A railway story worth telling

The recent death of Eric Lomax, a Signals officer captured by the Japanese in Singapore and tortured at Kanchanaburi camp in Thailand, comes shortly before the release of The Railway Man, a film based on the extraordinary story of what happened to Lomax and the Japanese associated with his abuse after the war:

A fellow former-prisoner then gave him a cutting from the Japan Times about a ex-Japanese soldier who had been helping the Allies to find the graves of their dead and claimed that he had earned their forgiveness. The accompanying photograph showed Takashi Nagase, the interpreter during Lomax's interrogation, and the man with whom he most associated his ordeal.

Nagase and Lomax finally met in 1994 and there was peace and forgiveness between them. The knowledge of what he had facilitated, including the deaths of several colleagues of Lomax, had haunted Nagase and receiving forgiveness from Lomax meant much to him.

But Nagase was not the only Japanese with a connection to Lomax. Osamu Komai was the son of the 2ic of Lomax's camp; that man, Mitsuo Komai, was tried by the British after the war, found guilty of war crimes and hanged. Osamu Komai grew up with the stigma of being the child of a war criminal; it would have been easy to resent this, and to resent the British who had hanged his father. Instead he took it upon himself to make apology for what his father had done:

Since I could not read English, I asked my acquaintance to translate the record. I found out that of those who my father beat severely, Lieutenant Lomax was seriously injured and Lieutenants Hawley and Armitage died as a result. Knowing the actual names of these British soldiers after 55 years profoundly affected me. Without realizing, I was bowing and apologizing from bottom of my heart. I forwarded the entire record to Mr. Nagase.
I learned from the reply from Mr.Nagase that Mr. Lomax was now a friend of his and was well in England. I wrote to Mr. Nagase, "I would like to meet Mr. Lomax and apologize on behalf of my father."

In 2007 Osamu Komai travelled to Berwick-on-Tweed to meet Lomax and the two men became friends.

"Continuing to hate gets you nowhere," says Eric. "It just damages you as an individual. At some point, the hating has to stop."

It has been 67 years since the end of the fighting in the Pacific, and some of the wounds inflicted in that fighting have taken many decades to heal. But if people like Nagase, Komai and Lomax can apologise for and forgive what happened, it shows hope for the human race.

Lomax's book "The Railway Man: A True Story of War, Remembrance and Forgiveness" on which the forthcoming film is based sounds like quite the read; I look forward to both book and film.

Physicists against interpretive dance

Well, not really, but very similar. Artists against fracking:

Dear Governor Cuomo,
I have concerns about the impact of fracking upon our water, our air, and our local communities in New York State. I believe that fracking for shale gas is a danger to all New Yorkers. Please don't frack New York.

Well, I've visited Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I'd say that the only risk from fracking is a distinct improvement in the quality of the environment. Or lower power bills.

I see that noted bipolar druggie Carrie Fisher supports the cause, for instance. Well, with that level of engineering and scientific expertise, I'm convinced. Truly, "Artists against fracking" have jumped the shark. What's next? "Lawyers against nut allergies"? "Pensioners against co-sleeping"? Kittens against apartheid?

Ruth Davidson - the new Romney?

Much heat and light being generated from the comments of Scottish Tory Ruth Davidson that nine out of ten Scottish households receive more in public services than they pay in tax:

Miss Davidson supported her claims by publishing figures from the Office for National Statistics, which showed the average Scottish household consumes £14,151 more in public services every year than it pays in tax.
Even the families in the middle income groups consume around £20,000 more in state spending than they contribute.
However, those in the top 10 per cent pay £17,205 more in tax than they receive in public services.

A fascinating breakdown, and the ONS is reasonably politically neutral so we can more or less trust the figures as quoted (though the devil, as ever, is in the detail). So, assuming that the figures quoted by Davidson are accurate, what do they mean?

Much has been made of comparing Davidson's comment to Mitt Romney's "47%" quote:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them [...] These are people who pay no income tax.

although they refer to quite different situations. Romney was only looking at income tax, which kicks in at much higher levels in the USA than in the UK: around $40K for a a family filing jointly which is typical for 1 worker families, whereas in the UK you start paying 20% as soon as you're past your £7K allowance. Davidson includes households that pay income and consumption taxes, but are still net receivers when you take into account Government spending on benefits, education, emergency services etc. Romney did not include payroll taxes (equivalent of NI) or consumption taxes (normally levied at 4-9% on most goods and services at state level).

