Not quite obscured from world view by the Olympic Games, the Russian Orthodox Church quietly demonstrates it has no influence over anything whatsoever without the strong arm of the Russian Legal Process to defend its name. Now, if it would just give everybody their money back ….

The Russian Legal Process is now better understood around the world, too. Three women are in prison for for reciting an unauthorised prayer and playing unauthorised music in a church, and a number of others are being sought to face similar charges arising from the same offences.

I have watched the video of the occasion in the church on YouTube. I think the song is rubbish but that hardly makes the singing of it worthy of a lengthy custodial sentence, wherever it happens.

Rock on!

Three cheers for those who celebrated the Diamond Jubilee, Hip-hip etc..

It has just been acknowledged by the Eurozone that economies are made up of people, that making a country’s books balance on paper is great but, if the rescue plan entails decimating that country’s working population, denying the young the opportunity to ever join it and effectively imposing abject poverty on the electorate for a long and indefinite period, the democratic will of the people can get in the way of its smooth implementation.

Just today, the Eurozone finance leaders were working on a plan to enable banks to fail without taxpayers taking the hit. Which is a massive step toward their acknowledging the presence still of a great deal of imaginary money that needs to be written off as soon as possible. So stand by for a the markets to wobble while the economists sort out who hasn’t really got what.

Musically, I am understanding the virtue of confident simplicity and am experiencing the urge to record. With no sign of full-time, permanent work on the horizon I’m about to launch myself as a limited company. Please go to www.boxfile.com if you would like details of how to employ me.

London opened its New Year with a firework display perfectly proportioned to fit a wide-screen television. I suspect there will be one for The Queen’s Jubilee in a few months, too. And another for the Olympic Games.

Other than that it will be an uneventful year for most of us. Some people will lose jobs, some people will find jobs. Some of the people finding jobs will be people who have lost jobs. Few of the lucky ones will match their previous income.

The only way for an economy to go forward is by collaborating sensibly with itself. It would appear this process has begun in the Eurozone. While it cannot yet know the exact amount of imaginary money on its collective balance sheets and it will take a very long time to work out, at least the period of denial of its existence has ended. Hurrah! for that.

Unfortunately, the British Government has yet to acknowledge the UK’s imaginary assets problem and so is not yet in a position to make any progress toward a solution. The Prime Minister remains in awe of the Financial Sector, the 10%ers (the 10% who deal shit and don’t care), and fears to cross them.

So long has Mr Cameron stared up in wonderment at the plate glass towers of power that he has been blinded by the sun’s reflection in them and can no longer discern the 90% of the economy that isn’t tall enough to be an obvious silhouette against his otherwise blue sky.

I am enjoying learning to play my musical instruments, the ones I had the forethought to buy before I was made redundant from my job. My suggestion it was a good thing to do was not a joke. Play on!

The protective blanket knitted some years ago in northern Europe is not large enough to cover the Eurozone as it exists today. Envoys were sent to China in search of more fiscal wool, enough to enable enlargement of the blanket to cover Greece. There is not yet any real idea as to how the Greeks would keep warm when China wanted its wool back, with interest.

Quiet, isn’t it? Nothing remarkable is happening in my world.

Politicians are gabbling on as they always do, economists are gabbling on as they always do, the media are challenging overzealous injunctions against their freedom to report things the rich would rather they didn’t and footballers are dipping their soldiers in other people’s eggs, so to speak. Nothing could be a more normal picture of modern life in the UK at the onset of summer 2011.

Other parts of the world have not been having it so good. Japan had its earthquake and tsunami. The central United States have suffered tornados. The southern United States are flooding. Much of the east of Australia flooded. Peru has a volcano erupting. Iceland has a volcano erupting in a slightly less spectacular fashion. I’m sure there are many other natural phenomena causing everything from disruption to devastation in their local areas that have escaped my notice.

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen are all experiencing revolution at one stage or another, some more violently than others. Iraq is far from settled. Afghanistan is nowhere near settled and I don’t doubt Chechnya has ongoing issues. Not to forget, of course, Israel and Palestine who still can’t rub along with each other. That’s not quite true, Israelis and Palestinians could quite easily rub along quite nicely but their leaders won’t let them. It’s a pride thing.

None of the above noted events, whether natural or human-made, are trivial. Neither am I in a position to do anything about them nor, I am fortunate to report, am I directly inconvenienced by them. So I play my guitar.

It’s not too late to get yourself a musical instrument, if you haven’t already seen or followed my advice so to do. The global nature of supply chains has meant hardship for many people who live and work in the UK but they too should be able to find something with which to inexpensively while away the upcoming winter months. It’ll be grim.

Enjoy the summer while it lasts.

Oh, and don’t build nuclear reactors on the coast in areas prone to earthquakes.

January 2011 is upon us. Fuel duty is going up. VAT is going up. Rail fares are going up. Just as the majority of the employed return to their commute. For some in the Public Sector it will mean the commencement of the Consultation Period prior to the redundancies deemed necessary by the end of March.

Winter fuel bills will be high following the unusually lengthy cold snap. The increased cost of cotton will not put clothing prices up on a a garment by garment basis but will result in the removal from sale of the very cheapest versions from which the increased cost of manufacture cannot be covered by the profit margin.

Mortgages will remain broadly unavailable to first time buyers and the housing market will continue to stagnate. Lending rules will be established that fix the position thus and the downturn in house prices will begin slowly and accelerate as it eventually dawns on existing homeowners that the next generation simply don’t have the money and won’t have the money to pay what people used to until recently for a dwelling place.

As the year unfolds the Cuts will be made and the pinch will be felt. A period of years must pass cheaply and almost everything for almost everybody won’t be much different while it does. Expect wailing and gnashing of teeth from some quarters but something has to give. We cannot continue to spend imaginary money.

The outlook is not all doom and gloom. Those who followed my advice of a year ago will finally find the time to learn to play their instruments. They will pass time creatively while their finances heal from an inevitable battering that will be totally beyond their control.

It could be a good year for music.

A general reduction in housing benefit will not result in a Kosovan style (as London’s Mayor put it) “cleansing” of the poorest families from city centre locations. All it will be is a cap on the earnings of the private landlords who have until now been able to achieve unreasonable incomes at the expense of taxpayers.

There are not hundreds of thousands of unsubsidised prospective tenants clamouring to pay over the odds for poor to average accommodation out of their own pockets so either landlords will lower rents in line with the benefit reductions or their ex-rental properties will return to the market and help push house prices down.

The only losers are the landlords. Which has never been a shame.

Phew!

We have a coalition between parties adult enough to “agree to differ” where appropriate.

It is a bit of a shame it took 303 years to achieve but, hey, it’s here now. I wish it well.

Vote positively for the policies *you* find most appealing.
Ignore warnings given by rival politicians.
Know your own mind and use it.

Note to members of worship clubs -
There is no point in having a democracy if all you do is vote the way your leader tells you to.

What depths are stooped to now! The disproportionate increase in duty on cider is a tax aimed specifically at the unemployed and the young, in fact anybody wanting to escape the drudge of life in Brown’s Britain legally and at lowest cost.

What I didn’t see in the budget was anything likely to give these people something better to do with their time than spend it getting wrecked.
_____

The Chancellor obviously thinks the safest way to raise money is to tax those too drunk or too young to vote, suggesting to non-cider drinkers that to do so will somehow eliminate a social menace. It won’t.

Anti-social drinkers of industrial strength cider at rock-bottom supermarket prices are the product of a mismanaged economy not the solution to it. They also form only a very small proportion of those who will be adversely affected by the substantial increase in tax, the remainder of whom drink responsibly and do have a vote.