a while, and I do prefer it to the rather cheaper salmon, but I would not want to go much further than that.

Odd that salmon has become a cheap fish again. I believe that in the first half of the 20th century, particularly during the depression in North America, salmon was dirt cheap. The huge salmon runs on the west coast were still up and running, so much so that poor people got thoroughly fed up with the stuff. They coveted tinned tuna. Maybe even tinned pilchards. Anything but salmon again. Then during the second half of the 20th century, salmon was a luxury item in western Europe. Salmon equalled posh. An equation which has not quite been blown away by the cheap farmed stuff.

I now get on to the sky sights of the post title. It was raining for most of the chicken day, but we did get out to inspect the declining water tower late afternoon and found it to be down to the last third. As expected, the drill seems to have been to remove all the insides, knock the bricks of the main curtain wall down the middle, dragging them out through a hole at the bottom and up onto the waiting wagon. All very neat and tidy.

On the way back treated to two spectacular skyscapes by the setting sun. Tremendous effects of light through the various banks of cloud. The first was brilliant blues, yellows and greys. The second more orange centric. Sadly transient; these thing only lasting a few minutes each.

Now have quite a decent show of daffodils in one sector of the new bed. The new bed being four sectored and L-shaped. Sector 1, off picture to the left is the snowdrops which have come up if not having been too splendid. Sector 2 is next, with its right hand portion being in the left of the picture. Daffodils up but some way off flower. The two or three bags of bulbs were randomised, but that must have been within sector. I can't see how the weather in sector 2 would be that different from that in sector 3 round the corner, the position of which can been found by looking at the turn in the border bar at the bottom of the picture and where the flowers are well out. Sector 4, off picture to the right is the winter aconites which like the snowdrops have come up even if they have not been too splendid. Both will probably do better next year, in part because the grass will be cut at the end of the summer and be shorter at this point in the cycle.

Larger animals seemed to have stopped poking around, although the place where they sometimes jump can be seen in front of the blue slide, but the presence of a good bit of well rotted garden (rather than kitchen) compost in the beds has certainly encouraged the worms. Much bigger and grander worm casts than we are getting in the lawn proper, relatively rock hard clay.Some of this can be seen under the border bar.

Border picket fence now backed with chicken wire to discourage transit of young dog from the land of the slide to the land of the daffodil.

Having done the daffodils to death, the next topic of breakfast pondering was the way in which process has taken over the world. BH noticed a bit in the DT the other week on this very subject and I had been well in the grip of IT process (and consultants selling IT process) in at least two of my various postings in the civil service.

From there I jumped to the way in which the same sort of people like to impose nice tidy hierarchies on organisations. For example, when I first joined the Treasury it had rather an odd structure. By the time that I had left it had been tidied up with 7 (or so) directorates with each directorate owning a number of teams and most teams owning a number of branches. The people in charge of teams were called team leaders instead of assistant secretaries and pretty much everybody sat open plan. Even the Treasury Knights. The only untidiness was a sort of layer between directorate and team, not fully recognised in the paperwork, with chunks of directorates headed up by vice-directors or some such. From which I now draw the lesson that while the old structure might of been untidy, it did perhaps reflect what the Treasury did. To revert to IT speak, the old structure was driven by the function, rather than letting the function be driven by the structure. This last being anathema in the IT world. And while the IT process people had a point, that the solution should be driven by what the user says and does, I never thought they allowed enough rope for IT to suggest new things to say and do, new things made possible by the IT. I suppose this was the consequence of users having been bitten once too often by IT salesmen selling the moon and the stars, this in the bad old days when big IT projects were always overrunning, collapsing or otherwise going pear shaped.

I then jump to ambulances where, in this area, we are served by something called the 'South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust' which serves Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Guessing, we used to be served by a much smaller operation, possibly organised at more or less a district level. So every district had an ambulance service, complete with ambulance station, chief officers and all the overheads of a free standing operation. Hundreds and hundreds of them, all cosy and local, but perhaps not terribly efficient. Perhaps organised into regions for the purposes of chief officer conferences. So maybe what we have bought from the shake up into trusts, as well as a lot of disturbance, is a shake down into units of organisation which really work. Units which look from  http://www.nhs.uk/servicedirectories/Pages/AmbulanceTrustListing.aspx  to be roughly old-speak regions in size but with subtle variations to allow for the terrain on the ground. Which, partly because there is no nationally imposed hierarchy, can strike the right balance between the various conflicting demands on such a service. It may be that similar arguments play in other parts of the Health Service.