It would be interesting to consider the implication of 10/10 Scottish households being net receivers of government services. That would imply that other sources of Government income, principally corporation taxes and the Barnett formula payments from Westminster, would be funding the marginal payments and services to households as well as all other non-local Government business (defence, foreign policy etc). Since corporation tax is indirectly a tax on employees and shareholders (commonly pension funds), that would imply that the burden of running Scottish national services is borne by successful businesses and English/Welsh taxpayers. As public spending inevitably rises above tax receipts, that squeeze will become ever tighter; corporation taxes will need to rise to the Laffer peak, assuming they are not already past it, since there's no realistic prospect of a Westminster Parliament increasing the financial transfer to Scotland. Northern North Sea oil tax income will continue to drop, aggravating the squeeze. One can only speculate at what will happen if Shetland declares independence and claims taxation rights on the oil fields in its waters.

Since we're only (only!) at a 9/10 ratio, the top 10% of taxpayers can be squeezed for a while longer. However, since they are more likely to be employees and shareholders in private companies, one wonders how long Scotland can continue squeezing the arse of the golden-egg-laying goose before it flies off to warmer and more welcoming pastures in the south.

Ruth Davidson's pronouncement may or may not have been politically wise, but you can't accuse her of making up facts or addressing an irrelevant issue:

Kenny Gibson, a Nationalist MSP, described it as Miss Davidson’s "Mitt Romney moment". He added:"“At least Mitt Romney only insulted around half of Americans, while Ruth Davidson believes almost 90 per cent of Scots do not 'contribute' to society."

Well, Kenny, I think we've dealt with the Mitt Romney comparison above. Perhaps you'd like to come up with a definition of "contribute" that encompasses the above facts yet refutes Ruth Davidson's claim? And don't start down the path of a "Scottish nurses are worth more to the country than just their salary" claim; if the Scottish NHS hired Filipino, Polish, Russian, Nigerian or South African nurses for the same salary, they'd likely get more expertise for their money.

Defecting Iranian cameraman - who is this news for?

The ever-interesting DEBKA brings us news that Ahmadinejad's personal cameraman has defected and brought some goodies along:

For some years, Golkhanban worked not just as a news cameraman but personally recorded visits by the Iranian president and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of top-secret nuclear facilities and Revolutionary Guards installations.
When he left Tehran in the president's party, his luggage was not searched and so he was able to bring out two suitcases packed with precious film and deliver it safely into waiting hands in New York.

Oopsie. A few red faces in Iranian security, I suspect.

What I find interesting is the amount of information leaking out about this defection. There's clearly no particular reason to keep the defection itself secret - Iran knows, America knows, and no doubt this is good propaganda to wave at and demoralise the Iranian leadership: "Hey, you know those people you trust absolutely? You probably should not trust them as much." But the detail on what he (allegedly) brought out is interesting:

Among them [the film and photos] are exclusive interior shots of the Natanz nuclear complex, the Fordo underground enrichment plant, the Parchin military complex and the small Amir-Abad research reactor in Tehran.

Why is American intelligence telling the Iranians what facilities they know about? Why not leave them paranoid and guessing? Is this a carefully judged leak, or is this someone who knows too much and talks too much blabbing his or her mouth off?

Transport official not going under the bus quietly

The first named official of the three Department of Transport civil servants suspended over the West Coast Mainline fiasco is Kate Mingay who was an Executive Director (aka Vice President) at Goldman Sachs up to 2003. Linkedin claims she was "Head of UK Debt Capital Markets" which seems quite a lofty title for a mere VP; one can only imagine that the UK debt markets were a lot less interesting in 2003 than they are now. Anyway, she's claiming that she was unfairly scapegoated:

"My role has been inaccurately portrayed, mainly due to statements and other comments made by the Department for Transport itself.
"I would like to make it clear that I did not have lead responsibility for this project; neither I nor any member of my team had any responsibility for the economic modelling for this project, or for any DfT project. Nor did I have any responsibility for the financial modelling in respect of this project."

Ironic, really; given that she came from the banking sector, you'd have thought she'd have learned more about politics and sacrificial goats than it appears she has.

Trying to kibitz what game she's playing, two main possibilities present themselves. First, that she genuinely believes that she and her team are in the clear and that she's being made a sacrificial goat; she's trying to get information out in public in the belief that The Truth Shall Set You Free. This seems naively optimistic to me; I would have thought that a far better move in this case would be to rope in an employment lawyer and use "going public" as a threat in early negotiation. Perhaps that's why I'm not an employment lawyer.

Alternatively, she realises that she's at least indirectly responsible for the mistakes, but figures she can bluff it out and rope in the PCS and Sir Gus (both of whom seem very willing to side with the civil servants) to face down the politicos; maybe she feels that putting a human face on the "mistake" is a better play for public sympathy than being a faceless "civil servant".

Ms. Mingay is listed as a (the?) corporate finance director for the DofT, and the issue around which the bid fell apart was apparently the GDP resilience model off which the bond amounts posted by FGW were calculated. It's not obvious that her team was in the clear - even if they had no input into the model (and why didn't they?) one would have thought that some sanity checks on the results would have been a prerequisite to starting their own calculations. It'll be very interesting to see the grubby details here if this gets as far as the courts.

Frankly though, I don't see this going very far. Either the DofT will cave and remove the staff suspensions (possibly with some token letter of admonition), or they'll come to a financial arrangement and pay off the protagonists as long as they find a job elsewhere in the Civil Service. After all, I can't believe that screwing up and wasting a few tens of millions of pounds is much of a bar to inter-departmental transfer...

Goldman Sachs as Facebook?

I know they helped with the IPO, but it seems that Goldman Sachs thinks it has a lot to learn from Facebook on the technology side:

"Finance is a very technology-dependent business," says Don Duet, a global co-chief operating officer in Goldman’s technology division. "We have a substantial infrastructure footprint, and over the past four or five years, we've been moving into a scale-out-type model that's very similar to the big web firms.

The first question which comes to mind: who is Don Duet and what has he done?

Don joined Goldman Sachs in 1988 as an associate in the Technology Department within Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities in New York. He transitioned to a number of roles within Technology [...] He was named managing director in 2000 and partner in 2006.
Don earned a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from Marist College in 1988.

Huh? Marist College? Looks like a small college in upstate NYC with not much in the way of a grad school element. So Don joined GS straight from school, and learned enough to be dangerous, then played the politics game to rise though the ranks of GS technology division. This should be entertaining. I hazard a guess that Duet doesn't know enough to know what he doesn't know.

What is Don Duet planning for GS?

Duet says it hopes to have these servers up and running within six months. "We want to get the point where we have machines that inherit some of the properties of the original Facebook designs, but actually work in more classic data centers."
[...]
In another echo of the big web players, Goldman has also made the move to "containerized" data centers. About eight years ago, Google started piecing its data centers together using shipping containers packed with servers and other gear.

Oh, Lordy. So Duet thinks that the computing problems that Facebook, Google and Goldman Sachs face are similar enough to adopt the same strategy in hardware? I don't even know where to start. And for state-of-the-art GS hardware he's taking the approach that GOOG took 8 years ago? WTF? GS is rumoured to have about 40,000 servers, vs the rumoured 30,000 FB servers in 2009, which (at an annual doubling) represents ~250K servers today; similarly, Google at 1mm servers in 2009 and maybe a slower growth rate should still be somewhere over 2mm servers today.

The other point I find significant is that in the whole interview Duet never mentions measuring how well GS is using the computers that they have. If their average utilization were 40%, and they could double this by introducing a market in computing resources among the GS divisions, that would be a doubled capacity for free. Maybe efficiency isn't what Duet sees himself as being paid for.

As a GS buddy of mine acerbically notes: "I'm sure, whatever happens, it will be declared a success [by Don Duet]."

Obama discovers the flip side of a compliant media

They don't ask the hard questions. Dana Milbank in the WaPo gives us the background to Obama's poor performance in the other night's debate:

In lieu of taking hard questions, Obama has opted for gauzy, soft-focus interviews with the likes of "Entertainment Tonight," gentle appearances on late-night comedy shows, kid-glove satellite hits with regional TV stations, and joint appearances with the first lady where questions are certain to be gentle. Tough questions are rare in one-on-one interviews, because Obama has more control over the topic — and the interviewer wants to be invited back.