So I might be allowing some point in the proposed NHS legislation yet - even if I never allow any point in the package as a whole.

Have been continuing to ponder about banks and decided that yesterday I fell into error with my noddy model. So what follows is issued by way of an errata - but without going to the length of marking up the changes. Not as if I was still at work after all. You can always play spot the difference.

So let us suppose we have a bank the business of which is to take deposits from one bunch of people and to make loans to another bunch, while remembering that in the olden days one of the main functions of a bank was to provide a safe haven and depositors would pay for moorings in that haven. Nowadays depositors generally expect to get paid. So let us suppose that the total deposited is D and that the bank has to pay depositors DI each year by way of interest. Being a model for today, we assume that DI is positive. We also assume that some at least of the D can be withdrawn on demand. Contrariwise, leaving aside Christian and Muslim subterfuges to avoid being accused of usury, banks have always charged borrowers. Let us suppose that the total lent is L and that the borrowers have to pay the bank LI each year by way of interest. Let further suppose that the bank has cash assets of C and owners O owning shares to the value of the market capitalisation M, M being some function of of some combination of what the market thinks that the bank will pay in dividends, DIVI, and what the market thinks the bank should be worth. Asset strippers being one of the varieties of sharks that move into the market when the market gets it wrong and M gets too low. We forget about  other assets - buildings, systems, goodwill etc - and operating costs. Then, for a solvent bank we should have L+C>=D, so that the bank can pay off its creditors, should need arise. If C reaches zero the bank is said to be bankrupt. Such an eventuality might be staved off either by calling in a chunk of L, perhaps bankrupting lots of small businesses on the way, or by a rights issue, supposing the market to have any appetite for same.

We then poke the thing around in various ways.

If L and D do not change from one period to the next and we use '*' to denote a value for the next period, we have C*=C+LI-DI-DIVI. Which suggests the possibility that an unscrupulous bank might pay far too much dividend, eventually resulting in the shares in the bank being worthless, but with shareholders having done well enough in the meantime not to mind.

If we allow L and D to change, we get C*=C+L-L*-D+D*+LI-DI-DIVI. So making lots of new loans or lots of depositors taking their loans back will hit C.

If all that the bank was doing was providing safe haven then L & LI would be zero, C >= D and DI < 0. But apart from providing safe haven, most banks also act as a sort of unit trust. Depositors get a share of the returns from the pool of lenders, with it being unlikely that many of the lenders will go bad at the same time, with the bank taking most of the risk and with C being the buffer against problems with L. Because O are the ones taking the risk it is fair that while DI is now positive, LI is bigger than DI, with some at least of the difference going to O as DIVI.

If DI gets bigger than LI and stays that way for any length of time, the bank goes bankrupt. This might happen if, for example, a whole lot of L goes pear shaped and has to be written down. Or if L is small because the bank can't find enough proper people to lend money to and resists the temptation to lend money to improper  people. Resistance which was broken down in the first instance, I seem to recall, by President Clinton saying that he wanted houses to be built for the people.

If the depositors make a run on the bank and D falls rapidly, the bank may exhaust C before they can liquidate enough L to pay out the depositors. Again, the bank is bankrupt.

We get the same effect if a chunk of D matures and the bank is unable to roll it over. This is, in effect, what happened to Northern Rock.

Haldane makes the point that once upon at time O had unlimited liability to meet the D flavoured liabilities, a fact which made O pay serious attention to what the bank was doing, rather than just letting the hired help get on with it. Banks tended to be more conservative than they are now with L a much smaller multiple of C. Maybe as low as 1 or 2 rather than the 20 that we peaked at just before the crash. Which last means that L and D are pretty much the same large number. The up side is that, other things being equal, the profits go up in proportion: double the loan book, double the profits, all on the same initial capital. And the bankers themselves were not the only stakeholders who wanted a slice.

He also makes the point that not only is L a large multiple of C, it is also a large multiple of the GDP of the country in which the bank is registered. So a relatively small percentage loss on L might mean that digging the bank out of bankruptcy might easily engulf the host. Making banks smaller does not necessarily remove this risk: if all the small banks get into the same fix at the same time, fixing them all costs just as much as fixing one big bank.

All of which leads back to something that I have been suspecting for some time. Small countries should not be in the business of hosting big banks which run big risks if hosting is to include underwriting their losses. So, at some point the centre of gravity is going to move away from London to some place where the real money is.