If you want to find out how good you are at boxing, you don't take on old Mrs. Smith next door. You seek out your local boxing club's toughest fighter, don gloves and have at him.

I suspect Obama has been relying way too much on scriptwriters, PR aides and planning for his public engagements. He should take a leaf out of Bill Clinton's book -- no, really. In Barbara Olson's book about Hillary Clinton Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton she describes Bill at college where he would plonk down his lunch tray on the "black" table (hosting the small number of African-American students) and just start talking to the suspicious students there. Bill's no stranger to a hostile audience, and indeed seems to actively seek them out as a challenge. Barack has protected himself from hostile questions, to the detriment of his debating skills. Mitt is a businessman and his bread-and-butter is taking on difficult meetings - if a meeting is going to be easy, why not leave it to an underling?

Let me say in passing that the craven carrying-of-water for Obama perpetrated by most of the US and UK media is revolting to see. I'm all in favour of them asking tough questions of Romney and holding his record up for inspection; why, then, do they not do the same thing for his opponent? Case in point: the 2007 race-baiting video which USA Today has tried to claim was "widely covered" in 2008. My arse, USA Today. Maybe it was widely viewed among the media, but I'm a USA news and politics junkie and it's the first I've seen or heard of it.

I especially liked the talkingpointsmemo.com defence:

Despite protestations by Carlson that the media ignored Obama’s speech, CNN's Peter Hamby pointed out that FOX News aired video of the speech at the time:

So, and I'm just guessing here, CNN didn't air any of it? The only people who saw the video were those whom the media regards as being "in the tank" for the GOP? FFS.

The media are doing Obama no favours in the long term by sucking up to him in the short term. When he falls (and he will) it will be a hard, brutal fall that comes from nowhere with no real warning - because he, and his compliant media, have hidden him from all the warning signals.

Frantic rearguard action by the Civil Service

Following the well-publicised £40mm screw-up with the West Coast mainline bid and the (unprecendented?) suspension of three senior civil servants at the DofT, head mandarin Sir Gus O'Donnell tries to pull the Civil Service off the top of a very slippery slope:

However, Sir Gus O'Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary, today blamed ministers for presiding over a Whitehall skills shortage and failing to pay enough to get the best staff.

They're screwing up! We should pay them more!

Interesting argument, Gus. I wonder how long the three civil servants in question have been working in the Civil Service. Are they part of the famed Civil Service fast stream? My experience with those clowns is that they are somewhat prone to leave a trail of destruction across each department they work with, and end up in a reasonably senior position with a large amount of experience in making mistakes. Either they learn from that and become tolerably competent, or their considerable faith in their own abilities is unshaken and they become positively dangerous.

I'm actually fine with the principle of paying good civil servants significantly more. However I want the overall wage bill to be neutral, Gus. If you want to pay some people more, you have to pay others correspondingly less - or fire them, and not splurge out horrific sums on the overly generous statutory redundancy. Gus seems to be wanting more pay and the current near-total protection from being fired. It is actually possible to fire someone from the Civil Service for incompetence, but it takes co-operation from the HR department and a good couple of years. Hardly the model of dynamic efficiency that Gus is promoting.

What now?

Sir Gus, who ran the civil service for a decade, today said mistakes will happen as under-qualified civil servants are forced to run increasingly complex projects.

I see a possible solution: stop trying to run complex projects when the department doesn't have the skills. How about that, Gus? I realise this may mean that the DofT has less to do and hence requires fewer staff, but from my point of view this is a win-win. For important projects like the West Coast mainline bid, bring in a small but competent outside team and make sure their financial incentives are aligned with the public's.

So whose fault was it?

He said it was not ceratin [sic] yet whether ministers were responsible for flawed policy or civil servants had wrongly carried out instructions.

I'd translate that as "my staff are frantically scrabbling around trying to put together a paper trail that provides cover for the three suspended personnel." Good luck with that, Gus.

Oh, and here come the PCS:

The Public and Commercial Services union, which represents one of the three Department for Transport employees facing disciplinary proceedings over the bungled procurement process, said public servants had been targeted as scapegoats.

Well, I guess "held to account for their actions" doesn't play as well to the peanut gallery. I suppose we couldn't expect anything else from Mr. Serwotka who clearly doesn't believe that pissing away a mere £40mm of taxpayer money due to outright incompetence merits suspension (note, not even disciplinary action yet, just suspension and presumably with pay).

The article does give what sounds like a plausible reason for Worst Great Western being allowed to win in the first place; the DofT has had a downer on Virgin for a while:

It [the antipathy towards Virgin Trains] stems from a renegotiation of the west coast franchise in 2006 – the consequence of a bungled upgrade of the route – that left the DfT feeling that it had been outwitted and outmanoeuvred, to the benefit of Branson and to the detriment of subsidy-paying taxpayers.

I bet people were happy with the result of the flawed calculation, and no-one wanted to look too closely at the numbers to check them...

The NY Attorney General is sending a message

And the message is don't try to help the Government, you'll only get screwed over:

The civil suit, filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, accuses Bear Stearns of failing to ensure the quality of loans underlying residential mortgage-backed securities.
It relates to securities sold by Bear Stearns in 2006 and 2007 - before it was taken over by JP Morgan

Now, I give the NY AG the benefit of the doubt and assume that there is indeed a reasonable case to answer for (former?) Bear Stearns employees and management undertaking dubious deals in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis. However, CEOs Jimmy Cayne and Alan Schwartz were fired in short order after the takeover, so it's not entirely clear whom Eric Schneiderman intends to blame for the company failings.

Let's be clear about this. Bear Stearns was about to implode on March 16th 2008. That implosion would have had unknown but likely dreadful consequences for the American banking system. The Fed (and the Treasury Sec Hank Paulson) leaned on Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan to buy out Bear Stearns with nearly zero notice; JP Morgan had no time to do any due diligence on the takeover. For sure they got Bear Stearns at a good price: $1.2bn at $10/share, but they had no opportunity to do the kind of investigation that would have uncovered evidence of these alleged dubious practices.

Eric Schneiderman is working hard to ensure that when the next financial crisis rolls around (and it will), large American firms will be much more hesitant to step into the breach when the US Government asks. If they feel that they will be freely screwed over for Doing the Right Thing, why should they help?

Deputy general secretary of the TUC wants more unemployment

Frances O'Grady of the TUC, writing in The Grauniad today, seems to favour more unemployment. Lots, lots more unemployment:

The twin track of wage growth since the turn of the century is illustrated by a statistic calculated by One Society, which found that if the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as the pay of FTSE 100 directors since its introduction in 1999, it would now be almost £19 an hour, rather than its current rate of £6.19.

I'll accept that statistic at face value.And in return, I'll note that UK unemployment since 1999 has risen from 6% to 8%; and the minimum wage purchasing power standard has risen from an index value of 800 in 1999 to 1150 today, or nearly a 50% jump.

If we raised the UK minimum wage to £19/hour as Frances O'Grady implies she wants us to, I wonder what would happen to that unemployment rate?

Perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on Frances since her BA in politics and modern history and diploma in industrial relations and union studies means that she has never been troubled by such considerations as wage costs. Given that, though, it's surprising how keen she is to spout confidently such rubbish...

She opines:

We need fairer wages for those in the boardroom, with employees having a seat on remuneration boards and packages that run in line with the long-term health of a company and not its short-term share price. And, of course, we need strong unions and more collective bargaining.

Ah, "fairer". That wonderful word. What's fair, Frances? Who judges? Now, I'm all in favour of better alignment of managerial remuneration with a company's medium-to-long-term profits; the temptation to loot the company with terrible short term decisions in order to general a temporary blip in salaries is deplorable. I'm not, however, convinced that putting regular employees on the board is going to make much of a difference.

I'm also not convinced that unions are particularly weak these days; they seem to be very solidly represented in the public sector. If Frances feels that unions don't have much traction in private companies where the management are actually accountable for profits, she should ask herself why that might be. Perhaps a relentless focus on the wages of the average worker and ensuring that the company is unable to sack bad employees or reward good employees might actually be counterproductive to gaining wider union representation?