Small countries should only host big banks which do not run big risks. Whose L is good and safe. Banks which exist more to provide serviced safe havens for the man & company in the street than to provide loans to grand & dodgy projects in far flung jungles. Or to grand & grossly overvalued housing estates nearer home. Perhaps in Ireland.

Against all this one might argue that C is dead money. Gold sovs. under the mattress. One wants to turn as much of C into L as possible so that it supports LI. That is where all the wealth comes from.

Perhaps now it is the time to leave all this to the experts. But at least I have dusted off some grist to the saloon bar mill.

That is to say, the regular clockwise walk around Horton Lane and Longmead Road without diversions or extensions. Hawthorne buds starting to burst in the Horton Lane hedges. Plus a sprinkling of dandelions, daisies and speedwell. This last having a pretty blue flower but, along with dandelions and daisies, is regarded as vermin in so far as our lawns are concerned.

On return came across an article by Andrew Haldane in the LRB about banks, an interesting article but I am not sure that I am impressed by the author being executive director for financial stability for the Bank of England. Was he off duty went our finance went unstable? Notwithstanding, prompted to make one of my elementary models as a vehicle for further thought.

So let us suppose we have a bank the business of which is to take deposits from one bunch of people and to make loans to another bunch. In the olden days one of the main functions of a bank was to provide a safe haven and depositors would pay for that haven but nowadays depositors generally expect to get paid. So let us suppose that the total deposited is D and that the bank has to pay depositors DI each year by way of interest. Being a model for today we assume that DI is positive. Contrariwise, leaving aside Christian and Muslim subterfuges to avoid being accused of usury, banks have always charged borrowers. Let us suppose that the total lent is L and that the borrowers have to pay the bank LI each year by way of interest. Let further suppose that the bank has cash assets of C and owners O owning shares to the value of the market capitalisation of M. Asset strippers being one of the varieties of sharks than move in when M gets too low. We forget about  other assets - buildings, systems, goodwill etc - and operating costs. My understanding of accounting is then that for a solvent bank we should have L+C=D, while M is some function of what the market thinks that the bank will pay in dividends.

We then poke the thing around in various ways.

If all that the bank was doing was providing safe haven then L & LI would be zero, C would equal D and DI would be negative. But apart from providing safe haven, the bank also acts as a sort of unit trust. Depositors get a share of the returns from the pool of lenders, with it being unlikely that many of the lenders will go bad at the same time, with the bank taking most of the risk and with C being the buffer against problems with L. Because O are the ones taking the risk it is fair that while DI is now positive, LI is bigger than DI, with the difference going to O in the form of dividends.

If DI gets bigger than LI and stays that way for any length of time, the bank is bankrupt. This might happen if, for example, a whole lot of L goes pear shaped and has to be written down. Or if L is small because the bank can't find enough proper people to lend money to and resists the temptation to lend money to improper  people. Resistance which was broken down in the first instance, I seem to recall, by President Clinton saying that he wanted houses to be built for the people.

If the depositors make a run on the bank and D falls rapidly, the bank may exhaust C before they can liquidate enough L to pay out the depositors. Again, the bank is bankrupt.

Haldane makes the point that once upon at time O had unlimited liability to meet the D flavoured liabilities, a fact which made O pay serious attention to what the bank was doing, rather than just letting the hired help get on with it. Banks tended to be more conservative than they are now with L a much smaller multiple of C. Maybe as low as 1 or 2 rather than the 20 that we peaked at just before the crash.

He also makes the point that not only is L a large multiple of C, it is also a large multiple of the GDP of the country in which the bank is registered. So a relatively small percentage loss on L might mean that digging the bank out of bankruptcy might easily engulf the host. Making banks smaller does not necessarily remove this risk: if all the small banks get into the same fix at the same time, fixing them all costs just as much as fixing one big bank.

All of which leads back to something that I have been suspecting for some time. Small countries should not be in the business of hosting big banks which run big risks if hosting is to include underwriting their losses. So, at some point the centre of gravity is going to move away from London to some place where the real money is.

Small countries should only host big banks which do not run big risks. Whose L is good and safe. Banks which exist more to provide serviced safe havens for the man & company in the street than to provide loans to grand & dodgy projects in far flung jungles. Or to grand & grossly overvalued housing estates nearer home. Perhaps in Ireland.

Against all this one might argue that C is dead money. Gold sovs. under the mattress. One wants to turn as much of C into L as possible so that it supports LI. That is where all the wealth comes from. At which point it is clearly time to turn into TB.